chapter in the book of the Revelation, was inspired

by God, and that every sentence is covered by His authority. Or they would say that they believe that the Four Gospels were written by men whose word can be trusted ; that the miracles attributed to Christ were really wrought by Him; that the miracles establish His claim to be the Son of God and Saviour of the world ; and that therefore they trust in Him for salvation. They would acknowledge with gratitude that they have the kind of experience which I have described, and that they see for themselves the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord; but would say—some of them—that their faith would perish if they began to doubt the Divine
ON THE PRECEDING LECTURES. YB
authority of any book, or any part of any book, in the Old Testament or the New; others, that their faith would perish if they began to doubt whether the Four Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
I think it very probable that a large majority of Christian men in this country would give one or other of these answers, and would commit themselves to one or other of these contentions. But it is very certain that very many of those who have the firmest belief in the inspiration and authority of all the books contained in that wonderful library of Jewish and early Christian writings which we call the Bible have never seriously examined the grounds of their belief. They are sure that the books are inspired, but, apart from their own experience of the spiritual force of the books, they can produce no reasons for believing in their inspiration ; their belief, as far as it is anything more than an inheritance from the traditions of the Christian Church, is an 2mference from experience.
And it is equally certain that very many of those who have the strongest confidence in the historical trustworthiness of the Four Gospels have never in- vestigated the grounds on which they believe that “there is satisfactory evidence,” to use the conve- nient words of Paley, “that many, professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, volun- tarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their
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belief in those accounts; and that they also sub- mitted, from the same motives, to new rules of con- duct.” Nor have they ever passed on to inquire “whether the account which our Scriptures contain be that story, that which these men delivered, and for which they acted and suffered as they did.” They would vehemently deny that their faith in Christ rested either on the authority of scholars or on tra- dition. They would insist that they have a personal certainty, which no assaults can shake, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour of mankind. But as they have never investigated for themselves the historical argument for the genuineness and authen- ticity of the Four Gospels, their certainty cannot really rest on the historical trustworthiness of the New Testament story.
The real grounds of a_ man’s belief, like the real motives of a man’s conduct, are not always known
to himself, Let me illustrate what I mean. I know a Nonconformist chapel, in which what may be de- scribed as a shallow, semi-elliptical apse behind the platform on which the preacher stands is screened off from the rest of the building by a row of Ionic columns, supporting, or apparently supporting, a massive architrave. A few years ago it became necessary to break through the screen, in order to place part of the organ in the apse. This innovation threatened the destruction of some of those stately columns, which were the pride and admiration of the men by whom the chapel was built ; but the cata-
ON THE PRECEDING LECTURES. 73
strophe was averted. All the space that was neces- sary for the organ was obtained by cutting away the lower half of the two central columns—they looked as if they were stone, they were really of wood—and leaving their two capitals with eight or ten feet of each of the shafts suspended to the architrave which they appeared to support. The columns had never supported what they seemed to support; the archi- trave had always been kept in its place by other means. That the lower half of the shaft of two of them has been removed is now concealed by the organ and its case. The columns are as important and stately as ever; they still seem to bear up a great weight, but two of them are hanging on to the architrave instead of supporting it. This is bad architecture ; but something very like it may be seen in the architecture of human opinions and _ beliefs. The pillars—apparently of solid marble, really of worm-eaten wood—on which we imagine that some of our most important convictions rest, might be removed, and the convictions would remain firm and unmoved ; they really rest on quite other supports— supports which are not apparent to the eye, and which we have never had the penetration to discover. The elaborate reasons, the formal demonstrations, which the intellect regards with pride as a row of stately columns upholding its faith, are suspended from the faith which is supposed to rest upon them. Cut through the columns half-way between base and capital, and the faith is undisturbed ; but let the
74 REPLY TO CRITICISMS
strength of the faith itself be impaired, and then the reasons and demonstrations fall into ruins.
