The evidence of faith

Preface

HE author of this volume would not venture to add another to the myriads with which the press is filling the world ol: religious thought, but for a region in that world, not unexplored indeed by minds more gifted than his, but still shunned for its imaginary dangers by many whose office it is to lead the way to its hidden treasures of spiritual truth. He believes that the unseen things of God which lie beyond the domain in wliich Nature witnesses to His power and goodness, do not require the added testimony of miracle. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned; they are revealed directly to the heart of faith. Nor has the belief which we identify with the Christian ii PREFACE.

grace of faith any other than the witness of this inner light.

The author is persuaded that the kind of teaching which this volume conveys is demanded by the present state of inquiry among serious-minded people^ and that the interests of Christianity in most of the churches are imperilled by the want of such teaching.

In the Introduction he gives public utterance to a profound conviction which has held his own mind for years ; no longer restrained by any doubts of the wisdom of such utterance. The fears of others, convinced of the same truth yet dreading the effect of its avowal either upon the weaker minds of individuals or upon the peace of churches, he dismisses as groundless. It is high time that the more enlightened of the clergy should speak the truth as it is known and believed by themselves. The suspicion, already awakened and rapidly spreading among the people, that the clergy are not dealing honestly with them, can be allayed only by a more candid admission of traditional errors, and a more careful examination of difficulties constantly arising in thoughtful minds and requiring

PREFACE, iii the instruction of such minds at the hands of those who profess to be their teachers in rehgion. The teaching so required must not be gathered alone from books, which few have time to read, and many of which are avowedly hostile to the Christian faith. It must be given by those who are appointed in the churches to be the teachers of their fellow-men, and who are supposed to have the understanding and the knowledge which shall enable them fitly to meet so grave a responsibility. The author believes that the function of teaching should fill a larger place in the office of the Christian ministry than it has done in these later years, and that the clergy w^ho are endowed with the gift of teaching should not be restricted, but encouraged in its freest exercise among the people.

In the sermons here given to the public, it was the preacher's aim to reach the average understanding of serious-minded people, and to convey to them the spiritual truth of Christianity as free as possible from the errors contained in the current traditional theology. Addressing various classes of hearers, he endeavored to clothe his thought in the simplest iv PREFACE.

language, that he might so present the truth to all ; not unmindful that the end of all truth is to lift men up to a higher plane of spiritual life. He would fain commend the Christian faith to those who cannot accept much of the doo:matic teachins; with which it is thought to be identified ; and he confesses to his unwavering belief in the Church of the future, One, Holy, and Catholic, in which liberty shall be reconciled with unity, and in which the essential truth of our religion, in its power upon the life, shall appear in its simplicity, beyond all doubting or possibility of error.

JAMES S. BUSH.

Concord, Mass.,

September 25, 1884.

Contents

Pagb

I. Coming of the Son of Man 35

II. The Scriptures for, our Learning .... 51

Introduction

T was a saying of Professor Huxlej, in one of his American lectures, that " belief without evidence is not only illogical but immoral." Professor Huxley is not often careless in the use of words. The full import, however, of those just quoted does not seem to have been well considered. The state of mind which they suppose is simply impossible. One cannot believe without evidence of some kind. The evidence may be insufficient or worthless, it may not have been seriously or carefully examined ; but if the belief be genuine, and not a false or idle affirmation of believing, it must rest upon something which has to the mind the nature of evidence. Even if the belief be nothing more than a blind assent to a theological or a scientific dogma, it has at least the support of an acknowledged authority. There are those who believed that Professor Huxley demonstrated the descent of the horse from the hipparion. The evidence was not quite clear to the minds of all who listened ; but it was received by many at the time, simply because it was Professor Huxley who gave it. He would not say that their belief was both " illogical and immoral."

But, however faulty in form, the saying of Professor Huxley conveys a great truth. Every one is in some degree responsible for his beliefs. Whether in science or religion, he is morally bound to give his mind to some serious examination of the grounds on which they may securely rest. This is none the less true in respect of the religious belief which we o,^ faith; especially in times like these, when the records of Christianity are subjected to a closer scrutiny and under a clearer light of knowledge than heretofore. The demand upon the Christian teacher to-day is more imperative than ever, to draw attention to the foundations which cannot be moved, — to distinguish between the faith which has its unfailing support in the heart of man, and identifies itself with an evidence of reality unassailable by human reason, and the religious helief that depends upon traditions which may prove to be vain, and testimony which may be impeached.

