Preface

School of Theology at Claremont
iii i
Theology Library
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CLAREMONT California
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PtH FOUR GOSPELS. {i
BY R. W. DALE, LL.D,
BIRMINGHAM.
HODDER & STOUGHTON NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
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PREFACE,
HE Lectures printed in this volume were
delivered to the Carrs Lane congregation,
at irregular intervals, during the winter and
early summer of the present year ; the five first
and the last on Sunday mornings, and the rest at the usual Thursday evening service.
For whom were they intended?
Eleven or twelve years ago I was preach- ing at Augustine Church, Edinburgh, a few months after Dr. Lindsay Alexander, a scholar and theologian of distinction, had resigned the pastorate. As I walked home with one of the deacons after the morning’s service, he said some very gracious things, which I have un- happily forgotten, about the sermon ; he also said some things, not so gracious, about the thinisters who had served the Church since Dr.
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School of Theology at Claremont
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Alexander's resignation ; these, owing to some unamiable intellectual peculiarity, I remember. «‘ Sir,” he said, “they have preached to us as if we were all Masters of Arts.” That was an error which I was not capable of committing, and therefore I deserved no credit for avoiding it. For if a preacher does something to form
the habits of his people, the people do almost as much to form the habits of the preacher ;
and for thirty-seven years I have been the minister of a congregation in the heart of a great manufacturing community—a congrega- tion in which there are never many Masters of Arts, although there are in it many men and women with an active, vigorous, and specula- tive intellect, and with a keen interest in public affairs and in current theological controversies. For such persons the Lectures were prepared, and they are published with the hope that they may be of service to persons of the same description in other parts of England.
In delivering the Lectures to a popular audience, it was necessary to repeat in several
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Preface. ix
of the later Lectures some things which had been said in the earlier. These repetitions are unnecessary in a printed book, but I have not found it possible to cancel them without recon- structing the whole argument.
To those of my readers who may wish to see the question of the historical trustworthi- ness of the Four Gospels treated with greater fulness, I recommend Professor Salmon’s /x- troduction to the New T. estament, Dr. West- cott’s Hzstory of the New Testament Canon, Dr. Lightfoot’s Essays on the Work entitled “ Supernatural Religion,” Dr. Wace’s The Gospel and its Wetnesses, Professor Sanday’s The Gospels in the Second Century, and The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Beltef, by my friend Dr. Fisher, of Yale (U.S.), to all of which books I gratefully acknowledge my
_ own obligations.
R. W. DALE. LLANBEDR, August, 1890.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE lI. PAGE THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE , 5 ° ° I
LECTURE II. THE VALIDITY OF THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPE- RIENCE 4 : : 3 . : = e eer
*
LECTURE III.
THE DIRECT APPEAL OF CHRIST TO THE SPIRIT OF MAN . * : é : ° 5 . ang?
LECTURE IV. REPLY TO CRITICISMS ON THE PRECEDING LECTURES 63
LECTURE V.
THE HISTORICAL TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE STORY CONTAINED IN THE FOUR GOSPELS: HOW SHOULD
THE EVIDENCE BE APPROACHED? . e ° eos LECTURE VI. EUSEBIUS e ° ° ° e ° a e 2 104
LECTURE VII. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA AND TERTULIIAN . er,
Xii Contents,
LECTURE VIII. aoe IRENZUS e e e e . e e e es 8 136 LECTURE IX. TATIAN ® e e ry 5 ° e a . e 153 LECTURE X.
JUSTIN MARTYR . i ‘ a ° . . e 175
LECTURE XI. IMCARCION 20. jhe) el acre ased Wik ce eit ae ae aac
LECTURE XI. PAPIAS e 2 fe A is ‘ 5 4 y e225
LECTURE XIII. - POLYCARP . e : i : ‘ e s e e 246
LECTURE XIV. REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT! 5 14°)", sgdunieiee 269
APPENDIX Pes og a Uy eee
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LECTURE I.
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE,
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HERE are large numbers of people who sup-
pose that modern Science and modern Criticism have destroyed the foundations of Faith, and who cannot understand how it is possible, in these days, for intelligent, open-minded, educated men to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It may perhaps be well for us to remember that more than a hundred and fifty years ago there were large numbers of people of precisely the same mind. They believed that, as the result of the great changes which had passed upon the intellectual life of Europe since the Revival of Learning, the Christian Faith was no longer credible, and that its power was finally broken. Butler, in the preface to his Analogy, pub- lished in 1736, says: “It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Chris- tianity isnot so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age,
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this were an agreed point among all _ people of dis- cernment, and nothing remained, but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long in- terrupted the pleasures of the world.”
