GATHERED FROM JENYN'S INTERNAL EVIDENCES, WITH ADDITIONS AND MODIFICATIONS.
When the religion of Christ made its appearance it was entirely new, infinitely above, and altogether different from any other which had at any time entered into the mind of man. Its object was new. It was to prepare us with fitness of character, through a state of trial, for mutual association with the pure and lovely in the kingdom of heaven. This is presented in all the gospel, as the chief end of the Christian's life. Until Christ, no such reward was offered to mankind, nor means provided for its attainment.
Many of the philosophers in old times had ideas of a future state, but they were mixed with a great deal of uncertainty and misgivings.
Ancient legislators endeavored to inculcate the idea of rewards and punishments after death, to give sanction to their laws. This was the sole end in view, and when their laws were virtuous, it was a noble, a praiseworthy end. But the religion of Christ is related to the same object, brings it about; and, also, has a nobler end in view, and that is to prepare us here for a more noble society among the citizens of the kingdom of God in the great hereafter.
In all the older religions the good of the present was the direct, and the first object, but in the religion of Christ it is the second. The first great object of the gospel of Christ is to prepare us for the realities of eternity.
There is a great contrast between adhering to morality from the motive of present profit, in expectation of future reward, and living such a life as to qualify us for the realization of future happiness.
The character of those who are governed by these different principles is not the same. On the first principle, present utility, we may have mere moralists, men practicing simple justice, temperance and sobriety. On the second, we must add to those graces of moral nature faith in God, resignation to his will, and habitual piety. The first will make us very good citizens in a civil government, but will never be sufficient to make us Christians. So the religion of Christ insists upon purity of heart and benevolence, or charity, because these are essential to the end proposed.
"That the present existence is one of trial with reference to another state of being, is confirmed by all that we know in what is termed the course of nature. Probation is the only key that unfolds to us the designs of God in the history of human affairs, the only clue that guides us through the pathless wilderness, and the only plan upon which this world could possibly have been formed, or upon which its history can be explained."
This world was not formed upon a plan of unconditioned happiness, because it is overspread with miseries. Neither was it formed upon a plan of unconditioned misery, for there are many joys interspersed throughout the whole. It was not formed for the unconditional existence of both vice and virtue, for that is no plan at all, the two elements being, as we know, destructive of each other. By the way, in this very fact we find the grand necessity for the remedial scheme.
The mixture of vice and virtue, of happiness and misery, is a necessary result of a state of probation, trials and sufferings consequent upon offending or violating the will of heaven.
The doctrine of the religion of Christ, with its ultimate object and its ideas of God and man, of the present and the future life, and of the relations which these all bear to each other, was and is wholly unheard of until you come to the teachings of Christ. No other religion ever drew such pictures of the worthlessness of earthly-mindedness and of living merely for this present world. And no other ever set out such beautiful, lively and glorious pictures of heavenly-mindedness, along with the joys of a future world, nor such pictures of victory over death and the grave, nor of the last judgment, nor of the triumphs of the redeemed in that tremendous day. The personal character of the great author, Christ, is as new and peculiar to this religion as anything else that we can possibly name—"He spake as never man spake."
He is the only founder of a religion which is "unconnected with all human policy and government," and, as such, should not be prostituted to any mere worldly purposes whatever. Numa, Mohammed, and even Moses, blended their religious institutions with their civil, and by such means controlled their adherents. Christ neither exercised nor accepted such power. He rejected every motive which controlled other leaders, and chose those which others avoided. Power, honor, riches and pleasure were alike disregarded. He seemed to court poverty, sufferings and death.
Many impostors and enthusiasts have tried to impose upon the world with pretended communications from the world of spirits—some of them have died rather than recant; but no history is found to show one who made his own sufferings and death a necessary part of his plan and essential elements in his mission. This distinguishes the Savior of the world from all mere enthusiasts and imposters. He declared his death in all its minutia; with a prophet's vision he saw it, declared it was necessary, and voluntarily endured it; and he was neither a madman nor idiot. Look at his lessons, his precepts and his wonderful conduct, and then imagine him insane if you can. Still, if he was not what he pretended to be, he can be viewed in no other light; and yet under the character of a madman he deserves much attention on account of such sublime and rational insanity. There is no other person known in the world's history so rationally and sublimely mad.
