The Lost Faith, and Difficulties of the Bible, as Tested by the Laws of Evidence

by Thomas S. Childs

And you are changed. No recollections of the past that your letter has called up have impressed me more sadly than the change you speak of in yourself. You have lost the faith of your childhood. It is true you do not speak of it as a loss: you think you have gained by it. Your early beliefs oppressed you, and you have escaped the burden by rejecting belief in God and in a future life.

Let me claim the liberty of an old friend—it may be for the last time, for we shall soon both be away—and ask if you are sure of your ground. The questions are too momentous, the interests involved are too great and too lasting, to be risked on an uncertainty. You are not, indeed, sure that there is no God, but you are sure that no man can prove that there is; and you are equally certain that there can be no future state of suffering for any. Your final conclusions you have reached through the influence of Mr. ——, and you admit that his hold on you and on others has come largely through his passionate denials of the doctrine of future retribution. I have no doubt this is so. But, after all, is this decisive? Are Mr. ——'s doubts and denials more to be relied on than the positive beliefs of as intelligent and good men as the world has ever seen? I do not press this as proof one way or the other, but it is something worth thinking of before you give up for ever your respect for Christianity and the Bible.

Your letter has called up memories that will not down at the bidding. You remember your mother; you remember her life; you remember her death. The day after her burial we were sitting, you and I, under the old willow on the bank of the river—it is all before me now—and you told me how she died with her hand on your head, and how before she died you promised to meet her again. Was it all a delusion? Did she go out in final darkness? And was your promise the folly of childhood?

Will you bear with me if I recall another and a later scene? The days of childhood were behind us. We had drifted apart. You remained among the old home-scenes; I was making my way among strangers. Then one went from you who had become dearer to you than a mother. I have before me a letter that came to me out of the shadows of that bitter trial; I know you will not misjudge me if I quote its words now. Thus you wrote: "I am sure such a life cannot have ended; the possibilities of it cannot yet be finished. That soul, with all its sweetness and beauty and brightness, cannot have been quenched like a spark on the ocean.... Her last words were, 'I go with Him who has brought life and immortality to light, and who has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.'" I would not recall these early views and faiths unkindly. If they were wrong, of course you are right in parting with them; but is it certain they were wrong? And in giving them up have you found something better and more sure to take their place?

One important point I presume you have not overlooked: whatever doubts there may be as to the existence of God, atheism can never be proved. No man can ever be sure that there is not a God; he may deny that the proof of divine existence satisfies him, but that is all he can do. Somewhere in the universe, after all, God may be. No man has explored all its recesses; none has pierced its limitless heights; none has threaded all its dark abysses and found that in it all there is no God. A man must himself have the attributes of God to know that there is no God. And suppose I cannot prove that there is a God? If I live as if there were one and it should happen that there is not, I am safe; I lose nothing. But if I live as if there were no God and it should come to pass at last that there is, where am I? Of two untraveled paths, it is wisest to take that which is known to be safe.

But suppose it to be a question of probabilities. Suppose you have to choose between an endless succession of finite causes, as a man, an oak, a flower, a dewdrop—not one of which is adequate to its own existence—and one infinite, eternal self-existent, almighty and allwise Cause of all things (and some such choice sooner or later you must make), which is the better? Which is the more reasonable? If you think through these questions at all, either you must at last admit a God or you must make something for yourself that will do the work of God; and the God you make must do what actually is done now; what he will do hereafter, who can say? Your friend, Mr. ——, tells you that "all there is is all the God there is"—that "the universe is all there is or was or will be." This is pantheistic atheism; it is a mere assertion without a particle of proof; and if true, it can give us no relief for the future, as I hope to satisfy you.

By the side of this utterance of Mr. —— let me put the words of that king in the realm of science, Professor Joseph Henry. They are found in the last letter that he ever wrote, and may be taken as the final summing up of all those vast researches that have made his name the heritage of the world. They are entitled to some weight as against the statements of men who, if they can follow in his footsteps at all, must follow afar off. These are his words: "After all our speculations and an attempt to grapple with the problem of the universe, the simplest conception which explains and connects the phenomena is that of the existence of one spiritual Being infinite in wisdom, in power and all divine perfections." That is, the simplest and the best explanation of the facts of the universe is found in the existence of God. This is testimony accepted by the highest scientific authority both in this country and in Europe. I do not say that it proves there is a God, but it does prove that belief in God is consistent with the highest intellectual power. To disbelieve is no proof of a great mind.

Mr. —— eulogizes Thomas Paine as one of the greatest and best men of his age—a man "whose writings carry conviction to the dullest." Now, Paine, though a bitter enough infidel, as we all know, never so parted from his reason or his reverence as to deny the existence of God. He says with a force that, according to Mr. ——, must "carry conviction to the dullest:" "I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by searching into the nature of other things I find no other thing could make itself, and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it is that I know by positive conclusions resulting from this search that there is a power superior to all these things, and that power is God." Paine believed in God; he believed in a future life; he believed in the person of Christ, of whom Mr. —— so far takes leave of all historic judgment, and even of all respectable infidel judgments, as to say we do not know that he ever existed!

This suggests a word in regard to your questions whether I have heard Mr. —— and whether he can be fairly answered. I have never heard him on the subjects of which you speak, but I have read enough, I think, to judge him fairly. I recognize his brilliant gifts, his wit, his rhetorical power, but I am surprised that one of your natural clearness of mind should not see that he deals most unfairly with the questions of religion. His representation of Christianity is a caricature, and it takes great charity not to believe it is an intentional caricature. His treatment of the Scriptures is inexcusably unfair. If a Christian were to deal with an infidel book as Mr. —— deals with the Bible, there would be no bound to the charges of outrageous misrepresentation and perversion. His abuse of Christians and Christianity is often more like the raving of a madman than like the calm judgment of a fair-minded reasoner. What are we to think of a man who can sit down and deliberately write and send out to the world such words as these?—"Hundreds, and thousands, and millions, have lost their reason in contemplating the monstrous falsehoods of Christianity;" "Nine-tenths of the people in the penitentiaries are believers;" "The orthodox Christian says that if he can only save his little soul, if he can barely squeeze into heaven, ... it matters not to him what becomes of brother or sister, father or mother, wife or child. He is willing that they should burn if he can sing." This is enough. But what shall be said of such ravings? Suppose Mr. —— finds imperfections in the Church; suppose he finds a multitude of professed Christians that are not what they should be, just as Christ has given us reason to expect,—does that settle the real nature of Christianity? Suppose "nine-tenths of the people in the penitentiaries" were American citizens,—does that prove that American citizenship is a bad thing or make it worth while for a man to spend his life in denouncing our Constitution? Mr. —— knows there is a very different kind of citizen, and he knows that these men are in the penitentiary, not because they have kept the laws of their country, but because they have broken them. So, even if the monstrous assertion were true that nine-tenths of the occupants of the penitentiaries are Christian professors, they are there, not on account of Christianity, but in spite of it. True Christianity never sent them there, and every honest man knows that. Christianity is founded on Christ, and the required fruit of it is holiness, rectitude with man and purity before God. This is a fact that any man who wants to know the truth can understand by an hour's study of the teachings of Christ and his apostles.