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PHILADELPHIA:
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK,
No. 1334 CHESTNUT STREET

Some of the most pathetic cases of the spiritualunrest and skepticism of the day are foundamong the children of Christian parents. Theyhave been brought up to believe the Bible, butunder the influences that have met them as theyhave gone out from the old home into the worldtheir early faith has been shaken, and not unfrequentlydestroyed. To such as these, and, beyondthese, to all who have come to believe that ourage has passed beyond the Bible, it is hoped thatthe incidents and arguments of this little book maybe of service.

THE LOST FAITH.

LETTER I.

My Dear C——: It is useless for you to write tome on the subject of your last letter. I appreciateyour motives, but with me the question is settled.I have given up the beliefs of my childhood; theyhad long been a burden to me, and the writingsand lectures of Mr. —— did the rest. Have youheard him? Can he be fairly answered? I amnot, indeed, as confident as he is that there is nopersonal God, though I do not believe it can beproved, and I entirely agree with him in abhorringand rejecting the doctrine of future suffering.This was the horrible nightmare of my childhood,and you cannot conceive the relief that the rejection[8]of the doctrine has given me. I am frank tosay, from my own experience and that of others,that this is the point that gives Mr. —— his holdon so many. The doctrine of endless suffering forthe sins of this life is abhorrent to them, and theywelcome his views almost as a first truth of reason.This, at least, is my position. The existence ofGod cannot be proved, nor can any immortalityfor man except in the influence he may leave behindhim. But a truce to this. Come to me soonif you are not afraid of my "infidelity," and letus live over the days of our boyhood. Most ofthe dear old friends are gone; we are nearly alone,and I am not inclined to drop the last links ofbrighter, and perhaps better, days than these nowupon us. Yours, truly,

My Dear A——: Your letter has moved medeeply. Yes, we are almost alone. Of all thedear group that used to gather in the old school-house,[9]and play upon the common, and stroll alongthe river-banks in summer and skate upon its solidsurface in winter, you and I are nearly all thatremain. The Southern sea has poor H——;W——, the leader of our sports, fell (under anothername, I think) with Custer's band in thewild tragedy of Montana; B—— and S—— wontheir honors, and were buried with them, on thebattlefield; K—— lives a wreck in mind and body.The rest are scattered. The old homes are allchanged; the inmates are gone from them for ever.

And you are changed. No recollections of thepast that your letter has called up have impressedme more sadly than the change you speak of inyourself. 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 earlybeliefs oppressed you, and you have escaped theburden by rejecting belief in God and in a futurelife.

Let me claim the liberty of an old friend—it[10]may be for the last time, for we shall soon bothbe away—and ask if you aresure of your ground.The questions are too momentous, the interestsinvolved are too great and too lasting, to be riskedon an uncertainty. You are not, indeed, sure thatthere is no God, but you are sure that no man canprove that there is; and you are equally certainthat there can be no future state of suffering forany. Your final conclusions you have reachedthrough the influence of Mr. ——, and you admitthat his hold on you and on others has come largelythrough his passionate denials of the doctrine offuture retribution. I have no doubt this is so.But, after all, is this decisive? Are Mr. ——'sdoubts and denials more to be relied on thanthe positive beliefs of as intelligent and goodmen as the world has ever seen? I do not pressthis as proof one way or the other, but it issomething worth thinking of before you giveup for ever your respect for Christianity and theBible.

Your letter has called up memories that willnot down at the bidding. You remember yourmother; you remember her life; you rememberher death. The day after her burial we were sitting,you and I, under the old willow on the bankof the river—it is all before me now—and youtold me how she died with her hand on your head,and how before she died you promised to meet heragain. Was it all a delusion? Did she go out infinal darkness? And was your promise the follyof childhood?

Will you bear with me if I recall another anda later scene? The days of childhood were behindus. We had drifted apart. You remained amongthe old home-scenes; I was making my way amongstrangers. Then one went from you who had becomedearer to you than a mother. I have beforeme a letter that came to me out of the shadows ofthat bitter trial; I know you will not misjudge meif I quote its words now. Thus you wrote: "Iam sure such a life cannot have ended; the possibilities[12]of it cannot yet be finished. That soul,with all its sweetness and beauty and brightness,cannot have been quenched like a spark on theocean.... Her last words were, 'I go withHim who has brought life and immortality tolight, and who has opened the kingdom of heavento all believers.'" I would not recall these earlyviews and faiths unkindly. If they were wrong,of course you are right in parting with them; butis it certain they were wrong? And in givingthem up have you found something better andmore sure to take their place?

One important point I presume you have notoverlooked: whatever doubts there may be as tothe existence of God,atheism can never be proved.No man can ever be sure that there isnot a God;he may deny that the proof of divine existencesatisfieshim, but that is all he can do. Somewherein the universe, after all, God may be. No manhas explored all its recesses; none has pierced itslimitless heights; none has threaded all its dark[13]abysses and found that in it all there is no God.A man must himself have the attributes of God toknow that there is no God. And suppose I cannotprove that there is a God? If I live as if therewere one and it should happen that there is not, Iam safe; I lose nothing. But if I live as if therewere no God and it should come to pass at last thatthere is, where am I? Of two untraveled paths,it is wisest to take that which isknown to besafe.

But suppose it to be a question of probabilities.Suppose you have to choose between an endless successionof finite causes, as a man, an oak, a flower,a dewdrop—not one of which is adequate to itsown existence—and one infinite, eternal self-existent,almighty and allwise Cause of all things(and some such choice sooner or later you mustmake), which is the better? Which is the morereasonable? If you think through these questionsat all, either you must at last admit a God or youmust make something for yourself that will do the[14]work of God; and the God you makemust dowhat actually is done now; what he will do hereafter,who can say? Your friend, Mr. ——, tellsyou 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 assertionwithout a particle of proof; and if true, it can giveus no relief for the future, as I hope to satisfyyou.

By the side of this utterance of Mr. —— let meput the words of that king in the realm of science,Professor Joseph Henry. They are found in thelast letter that he ever wrote, and may be taken asthe final summing up of all those vast researchesthat have made his name the heritage of the world.They are entitled to some weight as against thestatements of men who, if they can follow in hisfootsteps at all, must follow afar off. These are hiswords: "After all our speculations and an attemptto grapple with the problem of the universe, thesimplest conception which explains and connects[15]the phenomena is that of the existence of onespiritual Being infinite in wisdom, in power andall divine perfections." That is, the simplest andthe best explanation of the facts of the universe isfound in the existence of God. This is testimonyaccepted by the highest scientific authority both inthis country and in Europe. I do not say that itproves there is a God, but it does prove that beliefin God is consistent with the highest intellectualpower. To disbelieve is no proof of a great mind.

Mr. —— eulogizes Thomas Paine as one of thegreatest and best men of his age—a man "whosewritings carry conviction to the dullest." Now,Paine, though a bitter enough infidel, as we allknow, never so parted from his reason or his reverenceas to deny the existence of God. He sayswith a force that, according to Mr. ——, must"carry conviction to the dullest:" "I know I didnot make myself, and yet I have existence; and bysearching into the nature of other things I find noother thing could make itself, and yet millions of[16]other things exist; therefore it is that I know bypositive conclusions resulting from this search thatthere is a power superior to all these things, andthat power is God." Paine believed in God; hebelieved in a future life; he believed in the personof Christ, of whom Mr. —— so far takes leaveof all historic judgment, and even of all respectableinfidel judgments, as to say we do not knowthat he ever existed!

