During the dark and unhappy time when he had, as it seems to me, bullied himself, or been bullied into infidelity, he had been utterly unable to realise the importance even of such a self-evident fact as that our Lord addressing an Eastern people would speak in such a way as Eastern people would best understand; it took him years to appreciate this. He could not see that modes of thought are as much part of a language as the grammar and words which compose it, and that before a pa.s.sage can be said to be translated from one language into another it is often not the words only which must be rendered, but the thought itself which must be transformed; to a people habituated to exaggeration a saying which was not exaggerated would have been pointless--so weak as to arrest the attention of no one; in order to translate it into such words as should carry precisely the same meaning to colder and more temperate minds, the words would often have to be left out of sight altogether, and a new sentence or perhaps even simile or metaphor subst.i.tuted; this is plainly out of the question, and therefore the best course is that which has been taken, i.e., to render the words as accurately as possible, and leave the reader to modify the meaning. But it was years before my brother could be got to feel this, nor did he ever do so fully, simple and obvious though it must appear to most people, until he had learned to recognise the value of a certain amount of inaccuracy and inconsistency in everything which is not comprehended in mechanics or the exact sciences. "It is this," he used to say, "which gives artistic or spiritual value as contrasted with mechanical precision."
In inaccuracy and inconsistency, therefore (within certain limits), my brother saw the means whereby our minds are kept from regarding things as rigidly and immutably fixed which are not yet fully understood, and perhaps may never be so while we are in our present state of probation. Life is not one of the exact sciences, living is essentially an art and not a science. Every thing addressed to human minds at all must be more or less of a compromise; thus, to take a very old ill.u.s.tration, even the definitions of a point and a line-- the fundamental things in the most exact of the sciences--are mere compromises. A point is supposed to have neither length, breadth, nor thickness--this in theory, but in practice unless a point have a little of all these things there is nothing there. So with a line; a line is supposed to have length, but no breadth, yet in practice we never saw a line which had not breadth. What inconsistency is there here, in requiring us to conceive something which we cannot conceive, and which can have no existence, before we go on to the investigation of the laws whereby the earth can alone be measured and the orbits of the planets determined. I do not think that this ill.u.s.tration was presented to my brother"s mind while he was young, but I am sure that if it had been it would have made him miserable. He would have had no confidence in mathematics, and would very likely have made a furious attack upon Newton and Galileo, and been firmly convinced that he was discomfiting them. Indeed I cannot forget a certain look of bewilderment which came over his face when the idea was put before him, I imagine, for the first time. Fortunately he had so grown that the right inference was now in no danger of being missed. He did not conclude that because the evidences for mathematics were founded upon compromises and definitions which are inaccurate--therefore that mathematics were false, or that there were no mathematics, but he learnt to feel that there might be other things which were no less indisputable than mathematics, and which might also be founded on facts for which the evidences were not wholly free from inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
To some he might appear to be approaching too nearly to the "Sed tu vera puta" argument of Juvenal. I greatly fear that an attempt may be made to misrepresent him as taking this line; that is to say, as accepting Christianity on the ground of the excellence of its moral teaching, and looking upon it as, indeed, a superst.i.tion, but salutary for women and young people. Hardly anything would have shocked him more profoundly. This doctrine with its plausible show of morality appeared to him to be, perhaps, the most gross of all immoralities, inasmuch as it cuts the ground from under the feet of truth, luring the world farther and farther from the only true salvation--the careful study of facts and of the safest inferences that may be drawn from them. Every fact was to him a part of nature, a thing sacred, pregnant with Divine teaching of some sort, as being the expression of Divine will. It was through facts that he saw G.o.d; to tamper with facts was, in his view, to deface the countenance of the Almighty. To say that such and such was so and so, when the speaker did not believe it, was to lead people to worship a false G.o.d instead of a true one; an e?d????; setting them, to quote the words of the Psalmist, "a-whoring after their own imaginations." He saw the Divine presence in everything--the evil as well as the good; the evil being the expression of the Divine will that such and such courses should not go unpunished, but bring pain and misery which should deter others from following them, and the good being his sign of approbation. There was nothing good for man to know which could not be deduced from facts. This was the only sound basis of knowledge, and to found things upon fiction which could be made to stand upon facts was to try and build upon a quicksand.
He, therefore, loathed the reasoning of Juvenal with all the intensity of his nature. It was because he believed that the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord were just as much matters of actual history as the a.s.sa.s.sination of Julius Caesar, and that they happened precisely in the same way as every daily event happens at present--that he accepted the Christian scheme in its essentials.
