Christianity's challenge and some phases of Christianity submitted for candid consideration

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B R.i'ai

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

I. Christianity's Challenge

Which of you convinceth me of sin?— Christ.

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength.—* Milton.

Truth is large. Our aspiration

Scarce embraces half we be ; Shame to stand in his Creation

And doubt Truth's sufficiency.

To think God's song unexcelling The poor tales of our own telling.

— Mrs. E. B. Browning

Prove all things : hold fast that which is good. — Paul.

CHRISTIANITY'S CHALLENGE.

Truth of any kind is not harmed by investigation. Truth is not afraid of investigation. If it be truth that nearly concerns us, it demands investigation — has a right to it. We have no right to ignore it, or to treat it w^ith indifference.

Now Christianity asserts itself to be the most vital truth pertaining to man. Its founder wrapped all truth up in His own personality, and boldly said, "I am the Truth." But such sweeping claim as this is not addressed to an unthinking, unreasoning credulity. Along with its matchless assertion Christianity presses its fearless challenge: " Which of you convinceth me of sin?" Its own demand is that it shall be put to the proof. It is the friend — the steadfast, changeless friend — of free inquiry. It is not afraid of the light. It addresses men as rational creatures, bound to act rationally. It appeals to men as moral agents, capable of acting in view of moral motives. It 9 2 asks no blind faith. It stands upon its reason. It appeals to the law and the testimony. It speaks as to wise men and bids them judge calmly, intelligently, searchingly, but honestly, what it says. It asks no favors because it deals with sacred things ; but neither is it on this account to be approached with prejudice.

Here are some of the words with which it addresses men: "Come now and let us reason together." " Is Satan divided against himself?" "Doth a devil cast out devils?" "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" "And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?" " Try the spirits, whether they be of God." "Prove all things; hold fast that which ' is good." It is in just this way that Christianity has always fearlessly flung out its challenge, and demanded investigation.

It has met wiih widely different treatment. Some have given it no heed whatever. Some, with no honest consideration of its claims, have laughed it to scorn. Some have so violently opposed it and made such an uproar about it, that its preachers have been obliged to flee for personal safety. Some have listened attentively and respectfully to a statement of its claims — have examined the records, consulted the evidences, searched the Scriptures and honestly tried to know what they had to say and whether its sayings were worth heeding.

Which is the wise and manly thing to do? Here is a cause that now for ages has been a potent factor in the world's life. It has done some revolutionary things. It has turned the world upside down. Something is in it, therefore. It is not to be tossed off with a sneer. It deserves at least a thoughtful attention. Surely it is rational to examine this matter. Surely it is worth every man's while to see whether these things of which Christianity speaks, are so. Come ye doubters, skeptics, half-believers, unbelievers, unsettled as to your convictions, in doubtful attitude, or neutral attitude, or hostile attitude — come, accept Christianity's challenge. Look its claims squarely in the face, and prove it to be false, or believe on its Lord. Let me name some of the grounds of its challenge, and the reasons why it is worth your thoughtful consideration.

I. Christianity is a conspicuous and widely influential fact in the world. For eighteen centuries it has had growing place and power among men. There are certain historical data in connection with it that are not now, and that doubtless never will be, called in question. They are put beyond the legitimate application of the most destructive

12 CHRIST I AXITy's CHALLENGE.

criticism. They have been recognized and acknowledged by the most learned opponents of the Christian system. They are established by all that amount and variety of evidence by which anything in .'he past is made worthy of belief. They have entered into the actual life of the best races of people. They have shaped the development and directed the currents of history. It is impossible to explain the history of the world without admitting the reality of these facts. They are just as much a part of the past as the death of Caesar, or the propagation of Alohammedanism, or the conquest of William the Norman, or the career of Napoleon.

No one intelligently questions that Jesus was a historical person, w'ho lived and died in Palestine about eighteen and a half centuries ago. The fact of His death, and the singular manner of His death, are as clearly established as the fact and the manner of any other death in the distant past. Such a man as Jesus of Nazareth really appeared on earth about the time the four gospels fix. Those four gospels contain, in substance, the history of His life. This is conceded hy all who, at this day, on the ground of scholarship and intellectual competency, are entitled to consideration. The miraculous may be denied — is denied. Strauss denied it. He charged that it was thrust into the record and associated with Jesus as myths or legendary tales, that " grew up out of the story-telling or marveling habit of the early disciples." But Strauss did not deny that Jesus once lived, and that He was the founder of Christianity. Theodore Parker denied that Jesus was God, and denied the supernatural in connection with Jesus' life and character, but Theodore Parker said, "Shall we be told such a man never lived; that the whole story is a lie ? Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived. But who did their wonders and thought their thoughts ? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated Jesus? None but Jesus." Renan denied the supernatural in the recorded life of Jesus; but Renan said, "Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. He founded the pure worship of no age, of no clime, which shall be that of all lofty souls to the end of time."