In common life it is not unusual to find men who have a sound, practical judgment, but who can give only a very poor account of the considerations which have determined their judgment. We trust them till they begin to explain. Their conclusions are sagacious; their reasons are worthless. The truth is that they reached their conclusions by a path which they cannot trace; their “reasons” are an after-thought ; they are not the reasons which really guided them. Men of this kind have an under- standing naturally strong and penetrating, and their fairness and self-control have prevented them from injuring an excellent instrument by rough usage. They have had an experience of affairs which in- fluences them without their knowledge. Their experience has trained them—not taught them—to be courageous at the right time and to be cautious ~ at the right time, to be trustful and suspicious with the right men. And so their judgments are right. But the intellectual processes by which their judg- ments are determined are of an automatic kind, and are too swift and too subtle to be recognised at the time, or to be discovered afterwards by a mind not accustomed to introspection; the ethical factors which assisted to give form and substance to the conclusion are. likely to be wholly disregarded. COC UmEn Ne mC NACo TL
1 See a remarkable sermon on “ Explicit and Implicit Reason *
ON THE PRECEDING LECTURES. 75
It need not surprise us therefore if Christian men sometimes give very inadequate reasons for believing in Christ. It does not follow that their belief has no solid foundations, or that you can destroy their belief by destroying the reasons which they allege for it. These may not be the real reasons. Indeed, as I have said, the reasons which are supposed to be the support of faith are often supported by it. Men think that they believe in Christ because they believe in the Bible; they really believe in the Bible because they believe in Christ. They think that their Chris- tian faith rests on their belief in the historical trust- worthiness of the Four Gospels; their belief in the historical trustworthiness of the Four Gospels really rests on their Christian faith. They know Christ for themselves ; in the Gospels they recognise the Christ whom they know; and therefore they believe that the Gospels are trustworthy.
III.
The question, Whether faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is an adequate ground for belief in the inspira- tion and authority of the Holy Scriptures, opens wide discussions, into which it is no part of my intention to enter. But the question, Whether faith in Christ is an adequate ground for believing in the historical trustworthiness of the Four Gospels, lies immediately in our way ; for the historical trustworthiness of the
epee in Sermons chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief. By John Henry Newman (1843).
76 REPLY TO CRITICISMS
Four Gospels will be the subject of the future Lectures of this course.
You will remember that I have said that in the Christ of the Four Gospels Christian men see for themselves the very glory of God. They know Him He is the Christ in whom their life is rooted, the Christ who has liberated them from the sense of guilt, broken or loosened the chains of their evil habits, extinguished or subdued the fire of their evil passions, given them all the strength they have ever had for righteous living. ‘They recognise His voice, His tone, His accent. His words in the printed book—words spoken more than eighteen hundred years ago—some- times come to them as if they were fresh from His lips ; they could not have been spoken by any one but Him. The Christ of the Gospels knows their innermost heart as the Living Christ knows it. He has the same unique tenderness and the same severity, the same majesty and the same gentleness. It is in the power of that very communion between Christ Himself and the Father which is illustrated in the Christ of the Gospels that they themselves find God.
What is the legitimate inference from these great experiences? Do they authenticate the historical trustworthiness of the four narratives of our Lord’s earthly life contained in the New Testament? Do they render unnecessary all critical inquiries? Do they close all discussion concerning the dates and the authorship of the several narratives?
ON THE PRECEDING LECTURES. 77
That these experiences authenticate the substantial
truth of the Four Gospels is obvious. To those who see the glory of God in the Christ of the Gospels,
and who recognise in Him the Christ they know for themselves, and who is the Lord, the strength, the joy, the glory of their life, doubt concerning the substantial truth of the Gospels is impossible. But their substantial truth does not necessarily carry with it the certainty that they were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or even that they were written before the first generation of Christians had passed away. There may be—there are—very decisive proofs of another kind that the men who wrote them belonged to that generation; but the substantial truth of the narratives, as accounts of what was said and done by the Lord Jesus Christ, is not inconsis- tent with the theory that they were the product of a later age. For it is conceivable that a personality so powerful and so unique as that of Christ might have impressed itself with such force upon the first genera- tion of His disciples, that they transmitted to their immediate successors a conception of Him as strong and as definite as their own, and that by these in turn it was transmitted to a third generation. In His whole character and spirit, in His relations both to God and to man, there was something so fresh and so original, that even if His earthly friends had left no written documents preserving their exact knowledge of His earthly history, the tradition of it could hardly have been corrupted by alien elements till a long time
78 REPLY TO CRITICISMS
after those who had known Him in Galilee and in Jerusalem had passed away. His teaching also was so different, both in substance and in manner, from all other teaching, that even the tradition of it would naturally and forcibly reject all foreign accretions. We know that before the third Gospel was written “many had” taken in hand to draw up accounts of the earthly life and ministry of our Lord; and as these narratives contained what had been “ delivered ” to the second generation of Christians by those who “from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word,” there were written materials of the highest authenticity, which might have been used by writers of the third or fourth generation of Christians. Accounts drawn from such sources would have that substantial truth which Christian men recognise for themselves in the story of the Four Gospels.
