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Title: The Lost Faith
And Difficulties of the Bible, as Tested by the Laws of Evidence
Author: T. S. Childs
Release Date: July 27, 2013 [EBook #43328]
Language: English
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THE LOST FAITH,
AND
DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE AS TESTED
BY THE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.
BY
T. S. CHILDS, D. D.
PHILADELPHIA:
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK,
No. 1334 CHESTNUT STREET
COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY
THE TRUSTEES OF THE
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK.
_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED._
WESTCOTT & THOMSON,
_Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Philada._
Some of the most pathetic cases of the spiritual unrest and
skepticism of the day are found among the children of Christian
parents. They have been brought up to believe the Bible, but under
the influences that have met them as they have gone out from the
old home into the world their early faith has been shaken, and not
unfrequently destroyed. To such as these, and, beyond these, to all
who have come to believe that our age has passed beyond the Bible, it
is hoped that the incidents and arguments of this little book may be
of service.
WASHINGTON, D. C., June, 1888.
THE LOST FAITH.
LETTER I.
MY DEAR C----: It is useless for you to write to me on the subject of
your last letter. I appreciate your motives, but with me the question
is settled. I have given up the beliefs of my childhood; they had
long been a burden to me, and the writings and lectures of Mr. ----
did the rest. Have you heard him? Can he be fairly answered? I am
not, indeed, as confident as he is that there is no personal God,
though I do not believe it can be _proved_, and I entirely agree with
him in abhorring and rejecting the doctrine of future suffering. This
was the horrible nightmare of my childhood, and you cannot conceive
the relief that the rejection of the doctrine has given me. I am
frank to say, from my own experience and that of others, that this is
the point that gives Mr. ---- his hold on so many. The doctrine of
endless suffering for the sins of this life is abhorrent to them, and
they welcome his views almost as a first truth of reason. This, at
least, is my position. The existence of God cannot be proved, nor can
any immortality for man except in the influence he may leave behind
him. But a truce to this. Come to me soon if you are not afraid of
my "infidelity," and let us live over the days of our boyhood. Most
of the dear old friends are gone; we are nearly alone, and I am not
inclined to drop the last links of brighter, and perhaps better, days
than these now upon us. Yours, truly,
A----.
* * * * *
MY DEAR A----: Your letter has moved me deeply. Yes, we are
almost alone. Of all the dear group that used to gather in the
old school-house, and play upon the common, and stroll along the
river-banks in summer and skate upon its solid surface in winter, you
and I are nearly all that remain. The Southern sea has poor H----;
W----, the leader of our sports, fell (under another name, I think)
with Custer's band in the wild tragedy of Montana; B---- and S----
won their honors, and were buried with them, on the battlefield;
K---- lives a wreck in mind and body. The rest are scattered. The old
homes are all changed; the inmates are gone from them for ever.
And you are changed. No recollections of the past that your letter
has called up have impressed me more sadly than the change you speak
of in yourself. You have lost the faith of your childhood. It is true
you do not speak of it as a loss: you think you have gained by it.
Your early beliefs oppressed you, and you have escaped the burden by
rejecting belief in God and in a future life.
Let me claim the liberty of an old friend--it may be for the last
time, for we shall soon both be away--and ask if you are _sure_ of
your ground. The questions are too momentous, the interests involved
are too great and too lasting, to be risked on an uncertainty. You
are not, indeed, sure that there is no God, but you are sure that no
man can prove that there is; and you are equally certain that there
can be no future state of suffering for any. Your final conclusions
you have reached through the influence of Mr. ----, and you admit
that his hold on you and on others has come largely through his
passionate denials of the doctrine of future retribution. I have no
doubt this is so. But, after all, is this decisive? Are Mr. ----'s
doubts and denials more to be relied on than the positive beliefs
of as intelligent and good men as the world has ever seen? I do not
press this as proof one way or the other, but it is something worth
thinking of before you give up for ever your respect for Christianity
and the Bible.
Your letter has called up memories that will not down at the bidding.
You remember your mother; you remember her life; you remember her
death. The day after her burial we were sitting, you and I, under the
old willow on the bank of the river--it is all before me now--and you
told me how she died with her hand on your head, and how before she
died you promised to meet her again. Was it all a delusion? Did she
go out in final darkness? And was your promise the folly of childhood?
Will you bear with me if I recall another and a later scene? The
days of childhood were behind us. We had drifted apart. You remained
among the old home-scenes; I was making my way among strangers. Then
one went from you who had become dearer to you than a mother. I
have before me a letter that came to me out of the shadows of that
bitter trial; I know you will not misjudge me if I quote its words
now. Thus you wrote: "I am sure such a life cannot have ended; the
possibilities of it cannot yet be finished. That soul, with all its
sweetness and beauty and brightness, cannot have been quenched like
a spark on the ocean.... Her last words were, 'I go with Him who has
brought life and immortality to light, and who has opened the kingdom
of heaven to all believers.'" I would not recall these early views
and faiths unkindly. If they were wrong, of course you are right in
parting with them; but is it certain they were wrong? And in giving
them up have you found something better and more sure to take their
place?
One important point I presume you have not overlooked: whatever
doubts there may be as to the existence of God, _atheism can never be
proved_. No man can ever be sure that there is _not_ a God; he may
deny that the proof of divine existence satisfies _him_, but that is
all he can do. Somewhere in the universe, after all, God may be. No
man has explored all its recesses; none has pierced its limitless
heights; none has threaded all its dark abysses and found that in it
all there is no God. A man must himself have the attributes of God to
know that there is no God. And suppose I cannot prove that there is a
God? If I live as if there were one and it should happen that there
is not, I am safe; I lose nothing. But if I live as if there were no
God and it should come to pass at last that there is, where am I? Of
two untraveled paths, it is wisest to take that which is _known_ to
be safe.
But suppose it to be a question of probabilities. Suppose you have
to choose between an endless succession of finite causes, as a man,
an oak, a flower, a dewdrop--not one of which is adequate to its own
existence--and one infinite, eternal self-existent, almighty and
allwise Cause of all things (and some such choice sooner or later you
must make), which is the better? Which is the more reasonable? If you
think through these questions at all, either you must at last admit a
God or you must make something for yourself that will do the work of
God; and the God you make _must do what actually is done now_; what
he will do hereafter, who can say? Your friend, Mr. ----, tells you
that "all there is is all the God there is"--that "the universe is
all there is or was or will be." This is pantheistic atheism; it is a
mere assertion without a particle of proof; and if true, it can give
us no relief for the future, as I hope to satisfy you.
By the side of this utterance of Mr. ---- let me put the words of
that king in the realm of science, Professor Joseph Henry. They are
found in the last letter that he ever wrote, and may be taken as the
final summing up of all those vast researches that have made his
name the heritage of the world. They are entitled to some weight
as against the statements of men who, if they can follow in his
footsteps at all, must follow afar off. These are his words: "After
all our speculations and an attempt to grapple with the problem of
the universe, the simplest conception which explains and connects
the phenomena is that of the existence of one spiritual Being
infinite in wisdom, in power and all divine perfections." That is,
the simplest and the best explanation of the facts of the universe
is found in the existence of God. This is testimony accepted by the
highest scientific authority both in this country and in Europe. I
do not say that it proves there is a God, but it does prove that
belief in God is consistent with the highest intellectual power. To
disbelieve is no proof of a great mind.
Mr. ---- eulogizes Thomas Paine as one of the greatest and best men
of his age--a man "whose writings carry conviction to the dullest."