The word evidence^ in the Scripture definition of faith, is another word for proof. Faith is a persuasion resting upon proof. It is not a mere

^ EXey^o^' — Heb. xi. 1.

fancy, or imagining of " things unseen," but a strong persuasion of their reality, grounded in the perception and innermost consciousness of the individuah Insomuch that to one who has this persuasion, " the unseen things " in which he believes are as real, nay, more real, as more powerfully affecting the conduct, than the things which he sees with his natural eyes.

This persuasion is often confounded with a mental assent to the reality of things which another has affirmed or narrated ; and this confusion has been the cause of much loose thinking and writing about relio'ious faith. The child helieves in the existence of God upon the declaration of his parent or teacher. In like manner he helieves in the existence of ghosts, upon the story of the housemaid ; or in fairies, upon the tales which have exercised his childish imagination. But a belief resting solely upon testimony from without, which may or may not be valid, is quite unlike the persuasion of unseen things which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews had in mind. The proof of this is the witness within, — an inward perception or feeling of the truth and reality of its object.

No one will deny that a true religious faith must have its origin in a belief grounded in some external authority. The child listens to the story of Jesus, or reads it in the Bible, and believes it to be true. But the belief does not become faith until the grace and truth of that life divine have found an abiding-place in the heart of the child. The Christian Church, as an authoritative witness and teacher of religious truth, may command assent to her creed concerning God ; but not until the heart of the believer goes out to Him in love and longing and worship, does this assent partake of the substance of the Christian grace of faith. There is a want within the soul itself which nothing less than the God of the Christian revelation can satisfy, — a conscious law of right and duty, which acknowledges none other source but the will Divine.

Thus the faith in Christ arises when the believer sees in Plim the manifestation of the Divine in human life and character — the grace and truth which tell, more than all things visible in nature, o'f the one invisible Being whom we adore. This is the vision of faith of which Jesus spake when He said, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Christian faith, then, in this its innermost substance, ^s that beholding of the Divme character and Divine purpose in the Christy which draws the disciple to His side., in trust and love. The believer sees in Him the reality of an unseen^ spiritual life which he consciously shares, and which he 1 " Seeing Him who is invisible." — Heb. xi. 27.

is persuaded is above the conditions of this our frail and suffering mortality. He is persuaded, too, that this life has none other source than the invisible and eternal life of God. He believes, not upon the revelation of " flesh and blood," 1 nor upon any external proof alone, — the authority of frail and fallible man, — but upon the testimony of the Spirit to his own spirit, in the reality and supreme excellency of " the things unseen," — the things pertaining to the Divine character, — the truth, the goodness, the wisdom, and the love of God, — with all akin to these which enters into human life. Far transcending then, as it does, the mere assent of the mind to the truth of anything narrated, or claiming credence upon human testimony, — this, the grace of faith, will not be weakened or destroyed by a careful sifting of such testimony, nor yet by withholding such assent where it cannot rationally be given. Faith has to do with realities, both objective and subjective, which can never be discredited. The evidence of them appears in human life and character. The Christ of history lives again in the life of His disciples ; in the words of truth, and deeds of love, of all good men. Whatever belief may be theirs of a bodily resurrection, the unseen reality to them is the risen life of Christ itself. " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those 1 Matt. xvi. 17.

things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God." ^ The testimony of Jesus to the resurrection was addressed to the hearts of His disciples before the crucifixion. " I am the resurrection and the life. Whosoever liveth and believeth on me, shall never die." To whatever sifting process of criticism the Gospel narrative may be subjected, the recorded words of Jesus will find their response in the heart, and be verified in the life, of every true believer.

The lat^ Mr. John Stuart Mill is said to have spoken contemptuously of our Lord's discourses in the Gospel of St. John. Yet there are no recorded words of Jesus wiiich have so stirred the hearts of men with emotions of commingled reverence and love as the last discourse in the Fourth Gospel. Whether they have come to us in the form which the Apostle bequeathed, or, as the critics conjecture, are the redaction, by an Alexandrian disciple, of the original narrative, they no doubt convey the substance of those divine utterances on which the minds of the faithful were stayed, in the years immediately following their Lord's departure. And no human criticism can disturb the faith which they have so long nourished.