In what madman's career can you find such a beautiful lesson as his instructions given upon the mount. What other leader enforced his precepts and lessons upon men's credulity with such assurances of reward as, "Come, ye blessed of my father! Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; I was naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee; or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in; or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick and in prison, and came unto thee? Then shall he answer and say unto them, Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
Before the appearance of Christ there existed nothing like the faith of Christ and Christianity upon the face of the earth. The Jews alone had a few of its types and shadows, but the great mystery of Christ had been kept hid since the world began. All the Gentile nations were wrapped up in the very worst idolatry, having little or no connection whatever with morality, except to corrupt it with the infamous examples of their gods. "They all worshiped a multitude of gods and demons, whose favor they sought by obscene and ridiculous ceremonies, and whose anger they tried to appease with the most abominable cruelties." With them, heaven was open only to legislators and conquerors, the civilizers and destroyers of mankind. This was the summit of their religion, and even this was limited to a few prodigies of genius and learning, which was but little regarded and understood by the great masses. One common cloud of ignorance and superstition involved them. At this time Christ came as a teacher; his appearance was like a rising sun, dispelling the darkness and blessing the earth with light and heat.
If any man can believe that the son of a carpenter, together with twelve of the meanest and most illiterate mechanics, unassisted by any superhuman wisdom and power, should be able to invent and promulgate a system of theology and ethics the most sublime and perfect, which all such men as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero had overlooked, and that they, by their own wisdom, repudiated every false virtue, though universally admired, and that they admitted every true virtue, though despised and ridiculed by all the rest of the world—if any man can believe that they were impostors for no other purpose than the promulgation of truth, villains for no purpose but to teach honesty, and martyrs with no prospect of honor or advantage; or that they, as false witnesses, should have been able, in the course of a few years, to have spread this religion over the most of the known world, in opposition to the interests, ambition and prejudices of mankind; that they triumphed over the power of princes, the intrigues of states, the forces of custom, the blindness of zeal, the influence of priests, the arguments of orators, and the philosophy of the world, without any assistance from God, he must be in possession of more faith than is necessary to make him a Christian and continues an unbeliever from mere credulity. If the credulous infidel, whose convictions are without evidence and against evidence, should, after all, be in the right, and Christianity prove to be a fable, what harm could ensue from being a Christian? Are Christian rulers more tyrannical and their Christian subjects more ungovernable? Are the rich more insolent when Christianized? Are poor Christians most insolent and disorderly? Does Christianity make worse parents and worse children? Does it make husbands and wives, friends and neighbors less trustworthy? Does it not make men and women more virtuous and happy in every situation in life? If Christianity is a fable, it is one the belief of which retains men and women in a regular and uniform life of virtue, piety and devotion to truth. It gives support in the hour of distress, of sickness and death.
"If there were a few more Christians in the world it would be very beneficial to themselves and by no means detrimental to the public."
THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST.
"He, who gave life to man at first,
Can restore it when it is lost."
Our Savior claimed to be the Son of God, and put the validity of his claim on this, that he should die openly by crucifixion, be buried, and rise from the dead upon the third day. Among all the impostors known in earth's history there is not one instance of a plot like this fact. A mere plot of this nature would be hard to manage. That the first part of this prophesy was fulfilled even our enemies admit. It has not been alleged by infidels of any note that the crucifixion was a fraud, and did not take place, and that Jesus, as a consequence, did not die.
The chief priests seem to have had considerable concern about the prediction of the resurrection. Why this? Was it because they had discovered in the person of Christ an impostor, a mere cheat? No; this alone would have caused them to utterly disregard the prediction of his resurrection. Those priests saw something in the character of Christ which caused them to fear the fulfillment of his prediction. What other person ever created such a concern about such an event? There is not a similar case in the world's history. What other dead person was ever known to create such a feeling as that which moved his enemies to confront him, if possible, in his rising power. Those priests had, doubtless, witnessed his miracles again and again. It is beyond all question true that they feared him in his death. If they had seen no wonderful power exerted during his life they certainly would have feared none after he was dead. The fear of the chief priests over the Savior's dead body is an insurmountable evidence of the mighty works which he accomplished during his life. Those priests addressed themselves to the Roman governor, and requested a guard placed around the tomb; three days and nights would settle the question, for the prediction would terminate on the third day. Pilate granted the request, and a guard was set to watch; they sealed the door of the sepulcher, placing the seal of the state upon the great stone. The object of the seal was, doubtless, for the satisfaction of all parties concerned in this matter.
