Young Men; In Business

by William Guest; J. D. Wells

Look again at the epistles of the New Testament: you have here the records of churches which fell, some into one error, others into another. But these errors are such as are common to humanity. Admirable, therefore, is the wisdom whereby inspired doctrines and consolations are conveyed, not in any abstract method, but in their relation to the very tendencies of our nature. Your objection, therefore, to the Bible, that it is so human, is from an utterly mistaken impression of the mode in which revelation could be best made to men, and from forgetfulness of its deep, profound, and most precious adaptation to human life.

And here I cannot help adverting to the moral unfairness of infidelity. In a recent conference of working-men, one of them told the meeting that the history of the fall of man, in the second chapter of Genesis, was so improbable that he rejected all which came after. Perhaps the narrative is improbable to a mind intensely literal, unused to eastern modes of thought, and which cannot find the truth under those partially allegorical representations which most effectually teach the vast bulk of the human race. The same objections are urged against the sun standing still in the book of Joshua, and to the history of Jonah. I am not going to reply to these objections. Infidels do not want a reply. If they did, they would find scores. But what shall be said of the candor of a man who, because of such objections, rejects the Old Testament, which abounds in passages of the tenderest sympathy for the poor and for the suffering, which demands the most exact rectitude between man and man, and which taught a morality in those early days to which there is nothing at all approaching in the annals of Egypt, Greece, and Rome? Let me recommend you to turn to Leviticus 19:9, 10; Deuteronomy 24:13, 19-22.

See how the slavery of the nations was mitigated among the Hebrews by the enforcement of the principle—which the Grecian and Roman law denied—that it was the duty of the master to treat his servants as men, to instruct them in his own religion, and to count them members of his household. Shame on men who have in the Bible such consideration for the toilers and such rebukes of oppressors, but who ignore all this, and hold up the Old Testament to scorn because of one or two difficulties to their understanding.[3] Nothing so loudly proclaims that such infidelity is not a thing of “honest” doubt, but of a bad mind and of a bad heart. Difficulties there are in the Bible. I have studied most of those difficulties, and confess with gratitude that they have one by one disappeared. This I doubt not will be the case with them all. But to me it seems that I should deserve the contempt of man and the indignation of my Maker, if because of these difficulties, in times so remote and in usages so different from modern customs, I set aside the book which tells me of God’s profound interest in my race, which reveals my relation to a spiritual world, which has purified the lives and pacified the consciences of millions, and which has made just and considerate their treatment of others.

Miracles which bear witness to divine revelations are made an occasion for doubt by some. Let us examine this objection candidly. Why are miracles not believed? “They contradict experience.” A few years ago M. Boutigny, at a meeting of the British Association, caused ice to be produced from a red-hot crucible. Surely this contradicted experience. “They are incredible to reason.” So is the fact that the sea once covered the beds of sea-shells on the tops of the highest mountains. “The enemies of Jesus attributed miracles to magic.” The very proof they were wrought; else they would have denied the facts, and not resorted to this pretence. “They are impossible, for they suspend inflexible laws of nature.” To this modern objection I reply, there are no laws of the universe except the direct agency of God. If, then, he interposes to arrest a subject-law, there is no suspension of the law of nature; the supreme law is still in operation. For example: By the inflexible law of gravitation, a ball dropped from the top of a tower falls to the earth. But suppose a man catches it in his hand, is the law of gravitation suspended? Not at all. A controlling law is brought into operation, to which, that law is obedient. Thus you have the agency of God in miracles. Do not, I implore you, be swayed by writers who find it the easiest of all things to multiply objections when they are utterly indifferent about finding replies. Remember that in the first ages miracles must have been worked, else Christianity, with the tremendous sacrifices it demanded, could not have gained a footing in the earth, much less have changed the religion of the Roman empire. Gibbon tried his strength to dispute this, but never did a man so signally fail.

An exaggerated estimate of the strength of literary skepticism has been another source of doubt in these days. There are three writers especially to whom this remark applies. The first is Dr. Colenso. He was believed to be a learned theological scholar. Never was an estimate more false; never did a more pedantic theologian take pen in hand. What pretensions had such a man to be a guide, who more recently tried to prove that there were no accredited prayers to Christ in the Bible, nor in the Prayer-book, nor in the Presbyterian Psalter? Thirty-four instances of direct prayer to Christ were at once pointed out in the Psalter; more than twelve prayers to the Saviour were quoted as sanctioned by apostolic practice in the New Testament, and passages of prayer to the “Lamb of God” were appealed to in the Liturgy. If young men are to doubt, let not a literary blunderer like this have weight with them. At the time that the bishop of Natal’s work came out, a gentleman was commiserated on the alleged overthrow of the Bible. “The Scriptures will be extinguished now,” said the man of the world. The shrewd Yorkshireman replied: “Well, you see I have lived long enough to hear many prophecies of this nature; but the extinguisher has always been a wooden one, which the light has burnt through.” My friend’s figure has remarkably come true. Dr. Colenso had a reputation as an arithmetician; but this has well nigh gone, and his theological books are marked sixpence on back book-stalls.

In like manner have the two other critics failed to get into the world’s thought. Some years ago, Dr. Strauss sent forth a so-called “Life of Jesus.” The greater part of the gospel narratives were resolved into myths. More recently another edition came out, and facts which in the first edition were called fabulous were now given as veritable history. Is the “critical faculty” of such a man a safe guide to young men?