We may see for ourselves the glory of God in the historic Christ of the New Testament ; we may be certain that that gracious, pathetic, Divine Persona- lity was not created by any human imagination; in that historic Christ we may recognise the living and glorified Christ, through whom we ourselves have received eternal redemption: and yet we may have to inquire in what age and by what persons the Four Gospels were written. Their substantial truth is not, in itself and apart from all other considerations, a final proof that they were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Uncertainty with regard to the authorship of the
ON THE PRECEDING LECTURES. 79
Four Gospels, uncertainty with regard to the dates at which they were written, is not to be regarded as the sign of faltering faith in Christ. Questions of literature should_be distinguished from questions of faith, Many great scholars are sure that the Gospels were written by the men to whom they are attributed ; but the acceptance of the conclusions of great scholars concerning the authorship of certain wonderful books is not one of the conditions of eternal salvation; it is something wholly different from faith in Christ: nor is it conceivable that a confidence in the learning and judgment of the most eminent of scholars is a condition precedent of faith in Him. The tradition of the Church declares that we owe the story of Christ to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; but faith in Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour and Lord of men, is something wholly different from a conviction that it is impossible for the tradition of the Church about the authorship of the Four Gospels to be erroneous.
Very few of us have investigated for ourselves the grounds of the prevalent and ancient belief con- cerning the authorship of these sacred books; we have accepted the tradition; we have been satisfied with the judgment of great orthodox scholars; but there is no want of religious faith in questioning, in doubting whether, after all, the tradition is absolutely trustworthy, or whether the judgment of scholars— even the greatest and most orthodox—is infallible.
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Religious doubt is of another kind, and relates to other objects. Its roots are in the moral and spiritual] life, not in the intellect. It has to do with the power and grace and glory of Christ, not with the conclu- sions of scholars or with the tradition of the Church. Do not be greatly troubled if, in conversation with a friend, or while reading an article in a review, you come to the conclusion that the argument for the early date of the Four Gospels is not so decisive as you had supposed. Do not imagine that your sense of uncertainty on a question of this description is any sign that your Christian faith is giving way.
But if, when it begins to appear possible that the traditional belief of the Church concerning the authorship of the Four Gospels may, after all, be erroneous, you are conscious—however faintly—of a certain sense of relief; if, with the intellectual doubt, you are conscious of any relaxation of the claims of Christ upon your loyal devotion and your unreserved obedience; and if the relaxation is wel- comed rather than dreaded: then you have reason for alarm. Or if, when the intellectual doubt begins to fasten itself upon you, you can discover that you have been gradually losing the moral and spiritual sense of your own need of the Christian redemption ; or that, perhaps, as the result of causes which you can trace, and for which you are responsible, your consciousness of the reality of that redemption is less vivid than it once was; if your thirst for the Living God has been less urgent ; if the satisfaction
ON THE PRECEDING LECTURES. 81
of that thirst has been less refreshing and animating ; then there are grave reasons for anxiety. The intel- lectual doubt which is an assailant from the outside has its confederates in the very citadel of your moral and spiritual life. When faith has been surrendered, you may imagine that you have had no choice, that your intellectual integrity forced you to abandon it; and yet the surrender might never have been made but for the treachery of internal foes.
Dek Nowe — ~ an ed a as rape i
2s hag ee Ar: is ake d ae
LECTURE V.
THE HISTORICAL TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE STORY CONTAINED IN THE FOUR GOS- PELS: HOW SHOULD THE EVIDENCE BE APPROACHED ?
