Part 3 — Chapter II. Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine Revelation. (continued 3)

3. The person and character of Christ.

A. The conception of Christ's person as presenting deity and humanity indissolubly united, and the conception of Christ's character, with its faultless and all-comprehending excellence, cannot be accounted for upon any other hypothesis than that they were historical realities.

The stylobate of the Parthenon at Athens rises about three inches in the middle of the 101 feet of the front, and four inches in the middle of the 228 feet of the flanks. A nearly parallel line is found in the entablature. The axes of the columns lean inward nearly three inches in their height of 34 feet, thus giving a sort of pyramidal character to the structure. Thus the architect overcame the apparent sagging of horizontal lines, and at the same time increased the apparent height of the edifice; see Murray, Handbook of Greece, 5th ed., 1884, 1:308, 309; Ferguson, Handbook of Architecture, 268-270. The neglect to counteract this optical illusion has rendered the Madeleine in Paris a stiff and ineffective copy of the Parthenon. The Galilean peasant who should minutely describe these peculiarities of the Parthenon would prove, not only that the edifice was a historical reality, but that he had actually seen it. Bruce, Apologetics, 343—“In reading the memoirs of the evangelists, you feel as one sometimes feels in a picture-gallery. Your eye alights on the portrait of a person whom you do not know. You look at it intently for a few moments and then remark to a companion: ‘That must be like the original,—it is so life-like.’ ” Theodore Parker: “It would take a Jesus to [pg 187]forge a Jesus.” See Row, Bampton Lectures, 1877:178-219, and in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 22; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ; Barry, Boyle Lecture on Manifold Witness for Christ.

(a) No source can be assigned from which the evangelists could have derived such a conception. The Hindu avatars were only temporary unions of deity with humanity. The Greeks had men half-deified, but no unions of God and man. The monotheism of the Jews found the person of Christ a perpetual stumbling-block. The Essenes were in principle more opposed to Christianity than the Rabbinists.

Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, 279—“The coëxistence of a perfect man and an imperfect society is impossible; and could the two coëxist, the resulting conduct would not furnish the ethical standard sought.” We must conclude that the perfect manhood of Christ is a miracle, and the greatest of miracles. Bruce, Apologetics, 346, 351—“When Jesus asks: ‘Why callest thou me good?’ he means: ‘Learn first what goodness is, and call no man good till you are sure that he deserves it.’ Jesus' goodness was entirely free from religious scrupulosity; it was distinguished by humanity; it was full of modesty and lowliness.... Buddhism has flourished 2000 years, though little is known of its founder. Christianity might have been so perpetuated, but it is not so. I want to be sure that the ideal has been embodied in an actual life. Otherwise it is only poetry, and the obligation to conform to it ceases.” For comparison of Christ's incarnation with Hindu, Greek, Jewish, and Essene ideas, see Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, Introduction. On the Essenes, see Herzog, Encyclop., art,: Essener; Pressensé, Jesus Christ, Life, Times and Work, 84-87; Lightfoot on Colossians, 349-419; Godet, Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith.

(b) No mere human genius, and much less the genius of Jewish fishermen, could have originated this conception. Bad men invent only such characters as they sympathize with. But Christ's character condemns badness. Such a portrait could not have been drawn without supernatural aid. But such aid would not have been given to fabrication. The conception can be explained only by granting that Christ's person and character were historical realities.

Between Pilate and Titus 30,000 Jews are said to have been crucified around the walls of Jerusalem. Many of these were young men. What makes one of them stand out on the pages of history? There are two answers: The character of Jesus was a perfect character, and, He was God as well as man. Gore, Incarnation, 63—“The Christ of the gospels, if he be not true to history, represents a combined effort of the creative imagination without parallel in literature. But the literary characteristics of Palestine in the first century make the hypothesis of such an effort morally impossible.”The Apocryphal gospels show us what mere imagination was capable of producing. That the portrait of Christ is not puerile, inane, hysterical, selfishly assertive, and self-contradictory, can be due only to the fact that it is the photograph from real life.

