The true and the false

Front matter

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Contents

PAGE JESUS AS A WITNESS... 6 os eee ep es ws 3 HISTORY AS A WITNESS. . . 6» ew eo « aie It PWXPERIENCE AS °A WITNESS ic) 05) 28: 00,8, ence 25 THE ENEMY AS A WITNESS... . 2 - 2 0 « « 32 SCRASON AS A. WITNESS “67/0: loo 0 5 pee ee aller, s 42 DPRPICTA YY, VEL ICN LEH IS (9.1) ols ou istic r od stim ine hal wind ee 50 MARIS THE LAGHT « sgie) le) sun eile: s)0% le) intents 54 Spree TS TT teu WAY Callin a \ al yeilia athe sae oh a ES 60 WHAT SHALL, I DO WITH JESUS?. .... 2... 65 THE CHRIST OF THE BIBLE AND THE CHRIST OF ROMAN IS Melty fa Cine seb s alias ibe tie oe ale: ogoayG 67 MAR VIA ND AOMARY 0 cio RUE OS eh eva le lesa Sifahe cs 77 THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE AND THE “‘ MIRACLES”? OMTHH PAPACY: las ati ail ela maint elie va, «Wu euipn 4 OO THE LORD’S SUPPER versus THE MASS... =. - 100 THE PAPACY DEFINED . . 1. 2 eee se eas 10g IST EN, CIRCE aN: cil a? qocta oc. as! ga: Ailes iey array om I2I PIER { VE7TSUS “THERA ROPH wh ss) si 570 Var oy shines ay es ESE Crvi1, LIBERTY AND THE PAPACY. ... «6s. 145 CONFESSION AND THE ‘‘CONFESSIONAL’”’. . . 158 THE GooD IN ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND How To CRC TANG gloat ins’ nite aOcate Siete Sciar\ el mie oN » 163

THE TRUE AND THE FALSE.

E JESUS AS A WITNESS.

II. History As A Witness

“To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs.’—Acts 1: 3.

Gilbert West and Lord Littleton agreed to overthrow Christianity by proving that the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the conversion of Paul were fictions. Myr. West chose the resurrection of Christ, and Lord Littleton the conversion of Paul. The result was that Mr. West in his effort to keep Christ in the grave was himself raised from the dead, and Lord Littleton in his attempt to prove that Paul’s vision was a myth, had a vision of himself as a sinner, and Jesus Christ a Saviour. The two friends, after their honest investigations, met to worship Him whose religion they had thought to destroy. Christianity is a religion of facts; and those who will honestly investigate its facts must, like West and Littleton, be convinced that our proposition is true: JESUS CHRIST WAS NOT A PRODUCT OF THE AGE IN WHICH HE LIVED; BUT A NATIVE OF ANOTHER WORLD WHO CAME TO THIS WORLD FOR A PURPOSE; THAT HE WAS GOD AND MAN IN ONE. We will study this morning two facts, the existence of which none will doubt; CHRISTIAN- ITY AND THE BIBLE. Christianity has been a fact for more than eighteen centuries, and it is such a fact as cannot be accounted for, except on the ground that its founder went along with it, and by his more than human power gave it success. Success in gathering followers is not of itself proof that a religion is of God. Confucius, Mohammed, and Sin have succeeded in that way. Confucius adapted his teachings to Chinese prejudice. Mohammed offered the sensual, bloodthirsty Turk a harem for a heaven, and, putting a sword in his hand, bade him fight for it. Sin succeeds because men love sin. A dead fish can swim with the current. Christianity, on the other hand, opposed the currents of men’s thoughts, appetites and prejudices. — In an age when there was no word for humility, Christ commends the poor in spirit. In an age when everybody’s idea of greatness was in rising above others, He teaches that true greatness is child-likeness, (Luke 9:48,) and that the measure of every man’s greatness is the amount of humble service he performs for the good of others. In an age when to kill an enemy was counted a great virtue, he taught men to love their enemies. He came not adapting his teachings to the spirit of the age, but calling upon men to change their minds and their characters. Opposed to one man and a few poor followers stood Judaism, Paganism, philosophy, and the natural heart. And yet in spite of these He succeeds. He founds no college, has no stated place of meeting around which to rally his supporters, puts no dependence in organization and writes not a word, so far as we know, except one sentence on the sand. ‘Lo, I am with you alway,’’ He says, and there is no satisfactory accounting for the success of his religion, except upon the ground that after his death he continued to live and do his mighty work.