N the preceding Lectures I have endeavoured to explain how it is that the faith of the majority of Christian people has not been shaken by the storm of criticism which, during the whole lifetime of the present generation, has been beating on the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. I have endeavoured to show that, even while a Christian man is unable to reach any definite and secure conclusion on the con- troversy concerning the origin of the Four Gospels, his faith in Christ as Son of God and Saviour of men may remain firm; that he has grounds and reasons for his faith which lie beyond the reach of criticism concerning the authorship and authenticity of these wonderful narratives; that he stands on a rock, and that “the floods of great waters,’ when they rise highest and rage most fiercely, cannot “come nigh unto him.” But though faith in the Lord Jesus Christ may
remain firm, while the historical trustworthiness of 82
HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE, 83
the only story that has come down to us of His earthly ministry is regarded as uncertain, Christian life and thought suffer a loss which cannot be measured. In the remaining Lectures of this course I therefore propose to lay before you some of the evidence which sustains the historical trustworthiness of the Four Gospels. Can we trust the Gospels? Have we the story of Christ which was told by the apostles and personal friends of our Lord, and which was received by the first generation of their disciples ? or is it the story of a later age? The primary ques- tion, the question of urgent practical importance, is not a /iterary one,—Did Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John write these books? but an Zzstovical one,—Do these books contain that representation of our Lord, that account of His miracles and teaching, which was given by the men who knew Him, and who, after His death, preached the Christian Faith?
It is often assumed that the literary question—the question of authorship—must be settled, and settled beyond dispute and doubt, before we can be sure that the contents of the Gospels are trustworthy. The principles of a legal trial are applied to this inquiry. It is supposed that we must know who the witnesses are before we can judge of the value of their testi- mony ; that we must be sure of their character ; that we must learn whether they had opportunities for knowing the facts; that we must discover whether they are reasonable and cautious persons, or hasty and fanatical.
84 HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE.
But this, as I hope to show before these Lectures are finished, is to invert the true order of the inquiry. In the case of the first three Gospels our confidence in their story does not rest on a preliminary demon- stration that they were written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were truthful and sagacious men, and had opportunities for knowing the real facts of our Lord’s history. I think that the evidence that they wrote these Gospels is sufficeent; but if it were insufficient, if we had reason to believe that their names were attached to these three narratives on the authority of a doubtful tradition, my confidence in their account of our Lord’s life and ministry would not be disturbed. I believe that these three Gospels contain a trustworthy account of our Lord, whoever may have written them. I receive their story, not on the uncorroborated testi- mony of the three men by whom they were written, or by whom it is commonly supposed that they were written, but on the authority of the first generation of Christians, who had learned the Christian Gospel and the earthly history of our Lord from the original apostles and other personal friends of Christ.
In the case of the Fourth Gospel the question of trustworthiness is more deeply implicated in the question of authorship. I believe that the proof— external and internal taken together — of John’s authorship is not merely sufficient, but decisive. But, even in the case of the Fourth Gospel, the primary and important question is not, Did the Apostle John
HOW TO. APPROACH THE EVIDENCE. 85
—_——
write the book? but, Does the book contain in substance the account of our Lord which John was accustomed to give to his disciples? The aim there- fore of the following Lectures is to show that the story of the Lord in our Four Gospels is the story which was told by the apostles themselves.
There is no dispute that at the close of the second century these Gospels were received by all Christian Churches as absolutely trustworthy, and as having the authority which belongs to sacred Scriptures: but I shall not take this for granted; I shall offer some illustrations of the evidence on which it rests. From the end of the second century I shall trace back the history of the books and of the story which they contain, until we reach the generation of Chris- tians that received the Christian Gospel from the original apostles.
It will not, I fear, be very easy to present the argument in a form that will be always and imme- diately intelligible to an audience unfamiliar with these inquiries and unfamiliar with the history of the Christian Church in the second century; I shall be able to state only a part of the historical evidence by which the trustworthiness of the Gospels is sustained ; other lines of evidence, some of which cannot be conclusive except to scholars, must be wholly set aside. I will do what I can.
But I may be told that, even when I have proved that the story is the story which was told by Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, and Philip, and
86 HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE.
Matthew, and the other apostles of Christ, I have not made my position secure. Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Matthew, and the rest, were they men to be trusted? For myself I do not care to vindicate their integrity and trustworthiness ; but if the Four Gospels contain the story which they told of the Master whom they worshipped, their integrity is apparent, and their trustworthiness needs no vindi- cation. And as I am fully convinced that they told this story, I believe that our Lord delivered the Sermon on the Mount and the great discourse in the upper room in Jerusalem; and that He gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, raised from the dead the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain, and called Lazarus from the grave after he had been dead four days.