Throughout the seventeenth century an under- current of unbelief had been rapidly gathering strength in France, in Holland, in Germany, and in England. To check it Grotius had written his De Veritate Religionis Christiane, Pascal had projected the great work, the fragments of which are preserved in his Pensées, and Richard Baxter, who, I think, was the earliest English writer on the “Evidences,” had written his Unreasonableness of Infidelity, his Reasons jor the Christian Religion, and his More Reasons for the Christian Religion, and no Reason against it. Towards the end of the century the hostile move- - ment became so formidable, that Robert Boyle founded his famous lectureship for the maintenance and defence of the Faith against unbelief. The first of the lecturers was Richard Bentley, who, in 1692, discoursed on Zhe Folly of Atheism and Deism, even with Respect to the Present Life—not a promis- ing argument with which to meet those who were denying or doubting the supernatural origin of the Christian revelation. He was followed, year after year, by a succession of men, eminent in their time, and some of whom had extensive learning and great intellectual force; but the sentences which I have quoted from Butler show that, after the Boyle
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. 3 SSS
lecturers had been lecturing for more than forty years, the assailants of the Christian Faith claimed the victory. The confidence of unbelief was as high when Butler wrote in the early part of the eighteenth century as it is now at the end of the nineteenth. Then came a great change; and within sixty years the writings and the very names of the English deists were almost forgotten ; the ponderous folios in which the first generation of Boyle lecturers lay entombed in public libraries were rarely disturbed, and were
covered with dust ;! and the fires of a great religious revival were burning gloriously in every part of the
country. Faith was triumphant.
Now again, as in Butler’s time, “it is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry.” The temper with which all but the coarsest and least cultivated of those who reject the Christian Faith regard it is happily very different from what it was in the last century. They do not “set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule”; they
1 “We too have had writers of that description, who made some noise in their day. At present they repose in lasting oblivion. Who, born within the last forty years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves free- thinkers? Who now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through? Ask the booksellers of London what is become of all these lights of the world. In a few years their few successors will go to the family vault of ‘all the Capulets.’”—BURKE: Reflections on the Revolution in France. [1790.]
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speak with respect, sometimes with pathetic regret, of the vanished illusions which once consoled the sorrows and sustained the courage, the hope, and the virtue of mankind ; but still they take it for granted that, “among all people of discernment”—or, to use the current phrases, among all cultivated men who are familiar with the best and most advanced
thought of our time—Christianity, as a religion claim- ing to have originated in Divine revelation, is a lost cause.
Their confidence is not, I think, as firm as it was ten or fifteen years ago; for they are beginning to discover that renewed and prolonged assaults on the Christian Faith—assaults from various quarters and sustained with great intellectual vigour and with all the resources both of the older learning and of the new sciences—have produced very little effect.
Fifty years ago, the discoveries of geology were suppose fatal to the inspiration of Moses ; and
it was contended that, if fatal to the inspiration of Moses, they must also be fatal to the claims of Christ as Son of God and Son of man, the Lord and the Saviour of the human race. The assailants of the Faith were sure that at last they were about to be victorious; among its defenders there was anxiety, anger, alarm. Ingenious theories were invented, illustrating the harmony between Genesis and geo- logy ; but plain men felt instinctively that they were very_much too ingeniousto he satisfactory, Since
that time, Christian scholars have given themselves
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. 5
more seriously than before to the scientific investiga- tion of the literature of ancient races; and they are coming to the conclusion that, when the true nature of the earlier books of the Old Testament is under- stood, the objections to their authority suggested by the discoveries of modern science cease to be relevant. Meanwhile ordinary Christian people, who know very | little about investigations of this kind, have ey accepted all that the geologists have ascertained in relation to the antiquity of the earth and the antiquity of man; but their faith in Christ is undisturbed. ay More recently, the conclusions of Mr. Darwin cba 8 3 cerning the origin of species, and.especially concern- ing the origin of man, created similar excitement. At first, and when the boldness and grandeur of his theories were very imperfectly apprehended, they provoked more resentment than apprehension ; for they seemed to impeach the digni ure. But the geological controversies had helped to dis- cipline thoughtful Christian men to a new conception of the nature of Divine revelation and of the literature in which the revelation is preserved. As soon as it became apparent that the general conclusions of Mr. Darwin were sustained by the almost universal con- currence of the highest scientific opinion in Europe and America, most Christian people accepted them without hesitation—but with one necessary and reasonable reservation. It lies within the scope of the physical sciences to investigate the origin and history of the physical organization of man; but
6 THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE,
their resources and methods are at fault when they attempt to investigate the origin and history of his ethical and spiritual life. By no process of develop- ment is the transition from mere necessity to freedom conceivable. The region of moral freedom, and of religious faith and hope, lies beyond the boundaries of the sciences that deal with a world of phenomena governed by fixed and unvarying laws. These dis- tinctions however remain unknown to the immense majority of Christian people. They are assured that the highest scientific authorities are practically agreed in accepting the great outlines of Mr. Darwin’s theory of the origin of species, and they are also assured that this theory is irreconcilable with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Through popular magazines, through newspapers, through a thousand channels, they are informed that the old beliefs concerning the creation of the heavens and the earth, and concerning the creation of man and the fall of man, are finally destroyed: but they still rely on Christ with their old confidence for the remission of sins; they still make His will the law of conduct; they still pray to Him for consolation in sorrow, for defence against temptation, and for strength in duty ; and they still hope, through Him, for a glorious immortality. They are sure that the foundations on which their faith is built are firm and unshaken.
