They dealt deceitfully with history as well as prophecy. They made or modified facts. They gave fanciful interpretations to prophecies. And they tried to make prophecy prove what it could not prove, however unquestionable and miraculous the fulfilment might be. The manner in which Nelson and Keith dealt with prophecy was often childish, and even dishonest. A careful examination of their works left a most painful impression on my mind.
What Albert Barnes says about much of the reasoning of preachers and divines is applicable to this class of writers more than to some others. 'A great part of the reasoning founded upon prophecies is unsound. Much of the reasoning employed by the early Christian Fathers, by the Schoolmen, and by the Reformers had no intrinsic force: it was based on ignorance and error. Yet theologians are prone to cling to it. They forget the age in which they live. They linger, they live, among the shades of the past. Their thoughts, their dialect, their way of reasoning are all of other days.
'The quality of another kind of reasoning common among divines is, that it is not understood by the mass of men, and that it does not seem to be understood by those who use it.'
17. In the following paragraph he speaks important words about theology as well as about theological reasoning.
'There is much theology,' says he, 'that a good man cannot preach. It would shock his own feelings; it would contradict his prayers; it would be fatal to all his efforts to do good; it would drive off the sinner to a hopeless distance, though he had begun to return to God; it would be at war with the elementary convictions which men have of what must be true. Among the doctrines of this theology are those,—that Christ died for the salvation of only a part of mankind,—that we are to blame for Adam's sin,—condemned for an act done ages before we were born.
'The theology that should be preached to make the pulpit what it should be, should be based on obvious and honest principles of Scripture interpretation. The preacher is the interpreter of a book, and he should be the voice, the organ, of its true and natural meaning. Nothing should be misquoted; nothing should be perverted or misapplied. His interpretation should be seen and felt to be in harmony with the scope, the drift, the spirit, the aim of the Bible. The success of preaching has been greatly hindered by false principles of Biblical interpretation. In interpreting other books men have gone on rational principles; but in interpreting the Bible they have gone on principles quite irrational. They have sought for double senses, and mystical meanings, and used texts as proofs of doctrines, that had no reference to the doctrines whatever. Metaphors and symbols have had all possible meanings forced on them. Infidels and men of the world are approached with arguments that are little less than insults to their understandings. They are disgusted, instead of being convinced. They are led to look on the Bible with disdain. They are willing to remain infidels, rather than become idiots. One is pained and sickened that such a multitude of impertinent and inapplicable texts should be brought as proofs of Christian doctrine;—texts applicable to anything else rather than the points under consideration. Even Dr. Edwards misuses texts of Scripture thus. The Bible is to be interpreted as other books are. Men are not to hide themselves in the mist of a hidden meaning, and shock the common sense of the world. Preachers should go on the supposition, that in every congregation there are shrewd and sagacious men, who can appreciate a good argument, and see the weakness of a bad one; men who can appreciate a good sermon, if there be a good sermon to be appreciated. For such, he may be assured, is the fact.'
All these unwise things had a tendency to shake my faith in writers on the evidences, to lessen my interest in the subject, to abate my confidence in the knowledge and integrity of the authors, and to diminish my faith in the supernatural origin of the Bible and Christianity.
18. The evidences that had most weight with me were the internal evidences. But these were often handled in an unsatisfactory way. The greater part of Soame Jenyns' little work was good, as far as it went; but it went only a very short way. It took a step or two, in the most difficult, doubtful, and uninviting part of the road, but it left the vast paradise of internal evidences unexplored, and even unapproached. His work was rather an apology for Christianity, proving that it was not open to censure, than a demonstration of its incalculable worth and power.
I did not myself see clearly at the time, that the adaptation of Christianity to man's wants, to man's nature, and its tendency to promote man's temporal as well as his spiritual welfare, was really a proof of its divine origin. I saw that it was a valid answer to the infidel objection that it was useless or mischievous; but not that it was a decisive proof of its divinity. Hence though I employed it as a refutation of infidel charges against Christianity, I never pressed it further.
And though I got at length much larger views of the excellency of Christianity than those presented by Soame Jenyns, I saw not half, I saw not a tenth of its worth and glory. I saw not a tenth even of what I see now. I now see there are no limits to the excellency of Christianity, or to the power of the argument supplied by its glorious character, in proof of its divinity.