For a remarkable exhibition of the argument from the character of Jesus, see Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 276-332. Bushnell mentions the originality and vastness of Christ's plan, yet its simplicity and practical adaptation; his moral traits of independence, compassion, meekness, wisdom, zeal, humility, patience; the combination in him of seemingly opposite qualities. With all his greatness, he was condescending and simple; he was unworldly, yet not austere; he had strong feelings, yet was self-possessed; he had indignation toward sin, yet compassion toward the sinner; he showed devotion to his work, yet calmness under opposition; universal philanthropy, yet susceptibility to private attachments; the authority of a Savior and Judge, yet the gratitude and the tenderness of a son; the most elevated devotion, yet a life of activity and exertion. See chapter on The Moral Miracle, in Bruce, Miraculous Element of the Gospels, 43-78.

B. The acceptance and belief in the New Testament descriptions of Jesus Christ cannot be accounted for except upon the ground that the person and character described had an actual existence.

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(a) If these descriptions were false, there were witnesses still living who had known Christ and who would have contradicted them. (b) There was no motive to induce acceptance of such false accounts, but every motive to the contrary. (c) The success of such falsehoods could be explained only by supernatural aid, but God would never have thus aided falsehood. This person and character, therefore, must have been not fictitious but real; and if real, then Christ's words are true, and the system of which his person and character are a part is a revelation from God.

“The counterfeit may for a season Deceive the wide earth; But the lie waxing great comes to labor, And truth has its birth.” Matthew Arnold, The Better Part: “Was Christ a man like us? Ah, let us see, If we then too can be Such men as he!” When the blatant sceptic declared: “I do not believe that such a man as Jesus Christ ever lived,” George Warren merely replied: “I wish I were like him!” Dwight L. Moody was called a hypocrite, but the stalwart evangelist answered: “Well, suppose I am. How does that make your case any better? I know some pretty mean things about myself; but you cannot say anything against my Master.” Goethe: “Let the culture of the spirit advance forever; let the human spirit broaden itself as it will; yet it will never go beyond the height and moral culture of Christianity, as it glitters and shines in the gospels.”

Renan, Life of Jesus: “Jesus founded the absolute religion, excluding nothing, determining nothing, save its essence.... The foundation of the true religion is indeed his work. After him, there is nothing left but to develop and fructify.” And a Christian scholar has remarked: “It is an astonishing proof of the divine guidance vouchsafed to the evangelists that no man, of their time or since, has been able to touch the picture of Christ without debasing it.” We may find an illustration of this in the words of Chadwick, Old and New Unitarianism, 207—“Jesus' doctrine of marriage was ascetic, his doctrine of property was communistic, his doctrine of charity was sentimental, his doctrine of non-resistance was such as commends itself to Tolstoi, but not to many others of our time. With the example of Jesus, it is the same as with his teachings. Followed unreservedly, would it not justify those who say: ‘The hope of the race is in its extinction’; and bring all our joys and sorrows to a sudden end?”To this we may answer in the words of Huxley, who declares that Jesus Christ is “the noblest ideal of humanity which mankind has yet worshiped.” Gordon, Christ of To-Day, 179—“The question is not whether Christ is good enough to represent the Supreme Being, but whether the Supreme Being is good enough to have Christ for his representative. John Stuart Mill looks upon the Christian religion as the worship of Christ, rather than the worship of God, and in this way he explains the beneficence of its influence.”

John Stuart Mill, Essays on Religion, 254—“The most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced, by holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so great and salutary hold on the modern mind. And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left: a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal preaching.... Who among his disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels?... About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight which, if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this preëminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than the endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life. [pg 189]When to this we add that, to the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ actually was ... a man charged with a special, express and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue, we may well conclude that the influences of religion on the character, which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion, are well worth preserving, and that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction.”See also Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus; Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 129-157; Schaff, Person of Christ; Young, The Christ in History; George Dana Boardman, The Problem of Jesus.