Assaults of another kind have been made on the traditional Christian beliefs during the last fifty years. Attacks on the historical trustworthiness of the Four
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. 7
Gospels have taken a new form; and the theories of their origin maintained by Strauss and by Ferdinand Baur have been discussed with great vigour all over Europe. The learning and the industry and the splendid intellectual vigour of Baur have produced a great impression on theological scholars ; but, if I may trust my own observation, neither the speculations of Strauss on the origin of the story of Christ, nor of Baur on the origin of the books of the New Testa- ment have produced the general alarm that was created for a time by the discoveries of geology and their alleged conflict with the early chapters of Genesis, or by the theories of Mr. Darwin and their alleged conflict with the Christian conception of the origin and destiny of man. Forty or fifty years ago ordinary Christian people heard that an eminent German theologian had written a great book to show that the story of Christ in the New Testament was as mythical as the story of Hercules ; that the book had produced immense excitement in Germany, France, and Holland; and that it had been translated into several European languages. They listened with astonishment, many of them with a certain scornful amusement; but very few of them felt that this assault on the Christian Faith was at all formidable. Some years later they heard that another eminent German theologian was maintaining that most of the books of the New Testament were written in the second century, in the interests of conflicting parties in the Church, or to bring about a reconciliation
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between them; that they were the productions of unknown authors, who, to add to the authority of their writings, had attributed them to Paul and Peter and John and Luke; that, to use the rough language of plain men, they were deliberate forgeries. Most Christian people listened to this account of the Christian Scriptures with indignation, and dismissed it as wholly incredible. It did not disturb their faith.
Nor has modern criticism on the Jewish Scriptures produced any general and enduring anxiety. The excitement which followed the appearance of the writings of Bishop Colenso, twenty or thirty years
ago, soon passed over; and_ there is something very
remarkable in the indifference with which at_the
resent time the majority of Christian people regard the_whole critical controversy concerning the Old
Testament.
I do not mean that these successive assaults on traditional Christian beliefs—assaults in the name of Science, assaults in the name of Criticism—have had no disastrous results. There are many persons who are convinced that the ascertained conclusions of modern Science and of modern Criticism are destructive of the authority which has been attri- buted both to the Jewish and the Christian Scrip- tures, that the traditional opinions concerning the authorship and the dates of many of the books ot the Old Testament are false ; and that most of the writings contained in the New Testament are spu-
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. 9
rious. Or, if some of the extreme conclusions of the destructive criticism are not regarded as finally established, it is known that great names can be quoted for, as well as against, them. And as it is assumed that the Jewish and the Christian Scrip- tures are the foundations of Christian faith, that we must believe in the genuineness and _ historical trustworthiness of these ancient books, and even in their inspiration, before we can believe in Christ, they argue that, until these discussions are finally closed in favour of the traditional opinions, faith
° e suetiee ° ee. : in Christ is impossible. The controversies_have
not, in any large number of cases, destroyed_faith
where faith already existed; but where faith does not
exist, they appear to very many persons to create an
insuperable obstacle to faith. To such persons, if they are serious and well informed, there is something perplexing in the
persistency of the faith of the great majority of Christian believers) Among those who remain
Christian there are men whose intellectual vigour, patience, and keenness are equal to their own; men who are their equals in general intellectual culture, and who know as much as they know about the currents of modern thought} candid men; men who are incorruptible in their loyalty to truth ; men who have a due sense of the immense importance, in relation to the higher life of the human race, of the
questions at issue: How 2s zt ¢. ith in Christ
of such men is unshaken ?