This suggests a word in regard to your questionswhether I have heard Mr. —— and whether hecan be fairly answered. I have never heard himon the subjects of which you speak, but I haveread enough, I think, to judge him fairly. I recognizehis brilliant gifts, his wit, his rhetoricalpower, but I am surprised that one of yournatural clearness of mind should not see that hedeals most unfairly with the questions of religion.His representation of Christianity is a caricature,and it takes great charity not to believe it is anintentional caricature. His treatment of the Scriptures[17]is inexcusably unfair. If a Christian wereto deal with an infidel book as Mr. —— deals withthe Bible, there would be no bound to the chargesof outrageous misrepresentation and perversion.His abuse of Christians and Christianity is oftenmore like the raving of a madman than like thecalm judgment of a fair-minded reasoner. Whatare we to think of a man who can sit downand deliberately write and send out to the worldsuch words as these?—"Hundreds, and thousands,and millions, have lost their reason in contemplatingthe monstrous falsehoods of Christianity;""Nine-tenths of the people in the penitentiariesare believers;" "The orthodox Christian says thatif he can only save his little soul, if he can barelysqueeze into heaven, ... it matters not to himwhat becomes of brother or sister, father or mother,wife or child. He is willing that they should burnif he can sing." This is enough. But what shallbe said of such ravings? Suppose Mr. —— findsimperfections in the Church; suppose he finds a[18]multitude of professed Christians that are not whatthey should be, just as Christ has given us reasonto expect,—does that settle the real nature of Christianity?Suppose "nine-tenths of the people inthe penitentiaries" were American citizens,—doesthat prove that American citizenship is a bad thingor make it worth while for a man to spend his lifein denouncing our Constitution? Mr. —— knowsthere is a very different kind of citizen, and heknows that these men are in the penitentiary, notbecause they have kept the laws of their country,but because they have broken them. So, even ifthe monstrous assertion were true that nine-tenthsof the occupants of the penitentiaries are Christianprofessors, they are there, not on account ofChristianity, but in spite of it. True Christianitynever sent them there, and every honest man knowsthat. Christianity is founded on Christ, and therequired fruit of it is holiness, rectitude with manand purity before God. This is a fact that anyman whowants to know the truth can understand[19]by an hour's study of the teachings of Christ andhis apostles.

To your question whether Mr. —— can be answered,I say deliberately he has been answered ahundred times. I do not think that in all his assaultson the Bible he has advanced a respectable argumentor objection that has not been urged and answeredagain and again long before he was born. TheChristian Church has not the least fear for herselffrom his attacks; indeed, she understands them sowell, and has repelled them so often, that she isperhaps too indifferent to anything he may say.The danger is not to the Church, but to thosewhowant to be convinced that the Bible is not true, andwho want to be assured that, however they may live inthis life, they have nothing to fear in a life to come.

LETTER II.

My Dear A——: The two questions that pressupon every mind, and that Mr. —— has shownagain and again, with wonderful pathos, by dyingbeds and at open graves, are pressing upon his, arethese: Is there a God? Is there a future state ofexistence? To these questions the best answerMr. —— has to give is, "We do not know." Heseems 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 ofpinions to soar or the folding for ever of wings, therise or the set of a sun." With all this uncertainty,he is absolutely sure that there is no future state ofsuffering for evil-doers. He does not know whetherthere is any future at all, but he does know thatthere is no future of sorrow. He is profoundly[21]ignorant as to thefact of a future, but has decisiveknowledge as to thenature of the future, if thereis one. "Rather than that this doctrine of endlesspunishment should be true," he says, "I wouldgladly see the fabric of our civilization, crumbling,fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, whereoblivion broods and even memory forgets."

Now, it may be quite true that Mr. —— has thispreference, yet this does not settle the case. Wecan fully understand how any man should shrinkfrom the terrible possibility of future suffering.Orthodoxy has no more delight in it than has infidelity.But it is not a question of preference: itis a question of fact; and the point I submit foryour reflection is this—whether Mr. ——, on hisown ground, is authorized to affirm that there is nofuture state of suffering for any. He says we donot know whether thereis any future state. Verywell. Then, certainly, we do not know whatkindof a future state there may be, if there is one. IfMr. —— is not able to assure us that there is no[22]future for us at all, he surely has not the ground toassure us of any kind of a future, good or bad.There may be a future of joy, there may be afuture of suffering; there may be both. Mr. ——is too good a lawyer to undertake to prove anythingby mere negative evidence. He "leaves thedead with Nature, the mother of all," and "Nature,"as to any sure utterance upon the future, isas 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 oneither supposition.

Suppose there is a God, though I cannot know itor I cannot know him. Then, clearly, I cannotknow what he is; I cannot know what he may do.It is quite possible that this unknown God may bea God who hates what we call sin, and who willpunish it, and who will punish it just as long as itstands an offence in the moral universe, whether it[23]be in this world or in the world to come. Noagnosticism can deny this conclusion. The darkestas well as the most radiant scenes that Christianfaith brings within our viewmay be eternally true.I may be immortal, and it may be an immortalityof joy or of sighing for me as I use this life andthe truth that God has made known to me in thislife.

Let us take the other hypothesis. Suppose thereis no God; suppose Mr. —— has satisfied methat there is no supernatural revelation, and nopersonal God to make one. Has he made it wellfor me hereafter? Has he delivered me from allfear for the future? Has he saved me beyondquestion from "the serpent of eternal pain"? Ifthere is no God, does that make it certain that therewill be no future suffering for any man? Let ussee. We are here in a world of suffering. Howcame we here? and how did suffering come here?If we came without a God, who will prove thatwithout a God we may not go elsewhere, and that[24]suffering may not go with us? Here we are—bynatural law, by evolution, by chance—as part andparticle of the one eternal unity; however it maybe, we are here, and we suffer. We know whatpain of body and pain of mind are. We have feltthe sting of death, and no law of nature, no powerof evolution, has ever lighted up for us the darknessof the grave. Now, the question we wantanswered is this: If "Nature" has brought us intothis state where there is so much of what we callsin, and so much bound with it that we call suffering,how do we know that the same "Nature" maynot continue the same facts hereafter? Nay, whatassurance can Mr. —— give us that "Nature" isnot a power that may in some future frenzy cast usinto a statefar worse than the present? Is he sofar possessed of all the secrets of "Nature" thatheknows the time will never come when she maystrike us with a force more terrible than any retributivejudgment of God? If "Nature" worksnow in storm and fire, in earthquake and pestilence,[25]in disease and torture and death, in the sorrows ofmemory, the horrors of remorse and dread forebodingsof coming woe,how do you know that shemay not manifest herself thus hereafter and throughthe ages to come?

If Nature is, as Mr. —— says, the mother ofus all, there are times when she manifests hermotherhood appallingly. And when are thesemanifestations to end and how are they to end?If under her regal sway we find that, as a fact, sinand suffering are connected here, can any manprove that it may not be a law of "Nature" herselfthat sin and suffering shall be connected eternally?If in the imperial reign of "the motherof us all" there are chains and scourges, prisonsand scaffolds, thunderbolts and flames, cyclones andfamines and ocean-graves, will any man prove thatsomewhere in the darkness and mystery of thefuture there may not be, in the long outworking ofthis reign, something worse than a hell, worse thanan undying worm, worse than a quenchless fire?