4. The testimony of Christ to himself—as being a messenger from God and as being one with God.

Only one personage in history has claimed to teach absolute truth, to be one with God, and to attest his divine mission by works such as only God could perform.

A. This testimony cannot be accounted for upon the hypothesis that Jesus was an intentional deceiver: for (a) the perfectly consistent holiness of his life; (b) the unwavering confidence with which he challenged investigation of his claims and staked all upon the result; (c) the vast improbability of a lifelong lie in the avowed interests of truth; and (d) the impossibility that deception should have wrought such blessing to the world,—all show that Jesus was no conscious impostor.

Fisher, Essays on the Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 515-538—Christ knew how vast his claims were, yet he staked all upon them. Though others doubted, he never doubted himself. Though persecuted unto death, he never ceased his consistent testimony. Yet he lays claim to humility: Mat. 11:29—“I am meek and lowly in heart.” How can we reconcile with humility his constant self-assertion? We answer that Jesus' self-assertion was absolutely essential to his mission, for he and the truth were one: he could not assert the truth without asserting himself, and he could not assert himself without asserting the truth. Since he was the truth, he needed to say so, for men's sake and for the truth's sake, and he could be meek and lowly in heart in saying so. Humility is not self-depreciation, but only the judging of ourselves according to God's perfect standard. “Humility” is derived from “humus”. It is the coming down from airy and vain self-exploitation to the solid ground, the hard-pan, of actual fact.

God requires of us only so much humility as is consistent with truth. The self-glorification of the egotist is nauseating, because it indicates gross ignorance or misrepresentation of self. But it is a duty to be self-asserting, just so far as we represent the truth and righteousness of God. There is a noble self-assertion which is perfectly consistent with humility. Job must stand for his integrity. Paul's humility was not of the Uriah Heep variety. When occasion required, he could assert his manhood and his rights, as at Philippi and at the Castle of Antonia. So the Christian should frankly say out the truth that is in him. Each Christian has an experience of his own, and should tell it to others. In testifying to the truth he is only following the example of “Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession” (1 Tim. 6:13).

B. Nor can Jesus' testimony to himself be explained upon the hypothesis that he was self-deceived: for this would argue (a) a weakness and folly amounting to positive insanity. But his whole character and life exhibit a calmness, dignity, equipoise, insight, self-mastery, utterly inconsistent with such a theory. Or it would argue (b) a self-ignorance and self-exaggeration which could spring only from the deepest moral perversion. But the absolute purity of his conscience, the humility of his spirit, the self-denying beneficence of his life, show this hypothesis to be incredible.

Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 39—If he were man, then to demand that all the world should bow down to him would be worthy of scorn like that which we feel for some straw-crowned monarch of Bedlam. Forrest, The Christ of History and of [pg 190]Experience, 22, 76—Christ never united with his disciples in prayer. He went up into the mountain to pray, but not to pray with them: Luke 9:18—“as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him.” The consciousness of preëxistence is the indispensable precondition of the total demand which he makes in the Synoptics. Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 81, 82—We value the testimony of Christians to their communion with God. Much more should we value the testimony of Christ. Only one who, first being divine, also knew that he was divine, could reveal heavenly things with the clearness and certainty that belong to the utterances of Jesus. In him we have something very different from the momentary flashes of insight which leave us in all the greater darkness.

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 5—“Self-respect is bottomed upon the ability to become what one desires to be; and, if the ability steadily falls short of the task, the springs of self-respect dry up; the motives of happy and heroic action wither. Science, art, generous civic life, and especially religion, come to man's rescue,”—showing him his true greatness and breadth of being in God. The State is the individual's larger self. Humanity, and even the universe, are parts of him. It is the duty of man to enable all men to be men. It is possible for men not only truthfully but also rationally to assert themselves, even in earthly affairs. Chatham to the Duke of Devonshire: “My Lord, I believe I can save this country, and that no one else can.” Leonardo da Vinci, in his thirtieth year, to the Duke of Milan: “I can carry through every kind of work in sculpture, in clay, marble, and bronze; also in painting I can execute everything that can be demanded, as well as any one whosoever.”