Then came the details. Were these also objectively true? He answered, "Certainly not in every case." He would not for the world have had any one believe that he so considered them; but having made it perfectly clear that he was not going to deceive himself, he set himself to derive whatever spiritual comfort he could from them, just as he would from any n.o.ble fiction or work of art, which, while not professing to be historical, was instinct with the soul of genius.
That there were unhistorical pa.s.sages in the New Testament was to him a fact; therefore it was to be studied as an expression of the Divine will. What could be the meaning of it? That we should consider them as true? a.s.suredly not this. Then what else? This--that we should accept as subjectively true whatever we found spiritually precious, and be at liberty to leave all the rest alone--the unhistoric element having been introduced purposely for the sake of giving greater scope and lat.i.tude to the value of the ideal.
Of course one who was so firmly persuaded of the objective truth of the Resurrection and Ascension could be in no sort of danger of relapsing into infidelity as long as his reason remained. During the years of his illness his mind was clearly impaired, and no longer under his own control; but while his senses were his own it was absolutely impossible that he could be shaken by discrepancies and inconsistencies in the gospels. What small and trifling things are such discrepancies by the side of the great central miracle of the Resurrection! Nevertheless their existence was indisputable, and was no less indisputably a cause of stumbling to many, as it had been to himself. His experience of his own sufferings as an unbeliever gave him a keener sympathy with those who were in that distressing condition than could be felt by any one who had not so suffered, and fitted him, perhaps, more than any one who has yet lived to be the interpreter of Christianity to the Rationalist, and of Rationalism to the Christian. This, accordingly, was the task to which he set himself, having been singularly adapted for it by Nature, and as singularly disciplined by events.
It seemed to him that the first thing was to make the two parties understand one another--a thing which had never yet been done, but which was not at all impossible. For Protestantism is raised essentially upon a Rationalistic base. When we come to a definition of Rationalism nothing can be plainer than that it demands no scepticism from any one which an English Protestant would not approve of. It is another matter with the Church of Rome. That Church openly declares it as an axiom that religion and reason have nothing to do with one another, and that religion, though in flat contradiction to reason, should yet be accepted from the hands of a certain order as an act of unquestioning faith. The line of separation therefore between the Romanist and the Rationalist is clear, and definitely bars any possibility of arrangement between the two. Not so with the Protestant, who as heartily as the Rationalist admits that nothing is required to be believed by man except such things as can be reasonably proved--i.e., proved to the satisfaction of the reason. No Protestant would say that the Christian scheme ought to be accepted in spite of its being contrary to reason; we say that Christianity is to be believed because it can be shewn to follow as the necessary consequence of using our reason rightly. We should be shocked at being supposed to maintain otherwise. Yet this is pure Rationalism. The Rationalist would require nothing more; he demurs to Christianity because he maintains that if we bring our reason to bear upon the evidences which are brought forward in support of it, we are compelled to reject it; but he would accept it without hesitation if he believed that it could be sustained by arguments which ought to carry conviction to the reason. Thus both are agreed in principle that if the evidences of Christianity satisfy human reason, then Christianity should be received, but that on any other supposition it should be rejected.
Here then, he said, we have a common starting-point and the main principle of Rationalism turns out to be nothing but what we all readily admit, and with which we and our fathers have been as familiar for centuries as with the air we breathe. Every Protestant is a Rationalist, or else he ought to be ashamed of himself. Does he want to be called an "Irrationalist"? Hardly--yet if he is not a Rationalist what else can he be? No: the difference between us is one of detail, not of principle. This is a great step gained.
The next thing therefore was to make each party understand the view which the other took concerning the position which they had agreed to hold in common. There was no work, so far as he knew, which would be accepted both by Christians and unbelievers as containing a fair statement of the arguments of the two contending parties: every book which he had yet seen upon either side seemed written with the view of maintaining that its own side could hold no wrong, and the other no right: neither party seemed to think that they had anything to learn from the other, and neither that any considerable addition to their knowledge of the truth was either possible or desirable. Each was in possession of truth already, and all who did not see and feel this must be either wilfully blinded, or intensely stupid, or hypocrites.
