1. The belief, concerning the position of mankind in this world and the next, held by the various Christians, who cling to the Old and New Testaments as the one inspired and infallible revelation of the mind and purpose of an Almighty, may be briefly summed up thus:—That the whole human race, because of the disobedience of Adam, is fallen from its original righteousness, and is under condemnation for transgression of the law or will of God; whether as Jews, to whom the law was given in certain forms of words or as Gentiles, who have the law, the knowledge of right and wrong, written on their consciences: that the eternal justice of God requires the eternal punishment of sin: that thus no escape being possible from the consequences of guilt, the result of Adam's disobedience and their own depravity, the whole human race must have perished, had it not been that God in love, and in order that he might place himself in a position to pardon sin in a way that would be consistent with eternal justice, sent his Son—the sole-begotten—into the world, who became incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth: that Jesus fulfilled the will of God in his life: that his death by crucifixion has been accounted by God a full atonement for the sins of all who believe on him and his fulfilment of the law as if it had been their fulfilment: that by his atonement and righteousness they are thus restored to the divine favour: that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day: that he ascended into heaven: that he is now there waiting until all who are ordained unto eternal life shall, in course of time, be born, when he will return to earth in the glory and power of heaven: that then those who have believed in him will be raised from the dead, or, if not dead, will receive an incorruptible body and a purified mind: that the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, shall then be inaugurated: that risen mankind, who have believed on Jesus, will thenceforth enjoy eternal bliss in direct communion with God: that those of mankind who have not believed in Jesus will also be raised from the dead, but, their sins being unatoned for, they will be punished with everlasting banishment from the presence of God: that the doom in each case will be irrevocable, everlasting.
2. The conception of the Almighty, in relation to fallen man, formed in the minds of many believers, is that of a king dealing with rebel subjects who are equally guilty, and whose lives are equally forfeit. He shows mercy to whom he will—those who are thus favoured having no right to this grace; and whom he will he leaves to deserved death—those thus left having no right to complain of the pardon of the others, as their own doom would have been the same whether the others were spared or not.
Other believers, again, rather conceive the Almighty to be in the position of a gracious benefactor, offering pardon through the merits of Jesus to any one who chooses to accept of it, the pardon not to take effect unless the sinner accepts it by acquiescing in the divine plan of salvation. And among the numerous sects into which believers are divided through opposing interpretations of various passages of the Bible, other conceptions of the Almighty and modifications of the foregoing statement of belief will be found. But all, or almost all, agree in dividing mankind into the believing and the unbelieving, the elect and the non-elect, the sheep and the goats, the saved and the lost.
Many Christians maintain that the atonement was universal; but it is doubtful if any maintain that the salvation will be universal, as belief is held to be a necessary condition or a sign of salvation.
Beyond such ideas as these there are two momentous considerations:—(1.) Whether an Almighty Maker of the universe could be such an one as, were he to carry out a scheme of salvation for a condemned race of his creatures, would do so in a way to have but a partial effect, or to be dependent on the belief or unbelief of those for whom it was devised. (2.) Whether vicarious sacrifice can in any way satisfy justice, divine or human. For what is vicarious sacrifice?—the substitution of the innocent for the guilty, whether an innocent lamb or an innocent child, or the innocent Son of the Eternal made flesh. However exalted the victim the principle is the same,—that of satisfying justice by committing so gross an injustice as enjoining or permitting the innocent to take the place of the guilty. Would any earthly tribunal be accounted righteous which allowed a self-sacrificing mother to substitute herself for a son, a son for a father? And does not the Christian doctrine represent its deity as the author of a proceeding so utterly unjust?
3. Christian believers, however, consider themselves as, or as having been, sinners under divine condemnation, but maintain that God can, consistently with justice, on account of the merits and death of Jesus, freely pardon their sin; and, in the hope that saving faith has been given them, they rest content in this belief, seek to live in this world in subjection to Christ's commandments, and await, after death, an entrance into bliss unspeakable, and, on Christ's Second coming, a joyful resurrection. Such, at least, is the profession; the practice does not always correspond. Christians are not unknown to history, nor possibly to the present age, whose conduct is widely at variance with their profession. But this is true of others besides believers in Christianity. They who rest content in the belief and hope just mentioned, are seldom disturbed by misgivings as to the soundness of the foundations of the Christian faith. They have no more doubt that the miraculous birth, the miracles, and the resurrection of Jesus were actual witnessed events, than they have of the assassination of Julius Caesar, or of the landing of William the Conqueror in England. And this belief seems to them to account for much. That stumbling-block to many in the way of owning that a wise and beneficent deity could be the author of such a world as this, of "a whole creation groaning and travailing in pain," disappears, in their minds, in view of the curse of God against sin, under which the earth and all it contains is, as they believe, labouring, and of the love of God in providing a way by which he could be just and yet pardon sin. It gives them, moreover, a definite, settling belief, and a hope for the future, that there is something better and different in store than life in this world. Regarding the earth and all upon it as under a curse, they profess to set their hearts on their home in heaven, on the glorious future revealed. Alas, then, if the grounds on which the prospect of this glorious future rests are worthless; if the hope is delusive; if its evil effect is, and has continually been, to divert men from applying themselves strenuously to make the best of this earth on which they live, and from heartily co-operating with their fellows to do the same; to build up brazen barriers of spiritual pride and self-complacency that sunder man from man; to foster vain-glory, strife, acrimony, and intolerance through pretence, as between opposing sects and schools, of a superior, or a more accurate, or a better defined knowledge of the mind of God.