It matters little whether we go to the dialogues of Plato or the Memorabilia of Xenophon for the wisdom of Socrates. The character of the man., 1 Col. iii. 1.

embalmed in history, will be preserved in the veneration of good men forever. Nor will it be doubted that his disciples have conveyed to us the substance of the truth which they received from him. None the less secure in the heart of faith will be the testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ to Him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Spiritual sight is an act of the soul, moved upon by its innermost love. It is a gift of God that may be cherished or neglected. One who has not cherished it is simply incompetent to judge of the realities upon which it is exercised ; as the uneducated intellect is unfit to pass an opinion upon Mr. Mill's treatise of Logic. Mr. Mill gives us to understand in his Autobiography that his early education was directed by his father with the deliberate purpose of making the development of a religious faith impossible. From some of the interesting notices in the Diary of Caroline Fox the attempt of the parent does not seem to have been altogether successful. But the mournful effect of such early training may be traced in the scepticism of Mr. Mill's posthumous essays, notwithstanding the moral bias which appears in other works of his, on the humanitarian side of the teachings of Jesus. On its Godward side, Christianity, if not rejected, was received with but a dim and wavering faith. Of none the less value, however, is the tribute he pays to the efficacy of the Christian faith in words quoted by Dean Stanley : ^ "It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modern mind. And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left, — a unique figure, not more unlike all His precursors than all His followers, even those who had the direct benefit of His teaching." Chiefly from the life and words of Jesus, Christendom derives its thought and feeling of " One God, the Father Almighty." Through Him the ideal goodness is enshrined in the hearts of men. We know God by Him ; we see God in Him, — " He that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me." In the unity of the Spirit, He is one with the Father. Subjectively, this, the faith which we call Christian, has its sole support in the apprehension of these spiritual verities. Clearly distinguishable from the superstitious beliefs which have been associated and often confounded with it, it has entered largely into the ethical culture of the nations, begetting among them the spirit of filial and fraternal love which shall unite them in " one communion and fellowship " throughout the world. " That they all may be one ; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us ; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me, . . . that they may be one, even as we are 1 Christian Institutions : The Creed of the early Christians.

one : I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." ^

The conception of Christian faith which I have thus presented is a familiar one in the Protestant churches, and is conspicuous in some of the devotional writings of Roman Catholic divines. Nevertheless, it is overlaid by the traditions and authoritative teachings of both Protestants and Catholics. Bishop Pearson, the acknowledged authority on this subject in the Church of England, gives the following definition of Christian faith : " The true nature of the faith of a Christian, as the state of Christ's Church now stands, and shall continue to the end of the world, consists in this, that it is an assent unto truths credible^ upon the testimony of Crod, delivered unto us in the writings of the Apostles and Prophets^ ^ Affirming the fallibility of human testimony, and its insufficiency as the ground of religious faith, the Bishop assumes that the entire contents of Scripture are " the testimony of God." This assumption runs through all his reasoning. The distinction between a divine and a human element is quite ignored. The stress, moreover, is laid upon the recorded miracles, of Scripture, and not upon the evidence in its contents of moral and spiritual verities addressed to the reason and conscience of men. " As the Israelites believed those truths which Moses spake to come from God,

1 St. John xvii. 21-23. ^ Pearson on the Creed.

being convinced by the constant supply of miracles, wrought by the rod which he carried in his hand ; so the blessed Apostles, being so plentifully endued from above with the power of miracles, gave sufficient testimony that it was God who spake by their mouths, who so evidently wrought by their hands."

Of this conception of Divine testimony, three things are to be noted, namely : 1. It is identified with the literal contents of a Book. 2. It is limited in time to a brief portion of human history. 3. It is authenticated only by miracles, performed by men who for near two thousand years have ceased to exist. The validity then of this testimony as the ground of Christian faith must depend upon the acceptance of these three conditions. We are constrained to say that if this be its chief support, Christianity is threatened with a loss in the civilized world which will not be matched by her future gains. 1. The plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture is no longer affirmed by competent religious teachers. 2. Belief in its miracles is rapidly vanishing before the knowledge of an undisturbed order of nature in the material world. 3. Belief in a God who has ceased to bear witness of Himself, and who testifies unto men not otherwise than by the recorded miracles of a single people ages ago, will be as transient. Are the rulers in the Christian Church prepared to admit that, the three conditions above-named failing, Christianity is to be entombed among the religions of the past ? Shall it not rather be said, that when beliefs decayed and waxen old have perished and been buried out of sight, the living spirit of our religion, still animating the body of the faithful, shall appear in clearer light and mightier power to save ?