It is, I admit, a fearful thing to fall unpreparedinto the hands of the living God; but if I mustchoose, give me that, a thousand times, rather thanthe terrific possibilities that overhang us all if weare to be eternally at the disposal of a blind, inexorable,soulless, merciless "Nature." The Judge ofall the earth will do right; at the worst we shallreceive no more at his hands than we deserve; butno created being can tell us what we shall receiveat the hands of an irresponsible, pitiless "Nature"though she be "the mother of us all." There isnothing so dark and terrible in all the woes of theBible as the possibilities that Mr. —— offers us inhis gospel; and there is this difference: the Bibleopens wide a door of hope for all who care to enterit; Mr. —— leads us out into the outer darknessand leaves us there. Is it worth while for anyman to spend his life in persuading us to make thisexchange of despair? And is it worth our while—yoursor mine—to make it?

LETTER III.

My Dear A——: In the note in which youkindly acknowledge my former communicationsyou say that, whatever Christianity may be to me,you cannot see it as I do; its excellences, as theyappear to my mind, do not impress you at all, andas long as they do not you cannot be expected toaccept it. I admit the conclusion: you cannot receiveas good and true what does not seem to be so.But does it follow that a thing is not good andtrue because you do not see it? The question stillcomes, Is the cause in the thing or in you?

You remember the Beethoven concert we onceattended together in B——? To you it was anoccasion of exquisite enjoyment; to me it wasnothing. The difference was not in the music: itwas in us. You have a musical taste; I have not.[28]I tried—not very sincerely, perhaps—to persuadeyou that there was nothing beautiful in it; yousmiled, but attempted no argument. You werewise. You knew the music was beautiful, for youhad experienced it; you had felt its power. If Ichose to deny it because I had not felt it, so it mustbe; you could only pity me.

Now, is it not possible that there may be somethinglike this in religion? May it not be a reality—asupreme reality—though you do not see it orfeel it? May I not know it to be real because Ihave felt its power? And if there are thousandsand tens of thousands as intelligent men andwomen as the world has ever seen who are as readyto testify that they have felt the power and experiencedthe reality of the Christian religion as you areto testify that you have felt the power and knowthe sweetness of music, are you wise to dismiss itsclaims becauseyou 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[29]its truth. A cloud of witnesses stand ready to testifyto you its truth from personal experience.They may not argue with you: multitudes of themcould not argue with you; but, after all, they havea proof of the reality of their religion, of thepower of Christ to satisfy and bless men, which noarguments in the world can shake. If all thiswere a new thing, or if the witnesses were onlyignorant and superstitious men, you might wellenough hesitate to receive the testimony; but whenyou reflect that it is the accumulated testimony ofnearly nineteen centuries, that it comes from allcountries and all classes, from the prince on thethrone and the beggar at his gate, from the philosopherin his study and the sailor in the forecastle,from the statesman in the cabinet and the ploughmanin the furrow, I submit it cannot with wisdomor reason be set aside. It is no answer to say thatmany great men and learned men and ploughmencan be brought who have had no such experienceand give no such testimony. This is true, but it is[30]one of the first laws of evidence that no amountof merely negative testimony can overthrow theexplicit evidence of honest, intelligent, trustworthywitnesses. Fifty men who did not see a murdercould not set aside the clear testimony of two whodid see it. Few of the race have ever seen themoons of Mars, or even of Jupiter; this does notdisturb the witness of the few who have: the satellitesare there.

I have just been reading—not for the first time—PeterHarvey's account of his visit, with DanielWebster, to John Colby. You will find it in Harvey'sReminiscences of Webster; and if you havenot read it, it is worth your reading. Colby hadmarried Webster's oldest sister when Webster wasa mere boy. It was in some respects a strangemarriage. She was a godly, Christian woman,while Colby was a wild, reckless, ungodly man—"thewickedest man in the neighborhood," Websterbelieved, "as far as swearing and impietywent." He seems to have been the terror of Webster's[31]boyhood. Singularly enough for New England,though a man of strong natural powers, henever learned to read till he was over eighty yearsof age. His wife died early, and the familiesdrifted apart. Webster had not seen Colby forover forty years, but he heard that a great changehad taken place with him, and he visited him tojudge for himself. I should mar the story of theinterview if I undertook to condense it. Let megive the essential parts of it in Mr. Harvey's ownwords. Long as it is, I think you would be sorryto have it shorter.

Webster and Harvey had driven to Andover,and were directed to Mr. Colby's house. "Thedoor was open.... Sitting in the middle of theroom was a striking figure who proved to be JohnColby. He sat facing the door, in a very comfortablyfurnished farmhouse room, with a little table—orwhat perhaps would be called a light-stand—beforehim. Upon it was a large, old-fashioned Scott'sFamily Bible in very large print, and, of course, a[32]heavy volume. It lay open, and he had evidentlybeen reading it attentively. As we entered he tookoff his spectacles and laid them upon the page ofthe book, and looked up at us as we approached,Mr. Webster in front. He was a man, I shouldthink, over six feet in height, and he retained in awonderful degree his erect and manly form, althoughhe was eighty-five or six years old. Hisframe was that of a once powerful, athletic man.His head was covered with very heavy, thick, bushyhair, and it was as white as wool, which added verymuch to the picturesqueness of his appearance. AsI looked in at the door I thought I never saw amore striking figure. He straightened himself up,but said nothing till just as we appeared at thedoor, when he greeted us with—

"'No, sir, not the slightest;' and he looked byMr. Webster toward me, as if trying to rememberif he had seen me.

"It certainly would be impossible to describe theexpression of wonder, astonishment and half incredulitythat came over Colby's face.

"'You Daniel Webster!' said he; and he startedto rise from his chair. As he did so he stammeredout some words of surprise. 'Is it possible thatthis is the little black lad that used to ride the horseto water? Well, I cannot realize it!'

"'Is it possible,' said Mr. Colby, when the embarrassmentof the first shock of recognition was past,'that you have come up here to see me? Is thisDaniel? Why! why!' said he, 'I cannot believe mysenses. Now, sit down. I am glad—oh, I am soglad to see you, Daniel. I never expected to see youagain. I don't know what to say. I am so gladthat my life has been spared that I might see you.[35]Why, Daniel, I read about you and hear about youin all ways. Sometimes some members of thefamily come and tell us about you, and the newspaperstell us a great deal about you, too. Yourname seems to be constantly in the newspapers.They say that you are a great man—that you area famous man—and you can't tell how delightedI am when I hear such things. But, Daniel, thetime is short; you will not stay here long: I wantto ask you one important question. You may be agreat man: are you agood man? Are you a Christianman? Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ?That is the only question that is worth asking oranswering? Are you a Christian? You know,Daniel, what I have been: I have been one of thewickedest of men. Your poor sister, who is nowin heaven, knows that. But the Spirit of Christand of almighty God has come down and pluckedme as a brand from the everlasting burning. I amhere now, a monument to his grace. Oh, Daniel, Iwould not give what is contained within the covers[36]of this book for all the honors that have been conferredupon men from the creation of the worlduntil now. For what good would it do? It is allnothing, and less than nothing, if you are not aChristian, if you are not repentant. If you do notlove 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.'