Christianity is no fiction, therefore ; no dream of an enthusiast, no mere conjecture, no concocted fable, but a fact, a palpable, undeniable fact, and a fact of a very extraordinary kind. Its history lies imbedded in the history of the world's intelligent and ruling nations. The history of civilization cannot be written without writing the history of

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Christianity. Take one point by way of illustration. Christianity's birth gave the world a new departure, and history a new date — A, D. (Anno Domini), the year of the Lord. What is that, appearing in all our dates and superscriptions, but the assent of the leading civilizations to the fact that with Christianity came a new era, whose beginning and progress should be forever inseparable from Christianity itself. Of course, there have been, and there are, other facts than this of Christianity. Mohammedanism is a fact. Buddhism is a fact. Confucianism is a fact. Perpetuated, too, these are, and influential; but only over stagnant and dead peoples. They are not aggressive facts. They do not welcome light and cannot bear it. They do not and they cannot push themselves and win place and power in this high noon of nineteenth-century intelligence, and amidst the best thought of our time. Christianity not only does this, but does more. It boldly grapples with these huge hulks of superstition — these perpetuated and hoary systems of religion, and is shaking them to pieces, winning their adherent races to its own ideas. It is thus gradually displacing these dead facts, having a show of perpetuity, by the greater and living fact — ^by itself!

2. But, secondly, Christianity claims to be a divine fact. It avows itself to be from God — his last message to men. Its calm and confident assertion is as to its doctrine, its law, its kingdom, its life, its founders, that they are divine. It boldly challenges investigation and demands belief on this very ground. " Which of you convinceth me of sin ?" asks Jesus. "If my words are not the words of God, and if my w^orks are not the works of God, then the charge of imposture is true, and I am guilty of blasphemy. But who of you convinceth me of this sin? I challenge the proof." Here is the present sphere of skepticism. Here is the battle of the evidences. Is the Christian religion from God any more than any other of the prevalent religions is from God.^ Was this Jesus of Nazareth a real worker of miracles? Did He rise from the dead? Christianity is a historical fact. Is it a supernatural fact? Scepticism no longer says, "There is no God!" Science now joins with Scripture in leaving that bold, arrogant, monstrous assertion to " the fool." We have gotten away from open and avowed atheism. Blank and utter denial of God's existence is too much for modern doubt. Agnosticism, the latest, and, at present, most popular form of unbelief, says, " There may be a God; but we cannot know that there is." Well, Jesus talks as if He knew. The four gospels read as if there were no room for doubt. Through and through the New Testament and the Old Testament is the claim that God is there speaking to men. And the Christ of the gospels, the Christ of Christianity, is represented as God manifest in the flesh. This person, this Godman called Jesus, asserts over and over His divine character and His divine mission. He claims divine authority, assumes divine prerogatives, professes to be the giver of divine life, and declares that the destinies of men forever depend on the reception or rejection of Him and His truth. The system of truth He founded, and of which He Himself is the center and soul, is called the Christian system, or the Christian religion — Christianity. It stands professedly as God's message to man.

Friends, this may be the literal truth. It may be that every thing claimed by Christianity is well founded; that God does here speak authoritatively and finally to men. If true, it certainly is worth your while, and that of every living being, to hear and heed what God has to say. Is Christianity true? Have you made up your mind as to that? What is your mind ? Is it utterly skeptical ? If so, on what ground ? Have you accepted Christianity's challenge, and instituted inquiry, and honestly looked the matter all over, so that you have not guesses, nor wishes, nor notions, but intelligent, positive convictions? That would be the manlything. That ought to be the only thing. Is that the thing you have done ? If not, don't you think the skepticism somewhat contemptible?