I.
But there is a preliminary question to be con- sidered: How are we to approach the consideration of the evidence that the Four Gospels contain the story of our Lord which/was told by His apostles and friends ? The answer to that question may determine the issue of the whole investigation ; one answer to it would, for all practical purposes, make the investigation irre- levant and unnecessary.
Let me explain what I mean. Of all recent theories assailing the historical trustworthiness of the Gospels, those of Strauss and of Ferdinand Baur are the most famous. Strauss does not begin by
HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE. 87
inquiring into the strength of the evidence by which the Christian story is supported ; he denies that any evidence can make it credible. Miracles, ne says, are impossible; the Gospels attribute miracles to our Lord Jesus Christ : therefore the Gospels cannot be historically trustworthy. His examination of the evidence for the early date of the Gospels is ex- tremely slight. His main business was, not to discover whether there is evidence that the story is true, but to account for its origin, supposing it to be false. When he published the first edition of his Life of Jesus, he was unwilling to attribute the story to deliberate invention; he thought that he could explain how myths and legends ‘about Jesus of Nazareth were likely to spring up spontaneously in the fervent imagination and vehement devotion of the second and third generations of His disciples ; and he believed that these mythical and legendary narratives were regarded by the unknown authors of the Four Gospels as trustworthy traditions of our Lord’s earthly history.
The object of Strauss was to account for the origin of the story. In the judgment of Ferdinand Baur, Strauss’s theory did not account for the books which contain the story. It failed to account for the books which bear the names of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It failed still more flagrantly to account for the Gos- pel of John. That Gospel cannot be treated as a collection of mythical narratives which had sprung
up spontaneously among devout and fervent Christian
88 HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE.
people. It is a theological treatise, with a regular plan and definite dogmatic purposes. According to” Baur, it represents a certain “tendency” of thought ; and he therefore assigns it to a time, late in the second century, when, as he thinks, it was natural that a Gospel with such a “tendency” should have been written. He distributes dates to the other three Gospels on the same principle. He thinks that, while the Gospels embody many popular traditions of Christ, to which the imagination and devotion of the Church had given a miraculous character, the four unknown writers felt themselves free to invent addi- tional miracles in order to add to the force and impressiveness of their narratives. They felt them- selves equally free to invent discourses which would support certain theological and controversial positions, and to attribute them to our Lord.
It is sometimes said that Christian men enter on the investigation of the evidence for the authority of the writings of the New Testament with their minds already made up, because these writings are the foundation of their faith. I have tried to show that, whether or not the New Testament writings can be proved to be trustworthy on historical grounds, our faith in Christ remains unshaken. But the charge may be retorted on the assailants of traditional beliefs. Strauss begins his Life of Jesus with the dogma—a dogma for which he offers no proof, and for which, as far as I know, nothing of the nature of proof has ever been offered—that miracles are impos-
HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE. 89
sible. His conclusion is therefore reached before the inquiry is begun. The verdict is given before a wit- ness is called. Baur’s conception of the history of the rise of the Christian Church rests on the assump- tion that miracles lie outside the limits of history, and that the origin of the Christian faith is to be accounted for without inquiring into the reality of the miracles attributed to our Lord, or even into the reality of our Lord’s resurrection.
If we are to begin our investigation with these assumptions, the investigation has a purely acade- mical interest. Assume that the story cannot be true, and no practical end is to be attained by inquiring whether our Gospels contain the story which was told by the original apostles of our Lord.
Nor are we likely to reach any satisfactory con- clusion if we isolate the story from the preceding history of the Jewish race to which our Lord Jesus Christ belonged, or from the history of the Chris- tian Faith, of which He was the Founder. In other words, we ought to take into account a// the facts that have any real bearing on our investigation. But through mere inconsiderateness, our Lord’s earthly history is often torn away from great masses of facts in which it is embedded, and to which it organically belongs.