"'John Colby,' replied Mr. Webster, 'you haveasked me a very important question, and one whichshould not be answered lightly. I intend to giveyou an answer, and one that is truthful, or I willnot 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 confusionof face—that I am not such a Christian as Iwish I were. I have lived in the world, surroundedby its honors and its temptations, and I[37]am afraid, John Colby, that I am not so good aChristian as I ought to be. I am afraid I havenot your faith and your hopes; but still I hopeand trust that I am a Christian, and that the samegrace which has converted you and made you anheir of salvation will do the same for me. I trustit, and I also trust, John Colby—and it will not belong before our summons will come—that we shallmeet in a better world, and meet those who havegone before us whom we knew, and who trusted inthat same divine free grace. It will not be long.You cannot tell, John Colby, how much delight itgave me to hear of your conversion. The hearingof that is what has led me here to-day. I came hereto see with my own eyes and hear with my ownears the story from a man that I know and rememberso well. What a wicked man you used tobe!'

"'Oh, Daniel,' exclaimed John Colby, 'youdon't remember how wicked I was, how ungratefulI was, how unthankful I was. I never thought of[38]God; I never cared for God; I was worse than aheathen. Living in a Christian land with the lightshining all around me and the blessings of Sabbathteachings everywhere about me, I was worse than aheathen until I was arrested by the grace of Christand made to see my sinfulness and to hear the voiceof my Saviour. Now I am only waiting to gohome to him, and to meet your sainted sister, mypoor wife. And I wish, Daniel, that you mightbe 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 amost touching prayer. As soon as he had pronouncedthe 'Amen,' Mr. Colby followed in a mostpathetic, stirring appeal to God. He prayed forthe family, for me and for everybody. Then werose, and he seemed to feel a serene happiness inhaving thus joined his spirit with that of Mr.Webster in prayer....

"The brothers-in-law took an affectionate leave[39]of each other, and we left. Mr. Webster couldhardly restrain his tears. When we got into thewagon, he began to moralize:

"'I should like,' said he, 'to know what theenemies of religion would say to John Colby's conversion.There was a man as unlikely, humanlyspeaking, to become a Christian as any man I eversaw. He was reckless, heedless, impious—neverattended church, never experienced the good influenceof associating with religious people—and herehe has been living on in that reckless way untilhe has got to be an old man, until a period of lifewhen you naturally would not expect his habits tochange, and yet he has been brought into the conditionin which we have seen him to-day, a penitent,trusting, humble believer. Whatever peoplemay say,' added Mr. Webster, 'nothing can convinceme that anything short of the grace of almightyGod could make such a change as I withmy own eyes have witnessed in the life of JohnColby.'"

Mr. Colby was eighty-four years old at the timeof his conversion. At that age he learned to readfor the single purpose of reading the Bible, and itwas the only book he ever did read. He lived forthree years after this, and to the end gave the clearestevidences of a change that to Mr. Webster'sjudicial mind could be explained only by the suppositionof a divine interposition; it was a divinereality. The last intelligible words of the onceterrible blasphemer were, "Jesus! glory!"

Changing the details, the experience of JohnColby has been the experience of thousands uponthousands. And—I put it to you in all candor—isit all a lie? Was Webster—one of the grandestintellects of this or of any age—was he afanatic or a fool to believe in the reality of thereligion that John Colby had experienced? Washe a weakling to put his faith where John Colbyhad put his, and to trust that when the summonsof both should come—as it soon did come—theymight meet each other and those who had gone[41]before them trusting in the same divine, freegrace?

You may criticise the Bible, you may criticiseChristians, but, after all, there is something inChristianity that cannot be explained away as asuperstition or a delusion; there is something thatcannot be dismissed by a scoff or with indifference.Somewhere and at some time it will have the finalword, and it will be heard. I commend it to yourhonest and earnest judgment now. Try it; I askno more. Settle the great questions that press onevery heart as the Bible opens the way of settlementto you, and wait the issue. You can losenothing; you may gain everything. The fact isas remarkable as it is familiar that no man in thelast hour here—the hour, often, of supernal light—everwanted to take back or to change his faithin the Man of Nazareth as the Son of God and theSaviour of men. When the shadows are meltingin the great realities, and the mysteries of life areabout to be finished and the verities of the future[42]are to be proved, no man has yet been found tomourn that in the face of all difficulty and doubtand denial here he was a Christian. Can that, oranything approaching it, be said of any form ofatheism or infidelity or unbelief?

LETTER IV.

My Dear A——: I had supposed my last letterwould end our correspondence. Your kind replyhas gratified me more than I can express. Withoutfurther words, let me take up at once the questionthat you put, I am sure, sincerely. You ask,"Whatis 'the way of settlement that the Bibleopens to the great questions that press us?'"

The questions of supreme interest are few andsimple. Is there a God? Is there a future existencefor us? How can that existence be made asafe and satisfying one? If you are willing toallow any authority to the Bible at all, there can beno doubt as to the first two questions. There is aGod by whom we were created and to whom weare responsible; there is a future existence. Thosetwo questions are settled, if the Bible can settle[44]anything. And they are settled, let me add, inharmony with the profoundest instincts and themost imperative demands of our nature. Whatevera few souls in their struggling dissatisfactionand sad unrest may persuade themselves, the greatyearning heart of humanity will quiet itself onnothing less than God and immortality. Evenyour former guide, Mr. —— (let me hope I mayspeak of him now as only yourformer guide), criesout in the presence of the dead and before theawful silence of the grave, "Immortality is a wordthat hope through all the ages has been whisperingto 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 toturn to the hope that the Bible alone gives, when thebitterest rejecters of God and his word long forthe consolation that only the rejected word affords.

Let us turn to the other question. If, when weare through with this life—as we soon shall bethrough with it—we are not through with existence—if[45]there is a life beyond the present notmeasured by years or ages,—how can it be madeworth having? Is there any way in which ourimmortality can be assured to us as an immortalgood? After all the doubts and darkness, themystery and suffering, the bitterness and disappointment,of this life, may it in any way be founda great and a good thing, after all, that we havelived? To answer these questions we must comeback to the old truth—the truth of your childhood.The "advanced thought" of our day has discoverednothing to change the fact that men are out ofthe way, they are not what they should be. Everyman knows this. The Bible expresses it in a veryplain way by sayingthey are sinners. As such itdeals with them; to such alone it opens its door ofhope. The Bible is of no use to you unless youare a sinner. If you call this cant, I am sorryfor it, but I cannot help it; I cannot changeit. The only men for whom God is dealing herefor good, for whom he is making possible an immortality[46]of honor and happiness, are the sinful.And is not this well for us? Does it not at oncebring hope to you—a hope as great as it is mysterious?You know that life has not been to youan unstained thing any more than it has been toany of us. To know this is to know sin, the oneappalling fact of the universe, the one unspeakablewoe of our being.

In the simplest way, then, my dear A——, letme say that the first step in your coming right withGod, and so right with the future, is to know andto feel that you are wrong. The Bible closes thedoor of hope for ever on the man who comes claimingthe brightness and the good of a life beyond thegrave because he is worthy of it. These words wereonce familiar to you: "By the deeds of the lawthere shall no flesh be justified." Rom. iii. 20.