Now, Paine, though a bitter enough infidel, as we all know, never so
parted from his reason or his reverence as to deny the existence of
God. He says with a force that, according to Mr. ----, must "carry
conviction to the dullest:" "I know I did not make myself, and yet
I have existence; and by searching into the nature of other things
I find no other thing could make itself, and yet millions of other
things exist; therefore it is that I know by positive conclusions
resulting from this search that there is a power superior to all
these things, and that power is God." Paine believed in God; he
believed in a future life; he believed in the person of Christ, of
whom Mr. ---- so far takes leave of all historic judgment, and even
of all respectable infidel judgments, as to say we do not know that
he ever existed!
This suggests a word in regard to your questions whether I have heard
Mr. ---- and whether he can be fairly answered. I have never heard
him on the subjects of which you speak, but I have read enough, I
think, to judge him fairly. I recognize his brilliant gifts, his
wit, his rhetorical power, but I am surprised that one of your
natural clearness of mind should not see that he deals most unfairly
with the questions of religion. His representation of Christianity
is a caricature, and it takes great charity not to believe it is
an _intentional_ caricature. His treatment of the Scriptures is
inexcusably unfair. If a Christian were to deal with an infidel book
as Mr. ---- deals with the Bible, there would be no bound to the
charges of outrageous misrepresentation and perversion. His abuse
of Christians and Christianity is often more like the raving of a
madman than like the calm judgment of a fair-minded reasoner. What
are we to think of a man who can sit down and deliberately write
and send out to the world such words as these?--"Hundreds, and
thousands, and millions, have lost their reason in contemplating the
monstrous falsehoods of Christianity;" "Nine-tenths of the people in
the penitentiaries are believers;" "The orthodox Christian says that
if he can only save his little soul, if he can barely squeeze into
heaven, ... it matters not to him what becomes of brother or sister,
father or mother, wife or child. He is willing that they should burn
if he can sing." This is enough. But what shall be said of such
ravings? Suppose Mr. ---- finds imperfections in the Church; suppose
he finds a multitude of professed Christians that are not what they
should be, just as Christ has given us reason to expect,--does that
settle the real nature of Christianity? Suppose "nine-tenths of the
people in the penitentiaries" were American citizens,--does that
prove that American citizenship is a bad thing or make it worth while
for a man to spend his life in denouncing our Constitution? Mr. ----
knows there is a very different kind of citizen, and he knows that
these men are in the penitentiary, not because they have kept the
laws of their country, but because they have broken them. So, even if
the monstrous assertion were true that nine-tenths of the occupants
of the penitentiaries are Christian professors, they are there, not
on account of Christianity, but in spite of it. True Christianity
never sent them there, and every honest man knows that. Christianity
is founded on Christ, and the required fruit of it is holiness,
rectitude with man and purity before God. This is a fact that any man
who _wants_ to know the truth can understand by an hour's study of
the teachings of Christ and his apostles.
To your question whether Mr. ---- can be answered, I say deliberately
he has been answered a hundred times. I do not think that in all
his assaults on the Bible he has advanced a respectable argument or
objection that has not been urged and answered again and again long
before he was born. The Christian Church has not the least fear for
herself from his attacks; indeed, she understands them so well, and
has repelled them so often, that she is perhaps too indifferent to
anything he may say. The danger is not to the Church, but to those
_who want to be convinced that the Bible is not true, and who want
to be assured that, however they may live in this life, they have
nothing to fear in a life to come_.
Indulge me in another letter, and believe me
Yours, truly,
C----.
LETTER II.
MY DEAR A----: The two questions that press upon every mind, and
that Mr. ---- has shown again and again, with wonderful pathos, by
dying beds and at open graves, are pressing upon his, are these:
Is there a God? Is there a future state of existence? To these
questions the best answer Mr. ---- has to give is, "We do not know."
He seems confident that there is no personal God, and "we cannot
say whether death is a wall or a door, the beginning or the end of
a day, the spreading of pinions to soar or the folding for ever of
wings, the rise or the set of a sun." With all this uncertainty, he
is absolutely sure that there is no future state of suffering for
evil-doers. He does not know whether there is any future at all, but
he does know that there is no future of sorrow. He is profoundly
ignorant as to the _fact_ of a future, but has decisive knowledge as
to the _nature_ of the future, if there is one. "Rather than that
this doctrine of endless punishment should be true," he says, "I
would gladly see the fabric of our civilization, crumbling, fall to
unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and even
memory forgets."
Now, it may be quite true that Mr. ---- has this preference, yet
this does not settle the case. We can fully understand how any man
should shrink from the terrible possibility of future suffering.
Orthodoxy has no more delight in it than has infidelity. But it is
not a question of preference: it is a question of fact; and the
point I submit for your reflection is this--whether Mr. ----, on his
own ground, is authorized to affirm that there is no future state
of suffering for any. He says we do not know whether there _is_ any
future state. Very well. Then, certainly, we do not know what _kind_
of a future state there may be, if there is one. If Mr. ---- is not
able to assure us that there is no future for us at all, he surely
has not the ground to assure us of any kind of a future, good or bad.
There may be a future of joy, there may be a future of suffering;
there may be both. Mr. ---- is too good a lawyer to undertake to
prove anything by mere negative evidence. He "leaves the dead with
Nature, the mother of all," and "Nature," as to any sure utterance
upon the future, is as silent as are the lips of the dead themselves.
Mr. ---- does not believe in a personal God. _You_ are not sure
whether there is one or not. There may be; there may be none. If
there is, we cannot know it. Let us see what we gain on either
supposition.
Suppose there is a God, though I cannot know it or I cannot know him.
Then, clearly, I cannot know what he is; I cannot know what he may
do. It is quite possible that this unknown God may be a God who hates
what we call sin, and who will punish it, and who will punish it just
as long as it stands an offence in the moral universe, whether it
be in this world or in the world to come. No agnosticism can deny
this conclusion. The darkest as well as the most radiant scenes that
Christian faith brings within our view _may_ be eternally true. I may
be immortal, and it may be an immortality of joy or of sighing for
me as I use this life and the truth that God has made known to me in
this life.
Let us take the other hypothesis. Suppose there is no God; suppose
Mr. ---- has satisfied me that there is no supernatural revelation,
and no personal God to make one. Has he made it well for me
hereafter? Has he delivered me from all fear for the future? Has
he saved me beyond question from "the serpent of eternal pain"? If
there is no God, does that make it certain that there will be no
future suffering for any man? Let us see. We are here in a world of
suffering. How came we here? and how did suffering come here? If we
came without a God, who will prove that without a God we may not go
elsewhere, and that suffering may not go with us? Here we are--by
natural law, by evolution, by chance--as part and particle of the
one eternal unity; however it may be, we are here, and we suffer.
We know what pain of body and pain of mind are. We have felt the
sting of death, and no law of nature, no power of evolution, has
ever lighted up for us the darkness of the grave. Now, the question
we want answered is this: If "Nature" has brought us into this state
where there is so much of what we call sin, and so much bound with
it that we call suffering, how do we know that the same "Nature" may
not continue the same facts hereafter? Nay, what assurance can Mr.
---- give us that "Nature" is not a power that may in some future
frenzy cast us into a state _far worse_ than the present? Is he so
far possessed of all the secrets of "Nature" that he _knows_ the time
will never come when she may strike us with a force more terrible
than any retributive judgment of God? If "Nature" works now in storm
and fire, in earthquake and pestilence, in disease and torture and
death, in the sorrows of memory, the horrors of remorse and dread
forebodings of coming woe, _how do you know that she may not manifest
herself thus hereafter and through the ages to come_?
