The lawyer asks, “When the missionary carries the church to the heathen, does he not present it for their rational acceptance? And if so, does he not ask their finite judgment to pass upon and accept the infinite and absolute?” We are sure our friend would argue better than this if he had a case in court on which anything of importance depended. When presented by his brother lawyer opposite with the decision of the court of appeals barring his case, would he attempt to judge or pass upon the judgment of the court before accepting it, or would he not be content with simply verifying the fact that the decision has been rendered by the court of appeals or court of last resort? We feel quite sure that, if he were on the defensive, and adduced the decision of the court of last resort barring the action, he would be very far from allowing his brother opposite to question the judgment. Nor would he as a lawyer dream of rejecting the decision because his own mind had not passed upon its merits; but, when once assured that the court had rendered it, he would accept it and submit to it as law, not on his own judgment, but on the authority of the court itself. All he would allow himself to do would be to verify the
powers of the court, in order to ascertain if it is a court of competent jurisdiction, and to be sure that it had rendered the decision. The decision itself he would not, as a lawyer, think of examining any farther than to ascertain its meaning. He would take it as final, and submit to it as law, whether for him or against him.
The objection fails to distinguish what, in the case supposed, the heathen are required to pass upon in order to act rationally in accepting the church. They would be required to pass on the sufficiency of the evidence of her divine institution and commission to teach and govern all men and nations in all things pertaining to the kingdom of God on earth. That evidence, called by theologians “motives of credibility,” found complete, all the rest follows as a logical consequence, and there is no calling upon “the finite to pass upon the infinite and absolute, any more than there is upon the counsellor to pass upon the merits of the judgment of the court of final resort after being certified that the court has actually rendered it. All that one has to believe of the infinite and absolute, after he has established by evidence appropriate in the case the divine institution and commission of the church, he believes on the authority of the church herself.
The missionary, no doubt, presents the church to their rational acceptance, and must, therefore, present to them the motives of credibility, or the facts which accredit her as divinely instituted and commissioned, and these motives, these facts, must be addressed to their understanding, and be such as their reason can pass upon and accept or reject. But the question is, Supposing reason has passed upon these facts or the motives, and found them sufficient to accredit
the church, as a teacher come from God, and commissioned or authorized by him to teach his word, is not the acceptance of that word on her authority as the word of God a “rational acceptance,” and all the most rigid reason does or can demand?
The lawyer says no; and because all authority is in the person, and resides nowhere outside of him, and therefore it is necessary that reason should pass upon the contents of the word, that is, upon the doctrines and mysteries contained in the word the church professes to teach, which is impossible; for it requires the finite to pass upon the infinite and absolute, which exceeds its powers; therefore, faith is impossible. But this simply implies that no belief is admissible that is not science, and faith must be swallowed up in knowledge, and thus cease to be faith, before the human mind can rationally accept it.
The trouble with the lawyer’s objection is that it assumes that faith is irrational, unless it is science or knowledge. His statement goes even farther than this. He not only denies that there can be any rational belief on extrinsic authority, but that there is or can be any such authority, or that any state, church, or being has or can have any authority outside of me, or not derived from me. This, as far as words go, asserts that God himself has no authority over me, and his word has no authority for my reason or will, not dependent on me. We do not believe he means this, for he is not divested of the reason common to all men. He means, we presume, simply that no state, no church, not even God himself, has any authority on which I can rationally believe anything which transcends the reach of my reason, or which is not intrinsically evident to
my reason by its own light. But what is evident to me by the light of my own reason, I know, and not simply believe. As belief is always on extrinsic authority simply accredited to reason, this goes so far as to deny that any belief is or can be rational, and that any authority or any amount of testimony is sufficient to warrant it, which, as we have seen, is much farther than the lawyer can go in the practice of his profession, or any man in the ordinary business of life.
We do not think our legal friend has duly considered the reach of the principle he lays down. Even in the so-called positive sciences, the greater part of the matters accepted by the scientist are accepted on extrinsic authority, not on personal knowledge. No geologist has personally observed all or even the greater part of the facts he uses in the construction of his science; no geographer, however great a traveller he may have been, has visited and personally examined all parts of the globe which he describes; the botanist describes and classifies more plants, the zoölogist more forms of life, than he has personally seen, and the historian deals almost entirely with facts of which he has no personal knowledge. Eliminate from the sciences what the scientist has not observed for himself, but taken on the reported observation of others, and from the garniture of every mind what it believes or takes on extrinsic authority, not on his personal knowledge, and there would be very little left to distinguish the most learned and highly educated man from the untutored savage. In all the affairs of life, we are obliged to rely on extrinsic authority, on evidence neither in the subject nor in the object, on the observations and testimony of others, and sometimes on the observations
and accumulated testimony of ages, especially in wise and prudent statesmanship; and if we were suddenly deprived of this authority evidence, or testimony, and reduced to our own personal knowledge, intuitive or discursive; society would come to a standstill, and would soon fall below the level of the New Hollander, for even he inherits some lessons from the past, and associates with his observations some observations of others.