So long as people carried on a discussion thus, what agreement was possible between them? Yet where, upon the Christian side, was the attempt to grapple with the real difficulties now felt by unbelievers? Simply nowhere. All that had been done hitherto was antiquated. Modern Christianity seemed to shrink from grappling with modern Rationalism, and displayed a timidity which could not be accounted for except by the supposition of secret misgiving that certain things were being defended which could not be defended fairly. This was quite intolerable; a misgiving was a warning voice from G.o.d, which should be attended to as a man valued his soul. On the other hand, the conviction reasonably entertained by unbelievers that they were right on many not inconsiderable details of the dispute, and that so-called orthodox Christians in their hearts knew it but would not own it--or that if they did not know it, they were only in ignorance because it suited their purpose to be so--this conviction gave an overweening self-confidence to infidels, as though they must be right in the whole because they were so in part; they therefore blinded themselves to all the more fundamental arguments in support of Christianity, because certain shallow ones had been put forward in the front rank, and been far too obstinately defended.
They thus regarded the question too superficially, and had erred even more through pride of intellect and conceit than their opponents through timidity.
What then was to be done? Surely this; to explain the two contending parties to one another; to show to Rationalists that Christians are right upon Rationalistic principles in all the more important of their allegations; that is to say, to establish the Resurrection and Ascension of the Redeemer upon a basis which should satisfy the most imperious demands of modern criticism. This would form the first and most important part of the task. Then should follow a no less convincing proof that Rationalists are right in demurring to the historical accuracy of much which has been too obstinately defended by so-called orthodox writers. This would be the second part. Was there not reason to hope that when this was done the two parties might understand one another, and meet in a common Christianity? He believed that there was, and that the ground had been already cleared for such mutual compromise as might be accepted by both sides, not from policy but conviction. Therefore he began writing the book which it has devolved upon myself to edit, and which must now speak for itself. For him it was to suffer and to labour; almost on the very instant of his having done enough to express his meaning he was removed from all further power of usefulness.
The happy change from unbelief to faith had already taken place some three or four years before my return from America. With it had also come that sudden development of intellectual and spiritual power which so greatly astonished even those who had known him best. The whole man seemed changed--to have become possessed of an unusually capacious mind, instead of one which was acute, but acute only. On looking over the earlier letters which I received from him when I was in America, I can hardly believe that they should have been written by the same person as the one to whom, in spite of not a few great mental defects, I afterwards owed more spiritual enrichment than I have owed to any other person. Yet so it was. It came upon me imperceptibly that I had been very stupid in not discovering that my brother was a genius; but hardly had I made the discovery, and hardly had the fragment which follows this memoir received its present shape, when his overworked brain gave way and he fell into a state little better than idiocy. His originally cheerful spirits left him, and were succeeded by a religious melancholy which nothing could disturb. He became incapable either of mental or physical exertion, and was p.r.o.nounced by the best physicians to be suffering from some obscure disease of the brain brought on by excitement and undue mental tension: in this state he continued for about four years, and died peacefully, but still as one in the profoundest melancholy, on the 15th of March, 1872, aged 40.
Always hopeful that his health would one day be restored, I never ventured to propose that I should edit his book during his own life- time. On his death I found his papers in the most deplorable confusion. The following chapters had alone received anything like a presentable shape--and these providentially are the most essential.
A dream is a dream only, yet sometimes there follows a fulfilment which bears a strange resemblance to the thing dreamt of. No one now believes that the Book of Revelation is to be taken as foretelling events which will happen in the same way as the ma.s.sacre, for instance, of St. Bartholomew, indeed it is doubtful how far the whole is not to be interpreted as an allegory, descriptive of spiritual revolutions; yet surely my mother"s dream as to the future of one, at least, of her sons has been strangely verified, and it is believed that the reader when he lays down this volume will feel that there have been few more potent witnesses to the truth of Christ than John Pickard Owen.
THE FAIR HAVEN
CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTION
It is to be feared that there is no work upon the evidences of our faith, which is as satisfactory in its completeness and convincing power as we have a right to expect when we consider the paramount importance of the subject and the activity of our enemies. Otherwise why should there be no sign of yielding on the part of so many sincere and eminent men who have heard all that has been said upon the Christian side and are yet not convinced by it? We cannot think that the many philosophers who make no secret of their opposition to the Christian religion are unacquainted with the works of Butler and Paley--of Mansel and Liddon. This cannot be: they must be acquainted with them, and find them fail.