If Nature is, as Mr. ---- says, the mother of us all, there are times
when she manifests her motherhood appallingly. And when are these
manifestations to end and how are they to end? If under her regal
sway we find that, as a fact, sin and suffering are connected here,
can any man prove that it may not be a law of "Nature" herself that
sin and suffering shall be connected eternally? If in the imperial
reign of "the mother of us all" there are chains and scourges,
prisons and scaffolds, thunderbolts and flames, cyclones and famines
and ocean-graves, will any man prove that somewhere in the darkness
and mystery of the future there may not be, in the long outworking of
this reign, something worse than a hell, worse than an undying worm,
worse than a quenchless fire?
It is, I admit, a fearful thing to fall unprepared into the hands of
the living God; but if I must choose, give me that, a thousand times,
rather than the terrific possibilities that overhang us all if we are
to be eternally at the disposal of a blind, inexorable, soulless,
merciless "Nature." The Judge of all the earth will do right; at the
worst we shall receive no more at his hands than we deserve; but no
created being can tell us what we shall receive at the hands of an
irresponsible, pitiless "Nature" though she be "the mother of us
all." There is nothing so dark and terrible in all the woes of the
Bible as the possibilities that Mr. ---- offers us in his gospel; and
there is this difference: the Bible opens wide a door of hope for all
who care to enter it; Mr. ---- leads us out into the outer darkness
and leaves us there. Is it worth while for any man to spend his life
in persuading us to make this exchange of despair? And is it worth
our while--yours or mine--to make it?
Truly yours,
C----.
LETTER III.
MY DEAR A----: In the note in which you kindly acknowledge my former
communications you say that, whatever Christianity may be to me, you
cannot see it as I do; its excellences, as they appear to my mind,
do not impress you at all, and as long as they do not you cannot be
expected to accept it. I admit the conclusion: you cannot receive as
good and true what does not seem to be so. But does it follow that a
thing is not good and true because you do not see it? The question
still comes, Is the cause in the thing or in you?
You remember the Beethoven concert we once attended together in
B----? To you it was an occasion of exquisite enjoyment; to me it
was nothing. The difference was not in the music: it was in us. You
have a musical taste; I have not. I tried--not very sincerely,
perhaps--to persuade you that there was nothing beautiful in it; you
smiled, but attempted no argument. You were wise. You knew the music
was beautiful, for you had experienced it; you had felt its power.
If I chose to deny it because I had not felt it, so it must be; you
could only pity me.
Now, is it not possible that there may be something like this in
religion? May it not be a reality--a supreme reality--though you do
not see it or feel it? May I not know it to be real because I have
felt its power? And if there are thousands and tens of thousands as
intelligent men and women as the world has ever seen who are as ready
to testify that they have felt the power and experienced the reality
of the Christian religion as you are to testify that you have felt
the power and know the sweetness of music, are you wise to dismiss
its claims because _you_ have not felt the force of them? You must
see this. I leave it to your candor. Christianity may be true though
you have not felt its truth. A cloud of witnesses stand ready to
testify to you its truth from personal experience. They may not argue
with you: multitudes of them could not argue with you; but, after
all, they have a proof of the reality of their religion, of the
power of Christ to satisfy and bless men, which no arguments in the
world can shake. If all this were a new thing, or if the witnesses
were only ignorant and superstitious men, you might well enough
hesitate to receive the testimony; but when you reflect that it is
the accumulated testimony of nearly nineteen centuries, that it comes
from all countries and all classes, from the prince on the throne and
the beggar at his gate, from the philosopher in his study and the
sailor in the forecastle, from the statesman in the cabinet and the
ploughman in the furrow, I submit it cannot with wisdom or reason be
set aside. It is no answer to say that many great men and learned men
and ploughmen can be brought who have had no such experience and give
no such testimony. This is true, but it is one of the first laws of
evidence that no amount of merely negative testimony can overthrow
the explicit evidence of honest, intelligent, trustworthy witnesses.
Fifty men who did not see a murder could not set aside the clear
testimony of two who did see it. Few of the race have ever seen the
moons of Mars, or even of Jupiter; this does not disturb the witness
of the few who have: the satellites are there.
I have just been reading--not for the first time--Peter Harvey's
account of his visit, with Daniel Webster, to John Colby. You will
find it in Harvey's _Reminiscences of Webster_; and if you have not
read it, it is worth your reading. Colby had married Webster's oldest
sister when Webster was a mere boy. It was in some respects a strange
marriage. She was a godly, Christian woman, while Colby was a wild,
reckless, ungodly man--"the wickedest man in the neighborhood,"
Webster believed, "as far as swearing and impiety went." He seems to
have been the terror of Webster's boyhood. Singularly enough for New
England, though a man of strong natural powers, he never learned to
read till he was over eighty years of age. His wife died early, and
the families drifted apart. Webster had not seen Colby for over forty
years, but he heard that a great change had taken place with him, and
he visited him to judge for himself. I should mar the story of the
interview if I undertook to condense it. Let me give the essential
parts of it in Mr. Harvey's own words. Long as it is, I think you
would be sorry to have it shorter.
Webster and Harvey had driven to Andover, and were directed to Mr.
Colby's house. "The door was open.... Sitting in the middle of the
room was a striking figure who proved to be John Colby. He sat facing
the door, in a very comfortably furnished farmhouse room, with a
little table--or what perhaps would be called a light-stand--before
him. Upon it was a large, old-fashioned Scott's Family Bible in very
large print, and, of course, a heavy volume. It lay open, and he
had evidently been reading it attentively. As we entered he took off
his spectacles and laid them upon the page of the book, and looked
up at us as we approached, Mr. Webster in front. He was a man, I
should think, over six feet in height, and he retained in a wonderful
degree his erect and manly form, although he was eighty-five or six
years old. His frame was that of a once powerful, athletic man. His
head was covered with very heavy, thick, bushy hair, and it was as
white as wool, which added very much to the picturesqueness of his
appearance. As I looked in at the door I thought I never saw a more
striking figure. He straightened himself up, but said nothing till
just as we appeared at the door, when he greeted us with--
"'Walk in, gentlemen.'
"Mr. Webster's first salutation was--
"'This is Mr. Colby--Mr. John Colby--is it not?'
"'That is my name, sir,' was the reply.
"'I suppose you don't know me?' said Mr. Webster.
"'No, sir, I don't know you; and I should like to know how you know
me.'
"'I have seen you before, Mr. Colby,' replied Mr. Webster.
"'Seen me before!' said he; 'pray, when and where?'
"'Have you no recollection of me?' asked Mr. Webster.
"'No, sir, not the slightest;' and he looked by Mr. Webster toward
me, as if trying to remember if he had seen me.
"Mr. Webster remarked,
"'I think you never saw this gentleman before, but you have seen me.'
"Colby put the question again,
"'When and where?'
"'You married my oldest sister,' replied Mr. Webster, calling her by
name.
"'I married your oldest sister!' exclaimed Colby. 'Who are you?'
"'I am "little Dan,"' was the reply.
"It certainly would be impossible to describe the expression of
wonder, astonishment and half incredulity that came over Colby's face.
"'_You_ Daniel Webster!' said he; and he started to rise from his
chair. As he did so he stammered out some words of surprise. 'Is it
possible that this is the little black lad that used to ride the
horse to water? Well, I cannot realize it!'
"Mr. Webster approached him. They embraced each other, and both wept.
"'Is it possible,' said Mr. Colby, when the embarrassment of the
first shock of recognition was past, 'that you have come up here
to see me? Is this Daniel? Why! why!' said he, 'I cannot believe
my senses. Now, sit down. I am glad--oh, I am so glad to see you,
Daniel. I never expected to see you again. I don't know what to
say. I am so glad that my life has been spared that I might see
you. Why, Daniel, I read about you and hear about you in all ways.
Sometimes some members of the family come and tell us about you, and
the newspapers tell us a great deal about you, too. Your name seems
to be constantly in the newspapers. They say that you are a great
man--that you are a famous man--and you can't tell how delighted I
am when I hear such things. But, Daniel, the time is short; you will
not stay here long: I want to ask you one important question. You
may be a _great_ man: are you a _good_ man? Are you a Christian man?
Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? That is the only question that is
worth asking or answering? Are you a Christian? You know, Daniel,
what I have been: I have been one of the wickedest of men. Your poor
sister, who is now in heaven, knows that. But the Spirit of Christ
and of almighty God has come down and plucked me as a brand from the
everlasting burning. I am here now, a monument to his grace. Oh,
Daniel, I would not give what is contained within the covers of
this book for all the honors that have been conferred upon men from
the creation of the world until now. For what good would it do? It
is all nothing, and less than nothing, if you are not a Christian,
if you are not repentant. If you do not love the Lord Jesus Christ
in sincerity and truth, all your worldly honors will sink to utter
nothingness. Are you a Christian? Do you love Christ? You have not
answered me.'
"All this was said in the most earnest and even vehement manner.
"'John Colby,' replied Mr. Webster, 'you have asked me a very
important question, and one which should not be answered lightly. I
intend to give you an answer, and one that is truthful, or I will
not give you any. I hope that I am a Christian. I profess to be a
Christian. But, while I say that, I wish to add--and I say it with
shame and confusion of face--that I am not such a Christian as I wish
I were. I have lived in the world, surrounded by its honors and its
temptations, and I am afraid, John Colby, that I am not so good a
Christian as I ought to be. I am afraid I have not your faith and
your hopes; but still I hope and trust that I am a Christian, and
that the same grace which has converted you and made you an heir of
salvation will do the same for me. I trust it, and I also trust, John
Colby--and it will not be long before our summons will come--that we
shall meet in a better world, and meet those who have gone before us
whom we knew, and who trusted in that same divine free grace. It will
not be long. You cannot tell, John Colby, how much delight it gave me
to hear of your conversion. The hearing of that is what has led me
here to-day. I came here to see with my own eyes and hear with my own
ears the story from a man that I know and remember so well. What a
wicked man you used to be!'
"'Oh, Daniel,' exclaimed John Colby, 'you don't remember how wicked I
was, how ungrateful I was, how unthankful I was. I never thought of
God; I never cared for God; I was worse than a heathen. Living in a
Christian land with the light shining all around me and the blessings
of Sabbath teachings everywhere about me, I was worse than a heathen
until I was arrested by the grace of Christ and made to see my
sinfulness and to hear the voice of my Saviour. Now I am only waiting
to go home to him, and to meet your sainted sister, my poor wife. And
I wish, Daniel, that you might be a prayerful Christian; and I trust
you are. Daniel,' he added, with deep earnestness of voice, 'Will you
pray with me?'
"We knelt down, and Mr. Webster offered a most touching prayer. As
soon as he had pronounced the 'Amen,' Mr. Colby followed in a most
pathetic, stirring appeal to God. He prayed for the family, for me
and for everybody. Then we rose, and he seemed to feel a serene
happiness in having thus joined his spirit with that of Mr. Webster
in prayer....
"The brothers-in-law took an affectionate leave of each other, and
we left. Mr. Webster could hardly restrain his tears. When we got
into the wagon, he began to moralize:
"'I should like,' said he, 'to know what the enemies of religion
would say to John Colby's conversion. There was a man as unlikely,
humanly speaking, to become a Christian as any man I ever saw. He was
reckless, heedless, impious--never attended church, never experienced
the good influence of associating with religious people--and here he
has been living on in that reckless way until he has got to be an old
man, until a period of life when you naturally would not expect his
habits to change, and yet he has been brought into the condition in
which we have seen him to-day, a penitent, trusting, humble believer.
Whatever people may say,' added Mr. Webster, 'nothing can convince
me that anything short of the grace of almighty God could make such
a change as I with my own eyes have witnessed in the life of John
Colby.'"
Mr. Colby was eighty-four years old at the time of his conversion.
At that age he learned to read for the single purpose of reading the
Bible, and it was the only book he ever did read. He lived for three
years after this, and to the end gave the clearest evidences of a
change that to Mr. Webster's judicial mind could be explained only by
the supposition of a divine interposition; it was a divine reality.
The last intelligible words of the once terrible blasphemer were,
"Jesus! glory!"
Changing the details, the experience of John Colby has been the
experience of thousands upon thousands. And--I put it to you in all
candor--is it all a lie? Was Webster--one of the grandest intellects
of this or of any age--was he a fanatic or a fool to believe in the
reality of the religion that John Colby had experienced? Was he a
weakling to put his faith where John Colby had put his, and to trust
that when the summons of both should come--as it soon did come--they
might meet each other and those who had gone before them trusting in
the same divine, free grace?
You may criticise the Bible, you may criticise Christians, but, after
all, there is something in Christianity that cannot be explained
away as a superstition or a delusion; there is something that cannot
be dismissed by a scoff or with indifference. Somewhere and at some
time it will have the final word, and it will be heard. I commend
it to your honest and earnest judgment now. Try it; I ask no more.
Settle the great questions that press on every heart as the Bible
opens the way of settlement to you, and wait the issue. You can lose
nothing; you may gain everything. The fact is as remarkable as it
is familiar that no man in the last hour here--the hour, often, of
supernal light--ever wanted to take back or to change his faith in
the Man of Nazareth as the Son of God and the Saviour of men. When
the shadows are melting in the great realities, and the mysteries of
life are about to be finished and the verities of the future are to
be proved, no man has yet been found to mourn that in the face of all
difficulty and doubt and denial here he was a Christian. Can that, or
anything approaching it, be said of any form of atheism or infidelity
or unbelief?
As ever, yours,
C----.
LETTER IV.
MY DEAR A----: I had supposed my last letter would end our
correspondence. Your kind reply has gratified me more than I can
express. Without further words, let me take up at once the question
that you put, I am sure, sincerely. You ask, "What _is_ 'the way of
settlement that the Bible opens to the great questions that press
us?'"
The questions of supreme interest are few and simple. Is there a
God? Is there a future existence for us? How can that existence be
made a safe and satisfying one? If you are willing to allow any
authority to the Bible at all, there can be no doubt as to the first
two questions. There is a God by whom we were created and to whom we
are responsible; there is a future existence. Those two questions are
settled, if the Bible can settle anything. And they are settled,
let me add, in harmony with the profoundest instincts and the most
imperative demands of our nature. Whatever a few souls in their
struggling dissatisfaction and sad unrest may persuade themselves,
the great yearning heart of humanity will quiet itself on nothing
less than God and immortality. Even your former guide, Mr. ---- (let
me hope I may speak of him now as only your _former_ guide), cries
out in the presence of the dead and before the awful silence of the
grave, "_Immortality_ is a word that hope through all the ages has
been whispering to love. All wish for happiness beyond this life; all
hope to meet again the loved and lost." Yes, there are hours when
the most hopeless are glad to turn to the hope that the Bible alone
gives, when the bitterest rejecters of God and his word long for the
consolation that only the rejected word affords.
Let us turn to the other question. If, when we are through with this
life--as we soon shall be through with it--we are not through with
existence--if there is a life beyond the present not measured by
years or ages,--how can it be made worth having? Is there any way
in which our immortality can be assured to us as an immortal good?
After all the doubts and darkness, the mystery and suffering, the
bitterness and disappointment, of this life, may it in any way be
found a great and a good thing, after all, that we have lived? To
answer these questions we must come back to the old truth--the truth
of your childhood. The "advanced thought" of our day has discovered
nothing to change the fact that men are out of the way, they are not
what they should be. Every man knows this. The Bible expresses it
in a very plain way by saying _they are sinners_. As such it deals
with them; to such alone it opens its door of hope. The Bible is of
no use to you unless you are a sinner. If you call this cant, I am
sorry for it, but I cannot help it; I cannot change it. The only men
for whom God is dealing here for good, for whom he is making possible
an immortality of honor and happiness, are the sinful. And is not
this well for us? Does it not at once bring hope to you--a hope as
great as it is mysterious? You know that life has not been to you
an unstained thing any more than it has been to any of us. To know
this is to know sin, the one appalling fact of the universe, the one
unspeakable woe of our being.