But perhaps you are not utterly skeptical. You have heard, however, a great deal that is suggestive of doubt as to some things in Scripture. You have heard of men making merry with the so-called "Mistakes of Moses." You have heard some very remarkable statements about the gospels. You have heard the old, clear, definite, positive doctrines of Scripture set aside, and a gospel of indefiniteness heralded as the gospel for our time, of which Farrar, with his " Eternal Hope," Matthew Arnold, with his " Sweetness and Light," and Henry Ward Beecher, with his exegesis by imagination, are the chief apostles. You have heard more or less of this and much else that is afloat in public prints and in the talk of the street, and doubts are lodged in your mind. You find yourself questioning some things — wondering if, after all, they are true. You still yield a general assent to Christianity, but it is somewhat vague and indefinite. Uncertainties have taken the place of confidences as regards many so-called biblical truths. Down in your secret heart it is beginning to be doubtful whether, after all, the

18 cheistianity's challenge.

things contained in the gospel, all of them, as from God, are really so. Take for example your thought about God, about yourself, about the future. Now Christianity claims that as to all its revelation, as to every doctrine of it, every disclosure of the divine character, every unfolding of human destiny, every promise and every penalty, every offer of everlasting reward and every declaration of everlasting punishment, it is from God. And surely, if God has spoken here, no creature of God should be satisfied with doubts or uncertainties. You ought not to be taking notions for statements, guesses for facts, wishes for arguments, and the kind of God you want for the kind of God He is. It is a matter of infinite moment. Christianity claims to be divine in all its revelation of God, of man, of sin, of duty, of destiny.

Other facts, I know, make the same claim. But they do not come to the light to have their claims sifted. Christianity does. Other religions claim to be from God. But many of them are so associated with immorality and lust, and bear such shameful and ungodly fruit, as to carry the evidence of their falsity on their face. All of them fall in with sinful nature, and flow with the current, and have no out-reaching, aggressive, uplifting vitality. They breast and turn back no tides of evil. As their adherent races rot and die, they too rot and die, and in their stagnant pools to-day they are going through the different stages of decay and dissolution. Christianity meets men with some show of reason in its divine claim ; for it is constantly rising and raising its adherent races with it. Something is in it, therefore, something possesses it, separating it utterly from everything else in this world. That something, it says, is God! Christ says that He is the truth, that the truth is the word, that the word is God. Is this false ? Then to the law and the testimony. Listen to the challenge : " Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" Is the claim true? Listen again : " Why do ye not believe Me ?" Surely it is the part of reason instantly to see whether these things are so, and honestly and earnestly to act upon them if they are.

3. But thirdly, Christianity claims to be of vast personal concern to every living being. Of course a revelation from God would be of some moment, in any event. But it might be to only a part of the human family ; and it might be only preliminary and of subordinate importance compared with other possible revelations. Christianity, however, claims to be of infinite moment, and to each man it declares itself to be of equal consequence. Christianity asserts itself to be a finality. This is its own statement. Nothing is to come after. What it settles, in the relations of men to God, will be eternally settled. It claims to be God's last message. It foretells no other revelation — forbids the reception of any other — sweeps the entire future with its everlasting settlements of reward or punishment and comes burdened only with its own struggles and its own millennial glories. Its one great promise is eternal life through Jesus Christ to them that believe. Its one great revelation of punishment is the final and remediless doom of those who believe not. The earliest theophanies were only preludes to Judaism; and Judaism itself was only a preparation for Christianity. But if Christianity be true, it is the last thing. God has nothing else with which to affect men and change their condition. This fixes destinies eternally. According to its own words, he that believeth it shall be saved. He that believeth it not shall be damned. From the judgment seat of its divine founder, the wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment — the righteous into life eternal.

And these transcendent interests and final settlements are claimed by Christianity to have relation to every individual soul. The personality of this message from God and the universality of it are alike unmistakable. All are gone out of the way, all need the redemption of Christ, all must repent, all must die, all must stand before the judgment seat, every one must give account of himself to God, and every one shall there receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. There is no discharge in that war. There is no escape from that tribunal. God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing. And there is no name under heaven whereby men, any man, can escape the condemnation of that court of last resort and be saved, but the name of Jesus. These are the claims and doctrines of Christianity. These are the revelations of Him who assumed to be God manifest in the flesh, and to come into the world that the world through Him might be saved. And I ask if they do not magnify and make clear to every mind the unutterable folly of dismissing Christianity, or doubting it, without an honest and thorough consideration. If such consequences, so personal to each and so fearful and remediless, are declared to hang on the practical denial or admission of the claims of the gospel, then nothing whatever ought so soon to be settled in the case of every living soul as whether these claims are true or false. Come, then, and let us reason together. If you have a doubt about Christianity or any of its claims — if you are rejecting any truth concerning the divine character, or vour own character, or the awards of the judgment, or the eternal future, claimed here to be the truth of God, without ever having fully and finally made up your mind whether the claim is well founded (and you may be doing this while even a member of the church) in the name of the Christianity I preach and of the Christ in whose stead I stand before you, I demand that you stop — stop now, in the midst of whatever may be absorbing your attention or engaging your thought; stop and settle this question once for all. Dare to face it — to give it instant and earnest heed. You may have thought of it before.' But you have not so sincerely and so thoroughly given it consideration that you stand with reference to it as one whose mind is made up. It is worth such consideration. It ought to have it — ought to have it now. Christianity is everything to you, or it is nothing. It is of inconceivable consequence, or it is as worthless and as wicked an imposition as was ever brought before the world.