Now, granting readily that in some minds there is a certain wilful and prejudiced self-blindness which no reasoning can overcome, and granting also that men very much preoccupied with any one pursuit (more especially a scientific one) will be apt to give but scant and divided attention to arguments upon other subjects such as religion or politics, nevertheless we have so many opponents who profess to have made a serious study of Christian evidences, and against whose opinion no exception can be fairly taken, that it seems as though we were bound either to admit that our demonstrations require rearrangement and reconsideration, or to take the Roman position, and maintain that revelation is no fit subject for evidence but is to be accepted upon authority. This last position will be rejected at once by nine-tenths of Englishmen. But upon rejecting it we look in vain for a work which shall appear to have any such success in arresting infidelity as attended the works of Butler and Paley in the last century. In their own day these two great men stemmed the current of infidelity: but no modern writers have succeeded in doing so, and it will scarcely be said that either Butler or Paley set at rest the many serious and inevitable questions in connection with Christianity which have arisen during the last fifty years. We could hardly expect one of the more intelligent students at Oxford or Cambridge to find his mind set once and for ever free from all rising doubt either by the a.n.a.logy or the Evidences. Suppose, for example, that he has been misled by the German writers of the Tubingen school, how will either of the above-named writers help him? On the contrary, they will do him harm, for they will not meet the requirements of the case, and the inference is too readily drawn that nothing else can do so. It need hardly be insisted upon that this inference is a most unfair one, but surely the blame of its being drawn rests in some measure at the door of those whose want of thoroughness has left people under the impression that no more can be said than what has been said already.
It is the object, therefore, of this book to contribute towards establishing Christian evidences upon a more secure and self-evident base than any upon which they are made to rest at present, so far, that is to say, as a work which deliberately excludes whole fields of Christian evidence can tend towards so great a consummation. In spite of the narrow limits within which I have resolved to keep my treatment of the subject, I trust that I may be able to produce such an effect upon the minds of those who are in doubt concerning the evidences for the hope that is in them, that henceforward they shall never doubt again. I am not sanguine enough to suppose that I shall be able to induce certain eminent naturalists and philosophers to reopen a question which they have probably long laid aside as settled; unfortunately it is not in any but the very n.o.blest Christian natures to do this, nevertheless, could they be persuaded to read these pages I believe that they would find so much which would be new to them, that their prejudices would be greatly shaken.
To the younger band of scientific investigators I appeal more hopefully.
It may be asked why not have undertaken the whole subject and devoted a life-time to writing an exhaustive work? The answer suggests itself that the believer is in no want of such a book, while the unbeliever would be repelled by its size. a.s.suredly there can be no doubt as to the value of a great work which should meet objections derived from certain recent scientific theories, and confute opponents who have arisen since the death of our two great apologists, but as a preliminary to this a smaller and more elementary book seems called for, which shall give the main outlines of our position with such boldness and effectiveness as to arrest the attention of any unbeliever into whose hands it may fall, and induce him to look further into what else may be urged upon the Christian side. We are bound to adapt our means to our ends, and shall have a better chance of gaining the ear of our adversaries if we can offer them a short and pregnant book than if we come to them with a long one from which whole chapters might be pruned. We have to bring the Christian religion to men who will look at no book which cannot be read in a railway train or in an arm-chair; it is most deplorable that this should be the case, nevertheless it is indisputably a fact, and as such must be attended to by all who hope to be of use in bringing about a better state of things. And let me add that never yet was there a time when it so much behoved all who are impressed with the vital power of religion to bestir themselves; for the symptoms of a general indifference, not to say hostility, must be admitted to be widely diffused, in spite of an imposing array of facts which can be brought forward to the contrary; and not only this, but the stream of infidelity seems making more havoc yearly, as it might naturally be expected to do, when met by no new works of any real strength or permanence.
Bearing in mind, therefore, the necessity for prompt action, it seemed best to take the most overwhelming of all miracles--the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and show that it can be so substantiated that no reasonable man should doubt it. This I have therefore attempted, and I humbly trust that the reader will feel that I have not only attempted it, but done it, once and for all so clearly and satisfactorily and with such an unflinching examination of the most advanced arguments of unbelievers, that the question can never be raised hereafter by any candid mind, or at any rate not until science has been made to rest on different grounds from those on which she rests at present.
But the truth of our Lord"s resurrection having been once established, what need to enc.u.mber this book with further evidences of the miraculous element in his ministry? The other miracles can be no insuperable difficulty to one who accepts the Resurrection. It is true that as Christians we cannot dwell too minutely upon every act and incident in the life of the Redeemer, but unhappily we have to deal with those who are not Christians, and must consider rather what we can get them to take than what we should like to give them: "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves," saith the Saviour. A single miracle is as good as twenty, provided that it be well established, and can be shewn to be so: it is here that even the ablest of our apologists have too often failed; they have professed to substantiate the historical accuracy of all the recorded miracles and sayings of our Lord, with a result which is in some instances feeble and conventional, and occasionally even unfair (oh! what suicidal folly is there in even the remotest semblance of unfairness), instead of devoting themselves to throwing a flood of brilliancy upon the most important features and leaving the others to shine out in the light reflected from these. Even granting that some of the miracles recorded of our Lord are apocryphal, what of that?