Horace: “Exegi monumentum ære perennius.” Savage, Life beyond Death, 209—A famous old minister said once, when a young and zealous enthusiast tried to get him to talk, and failing, burst out with, “Have you no religion at all?” “None to speak of,”was the reply. When Jesus perceived a tendency in his disciples to self-glorification, he urged silence; but when he saw the tendency to introspection and inertness, he bade them proclaim what he had done for them (Mat. 8:4; Mark 5:19). It is never right for the Christian to proclaim himself; but, if Christ had not proclaimed himself, the world could never have been saved. Rush Rhees. Life of Jesus of Nazareth, 235-237—“In the teaching of Jesus, two topics have the leading place—the Kingdom of God, and himself. He sought to be Lord, rather than Teacher only. Yet the Kingdom is not one of power, national and external, but one of fatherly love and of mutual brotherhood.”

Did Jesus do anything for effect, or as a mere example? Not so. His baptism had meaning for him as a consecration of himself to death for the sins of the world, and his washing of the disciples' feet was the fit beginning of the paschal supper and the symbol of his laying aside his heavenly glory to purify us for the marriage supper of the Lamb. Thomas à Kempis: “Thou art none the holier because thou art praised, and none the worse because thou art censured. What thou art, that thou art, and it avails thee naught to be called any better than thou art in the sight of God.” Jesus' consciousness of his absolute sinlessness and of his perfect communion with God is the strongest of testimonies to his divine nature and mission. See Theological Eclectic, 4:137; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153; J. S. Mill, Essays on Religion, 253; Young, Christ of History; Divinity of Jesus Christ, by Andover Professors, 37-62.

If Jesus, then, cannot be charged with either mental or moral unsoundness, his testimony must be true, and he himself must be one with God and the revealer of God to men.

Neither Confucius nor Buddha claimed to be divine, or the organs of divine revelation, though both were moral teachers and reformers. Zoroaster and Pythagoras apparently believed themselves charged with a divine mission, though their earliest biographers wrote centuries after their death. Socrates claimed nothing for himself which was beyond the power of others. Mohammed believed his extraordinary states of body and soul to be due to the action of celestial beings; he gave forth the Koran as “a warning to all creatures,” and sent a summons to the King of Persia and the Emperor of Constantinople, as well as to other potentates, to accept the religion of Islam; yet he mourned when he died that he could not have opportunity to correct the mistakes of the Koran and of his own life. For Confucius or Buddha, Zoroaster or Pythagoras, Socrates or Mohammed to claim all power in heaven and earth, would show insanity or moral perversion. But this is precisely what Jesus claimed. He was either mentally or morally unsound, or his testimony is true. See Baldensperger, Selbstbewusstsein Jesu; E. Ballentine, Christ his own Witness.

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IV. The Historical Results of the Propagation of Scripture Doctrine.

1. The rapid progress of the gospel in the first centuries of our era shows its divine origin.

A. That Paganism should have been in three centuries supplanted by Christianity, is an acknowledged wonder of history.

The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity was the most astonishing revolution of faith and worship ever known. Fifty years after the death of Christ, there were churches in all the principal cities of the Roman Empire. Nero (37-68) found (as Tacitus declares) an “ingens multitudo” of Christians to persecute. Pliny writes to Trajan (52-117) that they “pervaded not merely the cities but the villages and country places, so that the temples were nearly deserted.” Tertullian (160-230) writes: “We are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all your places, your cities, your islands, your castles, your towns, your council-houses, even your camps, your tribes, your senate, your forum. We have left you nothing but your temples.” In the time of the emperor Valerian (253-268), the Christians constituted half the population of Rome. The conversion of the emperor Constantine (272-337) brought the whole empire, only 300 years after Jesus' death, under the acknowledged sway of the gospel. See McIlvaine and Alexander, Evidences of Christianity.