It was a precaution against fraud. If the seal upon a door or box is broken we know at once that it has been meddled with. When Darius thrust Daniel among the lions he put his seal upon the door of the den, to satisfy himself and his court that no human hand had interfered for Daniel's delivery. When he came to the den and found his seal unbroken, he was satisfied. A seal thus used is of the nature of a covenant. If you deliver sealed writings to an individual his acceptance amounts to a covenant between you that the same shall be delivered just as they were received. If the seal is broken, it is a manifestation of attempted fraud. There is no special agreement needed in order to the existence of covenants by seals; it is an agreement which men are placed under by the laws of nations. The sealing of the sepulcher where the body of Jesus lay was to impose, by all the solemnities of the Roman state, obligations upon all the parties interested in the person of Christ. It was a grand effort on the part of the authorities to prevent any interference with the dead body.
When impostors are known they become odious, and are but little noticed. How was it with Christ? When the popular sentiment was that he was a prophet the priests and scribes sought his life, believing that his death would end his cause? When they and the people learned that he was an impostor (?) they thought him unsafe after he was dead.
The prediction of Christ that he would rise the third day was publicly known throughout Jerusalem; but why the chief priests should concern themselves so much about it as to take all the steps to prevent its fulfillment, is a puzzling question with infidels. Was it because they had detected him as a cheat and an impostor? No, this is an unreasonable conclusion. It must have been a secret conviction touching his mighty power. The seal was a proper check upon the guards; the Jews could have no other object in having it placed there. They were not so foolish as to think, that by this contrivance they would outstrip Providence.
Guards were set to watch, and, doubtless, did their whole duty. But what are sentinels when the power of Omnipotence is put forth? An angel of the Lord makes his appearance. The keepers saw him, and fell down like dead men. The angel rolled away the stone, and the conqueror came forth to live in the hearts of millions, and to live forevermore.
The disciples, receiving power from on high, soon make their appearance in Jerusalem, and boldly assert the fact of the resurrection. The murderers of the Savior were there. What do the priests do next? They had bribed the soldiers to tell a lie which was so base that it only needed to be told in order to be known as a lie. Next, they arrest the apostles; they beat them, they scourge them, and bid them shut their mouths, and insist that they shall say no more about this matter. They did not seem to regard them as liars and impostors, else they would doubtless have charged them with the fraud. They try to assassinate and murder these witnesses of the resurrection. They prevailed with Herod to put one of them to death; but they never seemed to think of charging them with stealing the body away. Their orator, Tertullus, could not have missed such a topic as imposition and fraud if any had been practiced. He did not seem to think of anything of the sort, but contented himself with the charge of sedition, heresy, and the profanation of the temple. Yet the very question of the resurrection was under consideration; for Festus tells Agrippa, that the Jews had "certain questions against Paul of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive." After this Agrippa heard Paul's testimony, and so far was he from suspecting imposition, that he said, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."
Not long after the resurrection the apostles were taken before the council and sanhedrim of the Children of Israel. They make their own defense, a part of which is in these words: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree." The first impulse of the council was to slay them all; but Gamaliel, one of the council, stood up and related the history of several impostors who perished in former days, and said: "If this work be of men it will come to nought, but if it be of God ye can not overthrow it." He advised them to refrain from the men and let time tell the story. The tree shall be known by its fruits. The council acquiesced; they gave the apostles a whipping and let them go.
A resurrection is a thing to be ascertained by men's senses. We all know whether a man is dead by the same means by which we know whether a man is alive. There are those who claim that "a resurrection could not be proven by any amount of testimony, because of its being contrary to the course of nature." But this is mere prejudice and ignorance. First: Who can measure the extent of natural possibilities? Are they generally known? Is it a greater thing to give life to a body once dead than to a body that never was alive? The objection rests upon the thought that testimony should be respected only in such cases as seem to us possible, or in the ordinary course of nature. According to this, no amount of evidence could establish the fact that water freezes and becomes solid in a country where such is not the ordinary course of nature. Does a man's ability in discerning and his truthfulness in reporting depend upon the skill or ignorance of those who hear? We know facts that seem to be as much contrary to the course of nature as anything could possibly be. But, in all candor, I must claim that in appealing to the settled course of nature, in a case like the one under consideration, the question is referred not to the laws of evidence or maxims of reason, but to the prejudices of men and to their mistakes, which are many. Men form a notion of nature from what they see; so, under different surroundings, their notions about the course of nature will differ. The objection falls worthless at the feet of the Infinite One. There is no greater difficulty in accounting for the fact that the dead live again than there is in accounting for the fact that they did live.