Can he who is wrong make himself right? Canhe be all he ought to be? Can he do all he oughtto do? Can you set right all the wrong and allthe failure of the past? Can you make the future[47]without error? To ask these questions is to answerthem to every honest conscience.

For one who is wrong there must be the consequencesof wrong, and these must be as fearful andas far-reaching as sin itself. "Whatsoever a mansoweth, that shall he also reap," and evermore andeverywhere the harvest is greater than the seed.The coming tribulation and anguish of the unsavedsouls that do evil is a law of nature as well as ofrevelation. The wages of sin is death. You knowthis. You have felt it in its measure. You haveseen it in the unhappiness, the misery, the woe, thedespair and death with which sin reigns everywherearound us. Take the brightest view of lifethat you can, and the darkness in which it ends isterrible. To go out of it without God is to go outwithout hope. Am I wrong in believing that youneed no argument here, that no conviction is moresorrowfully intense with you than this?

Will you go now a step farther? Standing inyour wrong and your weakness and your unrest,[48]with the heavy shadows of the future falling uponyou, are you willing to draw near to the open portalof a better life? Are you willing to look upand read over it—"God so loved the world that hegave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believethin him should not perish, but have everlasting life"?John iii. 16. Are you willing to submit your faithto the mystery—beyond all depth except the loveof God—that the Son of God in our nature hasborne our sins in his own body on the tree—that hehas died for us, the Just for the unjust? In otherwords, are you willing to receive the kingdom ofheaven as a little child—to be saved, if saved youmay be, in God's own way?

In a former letter I spoke of the testimony ofWebster to the reality of the Christian religion;and, though it is true that Christianity does notdepend upon the patronage of any man, it is wellto know that greater intellects than those thatwould persuade you to reject it have bowed beforeit and found their supreme hope in it. Let me[49]give you, then, another testimony from this greatestof American statesmen and jurists. It was hislast night on earth; that life of extraordinaryinfluence and honor was closing. As his familyand friends stood around his bed his physicianrepeated the immortal hymn of Cowper:

the majestic voice that had thrilled courts andsenates, was heard in a clear thrice-repeated"Amen! Amen! Amen!" And so he passed, letus hope, to have part in that final song. Pity,[50]infinite pity, that he had not made more of thatmagnificent intellect for the Giver of it! But atleast he was too great a man to deny the Love andthe Sacrifice by which alone the life of the greatestas well as the feeblest can be saved from beingan eternal tragedy.

I know, my dear A——, the derision withwhich all this may be received, but my hope isthat you have passed beyond that point of intellectualself-conceit and moral self-murder. At allevents, this is the only ground of a safe immortalitythat the Bible holds out, and beyond theBible there is no ground. If you ever settle safelythe solemn questions of the future, you will settlethem here. If you ever find the rest for which Iknow you are weary, you will find it at the crossand in the presence of Him who hung upon it, andwhose words are to-day, as of old, "Come untome, 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[51]make a plea for the faith of your earlier years. Itis easy to put it aside, but, after all, it is a faith thatwill stand. The evidence of nineteen centuriesfrom millions of honest and intelligent witnesses,of all ranks and conditions, living and dying, tothe power of this faith to sustain in the mostsolemn crises of life, when flesh and heart are failing,and when the darkness and anguish and mysteryof death are rocking the soul to its foundations,cannot wisely be dismissed as a delusion: theremust be a reality behind it. The lights that havegone out from your own home and heart you wereright in believing have "not gone out in darkness,"but you will not forget that as they went into purerlight they went with Him who has brought life andimmortality to light, who is the Resurrection andthe Life, in whom believing, though we were dead,yet shall we live.

Here I must rest. I can only commend you toGod and to the word of his grace—to the writtenword and to the incarnate Word, to the Bible and[52]to Christ. I am as certain as I am of my ownexistence that if you will give yourself up to theguidance of these you will be satisfied and you willbe saved. If you will only take the Bibleandfollow it, you will find an assurance of its truththat cannot be shaken; you will find rest, for youwill find Christ. And surely it is not too much toask that in a matter of such infinite importanceyou make a fair, honest and thorough trial of thatwhich no man ever yet made trial of to be disappointed.

Yet let me not fail to impress as a final thoughtthat this result of good and of peace will comeonlyby the power of the Holy Spirit. It is his to takeof the things of Christ and show them to us;unless he does this, we cannot see them. My lastword of entreaty, then, is—and I would make it asearnestly as conviction and feeling and languagecan make it—yield to the Spirit of God. The endyou want is too great for your own strength. Youhave proved this. You have struggled on long[53]enough in your own plans and your own way, seekingrest, and you are as far from rest as ever. Trynow another way. Take hold of a higher strength."Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shallfind." I plead with you by all the memories ofthe past and by all the hopes of the future. Youhave sinned, and I would not heal the hurt slightly.No one knows better than you that if the Bible istrue you have a long and dark account against you—ifnot of open and flagrant sin, yet to the Mindthat makes no mistakes of that which is perhapsfar worse, of calm, deliberate, persistent rejectionof Christ and of his Spirit. It would be faithlessnessand cruelty to hide the fact that by all theverities of God you are in peril—in fearful peril.To stand in darkness where no light is is sadenough; but when Light is come into the worldand men stand in darkness, there is sin that sealsits own doom. As the case is now, the very unrestof your soul—its dark gropings, its unsatisfiedyearnings, its sighs of despair—all this is the living[54]witness of your danger, the prophecy of adeeper 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 onlyrest that the universe has for the erring and thesinful. The Spirit of God is very pitiful. Everythought of good is from him; every desire for abetter life is his inspiration; every penitent sigh ishis breath. I believe he is not far from you; Ibelieve, therefore, you are not far from the kingdomof heaven. Quench not the Spirit. Do notgo down in darkness in sight of the City ofLight.

You remember the circumstances of our returnfrom Europe in the fall of 18—. We were youngthen, but the events are still vivid in my memory,as they are no doubt in yours. For two days wewere delayed in Liverpool by a fearful storm. Inthat storm the Royal Charter was coming in, havingmade successfully the voyage of the world.She had been signaled, and was already in the[55]Channel; her arrival was looked for every hour.Dear friends of those we were leaving were onboard. The fires were lighted on the hearth, andthe table was spread for the long-absent ones, andglad hearts were waiting impatiently to give themjoyful welcome. But they never came; in sightof the harbor and of the lights of home they wentdown—the four hundred of that doomed ship.The next day we passed the silent wreck as wecame 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. Theharbor is near; the lights of the eternal home are insight; the table is spread, and dear ones—yours andmine—are waiting there to give us glad and everlastingwelcome. Do not make wreck of life andhope and immortality in the very sight of home.