Many of you, doubtless, are going on, yielding a kind of general assent to Christianity's divine claims, but exhibiting, nevertheless, a practical infidelity. You are not so certain about these things after all. You find yourselves possibly ohristiajstity's challenge. 23

cherishing a sort of half-defined hope that your case is not so bad, and that, even without a personal interest in the Christian religion, it will not go so wholly ill with you as some zealous preachers of Christianity would make out. Well, is it not time that this whole question was put at rest? Is it not worth your while to settle decisively your belief in, and your relation to, a fact so conspicuous and influential in the world, coming with such awful claims of authority, and making such demands upon you, and whose acceptance or rejection involves such fearful consequences, if true? Is it right, is it manly, is it well, is it wise, to dismiss this matter with an "Oh, I guess there's some doubt about these things?" Guess! Should a man be guessing on eternity?

Christianity, Christ, heaven, hell, the judgment, sin, holiness, God — these, and whether they be true or false, and our personal relations to them, whether they be right or wrong, are things to know about^ not to be doubting or guessing about. Why not determine, every one of you unsettled in regard to your personal relation to this gospel of Jesus Christ, to begin this very hour, seriously and thoughtfully, with an open Bible and a teachable spirit, to see once for all whether these things are so, and to settle once for all what you will do with

Christianit3^'s claims. What it is in the world to-day, and what it assumes in its address to your consciences and hearts, make it above all things else in the uni^-erse worth your instant and thoughtful attention. Give it that, and resolve that you will not be swerved from giving it that, till you are put past all doubt as to where you exactly stand and as to what you exactly believe with reference to this so-called gospel of God, and I am persuaded you will be found accepting ere long with an adoring and grateful heart its proffered terms of mercy.

II. Christianity's Book

Revelation is not a vain thing for us. It is our life. ■ — Westcott.

One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles from earthlj streams. — McCheyne.

Every hour I read you, kills a sin, Or lets a virtue in To fight against it. — Isaak Walton.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honey-comb. Moreov.er, by them is thy servant warned; and in keeping of them there is great reward.

. — ^The Psalmist.

CHRISTIANITY'S BOOK.

" And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." Here is Christ, the recognized founder of Christianity, going through the Old Testament Scriptures to show that they are filled with " things concerning Himself."

" But the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you." Here is a recognized apostle of Christ claiming that the New Testament, alike with the Old Testament, is the word of God. Christianity's Book is thus all Scripture, old and new. Christianity stands or falls not simply with the four gospels, nor with the records of the doings and sayings of the apostles, but also with Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms. " Search the Scriptures, for they are they which testify of Me." " If ye believe not Moses' writings, how shall ye believe my words ?" So says Christ. " The word of 27

God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God." So says an apostle of Christ. They go together. They are equally of God. The Pentateuch and the gospels, the prophecies and the epistles, the Psalms and the Revelation, Moses and Matthew, Isaiah and Paul, David and John — they all point to Christ, preach Christ, are explainable only by Christ. Make them Christless and you make them meaningless. Christianity's Book is the whole Bible. Christianity's record is all Scripture. The center of the Bible is the socket of the cross.

I wish just now to press upon your attention some features of this book. If you are disposed to deal honestly with Christianity, and to accept the challenge to a thoughtful and candid consideration of its claims, here is where investigation should begin. An appeal to the record is always in order. Christianity is to be judged by its recorded principles, by its written law, by its accessible and undeniable truths and facts. Here is the book. It is only the folly of the fool that will let Just gather on its unopened lids, and yet denounce or doubt its claims. To know the claims of any author to consideration we must look inside his works. To judge of Christianity with any fairness we must search these Scriptures.