As Columbus sailed into the mouth of the Orinoco river, some one suggested that it must flow from an island. ‘* No,” said Columbus, ‘‘such a river as this must drain a continent.’? And, as we look at this river of Christianity flowing down the ages, we are convinced that it flows from no little island of man’s thought and strength, but from the continent of God’s wisdom and omnipotence. ‘Do you believe in a God 2” asked a traveller of his devout Arab guide. ‘* Did you see that track in front of our tent this morning ?”’ replied the guide. ‘*Yes.’? ‘+ Well, what sort of a track was it??? “A camel’s.’? Do you see that sunset?’? continued the Arab. ‘*None but God could leave such a track as that.’? And as we trace the tracks of Christ on earth and down the ages, we believe that none but God could leave such tracks as His. If he had been a mele man,his religion would have perished soon after his death and burial. Leave out his resurrection and there is no accounting satisfactorily for Pentecost and other scenes that followed. Accept the resurrection, and all is plain enough.

Another fact open before us is the BIBLE. It is sucha Book that we cannot account for it, except on the ground that God was its author. Christianity is a Book religion. Jesus appealed frequently to the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The main object of Matthew’s gospel is to prove from the Scriptures that Christ is the promised Messiah. The sermons of the Apostles are made up largely of Scripture quotations. The trite saying ‘‘ Christianity is Christ,’? is nomore true than that ** Christianity is the Bible.’? Those who oppose Christianity, and those who would substitute something else than personal faith in Christ as the conditions of salvation, must get rid of the Bible. Infidelity and Churchism agree in setting it aside. An article of Cardinal Manning a few months ago in the NortTH AMERICAN REVIEW abuses the Bible and appeals from it to the Church; an article in the same magazine by a champion infidel blasphemer joins the Cardinal in abusing the Bible, and appeals from it to reason. Herod and Pilate are friends in their opposition to the Bible, though they disagree as to the standard of appeal. Iam not hereasachampion of the Bible. It needs none. Itis its own best champion, and has a way of taking care of itself. But Iam here to say that it is a Book of which God is the author, and like the Christ it reveals, perfectly human and perfectly divine. And I am no Book-worshipper. I love to see the Old Book tried by all the tests of criticism. There have crept into it Some spurious sentences and mistranslations, though not one that effects a single doctrine. There have crept into St. Peter’s Cathedral some cobwebs on its arches and around its pillars, but they do not detract from the perfection of the building. It still stands there a monument to the genius of Michael Angelo. Thesexton who brushes away the cobwebs simply reveals the beauty of the structure. Honest critics are the sextons who brush away the cobwebs from this grand old Cathedral of truth, and we have no fear that their little brooms will mar its granite walls and pillars.

Let us look now at some reasons for believing that the Bible is of Divine origin.

I. Irs CuArms. It claims to be inspired. *‘ Thus saith the Lord’? rings all through it, clear as a clarion. ‘‘ Hear the word of the Lord,’’ says Isaiah. (Is. 1:10.) ‘*The Lord said unto me’’ claimed Jeremiah. (Jer. 1:7.) ‘*The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel.’? (Ezek. 1:3.)

The New Testament puts the seal of inspiration upon the Old Testament. ‘The Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David.’? (Acts 1:16.) ‘*The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’’? (2 Peter 1:21.) ‘ All scripture given by inspiration of God.’? (2 Tim. 3:16.) If the men who wrote this book were not inspired, they were liars, and we have to explain how the Book which contains the highest morality ever given to earth could bewritten by asetof liars. And these bad men at the same time wrote their own doom, for thereis no vice more severely condemned in the Bible than deception. To claim that good men wrote the Bible and deny its inspiration is on a par with the claim that Christ was a good man, while he pretended to be what he was not. Either horn of the dilemma pierces through the opponents of inspiration. If good men wrote it, we must explain how good men can be hypocrites. If bad men wrote it, we have the spectacle of the best took in the world being written by bad men, who at the same time denounce themselves most unmercifully. To say that, if it is true, it does not need to be inspired is to talk nonsense, for every one knows the extreme difficulty of ascertaining the truth about anything in history or science. We must accept most statements on the authority of others; and it is very necessary in so important a matter as the relation of men to God that we should have an infallible authority. God the author of the Bible is such an authority. ‘*To err is human.’’ God therefore speaks for himself through men whom he moves to write. The purpose of the Bible is not to speculate or argue, but toreveal. Itgivesmany facts that man cannot learn without a revelation. Men, to reveal such facts, must, therefore, be inspired of God. No other ancient sacred book claims to be a revelation from God. The Bible is often compared with the Vedas of India and the Zendavesta of Persia. The Vedas, a collection of poems addressed to mythical deities, make no claim to revelation. The Zendavesta, a mass of speculations into the origin of things, makes no such claim. The Koran, and a few other poor imitations of the Bible, would hardly have thought of counterfeiting, if they had not had the genuine coin before them.