Since these letters were written, he to whom theywere addressed has gone where human argumentsand pleadings cannot reach him. In a moment, inthe twinkling of an eye, he passed from the scenesof a busy, honored and prosperous life into thesolemn mysteries that lie beyond our horizon. Onhis desk was found the following unfinished letter,written the night before his death:

I have not misapprehendedthe spirit and motive of your letters. I have readthem—more than once—with care and, I believe,with candor. When a man stands in the shadowof a great and awful change—and my physicianwarns me that my lifework may end suddenly—heis a fool who deals any other way than seriouslyand honestly with the questions you discuss. If Icannot say that your reasoning removes all mydoubts, I can most sincerely say this, even thoughit may be, in your judgment, at the cost of myconsistency:I would give the world to have your[57]faith and hope. While I have been glad to havethe arguments of Mr. —— to support my ownfaith or want of faith, I will be candid and saythat I have not been at rest. Life has been terriblyempty and hopeless since I felt, with ProfessorClifford, that "the Great Companion is dead." Ihave had success, as the world goes, but what ofit? What does it amount to? What is to be theend of it all? No God! No immortality! Nothingbeyond this little circle whose utmost limit Iseem to be even now touching! Is it so?

I am writing at midnight—an hour when thesequestions often come to me with the pressure ofdespair. Oh to be a child again with a child'sfaith, a child's peace! My mother—

Here the letter ended. Did the thought of hismother open the door of his aching heart to hismother's God and his mother's Christ? So let ushope. There is a mercy that is from everlasting toeverlasting upon them that fear God, and a righteousness[58]that is unto children's children to such askeep his covenant.

Lying upon the letter was the following slip, cutfrom a newspaper. It was stained apparently withtears, and was probably the last thing that myfriend read. It could hardly be the expression ofany heart to whom the "hand of mercy" was notalready "opening the wicket-gate:"

DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE
AS TESTED BY
THE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.[1]

One has to breathe but little of the atmosphereof popular thought to-day to find how full it is ofreligious doubt. Parental faiths count for little.The beliefs of childhood, the teachings of thesainted dead, the hopes that once brightened thedarkness and mysteries and griefs of life with thelight of a cloudless future, are to multitudes no more."The eclipse of faith" has come, and souls are[64]drifting out upon the starless, shoreless sea of unbelief.They see "the spring sun shining out ofan empty heaven to light up a soulless earth."They take up the wail of despair: "We are all tobe swept away in the final ruin of the earth."This is the deep, pathetic undertone of the sighingof a thousand hearts to-day.

Has life anything real? Is it worth living?When the little play is over, and the hour's music isended, and the lights are out, and we go forth intothe darkness of the final night—what then? Is itdarkness for ever? or is there the light of an eternalday? Who knows? Is anything certain?Must nations and men and the evening-moth alikego down and perish for ever under the crush of aninexorable fate? Is there no rift in this cloud?Have we no anchor that will hold as the stormdrives us on through the blinding mists and gloomto the eternal shore? Have we no sure word ofpromise to which we can cling when everythingelse around us and under our feet is giving way?

Is the Bible true? That is the simple but momentousquestion; it settles all other questions ofmost concern to men. To it, therefore, we find themost intense thought of thoughtful men converging.That from this there should emerge questions noteasily solved is not to be wondered at: they emergein every inquiry of human thought. The onlything to be asked is that these questions be dealtwith candidly and fairly.

To many minds the Bible is still on trial; it isonly just that in its trial those rules and principlesshall be observed which men everywhere expectand demand shall be observed for themselves whenthey or their interests are to be tried.

This is the point of this essay. It is not,indeed, a discussion from the highest ground ofinspiration; it does not claim to be. It simplydeals with a certain class—a very large class,however—of alleged difficulties of the Bible, andit appeals to the candid reader to deal with them asfairly and by the same rules as he would have his[66]fellow-men deal with him in a matter of life ordeath, or of any worldly interest.

For this object only a few of the common rulesof evidence have been taken. It is believed, however,that their application will cover a very largeportion of the popular objections to the alleged inconsistenciesand contradictions of the Bible.

Undoubtedly, there are difficulties in the Bible;the question is whether these prove that it isnot the work and word of God. On the otherhand, it may be suggested whether they do notconfirm it as the work of God, for they at onceput it in harmony with all his other works. Ifthe Bible were without difficulties, it would, for us,be out of the line with everything else that Godhas made or done. Nature and Providence arefull of difficulties. There is nothing in the Bibleharder of explanation and reconciliation than arethe facts that meet us everywhere in God's creativeand providential realms. If these difficulties donot prove that Nature and Providence are not, from[67]beginning to end, the works of God, they do not onthe 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 willall be removed: difficulties will remain. The Lordof hosts himself is a stone of stumbling and a rockof offence upon which many stumble and fall andare broken. Isa. viii. 14, 15. If a man is determinedto commit suicide, he can do it by the verymeans that God has created to preserve life—byfire or by water. Spiritual self-destruction is quitepossible through the word of life itself. At thesame time, no man has a right to put needless difficultiesin the Bible or to make difficulties wherenone exist. More than this, every man is boundto deal as fairly at least with the Bible as he dealswith his fellow-men in the ordinary relations oflife. That which would give him no trouble asa judge upon the bench or a juror in the boxought not to be urged as a fatal objection to theScriptures.

In testing at this time some of the difficulties ofthe Bible by the accepted rules of evidence, hardlymore can be done than to present a few of theserules as applicable to these difficulties. But therules are of the widest application; the solutionof one difficulty by them is the solution of ahundred.

Looking upon the Bible as a whole, we mayrefer for a moment to the familiar precept thatevery man is to be presumed innocent until he isproved guilty. This is emphatically true of a manof good general reputation. The rule would seemas applicable to a book as to a man. Now, theBible is not a new book; it has been before theworld for ages. It has a character. That it is onthe whole a good book the bitterest opposers of itsplenary inspiration not only admit, but assert. Itis conceded that it is entitled to its name—theBible,the Book. It claims to be a truthful book;by every fair principle this claim must be alloweduntil it is shown to be false. Bancroft's[69]Historyof the United States claims to be a reliable work;the claim is generally admitted. If a man nowcomes forward and asserts that it is false in wholeor in details, by universal judgment he mustprove his assertion, and obviously his proofs mustbe stronger than the evidences of the truth of thehistory. If this is so in reference to a book thathas not stood the test of half a century, emphaticallyis it true of a book whose character hasbeen established through the searching scrutinyof friends and foes for fifteen centuries—ay, fortwice fifteen centuries. If a man now affirmsthe Bible to be false, wholly or in part, it restsupon him in all fairness to prove his position, andhis evidence must be stronger than that which supportsthe book. For three thousand years a growingmass of testimony to the truth of the Biblehas been rolling up in the face of every objectionthat ingenuity, learning and the bitterest hostilitycould present. Account for it as we may, that is thefact. There is, therefore, a reasonable presumption[70]in its favor, and in favor of any specific statementthat it makes. If, then, we find in it a positivestatement in regard to any fact, and that statementis now confronted by another and a contradictoryone, the two do not stand on the same level. Thenew claimant must prove his position, and to proveit he must disprove the truth of the Scripturerecord. It is not enough to show that his propositionmight be true if we had no other informationon the subject: he must show that the Scripture,with its mass of supporting and cumulative evidence,is false; and he must support his new propositionby a body of evidence stronger than thismanifold evidence of ages by which the Scripturesare sustained.

The application of this principle is obvious, yetnothing is more common than its violation. Anhypothesis with certain analogies perhaps in itsfavor, but admittedly without a solitary positiveproof to sustain it, is put forward as an establishedtruth without regard to the fact that the Bible, with[71]its general character of veracity behind it, givesanother and an entirely different account of thematter. We will not say this is irreverent: it isunfair and unreasonable.

