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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43328 ***
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lost Faith, by T. S. Childs
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43328 ***