II. Irs MAKE-up. I go intoa field where the trees are planted in straight rows, the flowers in regular beds, and the streams flow in straight lines. Isay at once: ‘*Man has been here. This is man’s way of doing.’? But [ go into a forest where the trees are scattered here and there, all alike, and yet each different from the others; the flowers distributed in the meadow and on the hill-side; the streams flowing around graceful curves and sharp bends, obeying the law of gravitation, and yet free in their movements. I say at once: ‘This is God’s way of doing. Man did not plant this forest, nor arrange these flowers, nor make this stream.’’ I open a book and I see preface, introduction, everything arranged according to definite plan. And I have no doubt that man wrote it. But I open this Book and a glance reminds me of the God who made the forest, scattered the flowers, and formed the starry heavens. There is beauty and sublimity everywhere, but no garden-like conformity torule. To thestudent of nature’s works the make-up of the Bible is a presumption that the God of nature is its author.

Iit. Irs Untry. The Bible grew. It was 1500 years in reaching maturity. It is made up of sixty-six books, written by at least forty different men. ‘They differed in language, in nationality, in tastes, in surroundings. Among them were shepherds, kings, fishermen, priests, mechanics, physicians, theologians and law-makers. Some were learned, others unlettered. A book, written in different centuries by men so radically different, would inevitablv contain contradictory statements, and would indicate as many purposes as there were authors. Suppose we should select a physician from New York, three preachers of different denominations from Boston, a fisherman from Maine, an office-holder and a Senator from Washington; shut them up in different rooms, and tell each to write a chapter for a religious book we are going to publish. Would not that be a mess of a book? It would take an iron binding to hold it together. Now howisit withthe Bible? I am aware that there are some who think they see irreconcilable contradictions in it, but I have been hunting for them more than fifteen years without finding them. There is great variety, which students of nature would expect. But there is a marvelous unity. From beginning to end the doctrine of one God is taught. Where did these writers get the idea of one God? Certainly not from the cultured nations about them. Herodotus, who visited Egypt about five hundred years before Christ, said that gods were more plentifultherethan men. In India there were 300,000,000 gods. The Persians worshipped well-nigh everything that they could associate with fire or light. The cities, fields, and groves of Greece were full of imaginary deities, all of whom Rome borrowed and worshipped. And yet all of these writers for 1500 years taught that there was only one God. Contrast the character of the Jehovah of the Bible with any of the gods of the nations. Jehovah is pure, merciful and just. Saturn, the son of Time, among the Greeks, ate his own children, and, when Jupiter was born, his mother Rhea gave the hungry old father a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. While he was knawing on that, she succeeded in getting her child out of his reach. Jupiter wasalicentious, vindictive, quarrelsome wretch. He flung poor Vulcan out of heaven and maimed him for life, because he took his mother’s part in a family fracas. It was no uncommon thing for Jupiter and all his train to get drunk and make the top of Olympus hideous with their orgies. The , scenes enacted in the worship of Baal who kept thrusting his filthy presence upon the Israelites through the surrounding nations, and whom they were at times base enough to worship, ought not to be described before you. How different from these wicked, sensual gods is the God of the Bible who ‘‘ dwells in the high and holy place,’’ and ‘‘is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.’’

There is also a unity of purpose running through the whole Bible. We see it for the first time in the curse upon the serpent in Genesis, and for the last time in the ‘‘Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly’? of the last chapter of Revelation.. Its purpose is to reveal God in Jesus Christ. This thought, like the rising sun, grows brighter and brighter until the perfect day of the gospels. Side by side with this revelation of Jesus the Saviour, we have, in the Old Testament, a dark revelation of man as a sinner. This unity of teaching as to the one God, and the holiness of that God, and the coming of Christ, running through so many minds and so many ages cannot be accounted for, except on the ground that the Book has but one author who moved men to write his thoughts, and kept them from falling into the errors of the times in which they lived. Stand by the foundation of Solomon’s temple, while it is building. Here comes a stone brought from a distant quarry, and it finds its place in the building without the touch of chisel. A second stone from another quarry fits exactly into its place. This continues day after day till every stone is in place, and the glorious temple stands there complete. Do you suppose for a moment that these stones have somehow by chance been prepared for their places, and that such a magnificent building had no mind to plan it and superintend its erection? Such a thought would mark you an idiot or a lunatic. Now here is a temple of truth with stones quarried from different ages and different minds without any possibility of consultation; and it has been 1500 years in building. 2 examine it and I find a wonderful unity of purpose and of teaching. Am TI to conclude that all this came of chance? Please do not tempt me to convict myself of fitness for an idiot’s home or a lunatic asylum. Dryden was right when he wrote:

“Whence but from heaven could men unskilled in arts In several ages, born in several parts Weave such agreeing truths? Or how or why Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie?

Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice,

9 Starving their gains, and martyrdom their price.” _

IV. Irs Omissions. What the Bible does Nor say is a presumption in favor of itsinspiration. It never stops to gratify curiosity. When men write biographies, they are careful to give details of boyhood and youth. We have but one incident in the boyhood of Jesus. He appears at twelve years of age, and then suddenly disappears. The Apochryphal writers, manlike, have filled the vacancy with marvelous stories of his childish pranks of power and wisdom. There is no attempt in the Bible at the marvelous. Its simple straight-forward tone in narrating the most wonderful things is a little more than cculd be expected of men trying to establish a false claim to the miraculous. The miraculous atmosphere about it seems to be its native air. . Some one has truly said that Mohammed, Swedenborg, and Joseph Smith knew altogether too much. In their straining after the wonderful and miraculous, they show the unreality of their claims. They overshoot the mark. The dignified silence of the Bible about many things speaks for its truth.

V. Irs FAITHFULNESS. When men write the biographies of friends, they usually magnify their virtues, and minify, if they do not overlook, their faults. Those who belong toa party are careful to keep from the public such actions of their prominent leaders as they think might injure the party. Even the newspapers refuse to uncover the sins of men in high position. A poor hod-carrier gets into a brawl on a back alley, and every paper prints his name the next morning; and, if he has companions in sin, they are at once introduced to the public. But when there is a murder in a suspicious place on a prominent street, and the names of prominent men are in some way connected with the place, all we see is a few dark intimations. Their respectability covers their sins. The Bible on the other hand records, without apology, the sins of its most prominent men. Abraham, the father of the faithful, lies, and his lie is recorded. David commits adultery, and, though he is king, his foul deed is put down in black and white. Peter curses at the trial of Christ, and, though he went out and wept over it, the of good-will, quarrel and separate. Churches to-day try to keep such quarrels out of print, and if we had been called upon to edit the New Testament, and left to our own judgment, we should have decided that it was best for the infant cause to pass over such a family affair in silence. Butno. God’s ways are not our ways. He is true, not politic, and the facts, as they are, must be recorded. ‘The names of obscure sinners are not mentioned. No one knows the name of the poor thief on the cross or of the woman who was brought to Jesus for punishment. Man would have recorded them and left out Abraham, David, Peter and Paul. Now and then a man like Thomas Carlyle admires this divine way of doing things, and decides that he would like to have his own biography written after the same fashion. Mr. Froude attempts it with the result. that no other man. will make another such request for the next century; and Mr. Froude would not have done it, if he and Carlyle had been intimately associated in the establishment of an institution, whose very existence was to depend largely upon the character of its supporters.

A lady friend of mine, a constant Bible reader, handed me a list of prominent Bible characters who had committed some great sin, and asked me to explain how the Bible could be inspired withits bestcharacters guilty ofsuch things. ‘* I certainly should not have put them in, if I had written it,’? she said. Neither would I, nor you. None but God would have done it, for no one else would have felt that he could afford it. The fact that there are some things in the Bible which do not seem to be appropriate for reading in public shocks some people, especially those who would not for the world turn their own hearts inside out for the inspection of the public. If the whole truth where known about the best of us, it might be too bad for the public gaze. God tells the whole truth about men. His object is to reveal man to himself, that he may see the need of a Saviour. The O'd Testament is largely a revelation of man. God is revealed more fully in the New. Ifa good mirror reveals to us a dirty face, we need not smash the mirror to pieces. Better accept the revelation and go wash our face. The Bible is a book not so much for the public as for the individual. Like a mother, it has something to say to girls and young women, which no one else can tell them. Like a father it has something to say to boys and young men, and it says it insuch a way that every one is made better by listening. The Old Bookhasnoprudery. It speaks right out. It tells to all the things they most need to know. Its straightforward honest tone is what one would expect from its author, the God of truth.