The character of the Bible may justly claim tosustain its record till it is proved false. Deal withit 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 incarnateWord, stands a true witness in all things forever. Condemned, crucified, buried, it will riseagain. It is a perilous thing to condemn theguiltless.

Let us pass to another rule of law; it is this:"The testimony of a single witness, where there isno ground for suspecting either his ability or integrity,is a sufficient legal ground for belief"(Starkie on Ev., i. 550). The mere silence of onewitness or of many witnesses cannot set aside theclear, positive testimony of a single trustworthywitness. That Josephus does not mention events[72]which Moses records does not affect the truth ofthe Mosaic record, and his silence as to the Bethlehemmassacre—even if no reason could be suggestedfor it, as there can be—cannot, under thisrule of law, affect the positive testimony of Matthewthat there was such a massacre.

The courts go farther than this. They say, "Ifa witness swear positively that he saw or heard afact, and anotherwho was present that he did notsee or hear it, and the witnesses are equally faithworthy,the affirmative witness is to be believed"(Decisions of the Supreme Court of Errors of theState of Connecticut, vol. vi. p. 188). In the casereferred to in that decision the court set aside averdict that had been rendered by the lower courton the negative testimony of eleven witnesses againstthe positive testimony of three. The principlerecognized by that decision, and which is universallyaccepted as law, is that the negative testimony ofwitnesses present at any given transaction cannotset aside the positive testimony of a far less number[73]of witnesses, or even of a single reliable witness.

The silence of any of the evangelists in referenceto an incident or event at which they may havebeen present, but which possibly they may nothave noticed or which they do not record, does notcontradict in the least the testimony ofone whosays such an incident occurred. The fact of themarriage in Cana is not at all disturbed becauseJohn is the only witness who testifies to it. So ifone writer states a part of an incident or of a discoursewhich another writer omits, while the lattergives a part which the first omits, there is no contradiction.Matthew (xx. 20) says the mother ofZebedee's children made a certain request whichMark (x. 35) says the children themselves made.But this is not inconsistent: the children unitedwith the mother in the request. Matthew callsattention to one party; Mark, to another. Nothingcan be more unreasonable than the cavil thatstumbles at such difficulties.

The rule before us applies to that extraordinarydoubt of modern criticism—whether the Israeliteswere ever in Egypt, because, as affirmed, themonuments do not record their presence nor theirflight nor the destruction of the Egyptian host atthe Red Sea. Now, leaving out of the argumentthe strong probability that the monuments do referto their presence in Egypt, and the further probabilitythat the Egyptians would not be likely topreserve on their monuments the record of theirown ignominy and overthrow, the objection couldnot stand for a moment in any court of justice inthe presence of the positive testimony of therecord to the history in Egypt—all the more asthis testimony is sustained by an extraordinaryweight of incidental corroborative evidence, andis involved in the whole subsequent history of thenation.

Grant, if you will, that there are improbabilitiesin parts of the history; still, the courts rule that"mere improbability can rarely supply a sufficient[75]ground for disbelieving direct and unexceptionablewitnesses of the fact where there was no room formistake" (Starkie, i. 558; see alsoGreenleaf onEv., i. 1, 14, 15). That canon, fairly applied,sweeps away no inconsiderable portion of the objectionsto the Scripture histories. Take the greatdecisive fact of the resurrection of Christ—a factthat carries with it the whole Christian system andthe verity of the whole Christian revelation. It isa fact of testimony—of the testimony of manywitnesses, under a great variety of circumstances,at many times and places, and extending throughso long a period as to preclude all reasonable oradmissible supposition of "mistake." No fact ofancient history can be proved by testimony if theresurrection of Christ cannot be. The proof standsby itself, positive, direct, unexceptionable as to thecharacter and capacity of the witnesses. It is proofthat the law declares cannot be set aside by "mereimprobability;" and if this fact is established,everything essential to Christianity is established.[76]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 livingLord.

Another very important rule of law is this: "Incases of conflicting evidence, the first step in theprocess of inquiry must naturally and obviously beto ascertain whether the apparent inconsistencies andincongruities which it presents may not withoutviolence be reconciled" (Starkie, i. 578). "Wherethere is an apparent inconsistency or contradictionin the testimony of witnesses, such constructionshall 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 violationof this rule by many of the critics of theBible; their effort is to see, not if the testimonycan be made to agree, but if by any possibilityit can be forced to appear contradictory. It ishardly putting it too strongly to say that manyof these efforts would not be considered respectable,[77]and would not be tolerated by the criticsthemselves, if they concerned any other bookthan the Bible and any other subject than Christianity.

The courts take even stronger ground on theobligation of harmonizing apparently conflictingevidence. If the elements of reconciliation are notfound in the evidence itself, they insist on the admissionof any reasonable supposition that will explainthe difficulty.

"Where doubt arises," says Starkie (Ev. i. 586),"from circumstances of an apparently opposite andconflicting tendency, the first step in the naturalorder of inquiry is to ascertain whether they benot in reality reconcilable, especially when circumstancescannot be rejected without imputing perjuryto a witness; for perjury is not to be presumed,and in the absence of all suspicion that hypothesisis to be adopted which consists with and reconcilesall the circumstances which the case supplies."(See alsoStarkie, i. 578, 582.)

Take the familiar case of the taxing when Cyreniuswas governor of Syria. Luke ii. 2. Everybodyknows how confidently it was asserted thatLuke was in error because Cyrenius' governmentof Syria was several years later than Luke makesit; equally, every one knows how that difficultywas met by the supposition, made almost a certainty,that Cyrenius was twice governor of Syria—onceat the time in question, and once later.Even if the supposition were not as probable as itis, if there were no other way of solving the difficulty,we should be justified by the principle of lawin assuming it rather than to assume that a witnessas intelligent as Luke, and with his opportunitiesof knowledge and with no motive for misstatement,should either wilfully or carelessly have made sogross an error. Here the rule fits perfectly: "Inthe absence of all suspicion,that hypothesis is to beadopted which consists with and reconciles all the circumstanceswhich the case supplies."

In regard to certain objections to the Mosaic[79]record—for example, the improbability of thedesert sustaining the host of the Israelites: weselect this as an example of a mass of like objections—DeanStanley, while holding in general tothe historic fact, says the recorded miracles do notmeet the difficulty and we have no right to add tothem; for "if we have no warrant to take away,we have no warrant to add." If by this he meantwe have no right to add to the inspired wordas apart of it what is not in it, he is quite correct; butif he meant, as he evidently did, that we have noright to make a reasonable supposition to explainan apparent difficulty of the word, no utterance canbe more groundless. He might as well object thatMoses could not possibly have led the Israelitesthrough the desert forty years because no mancould do that without sleeping, and the recorddoes not say that Moses slept during all thattime, and "we have no warrant to add" to therecord.

The same difficulty is urged by others from the[80]present barrenness of the desert, which it is contendedis substantially as it was in the time of theExodus. This is to be met not so much by hypothesisas by the facts—(1) that the condition ofthe desert was very different then from its conditionnow. Because the country around Philadelphiacannot now support a tribe of Indians by huntingand fishing, it does not follow that it could not dothis two hundred years ago. (2) God had undertakento bring the nation out. If every miraclenecessary to accomplish this end is not recorded, itdoes not prove that it was not wrought. As in thelife of our Lord, so in the deliverance of Israel,many miracles may have been wrought of whichno account has come down to us.