Many read the Bible every day. Some love to read it. Some read it from a sense of duty. Some, it may be, are actuated by a vague and indefinable and unacknowledged fear that somehow it will go wrong with them if the Bible be not read. Many, in all probability, read it just as the mood takes them ; and many seldom, if ever, read it at all. Whatever may be the truth as to your familiarity, or want of familiarity with this book, I ask you now to look into it a while with me. Not a tithe of its wonders can be even named in a brief hour. No hundred books have been written about as much as this one; and no writer that has written about it claims to have yet fathomed its depths. Surely a book that has made such stir and shown such resource, that has had so much to do with the life of the world, that has been such an acknowledged power in society, that has had so remarkable a history, and that is to-day published in well nigh all the languages of the globe, cannot be without Interest to every thoughtful mind as possibly justifying to the fullest extent the imperious and profound claims of Christianity. Our brief glance at only a few of the marvels of this book may compel a change of judgment — may be enough to show that the Bible cannot be accounted for on any other ground than that it is of God I

I. Its history commands our atler^txoii. It is unique and altogether peculiar. In some of its parts it is by far the oldest book in the world — the earliest production of the human mind now in existence. We have a kind of veneration lor antiquity. We cross seas and continents to look with interest and wonder on the work of preceding centuries. But in our homes we have ancient monuments of written language so venerable that there is nothing extant to match them. Take the different parts of the Bible, and consider when they were written, through nearly a score of centuries; by whom they were written — by prince and peasant, by sovereign and slave, scholar and novice, men of letters and men without letters; in what conditions they were written — of affluence and indigence, under widely different states of society, in ages widely apart, treating subjects of limitless sweep and vast significance, going fearlessly down on record both as to the remote past and the remote future, and thus risking exposure both by scientific research and by the progress of events. And yet the authors are all found in harmony, the different parts dove-tail with a wonderful fitness, the same great object pervades thetn all, the type and the typified, the prophecy and fulfillment, the shadow and the substance, the mysterious contrariety of Messianic characteristics, and the mysterious person in whom these opposing and seemingly contradictory characteristics all meet, answer to each other in a marvelous way, and from Genesis to Revelation is unfolded the same great system of truth and duty. How did such a book get into the w^orld ? The book is here, itself a miracle. Account for it, will you, without God !

The word " Bible," as many of you know, is from the Greek word fSipMov, meaning a roll or scroll, z. e., a volume or book, such being the ancient form of a book made from the inner bark of the papyrus, or from parchment. As a plural noun — Ta Pi^lia — "the books," it was applied in the ancient Greek and Latin churches to the whole collection of sacred or canonical books; but in the English, as in all the modern languages of Europe, it has become a singular noun, to (3ij3?uov, and thus signifies "The Book." Hence, "the Bible" means, literally, T'/ie Book^ as if there were no other. So that common usage has come undesignedly to make recognition of what it is, and what God designed it to be, the one hook of the world.

This book began to be some fifteen centuries before Christ. Its first parts were written by Moses, the great Hebrew legislator and law- giver. The

32 christiaxity's eook.

Jews, of all sects, from time immemorial have held to this view. This tradition is wide-spread, persistent, most ancient and almost unanimous. Scholars, well-nigh to a man, and after the widest research, agree in this — that the first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, must be assigned to the Mosaic period and must be conceded Mosaic authorship. Do not let us be alarmed by the jingle of Ingersollisms, and get in a hurry to give up Moses. In giving up Moses we may be compelled to give up Christ. If Moses was a fraud, Christ was, for Christ endorsed him. " If ye believe not Moses' writings, how shall ye believe my words?" Subsequent to Moses, additions were made to the sacred writings from time to time, and all were held in sacred reverence by the Jewish nation and most carefully preserved. The Jews were the guardians of what is called the Old Testament, until the birth of Christ. For many centuries after, they had these Scriptures largely under their care. They copied them with most scrupulous exactness. " The deep reverence of the Jews for their sacred books, manifests itself in their numberless rules for the guidance of copyists in the transcription of the rolls designed for use in the synagogue service. They extended to every minute particular; the fjuality of the ink and the parchment; the number, length and breadth of the columns; the number of lines in each column, and the number of words in each line. No word must be written till the copyist had first inspected it in the example before him, and pronounced it aloud; before writing the name of God he must wash his pen; all redundance or defect of letters must be carefully avoided ; prose must not be written as verse, or verse as prose ; and when the copy has been completed, it must be examined for approval or rejection, within thirty days."