We do not rest upon them: we have enough and more than enough without them, and can afford to take the line of saying to the unbeliever, "Disbelieve this miracle or that if you find that you cannot accept it, but believe in the Resurrection, of which we will put forward such ample proofs that no healthy reason can withstand them, and, having accepted the Resurrection, admit it as the manifestation of supernatural power, the existence of which can thus no longer be denied."
Does not the reader feel that there is a ring of truth and candour about this which must carry more weight with an opponent than any strained defence of such a doubtful miracle as the healing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda? We weight ourselves as against our opponents by trying to defend too much; no matter how sound and able the defence of one part of the Christian scheme may have been, its effect is often marred by contiguity with argument which the writer himself must have suspected, or even known, to be ingenious rather than sound: the moment that this is felt in any book its value with an opponent is at an end, for he must be continually in doubt whether the spirit which he has detected here or there may not be existing and at work in a hundred other places where he has not detected it. What carries weight with an antagonist is the feeling that his position has been mastered and his difficulties grasped with thoroughness and candour.
On this point I am qualified to speak from long and bitter experience. I say that want of candour and the failure to grasp the position occupied, however untenably, by unbelievers is the chief cause of the continuance of unbelief. When this cause has been removed unbelief will die a natural death. For years I was myself a believer in nothing beyond the personality and providence of G.o.d: yet I feel (not without a certain sense of bitterness, which I know that I should not feel but cannot utterly subdue) that if my first doubts had been met with patient endeavour to understand their nature and if I had felt that the one in whom I confided had been ready to go to the root of the matter, and even to yield up the convictions of a life-time could it be shewn that they were unsafely founded, my doubts would have been resolved in an hour or two"s quiet conversation, and would at once have had the effect, which they have only had after long suffering and unrest, of confirming me in my allegiance to Christ. But I was met with anger and impatience.
There was an instinct which told me that my opponent had never heard a syllable against his own convictions, and was determined not to hear one: on this I a.s.sumed rashly that he must have good reason for his resolution; and doubt ripened into unbelief. Oh! what years of heart-burning and utter drifting followed. Yet when I was at last brought within the influence of one who not only believed all that my first opponent did, but who also knew that the more light was thrown upon it the more clearly would its truth be made apparent--a man who talked with me as though he was anxious that I should convince him if he were in error, not as though bent on making me believe whatever habit and circ.u.mstances had imposed as a formula upon himself--my heart softened at once, and the dry places of my soul were watered.
The above may seem too purely personal to warrant its introduction here, yet the experience is one which should not be without its value to others. Its effect upon myself has been to give me an unutterable longing to save others from sufferings like my own; I know so well where it is that, to use a homely metaphor, the shoe pinches. And it is chiefly here--in the fact that the unbeliever does not feel as though we really wanted to understand him. This feeling is in many cases lamentably well founded. No one likes hearing doubt thrown upon anything which he regards as settled beyond dispute, and this, happily, is what most men feel concerning Christianity. Again, indolence or impotence of mind indisposes many to intellectual effort; others are pained by coming into contact with anything which derogates from the glory due to the great sacrifice of Christ, or to his Divine nature, and lastly not a few are withheld by moral cowardice from daring to bestow the pains upon the unbeliever which his condition requires. But from whichever of these sources the disinclination to understand him comes, its effect is equally disastrous to the unbeliever. People do not mind a difference of opinion, if they feel that the one who differs from them has got a firm grasp of their position; or again, if they feel that he is trying to understand them but fails from some defect either of intellect or education, even in this case they are not pained by opposition. What injures their moral nature and hardens their hearts is the conviction that another could understand them if he chose, but does not choose, and yet none the less condemns them. On this they become imbued with that bitterness against Christianity which is noticeable in so many free-thinkers.
