Foundations of faith

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Preface

One who ascends a mountain sees the landscape below changing on his view from every new point of observation. The general features of forest and field, river and plain, are much the same, but the outlines of the picture are changed. The horizon falls further away ; new mountains show their misty tops, and new realms come faintly into view. Meantime objects near at hand appear to change in relative importance ; some that were conspicuous sink out of sight, and others, which they for a time concealed, stand out in bold profile.

Increasing knowledge furnishes to each succeeding generation a new view point from which to contemplate religion, natural or revealed. In this change of view we still recognize the old staple supports of faith — arguments which will forever stand firm from age to age ; but new truths also come into view, and the old arguments give new suggestions. They change in their relative value when viewed through a changed perspective.

To-day discoveries in archaeology are throwing light upon the religious faith of our race before the days of Moses or Abraham. The researches of historic criticism, while often announcing conclusions which are hasty and ill-sustained, are also giving suggestions which the sincere and patient searcher after truth must respect vi Preface.

To-day skepticism gathers what strength it can from any new facts which are accepted, or new theories which are prevalent. The citadel of Christian faith is attacked with new weapons and by new methods. If these attacks do not imperil the faith of the man who has found experience an unassailable and irrefutable argument for his trust in Christ, they are perilous to those who are occupied still about doctrines and theories and external evidences of Christianity, who are lingering in the outer court of the temple, and have not entered into the most holy place where the divine glory is directly revealed.

For these reasons there is needed, from time to time, a restatement of Christian evidences, such as, regarding any new truths which the researches of men have brought to light, and dealing fairly with prevalent phases of doubt, may serve the need of intelligent faith.

The Bible must be kept open to all the light which can be thrown upon it. Traditional faith, handed down through the Jewish and the Christian Church, is worthy of the highest veneration, and of itself must be held as an evidence of truth, next to demonstration. But the historic critic must not be ruled out of court without a hearing.

In these pages the writer sets forth the arguments which justify the Christian faith in his own mind, humbly desiring to contribute something to the defense of the truth.

Little Rock, Ark., August 30, 1902.

The Fulfillment of Our Hopes 252

FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH.

CHAPTER I. Relation of Reason and Faith

The great truths which we hold, relating to the interests and issues of life, none of us have discovered for ourselves. We have received them upon the statement of others, and by faith in them; yet this faith is not without justification in reason. Our teachers were wiser than we; they were sincere, and their disposition toward us was kind. Our faith in them was, therefore, reasonable. It would have been unreasonable not to have believed.

But the truths which we have accepted by faith in others were not originally so received. They were the discoveries of research, the conclusions of logic, the lessons of experience. They had their proofs, and if we could know that any of them were without proofs in the minds of those who have taught them to us, we would now cast them away as things which none are authorized to believe or teach.

Faith, then, is only legitimate when it has its evidences in reason. The immediate ground of faith to us may be the authority of the teacher, but the final, sufficient, and permanent foundation must be in truths which are well established, in things which lie within the range of certain knowledge.

In the development of our minds we seek, naturally, the ultimate foundations of belief in the knowledge of those truths by which belief was primarily established; we seek to pass beyond the mere word of the teacher to examine for ourselves the grounds of the teacher's authority. In short, if we seek to be teachers of truth, we must be prepared with evidences to sustain the doctrines we teach.

There comes a time when those who have been nurtured in the Christian faith, and who have received much upon the authority of the Church and the word of Christian parents and teachers, must propose for themselves to take this step; to examine the grounds of their faith; to pass beyond the authority of any mere statement of religious truth, from whatever source, and demand the reasons which justify such statements. This they must do if they would make their faith, in the best sense, a personal conviction, and be prepared to teach it to others or to defend it when opposed.

To enter upon the study of Christian evidences is, of itself, to confess the supremacy of reason in matters of religious belief. It is, in short, to summon our faith in Christ before the bar of reason to justify its existence and its claims.

Man has no higher duty than to exercise his reason diligently and sincerely, that he may know

Relation of Reason and Raith. 3

what should be the character of his conduct and the supreme aim of his life.

He who believes in the existence of God cannot believe that he has created us without a purpose, nor can he think that we may find our chief good in disregarding that purpose. The truth is axiomatic, that to "fear God and keep his commandments is the whole duty of man."

But if one would make the will of God the rule of his life, he must study the revelations of that will in his own moral instincts, in the order of nature, and in those truths that have been verified in the common experience of our race.