PUBLIC NOTORIETY OF THE SCRIPTURES.
Origen was born in the year one hundred and eighty-five of the Christian dispensation, and lived sixty-eight years. He gives in his writings five thousand seven hundred and sixty-five quotations from the New Testament. Tertullian gives eighteen hundred and two quotations from the New Testament. Clemens, of Alexandria, labored in the year one hundred and ninety-four. He gives us three hundred and eighty-four quotations from the New Testament. Ireneus lived in the year one hundred and seventy-eight. He gives us seven hundred and sixty-seven quotations from the New Testament, making a grand total of eight thousand seven hundred and twenty-three quotations, given by four ancient writers.
If all the copies of the New Testament in the world were destroyed, the whole, with the exception of eleven verses, could be reproduced from the writings of men who lived prior to the Nicene Council. Unbelievers quote from all ancient heathen authors as though they were books of yesterday, without manifesting the least doubt in reference to their authenticity or authorship. The evidences necessary to establish genuineness of authorship are ten-fold greater in the case of the New Testament Scriptures than in the case of the histories of Alexander, Julius Cæsar and Cyrus, as given by ancient writers.
The notoriety of the New Testament writings during the first centuries is without a parallel among all ancient writings. Their effect upon society during those centuries can never be explained in harmony with unbelief. But this is not all that is to be considered. Their notoriety extends over the centuries between us and the times of the apostles. Such notoriety is the grand support upon which the New Testament stands. All other ancient writings stand upon the same kind of evidence, but this kind of evidence is more than ten-fold greater in the support of our religion than it is in the support of any other ancient documents.
We may obtain some idea of the influence of the New Testament Scriptures during the first centuries from the statements of Gibbon. He says there were "six millions of Christians in existence in the year three hundred and thirteen." It is reasonable to allow that there were three millions in the year one hundred and seventy-five. Under the best emperors of the second century books were cheap. Thousands of persons engaged in writing histories for a livelihood. It is allowed that there were as many as fifteen thousand copies of the four gospels in circulation among the people in the last quarter of the second century. This state of things seems to convey the idea that it would be hard work to introduce successfully any corruption into the text after this period of time. It would be too easily detected.
There is also a grand argument in favor of the genuineness of our religion, which is in the fact that it was in deathly opposition to both Judaism and Paganism, its success being the destruction of both. If Christianity was an imposition, its success during the first three centuries of our era is utterly inexplicable.
WHAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN AND DONE WITHOUT THE BIBLE.
Our ancestors complained of the reign of wickedness; we complain of it and our posterity will complain of it. I sometimes think we are all a set of complainers and grumblers.
Of ancient pagans it is said: "They worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator." Of their idols Persius, who was a Roman satirical poet, born A.D. 34, said:
"O, cares of men! O, world all fraught
With vanities! O, minds inclined
Towards earth, all void of heavenly thought!"
Sedulius, an ancient Christian poet, and by nativity a Scotchman, says of the same:
"Ah! wretched they that worship vanities,
And consecrate dumb idols in their heart—
Who their own Maker, God on high, despise,
And fear the works of their own hands and art!
What fury, what great madness doth beguile
Men's minds that man should ugly shapes adore
Of birds, or bulls, or dragons, or the vile
Half-dog, half-man, on knees for aid implore."
One of their own poets jests them thus:
"Even now I was the stock of an old fig tree,
The workman doubting what I then should be,
A bench or god, at last a god made me."
The Romans, for a time, were without images for any religious use, but afterwards they received into their city the idols of all the nations they conquered; and as they became the lords of the whole earth, they became slaves to the idols of all the world. Seneca says: "The images of the gods they worship, those they pray unto with bended knees, those they admire and adore, and contemn the artificers who made them."
The character and condition of their gods was worse than their own. The common opinion touching their god of gods, Jupiter, was that he was entombed in Crete, and his monument was there to be seen. Lactantius wittily says: "Tell me, I beseech you, how can the same god be alive in one place and dead in another; have a temple dedicated to him in one place and a tomb erected in another?" Callimachus, in his hymn on Jupiter, calls the Cretians liars in this very respect. He says:
"The Cretians always lyars are, who raised unto thy name
A sepulchre, that never dyest, but ever art the same."