10 THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE.
This is the precise question which I propose to answer in the earlier lectures of the course which I begin this morning. It is not my primary intention to state the reasons why those who do not believe in Christ should believe in Him, but to explain why zt ts that those who believe in Him continue to believe, This explanation however ought to show that those are in error who suppose that present controversies on the authority of the Holy Scriptures make a firm and settled faith in Christ impossible.
a0
The substance of my first answer to the question why it is that those who believe in Christ continue to believe, may be given in a single sentence: What-
ever may hav the original grounds of thetr faith their faith has been verified _in their own personal experience.
They have trusted in Christ for certain great and wonderful things, and they have received great and wonderful things. They have not perhaps received precisely what they expected when their Christian life began, for the kingdom of heaven cannot be really known until a man has entered into it; but what they have received assures them that Christ is alive, that He is within reach, and that He is the Saviour and Lord of men.
That they have received these blessings in answer to their faith in Christ is a matter of personal con-
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. 1
sciousness. They know it,as they know that fire
burns. meniped Ee etrrsrees Their experience varies. Some of thém world
say that they can recall acts of Christ in which His personal volition and His supernatural power were as definitely manifested as in any of the miracles recorded in the Four Gospels. They were struggling unsuccessfully with some evil temper—with envy, jealousy, personal ambition—and could not subdue it. They hated it; they hated themselves for being under its tyranny; but expel it they could not. If it seemed suppressed for a time, it returned; and returned with its malignant power increased rather than diminished. They scourged | themselves with scorpions for yielding to it; still they yielded. In their despair they appealed to Christ; and in a moment the evil fires were quenched, and they were never rekindled. These instantaneous deliverances are perhaps exceptional ; but to those who can recall them they carry an irresistible conviction that the Living Christ has heard their cry and answered them.
Unwre
The more ordinary experiences of the Christian life, Leak
though less striking, are not less conclusive. The_ proof that Christ has heard prayer is not always con- centrated into a moment, but _is more common!
spread over large tracts of time. Prayer is offered for an increase of moral strength in resisting tempta- tion, or for the disappearance of reluctance in the discharge of duties which are distasteful, or for a
Prag
12 THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE.
more gracious and kindly temper, or for patience and courage in bearing trouble, or for self-control, or for relief from exhausting and fruitless anxiety ; and the answer comes. It comes gradually, but still it comes. We had lost hope. It seemed as if all our moral vigour was dying down, and as if nothing could restore it. The tide was slowly ebbing, and we were powerless to recall the retreating waters: but after we prayed it ceased to ebb; for a time it seemed stationary ; then it began to flow; and though with many of us it has never reached the flood, the wholesome waters have renewed the energy and the joy of life.
Or we prayed to Christ to liberate us from some evil habit. The chains did not fall away at His touch, like the chains of Peter at the touch of the angel; but in some mysterious way they were loosened, and at the same time we received accessions of strength. The old habit continued to trouble us; it still im- peded our movements: but we could move; we reco- vered some measure of freedom, and were conscious that we were slaves no longer. There still remained a mechanical and automatic tendency to the evil ways of thinking, speaking, or acting ; but we had become vigilant and alert, and were prompt to resist the tendency as soon as it began to work; and we were strong enough to master it. In the course of time the tendency became weaker and weaker, and at last, in some cases, it almost disappeared.
Some men have appealed to Christ when they have
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. 13
been seized with a great horror through the discovery of their guz/t. It was not the awful penalty which menaces the impenitent that haunted and terrified them. Nor was their distress occasioned chiefly by the consciousness of moral evil. They feared the penalty, and they were humiliated and shamed by the contrast between ideal goodness and their own moral and spiritual life ; but what stung and tortured them, sunk them into despair, filled heaven and earth with a darkness that could be felt, and made life intolerable, was their gwz/¢—guilt which they had incurred by their past sins, and which they continued to incur by their present sinfulness
When once this sense of guilt fastens itself on a man, he cannot shake it off at will. The keen agony may gradually pass into a dull, dead pain; and after a time, the sensibility of the soul may seem to be wholly lost ; but a man can never be sure that the horror will not return.
The real nature of this experience is best seen when it has been occasioned by the grosser and more violent forms of crime. Men who have committed murder, for example, have been driven almost insane a by the memory of their evil deed. Their agony may have had nothing in it of the nature of repentance ; they were not distressed because their crime had revealed to them the malignity and the fierce strength of their passions; they had no desire to become gentle and kindly. They were filled with horror and remorse by their awful guilt. They felt that the
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Nia ina ea MERE Pe INES ated SE hie crime was theirs, and would always continue to be theirs ; that it would be theirs if it remained concealed - as truly as if it were known ; indeed, it seemed to be in some terrible way more truly theirs so long as the secret was kept. It was not the fear of punishment that convulsed them ; they have sometimes brought on themselves public indignation and abhorrence, and have condemned themselves to the gallows by con- fessing their crime in order to obtain relief from their agony.