If there be any revelation of the divine will separate and distinct from this, and coming to us through supernatural agencies, it must still be tested by the light which comes from natural sources. A special revelation may give us truths which the volume of nature does not unfold, but it must still be in harmony with nature's teachings. It may bring to us truths which reason could never discover, and yet it must not contradict that which reason has discovered or experience attested.

Reason has authority, therefore, to examine that which claims to be a supernatural revelation from God, and to accept or reject the claim as the evidence may justify. Indeed, to make such examination is the bounden duty of every seeker after truth. It is only by such an examination that a strong and sincere faith can be established.

If it be objected that this view leaves divine revelation to be judged by human reason, we only answer that there must be within us power and authority to judge, else there can be no judgment; and if no judgment, no conviction and no faith. We take the ground, unequivocally, that there can be no faith contrary to reason. Your faith may be at some points contrary to my reason, or my faith may be contrary to your reason, and the faith of us both contrary to right reason; yet we maintain, without the slightest misgiving, that in each individual mind faith and reason must be in harmony, and that no man can believe what his own reason contradicts.

That we may not be misunderstood at this vital point, we grant that spiritual life has its own testimony of spiritual things; that it passes into realms of experience all its own; and that what appears to the carnal man a faith against reason may be, in truth, a faith based upon a higher reason than he has attained to. As the astronomer has conceptions of the universe which are beyond the thoughts of the clown, so to the mind that is wont to contemplate spiritual things, and to the moral nature prepared for the highest spiritual experiences, truths appear which lie beyond the faith of such as lead an earthly, sensuous life. Thus it is that God manifests himself to his own as he doth not unto the world.

Faith reaches beyond all the demonstrations of reason. It is the outlook of reason from that little territory which she has been able to compass to

Relation of Reason and Faith. 5

the boundless realm of truth beyond. In order to be assured of a thing as existing, it is not necessary to take its measure or determine its distance. Faith apprehends that which is too vast to be bounded and too shadowy to be defined. It looks at the spiritual and the infinite as men look upon the dim outline of a great continent seen far across a channel or strait ; and some are confident, and some doubt, and some declare that they cannot see anything at all. But the indistinctness is not vagueness; it is orly distance, and the cloud is in the eye of him tha^ doubts, and does not wrap that distant shore. Men of stronger vision catch a view — a faint and far-off view, but it is enough for assurance. If challenged, they could not define clearly between theAlue of the ocean and the mountain coast, and even their proofs would not serve dimmer eyes than their own; and yet they know, beyond a peradventure, that land is there. Their assurance has its substantial evidences, and those evidences are based on experiences of things more defined and objects nearer at hand. They have looked upon the mountain range, which an inexperienced eye would have mistaken for a cloud bank, and they have marked and studied the perspective of distance. They have grown accustomed to viewing objects at sea. From jutting headlands, or the decks of ships, they have seen the island coast and the outline of the promontory. They see and know. They are assured, but cannot convey to others fully the evidences which satisfy themselves. They know for themselves and not for another.

Such is faith, and such its relation to things which we are wont to say are known because they can be verified. It will be seen that the legitimacy of faith is to be tested by things known. There must be a harmony between that which is believed and that which can be proved.

We have a certain range of knowledge which comes to us through our natural capacities and the objects of nature about us. This knowledge a divine revelation cannot disregard. Indeed, we can only feel the authority of such revelation when we find that what it reveals is so linked in harmony with what we know that we cannot neglect the teaching of this revelation without our own intellectual confusion, and without rejecting the very basis of knowledge.

Our unaided sight makes us familiar with many things. But there are worlds of which we would scarcely dream without the telescope or microscope. One who has no .knowledge of the microscope or the wonders it reveals will laugh at the thought that there are myriads of living creatures in the sparkling water-drop. He holds the clear water in the sunlight, he tests it with his eye, and says, "They are not there." But you adjust the microscope, and bid him look. He sees now the myriad life. Will he say, "This is a delusion; I will not believe that this glass brings me a new revelation"? You will show him then that this glass is

Relation of Reason and Faith. 7

constructed with strict regard to the laws of seeing. You will show him that it does not distort vision, but aids it. Now, since the laws of seeing are not violated by this instrument, you will show him that he must accept its revelations or disbelieve those laws. If he does the latter, he is compelled to go back upon all that his natural sight has shown to him, and to distrust it. Then is he plunged into utter skepticism, and compelled, in order to deny the microscope, to deny the testimony of his unaided senses.