Many people seem to suppose that they may approach the subject as if the Lord Jesus Christ had appeared in Spain or in China, instead of in Judea and Galilee, and as if after His crucifixion and alleged
3 go HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE.
resurrection no great changes had taken place in the religious thought and life of mankind. They seem to suppose that the whole proof of the trustworthiness of the Four Gospels has been exhausted when they have gone through certain quotations from Christian and heretical writers belonging to the second century. They isolate our Lord’s earthly life from all that preceded it and from all that has followed it. They treat it as though it were wholly sporadic. This is contrary to sound historical principles. The story fits in with known facts. It is rooted in a great antecedent history. Its supernatural elements are vitally related to the actual order of the world, and are necessary to account for some of the greatest events in the subsequent history of mankind.
I shall now state some of the more obvious con- siderations which, as I think, should be present to our mind when we enter on this inquiry.
II.
We are separated from the Lord Jesus Christ by more than eighteen hundred years. There is no doubt that this vast interval creates many difficulties in the way of ascertaining with certainty whether the story of His life which has come down to us is trustworthy. We cannot deal with it, and with the evidence which may be alleged for it, as if we were living at the close of the second century or the beginning of the third. Early Christian writings, containing materials of great importance in relation
HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE. Or
—
to this inquiry, are known to us only by extracts and allusions. Others have wholly disappeared. Further, in the time of Irenzus, of Tertullian, and of Clement of Alexandria, the force of the tradition of Christ was still strong. Great masses of evidence, by which z¢hey were assured that the Four Gospels con- tained a true account of our Lord, are irrecoverably lost. It is impossible for us to place ourselves in the position of those who were living so near to the apostolic age.
But if much has been lost, much has been gained. We approach this inquiry through those great achievements of the Christian Faith which extend over the intervening centuries. We know the power which it has exerted over the religious, ethical, and intellectual life of the most highly civilized nations in the world. It has given them august conceptions of God. It has exalted their conception of the dignity of man. It has rescued from neglect and dishonour some of the most gracious and beautiful of human virtues; it has allied the awful and tender sanctions of religion with the common duties of morality. It has given fire and dignity to literature and art. It has inspired a heroism of devotion to the service of the sick, the miserable, and the fallen. It has created in saints a passion for holiness. Through century after century, and in many lands, it has disciplined millions of obscure men to honesty, temperance, patience, kindliness, cheerful content-
92 HOW T0 APPROACH THE EVIDENCE.
ment, and all the virtues which contribute to the happiness of private citizens, and to the peace, order, — and progress of states. It has consoled men in their sorrows ; it has given them hope in death.
These are among the obvious and uncontested effects of the power of the Christian Faith. They should be remembered—they should be taken into account—when we are considering the evidence for the truth of the story which has come down to us of the earthly history of its Founder. What might be incredible if it were told us of another man, who had done nothing to change the fortunes of the world, may be credible of Him. If miracles could do any- thing to deepen the impression produced by His personal force and by His teaching—anything to confirm the faith, the loyalty, and the courage of His allies and agents in the earliest movements of so immense and beneficent a revolution; if, on the hypothesis that He was more than man—and this has been the faith of His disciples from the very beginning—miracles could contribute anything to the illustration of His superhuman greatness ; if, on the hypothesis that He had come to be the Saviour, not merely the teacher, of the human race—and this too has always been part of the very substance of the Christian Gospel—miracles could contribute anything to the illustration of the true nature of His mission : then there were adequate reasons for their occurrence, and they have achieved their purpose.
The power of the miracles attributed to our Lord
HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE. 93
was not exhausted in the impression which they are said to have produced on the people who witnessed them ; nor, in later ages, has their chief service con- sisted in the evidence which they offer that He was sent of God. It has been one of the chief glories of the Christian Faith that it has taught men to care for the sick and the suffering. Even in the most corrupt times of the most corrupt Churches, the obligation to relieve all forms of human misery has never been wholly forgotten. It belongs to the very essence of Christian ethics ; for a Christian Church to deny it would be as impossible as for a Christian Church to deny the Unity of God or the reality of judgment to come. Nor has the recognition of the obligation been ineffective. Christian men have had a passion of pity for wretchedness, and in every country of Christendom great foundations of charity have been created in obedience to the authority of Christ and in imitation of His example.