This suggests an obvious and a very importantconsideration:facts may now be missing which wereperfectly well known at the time of the event, butthe record of which has not been preserved. Hence,if a difficulty can be removed by a reasonable supposition,or even by any admissible supposition,[81]of a missing fact, we are entitled to make thatsupposition.

Webster (Works, vol. vi. p. 64) in his address tothe jury on the celebrated trial of the Knapps forthe murder of Captain White of Salem, Massachusetts,says: "In explaining circumstances of evidencewhich are apparently irreconcilable or unaccountable,if a fact be suggested which at onceaccounts for all and reconciles all, by whomsoeverit may be stated, it is still difficult not to believethat such fact is the true fact belonging to thecase." The missing fact that was wanted in thiscase to show a motive for the murder was the stealingof a will, or the purpose to steal a will, andthis proved the true hypothesis.

To illustrate by a familiar incident of the OldTestament history. The prophets Jeremiah andEzekiel foretell the fate of the last king of Judah,Zedekiah. Jer. xxxii.; Ezek. xii. They declare thathe shall be taken captive by the king of Babylon,that he shall go to Babylon and that he shall die in[82]Babylon; yet Ezekiel expressly says that he shallnot see Babylon. Now, here is apparently as grossa contradiction as there can be; and if our informationstopped here, it would be impossible to reconcileit. Fortunately, however, the explanation isgiven in the history. From 2 Kings xxv. we learnthat the king of Babylon, when Zedekiah wasbrought into his presence at Riblah, ordered hiseyes to be put out and sent him blind to Babylon;so that he saw the king of Babylon, he went toBabylon, he died in Babylon, and yet he neversaw Babylon. But—and this is the point of thisfamiliar case—if this unexpected and extraordinaryfact had not been stated, how absolutely impossibleit would have been to give any satisfactory solutionof the difficulty! It may be doubted whetherany supposition as violent as this needs to bemade to reconcile every alleged contradiction of theBible.

A remarkable illustration of the power of a missingfact occurs in the history of the overthrow of[83]Babylon itself. The Scripture account (Dan. v.)says that Belshazzar was king of Babylon, that hewas in the city, engaged in a feast, at the time ofits capture, and that he was slain. Reliable secularhistorians give the name of the king as Nabonnedusor Labynetus, and state that he was not inthe city when it was captured, that he was notkilled, but taken prisoner, kindly treated and allowedto retire to private life. These differentaccounts were not only eagerly seized upon byskeptics as proofs of the error of the Scriptures,but even biblical scholars admitted them to be incapableof reconciliation. No longer ago thanwhen the writer was in the theological seminarythat 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 waspossible. Kitto, in hisCyclopedia, declared that nohypothesiscould harmonize the accounts. Yet thereconciliation was perfectly simple. A cylinder ofhistoric records discovered by Sir Henry Rawlinson[84]in the ruins of Lower Babylon showed that therewere at this time two kings of Babylon, a fatherand a son. One was occupying a stronghold nearthe city, the other was defending the city itself;the latter was taken and slain, the former wasspared. Thus, by the providential bringing tolight of a fact buried for centuries, that which hadseemed to be, and which had repeatedly and triumphantlybeen proclaimed to be, and which hadbeen given upas being, an irreconcilable contradiction,was shown to be perfectly harmonious. Yetif the hypothesis of two kings had been suggestedas an explanation before the discovery of the fact,it would have been hissed out of court by the wholeskeptical school.

The two accounts of the death of Judas havenot 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 werethe circumstances of the fall, and it is certainly not[85]impossible, or even improbable, that both accountsare true. The traitor hung himself, possibly, onthe verge of a precipice—the supposed spot furnishesall the conditions for this—and afterward(how long is not said) the rope or the limb of thetree gave way, and he fell, striking first on therocks at the foot of the tree and then plungingover the precipice with the result described byLuke.

The case is not without a parallel. A few weekssince the papers noticed the death of a gentlemanin one of our Western States. According to oneaccount, he perished in a railroad disaster; accordingto another, he committed suicide—a contradictionalmost exactly like that in the case of Judas.Yet there was no real discrepancy. With his wifeand child he was on the fatal train that met itsdoom at Chatsworth. His child was killed; heand his wife were taken from the ruins terriblyinjured. The wife soon died; in despair, and withno hope of his own life, he drew his pistol and[86]sent the ball through his own head. He perishedin the Chatsworth disaster, and he committedsuicide.

The application of these principles of law—theadmission of any reasonable hypothesis, or of anhypothesis that may seemimprobable, if it removesthe difficulty, the supposition of missing factsknown at the time, but now lost—principles of constantapplication in our courts of justice,—releasesat once the pressure from a large part of the objectionsto the inspired record. The accounts of thehealing of the blind men at Jericho and the resurrectionof Christ—two of the most difficult of fullexplanation in the New Testament—require nomore than this. It is not hard to present reasonablehypotheses to meet the cases as they stand;and if all the facts were known to us we believethe harmony would be as complete and as simpleas that of the histories of the siege and capture ofBabylon.

We draw the discussion to a close with the words[87]of the eminent American jurist and legal authority,Professor Greenleaf: "All that Christianity [orthe Bible] asks of men on this subject is thatthey would be consistent with themselves, thatthey would treat its evidence as they treat theevidence of other things, and that they would tryand judge its actors and witnesses as they deal withtheir fellow-men when testifying to human affairsand actions in human tribunals."

This, as we have said, is not the highest claimthat we can make for the Bible; but if men will goas far as this, and deal with the alleged contradictionsof the book honestly by the common rules ofevidence, the vast majority of all the difficulties towhich these rules apply will disappear. In themean time, if there are those that do not yield topresent knowledge, we can afford to wait. Manyobjections once supposed to be unanswerable havebeen answered, and the process is going on. Godis very patient, but we may be assured that Hewho just as the occasion has demanded has summoned[88]up the silent witnesses to his word from thevalley of the Nile, from the stormy cliffs of Sinai,from the plains of Mesopotamia and from the sullenshores of the Dead Sea, will not fail in the futureto give all the confirmation of his truth that thefaith of his Church may need.

FOOTNOTE:

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Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Lost Faith, and Difficulties of the Bible, as Tested by the Laws of Evidence

THE LOST FAITH,

DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE AS TESTED
BY THE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.

T. S. CHILDS, D. D.

CONTENTS

THE LOST FAITH.

LETTER I.

LETTER II.

LETTER III.

LETTER IV.

DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE
AS TESTED BY
THE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.[1]

FOOTNOTE:

Transcriber's note:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Lost Faith, and Difficulties of the Bible, as Tested by the Laws of Evidence

THE LOST FAITH,

DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE AS TESTEDBY THE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.

T. S. CHILDS, D. D.

CONTENTS

THE LOST FAITH.

LETTER I.

LETTER II.

LETTER III.

LETTER IV.

DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLEAS TESTED BYTHE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.[1]

FOOTNOTE:

Transcriber's note:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE AS TESTED
BY THE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.

DIFFICULTIES OF THE BIBLE
AS TESTED BY
THE LAWS OF EVIDENCE.[1]