In the simplest way, then, my dear A----, let me say that the first
step in your coming right with God, and so right with the future, is
to know and to feel that you are wrong. The Bible closes the door of
hope for ever on the man who comes claiming the brightness and the
good of a life beyond the grave because he is worthy of it. These
words were once familiar to you: "By the deeds of the law there shall
no flesh be justified." Rom. iii. 20.
Can he who is wrong make himself right? Can he be all he ought to be?
Can he do all he ought to do? Can you set right all the wrong and all
the failure of the past? Can you make the future without error? To
ask these questions is to answer them to every honest conscience.
For one who is wrong there must be the consequences of wrong,
and these must be as fearful and as far-reaching as sin itself.
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," and evermore
and everywhere the harvest is greater than the seed. The coming
tribulation and anguish of the unsaved souls that do evil is a law
of nature as well as of revelation. The wages of sin is death. You
know this. You have felt it in its measure. You have seen it in the
unhappiness, the misery, the woe, the despair and death with which
sin reigns everywhere around us. Take the brightest view of life
that you can, and the darkness in which it ends is terrible. To
go out of it without God is to go out without hope. Am I wrong in
believing that you need no argument here, that no conviction is more
sorrowfully intense with you than this?
Will you go now a step farther? Standing in your wrong and your
weakness and your unrest, with the heavy shadows of the future
falling upon you, are you willing to draw near to the open portal of
a better life? Are you willing to look up and read over it--"God so
loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life"? John
iii. 16. Are you willing to submit your faith to the mystery--beyond
all depth except the love of God--that the Son of God in our nature
has borne our sins in his own body on the tree--that he has died
for us, the Just for the unjust? In other words, are you willing to
receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child--to be saved, if
saved you may be, in God's own way?
In a former letter I spoke of the testimony of Webster to the reality
of the Christian religion; and, though it is true that Christianity
does not depend upon the patronage of any man, it is well to know
that greater intellects than those that would persuade you to reject
it have bowed before it and found their supreme hope in it. Let me
give you, then, another testimony from this greatest of American
statesmen and jurists. It was his last night on earth; that life of
extraordinary influence and honor was closing. As his family and
friends stood around his bed his physician repeated the immortal hymn
of Cowper:
"There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins,
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains."
As upon the night-air died away the final stanza--
"Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I'll sing thy power to save
When this poor, lisping, stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave,"
the majestic voice that had thrilled courts and senates, was heard
in a clear thrice-repeated "Amen! Amen! Amen!" And so he passed, let
us hope, to have part in that final song. Pity, infinite pity, that
he had not made more of that magnificent intellect for the Giver of
it! But at least he was too great a man to deny the Love and the
Sacrifice by which alone the life of the greatest as well as the
feeblest can be saved from being an eternal tragedy.
I know, my dear A----, the derision with which all this may be
received, but my hope is that you have passed beyond that point of
intellectual self-conceit and moral self-murder. At all events, this
is the only ground of a safe immortality that the Bible holds out,
and beyond the Bible there is no ground. If you ever settle safely
the solemn questions of the future, you will settle them here. If you
ever find the rest for which I know you are weary, you will find it
at the cross and in the presence of Him who hung upon it, and whose
words are to-day, as of old, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest."
In all this I know there is nothing new to you. I had nothing new to
say; I wished simply to make a plea for the faith of your earlier
years. It is easy to put it aside, but, after all, it is a faith
that will stand. The evidence of nineteen centuries from millions
of honest and intelligent witnesses, of all ranks and conditions,
living and dying, to the power of this faith to sustain in the most
solemn crises of life, when flesh and heart are failing, and when
the darkness and anguish and mystery of death are rocking the soul
to its foundations, cannot wisely be dismissed as a delusion: there
must be a reality behind it. The lights that have gone out from your
own home and heart you were right in believing have "not gone out in
darkness," but you will not forget that as they went into purer light
they went with Him who has brought life and immortality to light, who
is the Resurrection and the Life, in whom believing, though we were
dead, yet shall we live.
Here I must rest. I can only commend you to God and to the word of
his grace--to the written word and to the incarnate Word, to the
Bible and to Christ. I am as certain as I am of my own existence
that if you will give yourself up to the guidance of these you
will be satisfied and you will be saved. If you will only take the
Bible _and follow it_, you will find an assurance of its truth that
cannot be shaken; you will find rest, for you will find Christ. And
surely it is not too much to ask that in a matter of such infinite
importance you make a fair, honest and thorough trial of that which
no man ever yet made trial of to be disappointed.
Yet let me not fail to impress as a final thought that this result of
good and of peace will come _only by the power of the Holy Spirit_.
It is his to take of the things of Christ and show them to us; unless
he does this, we cannot see them. My last word of entreaty, then,
is--and I would make it as earnestly as conviction and feeling and
language can make it--yield to the Spirit of God. The end you want
is too great for your own strength. You have proved this. You have
struggled on long enough in your own plans and your own way, seeking
rest, and you are as far from rest as ever. Try now another way. Take
hold of a higher strength. "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye
shall find." I plead with you by all the memories of the past and by
all the hopes of the future. You have sinned, and I would not heal
the hurt slightly. No one knows better than you that if the Bible is
true you have a long and dark account against you--if not of open and
flagrant sin, yet to the Mind that makes no mistakes of that which
is perhaps far worse, of calm, deliberate, persistent rejection of
Christ and of his Spirit. It would be faithlessness and cruelty to
hide the fact that by all the verities of God you are in peril--in
fearful peril. To stand in darkness where no light is is sad enough;
but when Light is come into the world and men stand in darkness,
there is sin that seals its own doom. As the case is now, the very
unrest of your soul--its dark gropings, its unsatisfied yearnings,
its sighs of despair--all this is the living witness of your danger,
the prophecy of a deeper gloom and woe to come.
But as yet it is also the voice of God's mercy; it is the plea of
his Spirit calling you to the only rest that the universe has for
the erring and the sinful. The Spirit of God is very pitiful. Every
thought of good is from him; every desire for a better life is his
inspiration; every penitent sigh is his breath. I believe he is not
far from you; I believe, therefore, you are not far from the kingdom
of heaven. Quench not the Spirit. Do not go down in darkness in sight
of the City of Light.
You remember the circumstances of our return from Europe in the fall
of 18--. We were young then, but the events are still vivid in my
memory, as they are no doubt in yours. For two days we were delayed
in Liverpool by a fearful storm. In that storm the Royal Charter was
coming in, having made successfully the voyage of the world. She
had been signaled, and was already in the Channel; her arrival was
looked for every hour. Dear friends of those we were leaving were on
board. The fires were lighted on the hearth, and the table was spread
for the long-absent ones, and glad hearts were waiting impatiently to
give them joyful welcome. But they never came; in sight of the harbor
and of the lights of home they went down--the four hundred of that
doomed ship. The next day we passed the silent wreck as we came out,
and I am sure you thought, as I did, how unutterably sad and pathetic
is such an end, to perish in sight of home.
Our voyage, dear A----, is almost over. The harbor is near; the
lights of the eternal home are in sight; the table is spread,
and dear ones--yours and mine--are waiting there to give us glad
and everlasting welcome. Do not make wreck of life and hope and
immortality in the very sight of home.