Can we greatly wonder? For, sad though the admission be, it is only justice to admit that we Christians have been too often contented to accept our faith without knowing its grounds, in which case it is more by luck than by cunning that we are Christians at all, and our faith will be in continual danger. The greater number even of those who have undertaken to defend the Christian faith have been sadly inclined to avoid a difficulty rather than to face it, unless it is so easy as to be no real difficulty at all. I do not say that this is unnatural, for the Christian writer must be deeply impressed with the sinfulness of unbelief, and will therefore be anxious to avoid raising doubts which will probably never yet have occurred to his reader, and might possibly never do so; nor does there at first sight appear to be much advantage in raising difficulties for the sole purpose of removing them; nevertheless I cannot think that if either Butler or Paley could have foreseen the continuance of unbelief, and the ruin of so many souls whom Christ died to save, they would have been contented to act so almost entirely upon the defensive.
Yet it is impossible not to feel that we in their place should have done as they did. Infidelity was still in its infancy: the nature of the disease was hardly yet understood; and there seemed reason to fear lest it might be aggravated by the very means taken to cure it; it seemed safer therefore in the first instance to confine attention to the matter actually in debate, and leave it to time to suggest a more active treatment should the course first tried prove unsatisfactory. Who can be surprised that the earlier apologists should have felt thus in the presence of an enemy whose novelty made him appear more portentous than he can ever seem to ourselves? They were bound to venture nothing rashly; what they did they did, for their own age, thoroughly; we owe it to their cautious pioneering that we so know the weakness of our opponents and our own strength as to be able to do fearlessly what may well have seemed perilous to our forefathers: nevertheless it is easy to be wise after the event, and to regret that a bolder course was not taken at the outset. If Butler and Paley had fought as men eager for the fray, as men who smelt the battle from afar, it is impossible to believe that infidelity could have lasted as long as it has. What can be done now could have been done just as effectively then, and though we cannot be surprised at the caution shewn at first, we are bound to deplore it as short-sighted.
The question, however, for ourselves is not what dead men might have done better long ago, but what living men and women can do most wisely now; and in answer to it I would say that there is no policy so unwise as fear in a good cause: the bold course is also the wise one; it consists in being on the lookout for objections, in finding the very best that can be found and stating them in their most intelligible form, in shewing what are the logical consequences of unbelief, and thus carrying the war into the enemy"s country; in fighting with the most chivalrous generosity and a determination to take no advantage which is not according to the rules of war most strictly interpreted against ourselves, but within such an interpretation showing no quarter. This is the bold course and the true course: it will beget a confidence which can never be felt in the wariness, however well-intentioned, of the old defenders.
Let me, therefore, beg the reader to follow me patiently while I do my best to put before him the main difficulties felt by unbelievers.
When he is once acquainted with these he will run in no danger of confirming doubt through his fear in turning away from it in the first instance. How many die hardened unbelievers through the treatment which they have received from those to whom their Christianity has been a matter of circ.u.mstances and habit only? h.e.l.l is no fiction. Who, without bitter sorrow, can reflect upon the agonies even of a single soul as being due to the selfishness or cowardice of others? Awful thought! Yet it is one which is daily realised in the case of thousands.
In the commonest justice to brethren, however sinful, each one of us who tries to lead them to the Saviour is bound not only to shew them the whole strength of our own arguments, but to make them see that we understand the whole strength of theirs; for men will not seriously listen to those whom they believe to know one side of a question only. It is this which makes the educated infidel so hard to deal with; he knows very well that an intelligent apprehension of the position held by an opponent is indispensable for profitable discussion; but he very rarely meets with this in the case of those Christians who try to argue with him; he therefore soon acquires a habit of avoiding the subject of religion, and can seldom be induced to enter upon an argument which he is convinced can lead to nothing.
He who would cure a disease must first know what it is, and he who would convert an infidel must know what it is that he is to be converted from, as well as what he is to be led to; nothing can be laid hold of unless its whereabouts is known. It is deplorable that such commonplaces should be wanted; but, alas! it is impossible to do without them. People have taken a panic on the subject of infidelity as though it were so infectious that the very nurses and doctors should run away from those afflicted with it; but such conduct is no less absurd than cruel and disgraceful. INFIDELITY IS ONLY INFECTIOUS WHEN IT IS NOT UNDERSTOOD. The smallest reflection should suffice to remind us that a faith which has satisfied the most brilliant and profound of human intellects for nearly two thousand years must have had very sure foundations, and that any digging about them for the purpose of demonstrating their depth and solidity, will result, not in their disturbance, but in its being made clear to every eye that they are laid upon a rock which nothing can shake-- that they do indeed satisfy every demand of human reason, which suffers violence not from those who accept the scheme of the Christian redemption, but from those who reject it.