Lactantius informs us in book 10, chapter 20, that they gave divine honor to notorious common prostitutes, as unto goddesses, to Venus, or Faula, to Lapa, the nurse of Romulus, so called among the shepherds for her common prostitution, and to Flora, who enriched herself by her crime, and then, by will, made the people of Rome her heir, and, also left a sum of money by which her birthday was yearly celebrated with games, which, in memory of her, they called Floralia. They claimed that their great goddess, Juno, was both the wife and sister of Jupiter; and Jupiter, and the other gods, they held, were no better that adulterers, sodomites, murderers and thieves. Such was not held in private but published to the world. They were described by their painters in their tables, by their poets in their verses, and acted by their players upon their stages. (Lactantius, b. 5, ch. 21.)
As respects the manner in which they worshiped their gods, Alexander, in his Dierum Genialium, b. 6, ch. 26, insists that the most odious thing in their history was the effusion of human blood in the service of their gods. This same author says, "This unnatural, barbarous practice spread itself well nigh over the known world; it was in use among the Trojans, as it seems from Virgil's lines touching Æneas:
"Their hands behind their backs he bound whom he had destined
A sacrifice unto the ghosts, and on whose flames to shed
Their blood he purposed."—Ænead.
Some ignorant infidels seem at a great loss to understand why the Lord should order the groves and altars of the heathen destroyed. (Again and again their groves were cut down.) The children of Israel were to make no offerings in the groves. If infidels will only exercise common sense inside of the history of the worship of Priapus and Berecynthia, they will cease fretting over the destruction of those beautiful forests. Those groves were the most corrupt places upon the earth, places of retirement from the altar into prostitution, carried on as a matter of worship pleasing to Priapus. Here, on account of becoming modesty, the half can not be told. The removal of nuisances in our own country is conducted upon the same principles upon which groves were destroyed by the Israelites.
Lycurgus dedicated an image to laughter, to be worshiped as a god, and this is said to be "the only law he ever made pertaining to religion." While his great object was to make warriors, he ordained some things noted for the education of youth. He ordained other laws so much in favor of lust and all carnality of the worst kind, that it might justly be said he made his entire commonwealth ludicrous. He instituted wrestlings, dances and other exercises of boys and girls naked, to be done in public at divers times of the year, in the presence both of young and old men. Adultery was also approved and permitted by the laws of Lycurgus. Plato and Aristotle advocated community of women, of goods and possessions, to the end that no man should have anything peculiar to himself, or know his own children. This was ordained by Plato, in order to establish in the commonwealth such a perfect unity that no man might be able to say, that is thine, or this is mine.
Aristotle, in the second book of his "Politiques," sets forth many other detestable things. Lactantius, in the third of his Divine Institutions, shows that Plato's community of property and women took away frugality, abstinence, shamefacedness, modesty and justice itself.
Plato, like Lycurgus, ordained that young men should, for the increase of their physical strength and agility of body, at certain times exercise themselves naked; that girls and servant-maids should dance naked among the young men; that women in the flower of their youth should dance, run, wrestle and ride with young men naked as well as they, which, says Plato, "whosoever misliketh understandeth not how profitable it is for the commonwealth."
The morality of ancient times may be clearly seen in the fact that all manner of debasing things were brought to the front. How could men be persuaded that adultery should be punished when they were taught from infancy that it was a virtue among the gods? Lucian gives his experience thus, "When I was yet a boy, and heard out of Homer and Hesiod of the adulteries, fornications, rapes and seditions of the gods, truly I thought that those things were very excellent, and began even then to be greatly affected towards them, for I could not imagine that the gods themselves would ever have committed adultery if they had not esteemed the same lawful and good." To all this it may be added that the opinions of the ancient philosophers concerning virtue, vice, the final happiness, and the state of the spirit after death, were diverse and contradictory. The Epicurean doctrine was, that sovereign happiness consisted in pleasure. They granted a God, but denied his Providence; so virtue was without a spur, and vice without a bridle.
The Stoics also granted a Divine Providence, but they maintained such a fatal necessity that they blunted the edge of all virtuous efforts and excused themselves in vicious conduct. Both Stoics and Epicureans doubted the immortality of the human spirit, and thereby opened the way to all manner of licentiousness.
I am persuaded that eternity alone will fully reveal the consequences of a denial of a future life and retribution; it is a physical leprosy which removes all the most powerful incentives to virtue and loosens up the soul to all manner of lustful gratifications.
A man once remarked: "I have lived four years an avowed infidel. I have boasted that I would live a good man and die an infidel. I have formed the acquaintance of all the leading infidels of my country, and I am now prepared to candidly confess that I do not believe any man can keep a good heart without the fear of God. Such is my observation and experience."