Yours, in the bonds of early years,
C----.
Since these letters were written, he to whom they were addressed
has gone where human arguments and pleadings cannot reach him. In a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he passed from the scenes of a
busy, honored and prosperous life into the solemn mysteries that lie
beyond our horizon. On his desk was found the following unfinished
letter, written the night before his death:
MY DEAR C----:
I have not misapprehended the spirit and motive of your letters.
I have read them--more than once--with care and, I believe,
with candor. When a man stands in the shadow of a great and
awful change--and my physician warns me that my lifework may end
suddenly--he is a fool who deals any other way than seriously and
honestly with the questions you discuss. If I cannot say that your
reasoning removes all my doubts, I can most sincerely say this, even
though it may be, in your judgment, at the cost of my consistency: _I
would give the world to have your faith and hope_. While I have
been glad to have the arguments of Mr. ---- to support my own faith
or want of faith, I will be candid and say that I have not been at
rest. Life has been terribly empty and hopeless since I felt, with
Professor Clifford, that "the Great Companion is dead." I have had
success, as the world goes, but what of it? What does it amount to?
What is to be the end of it all? No God! No immortality! Nothing
beyond this little circle whose utmost limit I seem to be even now
touching! Is it so?
I am writing at midnight--an hour when these questions often come
to me with the pressure of despair. Oh to be a child again with a
child's faith, a child's peace! My mother--
* * * * *
Here the letter ended. Did the thought of his mother open the door
of his aching heart to his mother's God and his mother's Christ? So
let us hope. There is a mercy that is from everlasting to everlasting
upon them that fear God, and a righteousness that is unto children's
children to such as keep his covenant.
Lying upon the letter was the following slip, cut from a newspaper.
It was stained apparently with tears, and was probably the last thing
that my friend read. It could hardly be the expression of any heart
to whom the "hand of mercy" was not already "opening the wicket-gate:"
"'Mid the fast-falling shadows,
Weary and worn and late,
A timid, doubting pilgrim,
I reach the wicket-gate.
Where crowds have stood before me
I stand alone to-night,
And in the deepening darkness
Pray for one gleam of light.
"From the foul sloughs and marshes
I've gathered many a stain;
I've heard old voices calling
From far across the plain.
Now, in my wretched weakness,
Fearful and sad I wait,
And every refuge fails me,
Here at the wicket-gate.
"And will the portals open
To me who roamed so long
Filthy and vile and burdened
With this great weight of wrong?
Hark! a glad voice of welcome
Bids my wild fears abate.
Look! for a hand of mercy
Opens the wicket-gate.
"On, to the palace Beautiful
And the bright room called Peace!
Down, to the silent river,
Where thou shalt find release!
Up, to the radiant city,
Where shining ones await!
On! for the way of glory
Lies through the wicket-gate."
DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE.
DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE AS TESTED BY THE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.[1]
[1] The substance of this essay was given as an address before the
Bible Conference in Philadelphia in November, 1887. It has, however,
been revised and considerably changed with reference to its present
use.--T. S. C.
One has to breathe but little of the atmosphere of popular thought
to-day to find how full it is of religious doubt. Parental faiths
count for little. The beliefs of childhood, the teachings of the
sainted dead, the hopes that once brightened the darkness and
mysteries and griefs of life with the light of a cloudless future,
are to multitudes no more. "The eclipse of faith" has come, and souls
are drifting out upon the starless, shoreless sea of unbelief. They
see "the spring sun shining out of an empty heaven to light up a
soulless earth." They take up the wail of despair: "We are all to
be swept away in the final ruin of the earth." This is the deep,
pathetic undertone of the sighing of a thousand hearts to-day.
Has life anything real? Is it worth living? When the little play is
over, and the hour's music is ended, and the lights are out, and
we go forth into the darkness of the final night--what then? Is it
darkness for ever? or is there the light of an eternal day? Who
knows? Is anything certain? Must nations and men and the evening-moth
alike go down and perish for ever under the crush of an inexorable
fate? Is there no rift in this cloud? Have we no anchor that will
hold as the storm drives us on through the blinding mists and gloom
to the eternal shore? Have we no sure word of promise to which we can
cling when everything else around us and under our feet is giving
way?
_Is the Bible true?_ That is the simple but momentous question; it
settles all other questions of most concern to men. To it, therefore,
we find the most intense thought of thoughtful men converging. That
from this there should emerge questions not easily solved is not to
be wondered at: they emerge in every inquiry of human thought. The
only thing to be asked is that these questions be dealt with candidly
and fairly.
To many minds the Bible is still on trial; it is only just that in
its trial those rules and principles shall be observed which men
everywhere expect and demand shall be observed for themselves when
they or their interests are to be tried.
This is the point of this essay. It is not, indeed, a discussion from
the highest ground of inspiration; it does not claim to be. It simply
deals with a certain class--a very large class, however--of alleged
difficulties of the Bible, and it appeals to the candid reader to
deal with them as fairly and by the same rules as he would have his
fellow-men deal with him in a matter of life or death, or of any
worldly interest.
For this object only a few of the common rules of evidence have
been taken. It is believed, however, that their application will
cover a very large portion of the popular objections to the alleged
inconsistencies and contradictions of the Bible.
Undoubtedly, there are difficulties in the Bible; the question is
whether these prove that it is not the work and word of God. On the
other hand, it may be suggested whether they do not confirm it as the
work of God, for they at once put it in harmony with all his other
works. If the Bible were without difficulties, it would, for us,
be out of the line with everything else that God has made or done.
Nature and Providence are full of difficulties. There is nothing in
the Bible harder of explanation and reconciliation than are the facts
that meet us everywhere in God's creative and providential realms. If
these difficulties do not prove that Nature and Providence are not,
from beginning to end, the works of God, they do not on the face of
them prove that the Bible is not such.
In dealing with the difficulties of the Scriptures, therefore, we
have not the least idea that they will all be removed: difficulties
will remain. The Lord of hosts himself is a stone of stumbling and a
rock of offence upon which many stumble and fall and are broken. Isa.
viii. 14, 15. If a man is determined to commit suicide, he can do
it by the very means that God has created to preserve life--by fire
or by water. Spiritual self-destruction is quite possible through
the word of life itself. At the same time, no man has a right to put
needless difficulties in the Bible or to make difficulties where
none exist. More than this, every man is bound to deal as fairly at
least with the Bible as he deals with his fellow-men in the ordinary
relations of life. That which would give him no trouble as a judge
upon the bench or a juror in the box ought not to be urged as a fatal
objection to the Scriptures.
In testing at this time some of the difficulties of the Bible by the
accepted rules of evidence, hardly more can be done than to present a
few of these rules as applicable to these difficulties. But the rules
are of the widest application; the solution of one difficulty by them
is the solution of a hundred.
Looking upon the Bible as a whole, we may refer for a moment to the
familiar precept that every man is to be presumed innocent until he
is proved guilty. This is emphatically true of a man of good general
reputation. The rule would seem as applicable to a book as to a
man. Now, the Bible is not a new book; it has been before the world
for ages. It has a character. That it is on the whole a good book
the bitterest opposers of its plenary inspiration not only admit,
but assert. It is conceded that it is entitled to its name--the
_Bible_, _the_ Book. It claims to be a truthful book; by every fair
principle this claim must be allowed until it is shown to be false.