We enter into no discussion here of the possibility of miracles, nor yet of the credibility of the Scripture narratives concerning them. We simply note the fact that the implicit belief of a half-century ago is fast giving place to a spirit of inquiry which already changes their relative value among the " evidences " of Christianity, and, in the minds of many, destroys that value altogether. This fact indicates very plainly the drift of opinion, both within and without the Church, among the masses of the people no less than among the educated and intelligent. In the best religious teaching of our day, miracles, as marvels of power addressed to the senses, are no longer appealed to in proof of the divine mission of Prophets and Apostles. They have their use chiefly in the ethical and spiritual meaning which may be drawn from them. Nay, the preaching which sets them aside as " evidences," and seeks to awaken the faith of men by opening their blind eyes to the glory revealed by the Spirit in the person of Christ, finds its warrant in the words of the Master Himself : " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." Israel's hope was indeed fullilled in Him. But His claim was only to a spiritual Messialiship. No reference is made by Him to any fact external, on which such claim could rest. There is not a word of a birth miraculous. He desired a faith which had no other proof than the witness of the Spirit to His sonship with the Father ; and "as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God."

Scoffers there have always been, flouting the sacred record with its claim for a divine revelation. To-day it is the serious and reverent inquiry of religious minds whether that claim must not be made good by testimony solely addressed to the spiritual nature of man ; whether the popular beliefs must not be recast, lest they be rudely destroyed ; whether, in the interest of the Christian faith itself, the teachers of religion must not themselves remove the stumbling-block which the letter of Scripture has cast in the way.

The Church of Rome confounds the faith of a Christian with implicit assent to whatever she affirms to be true. Cardinal Newman tells us, in his " Grammar of Assent," that the instant a believer begins to inquire of such truth, he parts with his faith. The inquiry implies doubt ; and he who doubts no longer believes. It is from this confounding of faith with belief that the serious misgiving arises in the minds of many who accept without reserve the moral and spiritual teachings of Christianity, but reject some of its traditional beliefs, whether they may honestly confess the Christian faith before men. Is it not well to consider the loss which the Church may sustain from the exclusion of this class of persons ?

Faith is indeed the assent of the mind to things credible, upon the testimony of God. But the Divine witness is borne in upon the mind, not chiefly through the avenues of sense, but directly to the reason, the conscience, the heart of the believer. A materializing science can make no headway against a religious teaching which gives to this inward evidence of things unseen its true place. It may demolish the supports of a traditionary belief, whose chief ground is the authority of an infallible Church or the letter of an infalUble Book ; but it cannot touch the proof of unseen things that is lodged in the heart of a good man. If science (which is the true knowledge not merely of phenomena, but of all realities) could do this, then its antagonism to religion might well be thought alarming. In every thought of the universe God must be left out. In every attempt at moral government, the binding force of duty — the voice within, commanding what is right — must be ignored.

There are those who contemplate very calmly a change like this in the constitution of human society.

Others there are who believe that the prevailing tendency of what is called " modern thought " is in this direction. Certainly the educated intellect of the world is less religious in seeming than it once was. Priestly influence is declining, except where ignorance prevails. Men are not now in bondage to their fears, as in former days. The mysterious efficacy of religious rites is more severely questioned, the truth of theological dogmas more openly doubted ; and it may be asked, What is to be the issue of these things ? — a question of graver moment perhaps in the Old World than in the New ; for there, society having settled upon its lees, the fermentation of new ideas is causing a more dangerous effervescence. The surface more thickly crusted over with traditional abuses, the upheaval threatened is the more violent. And so it is that under the reactionary influence of the religious element we have seen conservative Protestantism in sympathy with the expelled Jesuits, and thousands flocking to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, — the clergy encouraging this popular delusion, and interpreting it as the omen of a newly awakened faith.