B. The wonder is the greater when we consider the obstacles to the progress of Christianity:

(a) The scepticism of the cultivated classes; (b) the prejudice and hatred of the common people; and (c) the persecutions set on foot by government.

(a) Missionaries even now find it difficult to get a hearing among the cultivated classes of the heathen. But the gospel appeared in the most enlightened age of antiquity—the Augustan age of literature and historical inquiry. Tacitus called the religion of Christ “exitiabilis superstitio”—“quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat.” Pliny: “Nihil aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam.”If the gospel had been false, its preachers would not have ventured into the centres of civilization and refinement; or if they had, they would have been detected. (b) Consider the interweaving of heathen religions with all the relations of life. Christians often had to meet the furious zeal and blind rage of the mob,—as at Lystra and Ephesus. (c) Rawlinson, in his Historical Evidences, claims that the Catacombs of Rome comprised nine hundred miles of streets and seven millions of graves within a period of four hundred years—a far greater number than could have died a natural death—and that vast multitudes of these must have been massacred for their faith. The Encyclopædia Britannica, however, calls the estimate of De Marchi, which Rawlinson appears to have taken as authority, a great exaggeration. Instead of nine hundred miles of streets, Northcote has three hundred fifty. The number of interments to correspond would be less than three millions. The Catacombs began to be deserted by the time of Jerome. The times when they were universally used by Christians could have been hardly more than two hundred years. They did not begin in sand-pits. There were three sorts of tufa: (1) rocky, used for quarrying and too hard for Christian purposes; (2) sandy, used for sand-pits, too soft to permit construction of galleries and tombs; (3) granular, that used by Christians. The existence of the Catacombs must have been well known to the heathen. After Pope Damasus the exaggerated reverence for them began. They were decorated and improved. Hence many paintings are of later date than 400, and testify to papal polity, not to that of early Christianity. The bottles contain, not blood, but wine of the eucharist celebrated at the funeral.

Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 256-258, calls attention to Matthew Arnold's description of the needs of the heathen world, yet his blindness to the true remedy: “On that hard pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell. In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, The Roman noble lay; He drove abroad, in furious guise, Along the Appian Way; He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, And crowned his hair with flowers,—No easier nor no quicker [pg 192]passed The impracticable hours.” Yet with mingled pride and sadness, Mr. Arnold fastidiously rejects more heavenly nutriment. Of Christ he says: “Now he is dead! Far hence he lies, In the lorn Syrian town, And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down.” He sees that the millions “Have such need of joy, And joy whose grounds are true, And joy that should all hearts employ As when the past was new!”The want of the world is: “One mighty wave of thought and joy, Lifting mankind amain.” But the poet sees no ground of hope: “Fools! that so often here, Happiness mocked our prayer, I think might make us fear A like event elsewhere,—Make us not fly to dreams, But moderate desire.” He sings of the time when Christianity was young: “Oh, had I lived in that great day, How had its glory new Filled earth and heaven, and caught away My ravished spirit too!” But desolation of spirit does not bring with it any lowering of self-esteem, much less the humility which deplores the presence and power of evil in the soul, and sighs for deliverance. “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick” (Mat. 9:12). Rejecting Christ, Matthew Arnold embodies in his verse “the sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty, and the languor of death” (Hutton, Essays, 302).

C. The wonder becomes yet greater when we consider the natural insufficiency of the means used to secure this progress.

(a) The proclaimers of the gospel were in general unlearned men, belonging to a despised nation. (b) The gospel which they proclaimed was a gospel of salvation through faith in a Jew who had been put to an ignominious death. (c) This gospel was one which excited natural repugnance, by humbling men's pride, striking at the root of their sins, and demanding a life of labor and self-sacrifice. (d) The gospel, moreover, was an exclusive one, suffering no rival and declaring itself to be the universal and only religion.

