Upon this subject, the last things to which the Archdeacon appeals, are the very things that he, at first, utterly repudiated. He asks, "Are we contemptuously to reject the witness of innumerable multitudes of the good and wise, that—with a spiritual reality more convincing to them than the material evidences which converted the apostles,"—they have seen, and heard, and their hands have handled the "Word of Life"? Thus at last the Archdeacon appeals to the evidences of the senses.
II.
THE Archdeacon then proceeds to attack the following statement: There is no subject, and can be none, concerning which any human being is under any obligation to believe without evidence.
One would suppose that it would be impossible to formulate an objection to this statement. What is or is not evidence, depends upon the mind to which it is presented. There is no possible "insinuation" in this statement, one way or the other. There is nothing sinister in it, any more than there would be in the statement that twice five are ten. How did it happen to occur to the Archdeacon that when I spoke of believing without evidence, I referred to all people who believe in the existence of a God, and that I intended to say "that one-third of the world's inhabitants had embraced the faith of Christians without evidence"?
Certain things may convince one mind and utterly fail to convince others. Undoubtedly the persons who have believed in the dogmas of Christianity have had what was sufficient evidence for them. All I said was, that "there is no subject, and can be none, concerning which any human being is under any obligation to believe without evidence." Does the Archdeacon insist that there is an obligation resting on any human mind to believe without evidence? Is he willing to go a step further and say that there is an obligation resting upon the minds of men to believe contrary to evidence? If one is under obligation to believe without evidence, it is just as reasonable to say that he is under obligation to believe in spite of evidence. What does the word "evidence" mean? A man in whose honesty I have great confidence, tells me that he saw a dead man raised to life. I do not believe him. Why? His statement is not evidence to my mind. Why? Because it contradicts all of my experience, and, as I believe, the experience of the intelligent world.
No one pretends that "one-third of the world's inhabitants have embraced the faith of Christians without evidence"—that is, that all Christians have embraced the faith without evidence. In the olden time, when hundreds of thousands of men were given their choice between being murdered and baptized, they generally accepted baptism—probably they accepted Christianity without critically examining the evidence.
Is it historically absurd that millions of people have believed in systems of religion without evidence? Thousands of millions have believed that Mohammed was a prophet of God. And not only so, but have believed in his miraculous power. Did they believe without evidence? Is it historically absurd to say that Mohammedanism is based upon mistake? What shall we say of the followers of Buddha, who far outnumber the followers of Christ? Have they believed without evidence? And is it historically absurd to say that our ancestors of a few hundred years ago were as credulous as the disciples of Buddha? Is it not true that the same gentlemen who believed thoroughly in all the miracles of the New Testament also believed the world to be flat, and were perfectly satisfied that the sun made its daily journey around the earth? Did they have any evidence? Is it historically absurd to say that they believed without evidence?
III.
Neither is there any intelligent being who can by any possibility be flattered by the exercise of ignorant credulity.
THE Archdeacon asks what I "gain by stigmatizing as ignorant credulity that inspired, inspiring, invincible conviction—the formative principle of noble efforts and self-sacrificing lives, which at this moment, as during all the long millenniums of the past, has been held not only by the ignorant and the credulous, but by those whom all the ages have regarded as the ablest, the wisest, the most learned and the most gifted of mankind?"