Alas for the future of the Christian Church if its hope be stayed upon this brief spasm of a dying superstition ! Credulity is not faith. If religious belief have no other basis than miracles, it must soon pass away, or be abandoned as the possession of a class feeble in its ignorance, and every day becoming weaker before a rapidly spreading intelligence. Nor will its interests be served by the teachers of religion who cling to this support, either honestly believing that the truths of revelation must be always thus authenticated, or dishonestly seeking by these arts to maintain a power long established, and now in danger of a speedy overthrow.^

If the truth were really known, these false or mistaken defenders of the faith have really joined hands with the materializing philosophers in the assumption that there is no better method of verifying their belief than this appeal to the senses. They both tell us that Christianity must stand or fall with our acceptance or rejection of miracles. They differ in afhrming on the one side, and denying on the other, the fact of miracles. And the fate of our religion is thought to hang upon the issue.

In the Roman Church it is an article of faith that the gift of miracles is perpetual. Protestants generally believe it was withdrawn some time in the second or third century of the Christian era.

^ It is not alone in Roman Catholic countries that the popular suspicion of insincerity among the clergy is increasing ; and it is a melancholy sign of the decadence of religious faith when the rulers of a church continue to teach what they no longer believe.

If belief in miracles is based upon human testimony, the Catholic position is quite as tenable as the Protestant. If it depend upon a ^priori reasoning, it is still stronger. For God does not change, either in power or purpose ; and there is quite as much need to convince the ignorant and unbelieving by miracle to-day, as there was in the early days of the Christian Church. Both Protestants and Catholics unite in making this the corner-stone in the whole fabric of Christian belief. And the materialist is triumphing already in the hope that, this support being withdrawn, the whole must tumble into ruins.

If the fate of our religion does indeed hang upon an issue like this, then the time is not far distant when the Christian faith will be confined to the ignorant, the credulous, and the superstitious, mastered by the tyranny of a corrupt priesthood. Christianity, to hold its place in the minds of honest and thoughtful men, must have its credentials in realities which can be verified. Its truths, to be received, must be susceptible of proof which defies criticism, and is accessible to all who do not purposely set their minds against it. They must address this proof to the reason, the conscience, and the affections of men. It is the glory of our religion, and the pledge of its perpetuity in the world, that it has within itself this proof ; and that wherever its great central doctrines are proclaimed thej carry with themselves, to good and honest hearts, the testimony to their truth.

The Church is at a great disadvantage when she fails to present this as the chief support of the Christian faith. Since the days of Paley she has been heavily handicapped, in her conflict with unbelief, by an appeal to miracles as credible upon human testimony. With the changing habits of thought which have come through modern discovery, and the freer and more enlightened criticism of Scripture, the method of Paley has appeared more and more faulty. We hear it said now, that if miracles do not prove Christianity, Christianity itself is the proof of miracles. Why attempt to prove miracles if we have the Christian faith without them ?

The late Mr. Morgan, some time president of the American Association of Natural Science, said to a friend, a short time before his death, " My heart is with the Christian religion." Notwithstanding the well-known disbelief of Mr. Morgan in the miracles of the Bible, those words were repeated over his grave by that friend, the officiating minister, as the dying confession of a Christian faith. On what grounds may such a confession be rejected by any one who claims authority in the Church to represent the Master Himself ?

The question is every day becoming a more serious one ; for the number of educated and thoughtful persons whose attitude toward the Christian religion is like the one I have described, is rapidly increasing. If they are to be denied the privileges of membership in the Church and excluded from her ministry, then must her hope of future conquests be surrendered. Her relation to the progressive thought of the world must be wholly changed. Antagonism must take the place of reconciliation, as the Church of Rome, indeed, has had the consistency to declare.

On the other hand, if the persons I have described are admitted to the Church and allowed their share in shaping its future, it is evident that the dogmatic expression of the Christian faith must undergo some change, and a freer handling of its records and formularies be permitted, without the hazard of ecclesiastical prosecution.

The issue is distinctly made between a formal and a spiritual Christianity. Already in our own communion the lines are sharply drawn between the two schools of thought, which lay the stress, respectively, vl'^qh faith and the faith, — the one representing implicit submission to external authority, the other the duty of free inquiry ; the one affirming certitude and infallibility in a visible Church, the other the promised guidance of a divine spirit of truth to the individual believer. It is not denied that each of these schools is supplemental to the other. Authoritative teaching is needful for the young and the ignorant. But the limitations of authority must be recognized, and it must itself submit to the adjustment which the ever-growing knowledge of truth demands. Spiritual religion will find expression in ritual and in dogma, but cannot be imprisoned in forms, inflexible and unchanging, without the loss of its vitality.