Later still, M. Renan, acknowledging that it was impossible to doubt the substantial genuineness of the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, presumed to patronize Christ and Christianity. And what was his conclusion? Do not start when I tell you: The Frenchman professes to believe that thousands of the most bigoted Jews, and of enlightened Greeks and Romans, renounced the venerable institutions of their fathers and embraced a religion which demanded the severest sufferings and sacrifices, because a woman under a love-spell of hallucination had fancied she had seen a young Galilean rabbi alive who was really dead! Just conceive what would now be the effect on Europe of a new religion whose fundamental fact had such puerile support. Why was it different on educated Romans? Do not say I am deceiving you when I tell you that M. Renan professes to believe that the apostle Paul abandoned prejudice, station, privilege, prospects, and braved scorn, appalling sufferings, and a martyr’s death, because he had been frightened in a thunder-storm! Talk about credulity, was there ever credulity like this? Alas, what monstrous absurdities will men believe rather than the plain testimony of Scripture! Woe to the dupes of a literary skepticism which changes its creed every five years!

It may be in addressing you, my friend, on the spirit of doubt which taints and enfeebles this age, that you have been influenced by what is deemed the attitude of scientific men towards Christianity. A flagrant and most mischievous impression is abroad that scientific men in our times are infidels. Very confidently do I affirm that it is not so. I have attended meetings of learned societies in London, and of the British Association in the country, and have heard these meetings spoken of as atheistic, when out of hundreds of scientific men there were not a dozen whose language could have justified such an imputation. Such distinguished leaders of science as Professor Owen, Professor Phillips of Oxford, and Sir Roderick Murchison, would indignantly repudiate the charge of seeking to undermine the faith of England in Christianity; and in this they would have the sympathy of an overwhelming majority of scientific men in the British Isles. Your danger is not so much in the facts science has established, as in the false notions which have been caught up of these facts. A scientific discussion would be beside the object of this address; but note these accordances between one science and the Bible: Scripture affirms the late date of man upon the earth; so does geology—Sir C. Lyell says, “No discovery has shaken our belief in the extremely modern date of the human era.” Scripture teaches that the world was once covered by water; so does geology: “It is concluded as a fundamental maxim in geology,” says Professor Phillips, “that the whole area now occupied by dry land was once covered by sea.” Scripture teaches that God made the dry land to appear; and geology affirms that the rocks, or dry land, have been upheaved from the waters. Scripture teaches that the beasts were created after their kind; that is, each group made up of a number of species; so does geology. The Bible, written for an unscientific age, has thus these marvellous agreements with science in its most recent developments. You perhaps hear of a solitary scientific mind tracing back man to a sea-shell; but another says, “The idea that a mollusk could become a fish, or a lizard a man, is worthy only of a madman, and gives but poor evidence of the progress of civilization at the present time.”[4] Indeed, there is no utterance that looks adverse to Scripture which is not met by a decided divergence of opinion equally scientific.

Turn from these questionings to the history of Jesus Christ as contained in the four gospels. The most consummate learning of the enemies of the faith cannot invalidate these gospels. Their genuineness has borne every critical test of the most advanced scholarship. The evidence for their absolute truthfulness is immeasurably greater than for the authenticity of any secular book which the past has transmitted to us. You believe that eight hundred years ago a conqueror landed in England who abolished the Saxon monarchy. On testimony better than that for the belief in William the Conqueror have you the fact confirmed to you, that eighteen hundred years ago, in a strip of fair and sunny land in Asia—a land which for two thousand years had been the theatre of events which marked it out as the scene for some grand evolvement of historic import—there appeared a Teacher from Galilee, just rising into the maturity of manhood. He unites in Himself the most unusual varieties of character. He has vast intellect and the tenderest sensibility; the calmest judgment and the keenest feeling. He is lowly, but always magnanimous; He is meek, and yet majestic; He is most compassionate to human frailty, but abhors human vice; He is despised, but never fretted; insulted, but never ruffled; never is He charged with sin, yet by a strange and precious sympathy He draws to Himself the sinful and the outcast. He is essentially human; is found at the marriage feast and the evening meal. He speaks parables which childhood can understand, and over which genius wonderingly lingers. His teaching is so profound, wise, and novel, that it for ever shades all the teaching of the wise men of antiquity. He did works which no other man had ever done. He invited all heavy-laden ones to come to him for rest, and announced that He was “the Light of the world.” During a brief ministry, over five hundred men and women so believed in Him, that afterwards many of them laid down their lives for His sake. Very soon after His death upon the cross, when he startled his enemies by the loud cry, “It is finished,” a “vast multitude” in Rome itself enrolled themselves as His disciples. This fact comes to us on the testimony of the heathen historian Tacitus; and Gibbon admits it must be received as unquestionably genuine.

This Jesus Christ we affirm to be the Son of man and the Son of God. He is the Revealer of God. He pierced to the core of human misery, while he wielded the resources of omnipotence; he wound about his heart human sympathies, but now sits at the right hand of God exalted. My brother, I solemnly tell you that to refuse to believe in Christ after the evidence afforded will violate your candor, will trample on the rectitude of your reasoning, and will bring on you consequences which you will eternally deplore. I cannot utter words that deserve comparison with those of Christ himself: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness.” “He that rejecteth me hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”