(a) The early Christians were more unlikely to make converts than modern Jews are to make proselytes, in vast numbers, in the principal cities of Europe and America. Celsus called Christianity “a religion of the rabble.” (b) The cross was the Roman gallows—the punishment of slaves. Cicero calls it “servitutis extremum summumque supplicium.” (c) There were many bad religions: why should the mild Roman Empire have persecuted the only good one? The answer is in part: Persecution did not originate with the official classes; it proceeded really from the people at large. Tacitus called Christians “haters of the human race.” Men recognized in Christianity a foe to all their previous motives, ideals, and aims. Altruism would break up the old society, for every effort that centered in self or in the present life was stigmatized by the gospel as unworthy. (d) Heathenism, being without creed or principle, did not care to propagate itself. “A man must be very weak,” said Celsus, “to imagine that Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Libya, can ever unite under the same system of religion.” So the Roman government would allow no religion which did not participate in the worship of the State. “Keep yourselves from idols,” “We worship no other God,” was the Christian's answer. Gibbon, Hist. Decline and Fall, 1: chap. 15, mentions as secondary causes: (1) the zeal of the Jews; (2) the doctrine of immortality; (3) miraculous powers; (4) virtues of early Christians; (5) privilege of participation in church government. But these causes were only secondary, and all would have been insufficient without an invincible persuasion of the truth of Christianity. For answer to Gibbon, see Perrone, Prelectiones Theologicæ, 1:133.

Persecution destroys falsehood by leading its advocates to investigate the grounds of their belief; but it strengthens and multiplies truth by leading its advocates to see more clearly the foundations of their faith. There have been many conscientious persecutors: John 16:2—“They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God.” The Decretal of Pope Urban II reads: “For we do not count them to be homicides, to whom it may have happened, through their burning zeal against the excommunicated, to put any of them to death.” St. Louis, King of France, urged his officers “not to argue with the infidel, but to subdue unbelievers by thrusting the sword into them as far as it will go.” Of the use of the rack in England on a certain occasion, it was said that it was used with all the tenderness which the nature of the instrument would allow. This reminds us of Isaak Walton's instruction [pg 193]as to the use of the frog: “Put the hook through his mouth and out at his gills; and, in so doing, use him as though you loved him.”

Robert Browning, in his Easter Day, 275-288, gives us what purports to be A Martyr's Epitaph, inscribed upon a wall of the Catacombs, which furnishes a valuable contrast to the sceptical and pessimistic strain of Matthew Arnold: “I was born sickly, poor and mean, A slave: no misery could screen The holders of the pearl of price from Cæsar's envy: therefore twice I fought with beasts, and three times saw My children suffer by his law; At length my own release was earned: I was some time in being burned, But at the close a Hand came through The fire above my head, and drew My soul to Christ, whom now I see. Sergius, a brother, writes for me This testimony on the wall—For me, I have forgot it all.”

The progress of a religion so unprepossessing and uncompromising to outward acceptance and dominion, within the space of three hundred years, cannot be explained without supposing that divine power attended its promulgation, and therefore that the gospel is a revelation from God.

Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:527—“In the Kremlin Cathedral, whenever the Metropolitan advanced from the altar to give his blessing, there was always thrown under his feet a carpet embroidered with the eagle of old Pagan Rome, to indicate that the Christian Church and Empire of Constantinople had succeeded and triumphed over it.”On this whole section, see F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 91; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 139.

2. The beneficent influence of the Scripture doctrines and precepts, wherever they have had sway, shows their divine origin. Notice:

A. Their influence on civilization in general, securing a recognition of principles which heathenism ignored, such as Garbett mentions: (a) the importance of the individual; (b) the law of mutual love; (c) the sacredness of human life; (d) the doctrine of internal holiness; (e) the sanctity of home; (f) monogamy, and the religious equality of the sexes; (g) identification of belief and practice.

The continued corruption of heathen lands shows that this change is not due to any laws of merely natural progress. The confessions of ancient writers show that it is not due to philosophy. Its only explanation is that the gospel is the power of God.

Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 177-186; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, chap. on Christianity and the Individual; Brace, Gesta Christi, preface, vi—“Practices and principles implanted, stimulated or supported by Christianity, such as regard for the personality of the weakest and poorest; respect for woman; duty of each member of the fortunate classes to raise up the unfortunate; humanity to the child, the prisoner, the stranger, the needy, and even to the brute; unceasing opposition to all forms of cruelty, oppression and slavery; the duty of personal purity, and the sacredness of marriage; the necessity of temperance; obligation of a more equitable division of the profits of labor, and of greater coöperation between employers and employed; the right of every human being to have the utmost opportunity of developing his faculties, and of all persons to enjoy equal political and social privileges; the principle that the injury of one nation is the injury of all, and the expediency and duty of unrestricted trade and intercourse between all countries; and finally, a profound opposition to war, a determination to limit its evils when existing, and to prevent its arising by means of international arbitration.”

Max Müller: “The concept of humanity is the gift of Christ.” Guizot, History of Civilization, 1: Introd., tells us that in ancient times the individual existed for the sake of the State; in modern times the State exists for the sake of the individual. “The individual is a discovery of Christ.” On the relations between Christianity and Political Economy, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, pages 443-460; on the cause of the changed view with regard to the relation of the individual to the State, see page 207—“What has wrought the change? Nothing but the death of the Son of God. When it was seen that the smallest child and the lowest slave had a soul of such worth [pg 194]that Christ left his throne and gave up his life to save it, the world's estimate of values changed, and modern history began.” Lucian, the Greek satirist and humorist, 160 A. D., said of the Christians: “Their first legislator [Jesus] has put it into their heads that they are all brothers.”

It is this spirit of common brotherhood which has led in most countries to the abolition of cannibalism, infanticide, widow-burning, and slavery. Prince Bismarck: “For social well-being I ask nothing more than Christianity without phrases”—which means the religion of the deed rather than of the creed. Yet it is only faith in the historic revelation of God in Christ which has made Christian deeds possible. Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 232-278—Aristotle, if he could look over society to-day, would think modern man a new species, in his going out in sympathy to distant peoples. This cannot be the result of natural selection, for self-sacrifice is not profitable to the individual. Altruistic emotions owe their existence to God. Worship of God has flowed back upon man's emotions and has made them more sympathetic. Self-consciousness and sympathy, coming into conflict with brute emotions, originate the sense of sin. Then begins the war of the natural and the spiritual. Love of nature and absorption in others is the true Nirvana. Not physical science, but the humanities, are most needed in education.

H. E. Hersey, Introd. to Browning's Christmas Eve, 19— “Sidney Lanier tells us that the last twenty centuries have spent their best power upon the development of personality. Literature, education, government, and religion, have learned to recognize the individual as the unit of force. Browning goes a step further. He declares that so powerful is a complete personality that its very touch gives life and courage and potency. He turns to history for the inspiration of enduring virtue and the stimulus for sustained effort, and he finds both in Jesus Christ.” J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 43—The change from the ancient philosopher to the modern investigator is the change from self-assertion to self-devotion, and the great revolution can be traced to the influence of Christianity and to the spirit of humility exhibited and inculcated by Christ. Lewes, Hist. Philos., 1:408—Greek morality never embraced any conception of humanity; no Greek ever attained to the sublimity of such a point of view.