Such are the relations which must subsist between natural and revealed religion. We must find, as the only sufficient reason for believing the Bible, that we cannot logically disbelieve it, and that we cannot reject its doctrines and teachings without our own utter confusion in regard to the conditions of knowledge and our conceptions of moral truth.

These suggestions will indicate the method of our inquiry.

Chapter II

Existence of God — Belief in God Essential to Philosophy.

To begin to reason assumes some unquestioned truths by which reason must be guided. It is in vain that we draw out the links of logic with hope to reach and bind any conclusion if the hither end of the chain be not fastened.

Mathematics must have its axioms, and so must philosophy; and these axioms the mind must supply out of itself. These axioms of reason we call intuitive ideas. These ideas which we call intuitive are the ideas of causation, eternity, infinity, and the absolute.

We do not insist that these ideas, or any defined ideas, exist in the mind of a child at its birth. Neither will we deny that it is the function of the senses to awaken the mind to action. Perhaps without some sort of sensation even self-consciousness would not be reached. Sensation gives us facts of the outer world, but the mind supplies out of its own endowment truths in respect to which all facts must be considered, and furnishes thus the laws of thought by which the material furnished by sensation is taken up and made to conduct to conclusions, the result of reflection and reason. If we had naught but sensation, the mind would receive passively, as a mirror, the ever-fleeting reflections of (8)

Existence of God. 9

outer objects, but would be taught no lessons, and could form no theories or systems of thought, and reach no conclusions. The mind is furnished in its own endowment with the power of reasoning from the facts which sense reveals.

That any truth may be accepted as intuitive, it must be such as is born in the first labor of human thought, always present and necessary in our thinking, and so, uniform and universal in the processes of human reasoning.

We have said causation, eternity, infinity, and the absolute are intuitive ideas. It is impossible to separate from our thought of things the idea of cause. Reason proceeds upon that idea, and upon it only can proceed, whether we move forward or backward, considering what will result from things we see or what they have resulted from. Nothing which we behold is taken, or can be taken, to be original and uncaused. Reason seeks the cause of things; and accepting all that now appears as both result and secondary cause, it also, upon the idea of causation, seeks the consequences of things.

Again, things transpire in time. But limit to time is inconceivable. Whatever duration is measured, it cannot be thought of as the beginning or end of time. We think of the beginning and end of life, the beginning and end of worlds. Time, as the measure of a certain order of events, has beginning and end. So, at the consummation and close of a dispensation the seer of Patmos heard an angel cry, "Time shall be no more!" But before

IO Foundations of Faith.

this earth existed eternity was, and beyond eternity. It is impossible to think otherwise.

We see things in space, but we can no more limit space than time. We extend the material until we contemplate worlds from which the swift messenger, light, requires thousands of years to reach our earth. Then thought doubles and trebles the distance, and deems itself no nearer the bound of space. Since space bounds all things, we can only think of space as bounded by space. Therefore that space should have limits is unthinkable.

So of the absolute. We cannot contemplate any excellence without the thought of the more excellent. Power under any limitations suggests greater power; goodness under any limitations suggests greater goodness. From the conditioned thought flies forward to the unconditioned, and recognizing the wise, the good, the strong, reckons that these have their fountain in the all-wise, the all-good, the almighty, the absolutely perfect.

It can hardty be allowed that in order to be accepted as intuitive these ideas should always be logically confessed in every system. A false reasoning may deny the only premises upon which reason can build, and so end in annulling reason itself. Agnosticism is not philosophy, but the denial that philosophy is possible; it is not reason, but the distrust of reason which accepts no conclusion. In order to justify itself, it must prove that nothing can be proved. It is not the normal condition of any mind, but a perversion of mind.

Existence of God. n

We return to the idea of causation, and state that this idea of cause, which is inseparable from all processes of thought, is the root idea of a God, a great First Cause, Creator and Ruler of the world. This idea of a God has been conspicuous in all the history and development of human thought. The idea of causation has clothed itself with personal atributes and powers according to the capacity of the human mind in its various stages of development where no light of divine revelation shone. It is therefore often stated that the idea of God is intuitive, and the statement is often contradicted. But certainly no one would speak of the idea of God, as revelation gives it, or as philosophy has developed it, as intuitive. Such a statement could not be made to include anything which has been added by logical development or revelation to the original and essential idea of cause. To say, on the other hand, that the very existence of the atheist and the infidel refutes the idea that the thought of God is intuitive, is to misrepresent the claim. The refutation to be valid must be directed against the root idea of causation, and it must show us a mind with normal capacity and development in which that idea of cause has not arisen or is not accepted.