Suppose that a man possessed by this great horror discovered that, in some wonderful way, the dark and damning stain on his conscience had disappeared ; that, although he had done the deed, the iron chain which bound him to the criminality of it had been broken; that before God and man and his own conscience he was free from the gut of it ;—the supposition, in its completeness, is an impossible one; but if it were possible, the discovery would lift the man out of the darkness of hell into the light of heaven.
But to large numbers of Christian men a discovery which in substance is identical with this has actually come in response to their trust in Christ. Nothing is more intensely real than the sense_of guilt; it is as real as the eternal distinction between right and wrong in which it is rooted. And nothing is more intensely real than the sense of release from guilt which comes from the discovery and assurance of the remission of sins. The evil things which a man has
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. 15
done cannot be undone; but when they have been forgiven through Christ, the iron chain which so bound him to them as to make the guilt of them eternally his has been broken; before God and his own conscience he is no longer guilty of them. This is the Christian mystery of justification, which, according to Paul—and his words have been con- firmed in the experience of millions of Christian men —is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” It changes darkness into light ; despair into victorious hope; prostration into buoy- ancy and vigour. It is one of the supreme motives to Christian living, and it makes Christian living possible. The man who has received this great deliverance is no longer a convict, painfully observing all prison rules with the hope of shortening his sen- tence, but a child in the home of God. ‘ There are experiences of another kind by which yf, Piles the faith of a Christian man is verified. Of these one of the most decisive and most wonderful is the
consciousness that through Christ he has passed into the eternal and Divine order. He belongs to
two worlds. He is just as certain that he is en-|_ vironed by things unseen and eternal as that he is | environed by things seen and temporal. In the power of the life given to him in the new birth he has entered into the kingdom of God. He is con- scious that that Diviner region is now the native land of his soul. It is there that he finds perfect rest and perfect freedom. It is a relief to escape to its eternal
16 THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE.
peace and glory from the agitations and vicissitudes, the sorrows and successes, of this transitory world. It is not always that he is vividly conscious of belonging to that eternal order; this supreme blessed- ness is reserved for the great hours of life; but he knows that it lies about him always, and that at any moment the great apocalypse may come. And even when it is hidden, its “powers” continue to act upon him, as the light and heat of the sun pass through the clouds by which the burning splendour is softened and concealed.
Further, “in Christ” Christian men know God; they know Him for themselves. The mere concep-
tion of God is as different from the immediate knowledge of Him as the mere conception of the
Matterhorn from the actual vision of it as an external objective grandeur; and it is not the conception of God, but God Himself, that fills them with awe and wonder, and with a blessedness which trembles into devout fear. Sometimes the “exceeding weight of glory” is too great to bear, and human infirmity is relieved when the vision passes. At other times God is more than a transcendent glory to be contemplated and adored. His infinite love, to use Paul’s words, is shed abroad in their heart, like the sun’s heat under tropical heavens; it is immediately revealed. How, they cannot tell, any more than they can tell how the material world is revealed to sense; they only know that, apart from any self-originated effort, apart from any movement of their own towards Him, the
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE. 17
Eternal Spirit draws near to their spirit and reveals _ God’s love to them. It is as if the warm streams of _ the love which have their fountains in the depths of His infinite life were flowing round them and into them. They are conscious of that love for them of which God is conscious.
And this blessedness is not the prerogative of elect saints, or of those who may be said to have a natural genius for spiritual thought. It is the common in- heritance of all that are “in Christ,” although there is reason to fear that many Christian people rarely reach the height of its joy. But among those who reach it are men of every degree of intellectual rank and every variety of moral and spiritual temperament. It is reached by ignorant men, whose thoughts are narrow and whose minds are inert, as well as by men with large knowledge and great powers of speculation ; by men destitute of imagination, as well as by men whose imagination kindles as soon as it is touched by the splendours of nature or by the verses of poets. Men whose whole life moves slowly and sluggishly reach it, as well as men who are impulsive, ardent, and adventurous. And where this experience is known, it becomes an effective force in the moral life. Peter, writing to slaves, says, “For this is acceptable, if through consciousness of God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully.” +
1 In the text of the Revised Version the words stand, “ If for conscience toward God”; but in the margin an alternative reading is suggested, “If for conscience of God.” This was