Bancroft's _History of the United States_ claims to be a reliable
work; the claim is generally admitted. If a man now comes forward
and asserts that it is false in whole or in details, by universal
judgment he must prove his assertion, and obviously his proofs must
be stronger than the evidences of the truth of the history. If this
is so in reference to a book that has not stood the test of half a
century, emphatically is it true of a book whose character has been
established through the searching scrutiny of friends and foes for
fifteen centuries--ay, for twice fifteen centuries. If a man now
affirms the Bible to be false, wholly or in part, it rests upon
him in all fairness to prove his position, and his evidence must
be stronger than that which supports the book. For three thousand
years a growing mass of testimony to the truth of the Bible has been
rolling up in the face of every objection that ingenuity, learning
and the bitterest hostility could present. Account for it as we may,
that is the fact. There is, therefore, a reasonable presumption in
its favor, and in favor of any specific statement that it makes.
If, then, we find in it a positive statement in regard to any fact,
and that statement is now confronted by another and a contradictory
one, the two do not stand on the same level. The new claimant must
prove his position, and to prove it he must disprove the truth of
the Scripture record. It is not enough to show that his proposition
might be true if we had no other information on the subject: he must
show that the Scripture, with its mass of supporting and cumulative
evidence, is false; and he must support his new proposition by a body
of evidence stronger than this manifold evidence of ages by which the
Scriptures are sustained.
The application of this principle is obvious, yet nothing is more
common than its violation. An hypothesis with certain analogies
perhaps in its favor, but admittedly without a solitary positive
proof to sustain it, is put forward as an established truth without
regard to the fact that the Bible, with its general character of
veracity behind it, gives another and an entirely different account
of the matter. We will not say this is irreverent: it is unfair and
unreasonable.
The character of the Bible may justly claim to sustain its record
till it is proved false. Deal with it as fairly as you deal with the
red-handed anarchist: let the book be innocent till proved guilty;
and if innocent, the written word, like the incarnate Word, stands a
true witness in all things for ever. Condemned, crucified, buried, it
will rise again. It is a perilous thing to condemn the guiltless.
Let us pass to another rule of law; it is this: "The testimony of
a single witness, where there is no ground for suspecting either
his ability or integrity, is a sufficient legal ground for belief"
(_Starkie on Ev._, i. 550). The mere silence of one witness or of
many witnesses cannot set aside the clear, positive testimony of a
single trustworthy witness. That Josephus does not mention events
which Moses records does not affect the truth of the Mosaic record,
and his silence as to the Bethlehem massacre--even if no reason could
be suggested for it, as there can be--cannot, under this rule of
law, affect the positive testimony of Matthew that there was such a
massacre.
The courts go farther than this. They say, "If a witness swear
positively that he saw or heard a fact, and another _who was present_
that he did not see or hear it, and the witnesses are equally
faithworthy, the affirmative witness is to be believed" (_Decisions
of the Supreme Court of Errors of the State of Connecticut_, vol.
vi. p. 188). In the case referred to in that decision the court
set aside a verdict that had been rendered by the lower court on
the negative testimony of eleven witnesses against the positive
testimony of three. The principle recognized by that decision, and
which is universally accepted as law, is that the negative testimony
of witnesses present at any given transaction cannot set aside the
positive testimony of a far less number of witnesses, or even of a
single reliable witness.
The silence of any of the evangelists in reference to an incident
or event at which they may have been present, but which possibly
they may not have noticed or which they do not record, does not
contradict in the least the testimony of _one_ who says such an
incident occurred. The fact of the marriage in Cana is not at all
disturbed because John is the only witness who testifies to it. So
if one writer states a part of an incident or of a discourse which
another writer omits, while the latter gives a part which the first
omits, there is no contradiction. Matthew (xx. 20) says the mother of
Zebedee's children made a certain request which Mark (x. 35) says the
children themselves made. But this is not inconsistent: the children
united with the mother in the request. Matthew calls attention to one
party; Mark, to another. Nothing can be more unreasonable than the
cavil that stumbles at such difficulties.
The rule before us applies to that extraordinary doubt of modern
criticism--whether the Israelites were ever in Egypt, because, as
affirmed, the monuments do not record their presence nor their flight
nor the destruction of the Egyptian host at the Red Sea. Now, leaving
out of the argument the strong probability that the monuments do
refer to their presence in Egypt, and the further probability that
the Egyptians would not be likely to preserve on their monuments
the record of their own ignominy and overthrow, the objection could
not stand for a moment in any court of justice in the presence of
the positive testimony of the record to the history in Egypt--all
the more as this testimony is sustained by an extraordinary weight
of incidental corroborative evidence, and is involved in the whole
subsequent history of the nation.
Grant, if you will, that there are improbabilities in parts of
the history; still, the courts rule that "mere improbability can
rarely supply a sufficient ground for disbelieving direct and
unexceptionable witnesses of the fact where there was no room for
mistake" (_Starkie_, i. 558; see also _Greenleaf on Ev._, i. 1,
14, 15). That canon, fairly applied, sweeps away no inconsiderable
portion of the objections to the Scripture histories. Take the great
decisive fact of the resurrection of Christ--a fact that carries with
it the whole Christian system and the verity of the whole Christian
revelation. It is a fact of testimony--of the testimony of many
witnesses, under a great variety of circumstances, at many times
and places, and extending through so long a period as to preclude
all reasonable or admissible supposition of "mistake." No fact of
ancient history can be proved by testimony if the resurrection of
Christ cannot be. The proof stands by itself, positive, direct,
unexceptionable as to the character and capacity of the witnesses.
It is proof that the law declares cannot be set aside by "mere
improbability;" and if this fact is established, everything essential
to Christianity is established. The seal of the risen Christ is
on the Old Testament; his blood is on the New Testament. It is,
throughout, the living book of the slain and living Lord.
Another very important rule of law is this: "In cases of conflicting
evidence, the first step in the process of inquiry must naturally
and obviously be to ascertain whether the apparent inconsistencies
and incongruities which it presents may not without violence be
reconciled" (_Starkie_, i. 578). "Where there is an apparent
inconsistency or contradiction in the testimony of witnesses, such
construction shall be put upon it as to make it agree if possible,
for perjury is not to be presumed" (_6 Conn._ 189). Nothing is more
remarkable than the constant violation of this rule by many of the
critics of the Bible; their effort is to see, not if the testimony
can be made to agree, but if by any possibility it can be forced to
appear contradictory. It is hardly putting it too strongly to say
that many of these efforts would not be considered respectable, and
would not be tolerated by the critics themselves, if they concerned
any other book than the Bible and any other subject than Christianity.
The courts take even stronger ground on the obligation of harmonizing
apparently conflicting evidence. If the elements of reconciliation
are not found in the evidence itself, they insist on the admission of
any reasonable supposition that will explain the difficulty.
"Where doubt arises," says Starkie (_Ev._ i. 586), "from
circumstances of an apparently opposite and conflicting tendency, the
first step in the natural order of inquiry is to ascertain whether
they be not in reality reconcilable, especially when circumstances
cannot be rejected without imputing perjury to a witness; for perjury
is not to be presumed, and in the absence of all suspicion that
hypothesis is to be adopted which consists with and reconciles all
the circumstances which the case supplies." (See also _Starkie_, i.
578, 582.)
Take the familiar case of the taxing when Cyrenius was governor of
Syria. Luke ii. 2. Everybody knows how confidently it was asserted
that Luke was in error because Cyrenius' government of Syria was
several years later than Luke makes it; equally, every one knows
how that difficulty was met by the supposition, made almost a
certainty, that Cyrenius was twice governor of Syria--once at the
time in question, and once later. Even if the supposition were
not as probable as it is, if there were no other way of solving
the difficulty, we should be justified by the principle of law in
assuming it rather than to assume that a witness as intelligent as
Luke, and with his opportunities of knowledge and with no motive
for misstatement, should either wilfully or carelessly have made so
gross an error. Here the rule fits perfectly: "In the absence of all
suspicion, _that hypothesis is to be adopted which consists with and
reconciles all the circumstances which the case supplies_."