“In obedience to the authority of Christ and in imitation of His example.” But how is the authority expressed? and in what facts has the example been given? Where has Christendom learnt that it fol- lows Christ by feeding the poor; by building hospitals for the sick, asylums for the aged, for the deaf, the dumb, and the blind; by giving shelter and aid to every description of physical infirmity and misery? Cancel the miracles, and how much remains to account for the great—I might almost say the supreme—place which this duty of showing mercy
94 HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE.
to the miserable has held in the thought and life of the Church through all the Christian centuries ?
The miracles of Christ have given the law to Chris- tian charity. Thousands of lepers have felt the touch of a kindly hand, and have had their sufferings soothed by human tenderness, because it has been believed that Christ was moved with compassion when He saw the leper of Galilee, and healed him. Millions of hungry men and women and children have been fed, because it has been believed that Christ multiplied the loaves and fishes. Thousands of hospitals and asylums have been built, tens of thou- sands of Christian men and women have devoted their lives to the service and relief of human misery, because it has been believed that Christ healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb. I cannot refuse to the glorious ministries of Christian charity a place in the consideration of the question whether the miracles attributed to Christ were really wrought by Him. I see that a confident belief that He wrought them has been the inspiration and the law of some of the fairest of those great works in which the characteristic spirit of the Christian Faith has been illustrated. It was worth while to work the miracles; for in every age, and in every land, and in the hearts of a great mul- titude that no man can number, they have opened fountains of compassion for human suffering. It was worth while to work them; for they are the origin of the relief and consolation which have lessened
HOW TO APPROACH THE EVIDENCE, 95
the pains and soothed the wretchedness of countless millions of the human race.
Ill.
There is another very obvious characteristic of the Christian Faith which has a very close relation to this inquiry. Christendom, according to Mr. Emerson, has “ dwelt with noxious exaggeration on the Person of Christ.” Had Christendom gone further in the “exaggeration” of its devotion to Him, Christendom would have been stronger and nobler. But the criticism points to a fact of infinite significance. In the religion of Christ, Christ is the larger part of the religion. Here the Prophet is ‘greater than the prophecy, the Messenger of God is greater than the message. It has been so from the beginning. With- in five-and-twenty or thirty years after His crucifixion He was spoken of by His disciples as being in a high and unique sense the Son of God; and “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” was associated with “the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost” in an apostolic benediction. His disciples believed that His death was a great and critical event in the history of the whole human race: “ One died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died, and rose again.” That conception of His death re- veals a conception of His Person which is “dark with excess of light.” What must He have been in whose
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death the whole race “died,” and through whose resutrection the whole race may “live unto God”? His crucifixion was an awful crime: and yet we are “justified by His blood,” and through Him we are to be saved from “the wrath,” the wrath of the Eternal. And, further, the Saviour of the world is also the Judge of the world ; all men are to “ be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to that which he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”
This, it may be said, is Paul’s conception of Christ ; but we have Paul’s word for it that, when he had “laid before” James and Peter and John the Gospel that he preached among the Gentiles, they gave him “the right hand of fellowship,” and acknowledged that he had been “entrusted with the Gospel of the uncircumcision, even as Peter with the Gospel of the circumcision ” ; they preached in substance the same Gospel—Peter to the Jews, Paul to the Gentiles.
The Apocalypse—written only a few years later, and written by the Apostle John, as many of those acknowledge who refuse to accept the Gospels as genuine—contains conceptions of Christ not inferior in majesty. He is coming “with the clouds: and every eye shall see Him, and they which pierced Him ; and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn over Him.” The angels of heaven, and the Church, and the “living creatures,” are represented as saying “with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath
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been slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honour, and glory, and bless- ing.” Nor is this all: “Every created thing which is in the heavens, and on the earth, and under the earth, and in the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the dominion for ever and ever.” Christ is “King of kings and Lord of lords.” The death of Christ is as wonderful in the Apocalypse as in the Epistles of Paul. The four and twenty elders “sing a new song, saying, Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.” John, who knew Christ “after the flesh,” John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” attri- butes to Christ a glory as great as that which is attributed to Him by the apostle to whom He appeared “last of all, as unto one born out of due time.”
That during His earthly life His disciples did not know how great He was is certain; but is it con- ceivable that there were no premonitions of the dis- covery which came to them after His ascension to heaven? The miracles attributed to Him in the Gospel—miracles which He worked in His own power —harmonize with the conception of His transcendent greatness which appears in the Apocalypse of John and in the uncontested Epistles of Paul. They con-