Kidd, Social Evolution, 165, 287—It is not intellect that has pushed forward the world of modern times: it is the altruistic feeling that originated in the cross and sacrifice of Christ. The French Revolution was made possible by the fact that humanitarian ideas had undermined the upper classes themselves, and effective resistance was impossible. Socialism would abolish the struggle for existence on the part of individuals. What security would be left for social progress? Removing all restrictions upon population ensures progressive deterioration. A non-socialist community would outstrip a socialist community where all the main wants of life were secure. The real tendency of society is to bring all the people into rivalry, not only on a footing of political equality, but on conditions of equal social opportunities. The State in future will interfere and control, in order to preserve or secure free competition, rather than to suspend it. The goal is not socialism or State management, but competition in which all shall have equal advantages. The evolution of human society is not primarily intellectual but religious. The winning races are the religious races. The Greeks had more intellect, but we have more civilization and progress. The Athenians were as far above us as we are above the negro race. Gladstone said that we are intellectually weaker than the men of the middle ages. When the intellectual development of any section of the race has for the time being outrun its ethical development, natural selection has apparently weeded it out, like any other unsuitable product. Evolution is developing reverence, with its allied qualities, mental energy, resolution, enterprise, prolonged and concentrated application, simple minded and single minded devotion to duty. Only religion can overpower selfishness and individualism and ensure social progress.

B. Their influence upon individual character and happiness, wherever they have been tested in practice. This influence is seen (a) in the moral transformations they have wrought—as in the case of Paul the apostle, and of persons in every Christian community; (b) in the self-denying labors for human welfare to which they have led—as in the case of Wilberforce and Judson; (c) in the hopes they have inspired in times of sorrow and death.

These beneficent fruits cannot have their source in merely natural causes, apart from the truth and divinity of the Scriptures; for in that case the [pg 195] contrary beliefs would be accompanied by the same blessings. But since we find these blessings only in connection with Christian teaching, we may justly consider this as their cause. This teaching, then, must be true, and the Scriptures must be a divine revelation. Else God has made a lie to be the greatest blessing to the race.

The first Moravian missionaries to the West Indies walked six hundred miles to take ship, worked their passage, and then sold themselves as slaves, in order to get the privilege of preaching to the negroes.... The father of John G. Paton was a stocking-weaver. The whole family, with the exception of the very small children, worked from 6 a. m. to 10 p. m., with one hour for dinner at noon and a half hour each for breakfast and supper. Yet family prayer was regularly held twice a day. In these breathing-spells for daily meals John G. Paton took part of his time to study the Latin Grammar, that he might prepare himself for missionary work. When told by an uncle that, if he went to the New Hebrides, the cannibals would eat him, he replied: “You yourself will soon be dead and buried, and I had as lief be eaten by cannibals as by worms.”The Aneityumese raised arrow-root for fifteen years and sold it to pay the £1200 required for printing the Bible in their own language. Universal church-attendance and Bible-study make those South Sea Islands the most heavenly place on earth on the Sabbath-day.

In 1839, twenty thousand negroes in Jamaica gathered to begin a life of freedom. Into a coffin were put the handcuffs and shackles of slavery, relics of the whipping-post and the scourge. As the clock struck twelve at night, a preacher cried with the first stroke: “The monster is dying!” and so with every stroke until the last, when he cried: “The monster is dead!” Then all rose from their knees and sang: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!”... “What do you do that for?” said the sick Chinaman whom the medical missionary was tucking up in bed with a care which the patient had never received since he was a baby. The missionary took the opportunity to tell him of the love of Christ.... The aged Australian mother, when told that her two daughters, missionaries in China, had both of them been murdered by a heathen mob, only replied: “This decides me; I will go to China now myself, and try to teach those poor creatures what the love of Jesus means.”... Dr. William Ashmore: “Let one missionary die, and ten come to his funeral.” A shoemaker, teaching neglected boys and girls while he worked at his cobbler's bench, gave the impulse to Thomas Guthrie's life of faith.

We must judge religions not by their ideals, but by their performances. Omar Khayyam and Mozoomdar give us beautiful thoughts, but the former is not Persia, nor is the latter India. “When the microscopic search of scepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found on this planet a place ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children, unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, infancy protected, manhood respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard—when sceptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundations and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the sceptical literati to move thither and to ventilate their views. But so long as these very men are dependent upon the very religion they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate before they rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that Savior who alone has given that hope of eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.” On the beneficent influence of the gospel, see Schmidt, Social Results of Early Christianity; D. J. Hill, The Social Influence of Christianity.

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