In regard to certain objections to the Mosaic record--for
example, the improbability of the desert sustaining the host of
the Israelites: we select this as an example of a mass of like
objections--Dean Stanley, while holding in general to the historic
fact, says the recorded miracles do not meet the difficulty and we
have no right to add to them; for "if we have no warrant to take
away, we have no warrant to add." If by this he meant we have no
right to add to the inspired word _as a part of it_ what is not in
it, he is quite correct; but if he meant, as he evidently did, that
we have no right to make a reasonable supposition to explain an
apparent difficulty of the word, no utterance can be more groundless.
He might as well object that Moses could not possibly have led the
Israelites through the desert forty years because no man could do
that without sleeping, and the record does not say that Moses slept
during all that time, and "we have no warrant to add" to the record.
The same difficulty is urged by others from the present barrenness
of the desert, which it is contended is substantially as it was in
the time of the Exodus. This is to be met not so much by hypothesis
as by the facts--(1) that the condition of the desert was very
different then from its condition now. Because the country around
Philadelphia cannot now support a tribe of Indians by hunting and
fishing, it does not follow that it could not do this two hundred
years ago. (2) God had undertaken to bring the nation out. If every
miracle necessary to accomplish this end is not recorded, it does not
prove that it was not wrought. As in the life of our Lord, so in the
deliverance of Israel, many miracles may have been wrought of which
no account has come down to us.
This suggests an obvious and a very important consideration: _facts
may now be missing_ which were perfectly well known at the time of
the event, but the record of which has not been preserved. Hence, if
a difficulty can be removed by a reasonable supposition, or even by
any admissible supposition, of a missing fact, we are entitled to
make that supposition.
Webster (_Works_, vol. vi. p. 64) in his address to the jury on the
celebrated trial of the Knapps for the murder of Captain White of
Salem, Massachusetts, says: "In explaining circumstances of evidence
which are apparently irreconcilable or unaccountable, if a fact be
suggested which at once accounts for all and reconciles all, by
whomsoever it may be stated, it is still difficult not to believe
that such fact is the true fact belonging to the case." The missing
fact that was wanted in this case to show a motive for the murder
was the stealing of a will, or the purpose to steal a will, and this
proved the true hypothesis.
To illustrate by a familiar incident of the Old Testament history.
The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel foretell the fate of the last king
of Judah, Zedekiah. Jer. xxxii.; Ezek. xii. They declare that he
shall be taken captive by the king of Babylon, that he shall go to
Babylon and that he shall die in Babylon; yet Ezekiel expressly says
that he shall not see Babylon. Now, here is apparently as gross a
contradiction as there can be; and if our information stopped here,
it would be impossible to reconcile it. Fortunately, however, the
explanation is given in the history. From 2 Kings xxv. we learn that
the king of Babylon, when Zedekiah was brought into his presence at
Riblah, ordered his eyes to be put out and sent him blind to Babylon;
so that he saw the king of Babylon, he went to Babylon, he died in
Babylon, and yet he never saw Babylon. But--and this is the point of
this familiar case--if this unexpected and extraordinary fact had not
been stated, how absolutely impossible it would have been to give any
satisfactory solution of the difficulty! It may be doubted whether
any supposition as violent as this needs to be made to reconcile
every alleged contradiction of the Bible.
A remarkable illustration of the power of a missing fact occurs
in the history of the overthrow of Babylon itself. The Scripture
account (Dan. v.) says that Belshazzar was king of Babylon, that he
was in the city, engaged in a feast, at the time of its capture,
and that he was slain. Reliable secular historians give the name of
the king as Nabonnedus or Labynetus, and state that he was not in
the city when it was captured, that he was not killed, but taken
prisoner, kindly treated and allowed to retire to private life. These
different accounts were not only eagerly seized upon by skeptics as
proofs of the error of the Scriptures, but even biblical scholars
admitted them to be incapable of reconciliation. No longer ago
than when the writer was in the theological seminary that prince
of biblical students, Addison Alexander, said that no solution of
the difficulty was known; he was too wise a man to say that no
solution was possible. Kitto, in his _Cyclopedia_, declared that no
hypothesis _could_ harmonize the accounts. Yet the reconciliation
was perfectly simple. A cylinder of historic records discovered by
Sir Henry Rawlinson in the ruins of Lower Babylon showed that there
were at this time two kings of Babylon, a father and a son. One was
occupying a stronghold near the city, the other was defending the
city itself; the latter was taken and slain, the former was spared.
Thus, by the providential bringing to light of a fact buried for
centuries, that which had seemed to be, and which had repeatedly and
triumphantly been proclaimed to be, and which had been given up _as_
being, an irreconcilable contradiction, was shown to be perfectly
harmonious. Yet if the hypothesis of two kings had been suggested as
an explanation before the discovery of the fact, it would have been
hissed out of court by the whole skeptical school.
The two accounts of the death of Judas have not passed out of the
field of popular objection. Matthew (xxvii. 5) says he committed
suicide; Luke (Acts i. 18) says he fell headlong and burst asunder.
He does not say where he fell from or what were the circumstances of
the fall, and it is certainly not impossible, or even improbable,
that both accounts are true. The traitor hung himself, possibly,
on the verge of a precipice--the supposed spot furnishes all the
conditions for this--and afterward (how long is not said) the rope
or the limb of the tree gave way, and he fell, striking first on the
rocks at the foot of the tree and then plunging over the precipice
with the result described by Luke.
The case is not without a parallel. A few weeks since the papers
noticed the death of a gentleman in one of our Western States.
According to one account, he perished in a railroad disaster;
according to another, he committed suicide--a contradiction almost
exactly like that in the case of Judas. Yet there was no real
discrepancy. With his wife and child he was on the fatal train that
met its doom at Chatsworth. His child was killed; he and his wife
were taken from the ruins terribly injured. The wife soon died; in
despair, and with no hope of his own life, he drew his pistol and
sent the ball through his own head. He perished in the Chatsworth
disaster, and he committed suicide.
The application of these principles of law--the admission of
any reasonable hypothesis, or of an hypothesis that may seem
_improbable_, if it removes the difficulty, the supposition of
missing facts known at the time, but now lost--principles of
constant application in our courts of justice,--releases at once the
pressure from a large part of the objections to the inspired record.
The accounts of the healing of the blind men at Jericho and the
resurrection of Christ--two of the most difficult of full explanation
in the New Testament--require no more than this. It is not hard to
present reasonable hypotheses to meet the cases as they stand; and
if all the facts were known to us we believe the harmony would be
as complete and as simple as that of the histories of the siege and
capture of Babylon.
We draw the discussion to a close with the words of the eminent
American jurist and legal authority, Professor Greenleaf: "All that
Christianity [or the Bible] asks of men on this subject is that
they would be consistent with themselves, that they would treat its
evidence as they treat the evidence of other things, and that they
would try and judge its actors and witnesses as they deal with their
fellow-men when testifying to human affairs and actions in human
tribunals."
This, as we have said, is not the highest claim that we can make
for the Bible; but if men will go as far as this, and deal with the
alleged contradictions of the book honestly by the common rules of
evidence, the vast majority of all the difficulties to which these
rules apply will disappear. In the mean time, if there are those
that do not yield to present knowledge, we can afford to wait. Many
objections once supposed to be unanswerable have been answered, and
the process is going on. God is very patient, but we may be assured
that He who just as the occasion has demanded has summoned up the
silent witnesses to his word from the valley of the Nile, from the
stormy cliffs of Sinai, from the plains of Mesopotamia and from the
sullen shores of the Dead Sea, will not fail in the future to give
all the confirmation of his truth that the faith of his Church may
need.
WASHINGTON, D. C., 1888.
THE END.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been
retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.
Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in
the original text.
The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the
transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
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