The idea of a great First Cause has no history in human thought. It has no history in the individual mind. Atheism has never been found to be the natural or normal attitude of human intelligence. As to the root idea of God in causation, none have been found originally denying it, nor can it logically be denied; and, as we have seen that the idea of cause has always clothed itself with personality in the mind of man in his primitive state, and that besides this the ideas of the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute are fundamental in human thought, we may safely say that the idea of God is intuitive — not the God of revelation, or of philosophy, for all ideas of God are less than the true and perfect — but the germ idea of an intelligent Agent, enthroned over the powers of nature and the destiny of man. Luthardt rightly declares: "An intuitive conviction of God dwells in the human mind. We can by no means free ourselves of the notion of a God. We cannot think of ourselves, we cannot think of the world, without involuntarily connecting therewith the idea of God. Our thoughts hasten past the visible and the finite toward a supreme, invisible, infinite Being, and cannot rest till they have attained this goal. We are obliged to think of God. Consciousness of God is as essential an element of our mind as self-consciousness.

But primary truths, furnished by intuition, must bear the test of logic. They must be found to be in harmony with legitimate conclusions drawn from any premise established, or any facts which reason can accept as such. Not capable of direct demonstration, they must still be incapable of refutation, or even of being rendered doubtful. All truth should support them, and every point of view reveal them. That a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, is not capable of direct

Existence of God. 13

geometrical demonstration, but any other position is capable of being refuted. Thus it must be with the foundations of our faith.

The belief in God is fundamental in true philosophy or any system of morals. If not first in chronological order among the conceptions of the human mind, it is first in its logical relations to all religious or moral ideas and convictions.

It is often stated, even by theologians, that the existence of God is not capable of proof, and is, therefore, a subject of faith, rather than of positive knowledge. This statement is often misconstrued, as if the idea of a God had not adequate support. The agnostic uses it as if it were an admission fatal to the Christian's faith. He says, "No man knows, or can know, whether there be a God or not." But we undertake to provethat faith in Godis necessary both to the intellectual and moral world, and that the denial of this great truth would be the denial of all knowledge. We undertake, in other words, to prove either that we know that there is a God or that we cannot know anything at all.

I begin with the recognition of intelligence — the power in man of perceiving and knowing truth. To deny this is to despair of knowledge and to conclude that nothing can be known.

I am, then, an intelligent being, and capable of knowledge. What is that, then, which I call knowledge? and by what process attained? What I call knowledge I have gathered from the world about me; but on what conditions? Can I find knowledge where it is not? or can I gather thought where none is expressed? or can that which is not the expression of intelligence convey intelligence to me?

I take up this book. It bears the name of Shakespeare. I peruse its pages. My mind is informed; thought is awakened; knowledge is communicated. But I get out of this book only the thought that is expressed in it; and the book itself does not think. It stands as a medium through which intelligence reaches me from another mind. It is from that mind I am instructed. My own intelligence is developed, instructed, only when I am put in communion with intelligence elsewhere. I can gather no thought, no knowledge, where they are not expressed.

I now ask, Whence have I gathered, primarily, all that I call knowledge? From the book of nature. Whether it be of science or of experience — of whatever character my knowledge may be — I have gathered it from this source, or it has been gathered for me from this source by others. But has any study of nature conveyed actual knowledge to me? I answer, Not unless knowledge is there expressed. I can read in the book only that which is there written. A chaos without law or order, and where no relations are fixed, no causes apparent, no sequences established, would convey no knowledge to the human mind, because it would have no suggestion of knowledge in its arrangement. Only where order, purpose, and law are

Existence of God. 15

manifest can knowledge be gained. The work of nature can inform my intelligence only upon the condition of being itself an expression of intelligence. If I miss the idea of design and law in nature, it teaches me nothing. Indeed, I must recognize purpose there, or turning back upon that -which I call my own reason, as also a part of this order of nature, regard it too as without purpose or end. If I claim any knowledge, it is only such as nature reveals. But nature reveals neither intelligence nor knowledge, if it be not a product of intelligence, if intelligence have not written its record upon it everywhere.