This being the case, and that it is so will, I believe, appear with great clearness in the following pages, what need to shrink from the just and charitable course of understanding the nature of what is urged by those who differ from us? How can we hope to bring them to be of one mind in Christ Jesus with ourselves, unless we can resolve their difficulties and explain them? And how can we resolve their difficulties until we know what they are? Infidelity is as a reeking fever den, which none can enter safely without due precautions, but the taking these precautions is within our own power; we can all rely upon the blessed promises of the Saviour that he will not desert us in our hour of need if we will only truly seek him; there is more infidelity in this shrinking and fear of investigation than in almost any open denial of Christ; the one who refuses to examine the doubts felt by another, and is prevented from making any effort to remove them through fear lest he should come to share them, shews either that he has no faith in the power of Christianity to stand examination, or that he has no faith in the promises of G.o.d to guide him into all truth. In either case he is hardly less an unbeliever than those whom he condemns.
Let the reader therefore understand that he will here find no attempt to conceal the full strength of the arguments relied on by unbelievers. This manner of substantiating the truth of Christianity has unhappily been tried already; it has been tried and has failed as it was bound to fail. Infidelity lives upon concealment. Shew it in broad daylight, hold it up before the world and make its hideousness manifest to all--then, and not till then, will the hours of unbelief be numbered. WE have been the mainstay of unbelief through our timidity. Far be it from me, therefore, that I should help any unbeliever by concealing his case for him. This were the most cruel kindness. On the contrary, I shall insist upon all his arguments and state them, if I may say so without presumption, more clearly than they have ever been stated within the same limits. No one knows what they are better than I do. No one was at one time more firmly persuaded that they were sound. May it be found that no one has so well known how also to refute them.
The reader must not therefore expect to find fict.i.tious difficulties in the way of accepting Christianity set up with one hand in order to be knocked down again with the other: he will find the most powerful arguments against all that he holds most sacred insisted on with the same clearness as those on his own side; it is only by placing the two contending opinions side by side in their utmost development that the strength of our own can be made apparent. Those who wish to cry peace, peace, when there is no peace, those who would take their faith by fashion as the take their clothes, those who doubt the strength of their own cause and do not in their heart of heart believe that Christianity will stand investigation, those, again, who care not who may go to h.e.l.l provided they are comfortably sure of going to Heaven themselves, such persons may complain of the line which I am about to take. They on the other hand whose faith is such that it knows no fear of criticism, and they whose love for Christ leads them to regard the bringing of lost souls into his flock as the highest earthly happiness--such will admit gladly that I have been right in tearing aside the veil from infidelity and displaying it uncloaked by the side of faith itself.
At the same time I am bound to confess that I never should have been able to see the expediency, not to say the absolute necessity for such a course, unless I had been myself for many years an unbeliever.
It is this experience, so bitterly painful, that has made me feel so strongly as to the only manner in which others can be brought from darkness into light. The wisdom of the Almighty recognised that if man was to be saved it must be done by the a.s.sumption of man"s nature on the part of the Deity. G.o.d must make himself man, or man could never learn the nature and attributes of G.o.d. Let us then follow the sublime example of the incarnation, and make ourselves as unbelievers that we may teach unbelievers to believe. If Paley and Butler had only been REAL INFIDELS for a single year, instead of taking the thoughts and reasonings of their opponents at second-hand, what a difference should we not have seen in the nature of their work.
Alas! their clear and powerful intellects had been trained early in the severest exercises; they could not be misled by any of the sophistries of their opponents; but, on the other hand, never having been misled they knew not the thread of the labyrinth as one who has been shut up therein.
I should also warn the reader of another matter. He must not expect to find that I can maintain everything which he could perhaps desire to see maintained. I can prove, to such a high degree of presumption as shall amount virtually to demonstration, that our Lord died upon the cross, rose again from the dead upon the third day, and ascended into Heaven: but I cannot prove that none of the accounts of these events which have come down to us have suffered from the hand of time: on the contrary, I must own that the reasons which led me to conclude that there must be confusion in some of the accounts of the Resurrection continue in full force with me even now. I see no way of escaping from this conclusion: but it seems equally strange that the Christian should have such an indomitable repugnance to accept it, and that the unbeliever should conceive that it inflicts any damage whatever upon the Christian evidences. Perhaps the error of each confirms that of the other, as will appear hereafter.