VI. Irs INCIDENTALS. The Bible is not intended to teach science, but we do not say this to apologize for its mistakes. I believe in its scientific accuracy. Thomas Paine used to shake his sides with laughter over the ridiculous mistake of Moses in putting light before the sun in his account of creation. But now the ten-year-old school boy joins with the day-laborer in laughing at Mr. Paine’s ignorance, as they walk the streets in the almost noon-day glare of the electric light. Any tyro knows now that there could have been light before the sun. At least three thousand years before Geology was thought of as a science, Moses gave what the best geologists tell us was the order of creation and development. Long before Maury was born Solomon gave an accurate description of the trade winds. Thousands of years before the world ever heard of Copernicus and Newton, Isaiah wrote of ‘‘ the circle of the heavens,’’ and Job said, ‘*‘ He stretcheth out the north over empty spaceand hangeth the world | upon nothing.’? Even so marvelous an event as the sun standing still at the command of Joshua some scholars think is confirmed by Ovid’s reference to a lost day. The pick and shovel of the modern explorer, laying bare tablet and corner stone with their inscriptions, have given confirmation to the Scripture narratives. Dates and names that scholars could not reconcile have become plain enough seen under this- new light. Now and then some new theory is announced which overthrows the Bible. The Bible simply waits in a dignified manner until some other theory overthrows this new enemy. The Bible has been overthrown so many times that its friends begin to think it is like a marble cube; turn it over as often as you please, it is always right side up. Overthrowing the Bible by putting the lever of criticism into these apparent discrepancies reminds one of an attempt to upturn Mount Blanc by inserting a pipe-stem into oneof the littlecrevicesonits side. The old mountain continues to stand, while the guide who knows its massive weight, and the weakness of his pipe-stem laughs at the folly of the attempt, if he is not made too sad to laugh by the thought that the traveller he has in charge ought to be in a madhouse.

VII. Irs PropHeEcrss. I find in this Book the biography of a person written hundreds of years before he was born. His name and the place of his birth over which he could have no control are named. His character and his reception by the people are so accurately given by one of the prophets that his enemies, in their dispair, have claimed that this chapter was inserted after his birth, though it is found in a translation of the Scriptures made over three hundred years before he was born. The manner of his death even to the dividing of his garments among the soldiers, the piercing of his body, the kind of persons he would have as his companions in death, all this and more are given without any attempt at double meaning. The prophecies of the Delphic oracle could be interpreted in either of two ways. Not so the Bible. It speaks definitely and these definite prophecies were all fulfilled. How can we account for it? By simply accepting the claim that the God who moved men to write the book could see ahead and tell what was coming to pass, and that he moved them to write what they as men could not possibly have known. This Jesus, whose biography was thus written by the prophets, is himself a prophet. and tells his disciples that certain things would come to pass, while they could see no indications of their approach. He said of Jerusalem: ‘* The days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee ; and they shall not leave in thee one stone above another; because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation.’’ (Luke 19:43-44.)

Now has this been fulfilled? You have but to read Josephus and you will see that it was literally fulfilled, when Titus, the Roman General, laid seige to the city and utterly destroyed it. I might quote fromJosephus andshow how every clause of Christ’s prophecy was fulfilled. A writer in Johnson’s Cyclopaedia sums it up in these words: ‘* The terrible dissensions among the Jews, the unspeakable sufferings of the besieged, the agonies of the nation shut up in the walls of Jerusalem, the destruction of more than 1,000,000 Jews, the enslaving of all the youth, the entire demolition of the city, so as to leave no sign of its former occupancy—all this forms. one of the gloomiest pages in the annals of man.’? Was not Christ a prophet, when he said, ‘‘ Behold your house is left unto you desolate??? And his prophecy, ‘‘Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the gentiles,’’ was and is still fulfilled. The prophets who wrote hundreds of years before Christ foretold the doom of their beloved city. Jeremiah had said ‘‘ Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps.’’ (Jer. 26:18.) And the name of the Roman who ran his plowshare over the site of the temple is preserved—Terentius Rufus. Julian the Apostate determined to make it appear that the prophecy of Christ was false. He proclaimed his purpose to restore the temple, and it is said that the Jewish women assisted in carrying away in their aprons the dust and debris from the place of the old temple’s foundation, weeping tears of joy as they worked. But there came such terrific lightning that the workmen were frightened off, and the impious project failed.

While ancient Babylon was in her glory, a prophet wrote her doom in these words: ‘‘ Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be in- . habited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation ; neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there; neither shall the shepherd make his fold there; but the wild beasts of the desert shall be there.” (Is. 13: 19-21.) “TI will also make it a possession for the bittern and pools of water.” (Is. 14: 23.) We have but to turn to any authentic book of travels to read the fulfilment of this prophecy. The place is a desolation, shunned even by the wandering Bedouin. Owls hoot and wild beasts prowl among its ruins. The marshy pools of water and the bittern are there. It is without inhabitant, and will remain so.

Nahum prophesied that Nineveh, then in her glory, should be © destroyed by water and fire. History confirms it by stating that, after the swollen river had washed away a part of the wall, the besiegers rushed through the breach and set the city on fire.