We conclude, then, that no other proof is needed that nature is the work of intelligence than this, namely, that nature is intelligible. If nature conveys intelligence to me, it is because intelligence is expressed in it; and if intelligence and knowledge are not expressed in nature, what I have been wont to call knowledge is a delusion, and I know nothing. Cut off from any fountain or source of intelligence, what I call my own intelligence has no longer any purpose or meaning. An eye upon which no light ever falls, an ear upon which no sound-wave ever beats, such were a faculty of intelligence to which no intelligence appeals in all the works of nature. Thus it is that I dare assert that I know there is a God, or else I know nothing. Looking forth upon a chance world, where no intelligence is expressed, I must confess that knowledge is impossible.

Chapter III

The Existence of God — Belief in God Essential to Morals.

In the preceding chapter we proved that the idea of an intelligent First Cause is a necessity of philosophy, by showing that it cannot be rejected without confusing all our ideas of knowledge and plunging us into despair of knowing anything at all. In this we consider the relation of the idea of God to our conceptions of moral obligation.

Man is a moral being. He instinctively recognizes himself as such. In this sense of responsibility moral nature is only self-conscious — only recognizes itself as existing; and, surely, without such recognition of itself, it could have neither function nor existence.

None are so bold as to deny that man is a moral being. The maddest skeptic must acknowledge the obligations of truth, integrity, purity. Actions must ever be, to our thought, good or bad, and we must still distinguish the base and the noble in character. Our ideas of government, also, rest upon the conception of responsibility to moral law, and can only be justified by such a conception.

Now, it is sufficient to point simply to the practical fruits of this idea to prove that it represents that which is real and abiding. The welfare of states, of societies and individuals, is secured by (16)

regard to what we call moral laws. That which is found to be for man's highest good — demanded by his nature and the conditions of his state — can never be false. It is to him a thing to be believed and regarded. Experience itself fully proves to man that his idea of moral obligation is not a delusion, but that in what he calls moral obligation he has found the fulcrum upon which human destiny is turning.

But moral obligation logically demands moral government. The moral sense is, indeed, a sense of responsibility to law; not springing from a previous conception of law, but prompted by a law within, and demanding the idea of a law external as the only explanation of its existence. Without the idea of accountability, no sense of obligation can exist. They are correlated.

Man cannot regard the ideas of right and wrong as representing nothing but himself. Right and wrong must have some other source than man's own will. If we stop with the human will alone, moral obligation is nothing. Man making laws for himself is only proposing to follow his own pleasure. Can that which originates in the human will bind the human will? No sense of obligation is felt, save as we recognize a power and authority above us — conditions of well-being, under which we are forever bound.

Legislatures establish statutes which regulate the methods of business and the processes of administering justice. But no legislator thinks of 2 himself as the author of moral law. He only confesses and expresses it; he does not create it. Moral law is from above. If drawn forth from his own consciousness, or from his experience, man still recognizes it as the handwriting of God upon nature. Moral obligation is only confessed, not created, in human legislation. But the idea of such obligation can alone give birth to laws and governments.

Even the ten commandments, the oldest written moral code, and that which is still received as the most perfect, did not come to men as the establishment of obligations which did not previously exist, or as the revelation of duties before unknown. And it is fair to state that, if the decalogue itself were reversed, so that we should read, "Thou shalt kill," "Thou shalt steal," "Thou shalt bear false witness," no man could receive it as declaring the will of the Creator.

There is a heart -written law which no revelation can ignore. As no human being can hold himself to be the author of moral law or to have done any more in his moral teachings than give expression to obligations which rest upon all men and which all consciences must feel, so, in the administration of law, it is always assumed that there are fundamental moral convictions which need not to be taught, which belong to all men, and of which none are ignorant. If one have signed notes or obligations ignorantly, the law will admit the ignorance in his defense; but if the act in question have reference to any general moral principle, no plea of ignorance will avail. If the murderer should plead, and even make it appear, that he did not know that the State had any law against murder, it would avail him nothing. He would be dealt with just as any other murderer, and that because it is assumed that the law, "Thou shalt not kill," is written upon the hearts of all men. Thus are our ideas of moral obligation separated from all human legislation. So clearly do they stand as relating us to some Power above ourselves, which, in all our conceptions of morals, we only confess and seek to regard.