I have spoken hitherto as though I were writing only for men, but the help of good women can never be so precious as in the salvation of human souls; if there is one work for which women are better fitted than another, it is that of arresting the progress of unbelief. Can there be a n.o.bler one? Their superior tact and quickness give them a great advantage over men; men will listen to them when they would turn away from one of their own s.e.x; and though I am well aware that courtesy is no argument, yet the natural politeness shewn by a man to a woman will compel attention to what falls from her lips, and will thus perhaps be the means of bringing him into contact with Divine truths which would never otherwise have reached him. Yet this is a work from which too many women recoil in horror--they know that they can do nothing unless they are intimately acquainted with the opinions of those from whom they differ, and from such an intimacy they believe that they are right in shrinking.
Oh, my sisters, my sisters, ye who go into the foulest dens of disease and vice, fearless of the pestilence and of man"s brutality, ye whose whole lives bear witness to the cross of Christ and the efficacy of the Divine love, did one of you ever fear being corrupted by the vice with which you came in contact? Is there one of you who fears to examine why it is that even the most specious form of vice is vicious? You fear not infection here, for you know that you are on sure ground, and that there is no form of vice of which the viciousness is not clearly provable; but can you doubt that the foundation of your faith is sure also, and can you not see that your cowardice in not daring to examine the foul and soul-destroying den of infidelity is a stumbling-block to those who have not yet known their Saviour? Your fear is as the fear of children who dare not go in the dark; but alas! the unbeliever does not understand it thus.
He says that your fear is not of the darkness but of the light, and that you dare not search lest you should find that which would make against you. Hideous blasphemy against the Lord! But is not the sin to be laid partly at the door of those whose cowardice has given occasion for it?
Is there none of you who knows that as to the pure all things are pure, so to the true and loyal heart all things will confirm its faith? You shrink from this last trial of your allegiance, partly from the pain of even seeing the wounds of your Redeemer laid open-- of even hearing the words of those enemies who have traduced him and crucified him afresh--but you lose the last and highest of the prizes, for great as is your faith now, be very sure that from this crowning proof of your devotion you would emerge with greater still.
Has none of you seen a savage dog barking and tearing at the end of his chain as though he were longing to devour you, and yet if you have gone bravely up to him and bade him be still, he is cowed and never barks again? Such is the genius of infidelity; it loves to threaten those who retreat, yet it shrinks daunted back from those who meet it boldly; it is the lack of boldness on the part of the Christian which gives it all its power; when Christians are strong in the strength of their own cause infidels will know their impotence, but as long as there are cowards there will be those who prey upon cowardice, and as long as those who should defend the cross of Christ hide themselves behind battlements, so long will the enemy come up to the very walls of the defence and trouble them that are within. The above words must have sounded harsh and will I fear have given pain to many a tender heart which is conscious of the depth of its own love for the Redeemer, and would be shocked at the thought that anything had been neglected in his service, but has not the voice of such a heart returned answer to itself that what I have written is just?
Again, I have been told by some that they have been aware of the necessity of doing their best towards putting a stop to infidelity, and that they have been unceasing in their prayers for friends or husbands or relations who know not Christ, but that with prayers their efforts have ended. Now, there can be no one in the whole world who has had more signal proofs of the efficacy of prayer than the writer of these pages, but he would lie if he were to say that prayer was ever answered when it was only another name for idleness, a cloak for the avoidance of obvious duty. G.o.d is no helper of the indolent and the coward; if this were so, what need to work at all?
Why not sit still, and trust in prayer for everything? No; to the women who have prayed, and prayed only, the answer is ready at hand, that work without prayer is bad, but prayer without work worse. Let them do their own utmost in the way of sowing, planting, and watering, and then let them pray to G.o.d that he will vouchsafe them the increase; but they can no more expect the increase to be of G.o.d"s free gift without the toil of sowing than did the blessed Apostle St.
Paul. If G.o.d did not convert the heathen for Paul and Apollos in answer to their prayers alone, how can we expect that he will convert the infidel for ourselves, unless we have first followed in the footsteps of the Apostles? The sin of infidelity will rest upon us and our children until we have done our best to shake it off; and this not timidly and disingenuously as those who fear for the result, but with the certainty that it is the infidel and not the Christian who need fear investigation, if the investigation only goes deep enough. Herein has lain our error, we have feared to allow the unbeliever to put forth all his strength lest it should prove stronger than we thought it was, when in truth the world would only have known the sooner of its weakness; and this shall now at last be abundantly shewn, for, as I said above, I will help no infidel by concealing his case; it shall appear in full, and as nearly in his own words as the limits at my disposal will allow. Out of his own mouth shall he be condemned, and yet, I trust, not condemned alone; but converted as I myself, and by the same irresistible chain of purest reason; one thing only is wanted on the part of the reader, it is this, the desire to attain truth regardless of past prejudices.