4. The foundations of the Christian faith are the supernatural testimonies, as recorded in the New Testament, given from on high to the supernatural attributes claimed for Jesus. Many there are who profess, or by their mode of teaching imply, disbelief in these supernatural testimonies or attributes, or ignore them altogether, yet who for the sake of their position, clerical or otherwise, or to be in unison with prevailing fashion, extol Christianity as a system of high moral government and elevating tendency. All such, however, will appear to the honest and truth-loving mind but deserving of unmeasured scorn. Excepting the Jesus of the New Testament, is there any other Jesus? If the supernatural attributes there claimed for him are a pretence, he was either self-deluded or he was an impostor, or the compilers of the four gospels have borne false witness, or are recorders of inflated hearsay, or the inventors of fiction, all the while asserting that they were eye-witnesses, or narrators of the testimony of eye-witnesses. And what is to be said of a system founded either on self-delusion or imposition? Are not noble and pure doctrines put to the basest use when they are made supports of pretence and falsehood, and should they not be rescued from such contamination? Besides, Jesus scarcely claims to be the originator of new laws. His claim is far more. He is held to be the same person who gave the commandments to Moses on Sinai; and his spiritual application and extension of these laws are to be found also in the books of the Psalms and the Prophets, alleged to have been written under his own inspiration. Whether or not they are to be found elsewhere, in so-called heathen writings, is a consideration beyond the scope of this inquiry. The exhortation "to take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth," might probably be found taught and practised under other than Christian sanction,—might perhaps be discovered not to have been the guiding principle of all Christian professors. As a system, then, of moral government, or of high spiritual life, the Christianity of the New Testament professes no more than to confirm and verify, explain, fulfil, and develop the Jewish Scriptures. But its supernatural claims on behalf of Christ himself, by which it pretends to lay bare the truth as to the position of mankind in this world and the next, and to give them the hope of a new life beyond the grave, rest on the supernatural occurrences recorded. If these are true, Jesus is all he claimed to be. He is now alive, he has the destinies of the whole human race in his hands, and is to be worshipped as God. If they are not true, he was either a mere man, deluding or self-deluded, or the history of his life is a myth, however originated or developed. Truth and sincerity demand that there be no compromise between these two positions. The time has surely gone by when sound morality and brotherly kindness require the support of supernatural pretence; when religion, in the words of an ancient writer, is to be praised as an imposture devised by wise men for restraining the evil passions of the multitude. Let every true man repudiate the libel on his race implied by the most unworthy, most pernicious and despairing idea, which has for so long influenced human thought, that for the support of high morality and love of kind it is necessary to disregard or to trifle with the highest of all morality—Truth.
5. Ordinary scientific research is of little avail here. Science of itself is unable either to affirm or to deny if any power beyond and supreme over Nature exists. Whether Nature works spontaneously, and there is nothing besides matter and its inherent organising powers; or whether her various operations are carried on in fixed modes, and by determinate forces, created and sustained by an Omnipotent and Omniscient Being, the observation of cause and effect, and the induction of general laws from ascertained facts is the same. But in the latter case, the Almighty One, if he willed, might suspend or break through, or alter the regular course of Nature's working; and the question here is, whether there is any valid evidence to show that the manifestations, as recorded in the New Testament, of a nature-controlling power actually happened. If such an one, almighty, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-just, all-loving, all-merciful (such as Exodus xxxiv. 6, 7) exists, a special revelation from him to men, different from his working in the visible universe, is not a thing impossible: moreover, assuming the Christian doctrine to be true, that by sending his son Jesus into the world he meant to save only a portion of the human race, the revelation might take place in a mode suited to the knowledge and capacities of those for whom it was intended; and merely because the mode may appear absurd and unworthy of a deity (though this consideration may not be lost sight of), or because it did not take place in the way which the learned and philosophers—hitherto a small minority of mankind—might have selected, it is not to be disbelieved if the evidence is good. And it may fairly be argued that there would be no simpler way by which an Almighty could reveal his own existence, or attest the divine mission of his chosen messenger, than by instances of nature-controlling power. Again and again, then, this one consideration presses, "Is there any good evidence to show that these occurrences did really happen, that this man Jesus, claiming to be the Son of God, received certain credentials from a Power beyond and supreme over Nature?"
6. The supernatural attributes of Jesus, claimed by himself, or by his disciples for him, and held to constitute saving faith, are—
a. That he was alive from all eternity, the sole-begotten Son of God, before he appeared in this world.