Questions that trouble beginners in religion

Front matter

BY THE REV. GEORGE W. SHINN:

Manual of Instruction upon the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels for the Christian Year. 208 pp., i8mo, boards, 30 cents.

Manual of Instruction on the Prayer-Book. 169 pp., i8mo, boards, 25 cents. Cloth, extra, 75 cents.

Contents

PAGE.

Preface 5

how do we know that there is a god ? ii

Preface

By beginners in religion are here meant persons, young and old, who are seriously inquiring what those things are which they must believe and do, and why they should believe and do them.

Young people are likely to reach a point in their experience when they say: "You tell us that we must believe in God, that we must cling to Christ as our Saviour, that we must attend public worship and do various other duties; but we meet people who do not believe as you tell us we must, and who are living in neglect of these duties. What good reasons are there that we should accept the doctrines which some reject, and why should we do the duties which so many ignore ?"

Sometimes parents and teachers are startled when they are thus called upon to defend the views they have taught, and, it may be, are perplexed to know what to reply.

The course taken is not always judicious, for the young inquirer is sometimes censured for doubting, or is appealed to not to desert the faith of his fathers.

PREFACE.

The fact is he may have no desire to desert that faith, nor is he willingly a doubter, but his mind is growing and he needs a reason for what he has hitherto taken simply upon the authority of others.

Possibly he has come across something in his reading which has disturbed him — some denial of an important point or some explanation with which he is not familiar.

He may have heard opposing views stated where he supposed that but one view could possibly be held ; and these views too are expressed by people who are beginning in various ways to have influence over him.

The case of such a young person is worthy of most careful consideration and demands the most judicious treatment.

If his questions are not answered he may conclude that they cannot be answered, and he may thus be driven into the very condition of doubt and denial which he should be helped over.

If his questions are not well answered he sees the weakness of the replies given, and is led to regard religion as settled upon a very insecure foundation.

Patience, tact, and wisdom are needed by the parent or teacher, when the young inquirer reaches his questioning stage that he may be convinced that the religion of Christ is indeed from God, and that it claims his acceptance.

PREFACE,

But there are older people who may be called beginners in religion. They have gone on year after year interested in other things, absorbed in business, laden with many cares, or perhaps have been eager in pursuit of riches and pleasures of this life, but there comes a period when they awake to the importance of religion. Perhaps they meet with some affliction, the home is broken up, the family is scattered, some loved ones are called away from earth. The unseen world becomes more real to them as they stand in the presence of their sorrow, and they would know the why and the wherefore of the doctrines and duties which are pressed upon their attention.

Probably some persons in adult years are led to give attention to religion by the simple fact that they find the world unsatisfactory. They are disappointed, and begin to ask, " Is there not something better than this?" but when the different points of the Christian faith are brought before them, and its duties are made known, they are filled with questionings, and would see that the new path is a good one and safe before they can walk in it.

For one reason and another men are arrested at almost any stage of their life by the claims of Christ's religion.

Afflictions, disappointments, remorse for sin, and many other causes, lead them to wish to

PREFACE.

know why Christians find comfort in their religion, and why they can look forward hopefully into the future.

It is not for a moment believed that this little book will help every one through his questionings, and completely satisfy him ; but it is offered as a help to the young beginner, when he would know why we believe and do as we do, and to the older beginner when, for any reason, he would examine the claims of Christ's religion upon him. The topics treated follow the order of the articles of the Christian Faith as contained in the Apostles' Creed, so that with the questions appended to each section the book may serve as a text-book for use in schools in connection with the other Manuals in this series already published. Grace Church, Newton, Mass., February, 1882.

I. How do we Know that there is a God?

There are two principal ways of knowing a fact. We may perceive it by our senses, or we may become so convinced by many other considerations that we accept it.

When then we are asked how it is that we know there is a God, we cannot say that we have perceived Him by our senses, but we reply there are many considerations which when taken together make us just as sure that God exists as if we were looking upon Him with our eyes, or listening with our ears to His voice.

NOW WHAT ARE THESE CONSIDERATIONS?

i st. The first one is this: Belief in the existence of a God is universal.

Cicero long ago said, " There is no people so wild and savage as not to have believed in a God, even if they have been unacquainted with his nature. We know now nearly all, if not all, the races and nations that dwell on the face of the earth, and we find that however much they differ in intelligence, there is in all of them a belief in some Higher Power.

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" However degraded some races may be, they yet retain some ideas of Deity."

But objectors have said that the thought of Deity is a remnant of superstition and barbarism, and that when a race emerges from its low condition to a higher one it loses its belief in God. This view, however, is not borne out by the facts, for you find that the most cultivated nations of antiquity kept up the rites of religion, built temples for the gods, and maintained worship of the Higher Powers; and, however far any nation on the face of the earth to-day has gone in civilization, its recognition of Deity has been retained.

It is very true that w r ith advancing intelligence nations have changed their \iews of Deity, and have adopted higher and purer doctrines instead of the crude notions once held, but this only confirms the position here laid down that belief in Deity is universal.

There have been individuals in different ages w r ho have denied God's existence, and have sought to prove the falsity of the particular views held by those about them, or have in some cases tried to show that any belief in Deity is erroneous, but they have never succeeded in having their notions adopted by any considerable number of men.

It has been impossible to devise any system of Atheism that would stand from age to age.

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In our day a new form of Atheism begins to assert itself. It is known as Agnosticism.

Its main point is that we cannot know of a certainty anything about God and spirit and futurity, and therefore we are not to trouble ourselves with such thoughts, but simply to be concerned with the things that we are " sure of." Another class of Atheists, called sometimes the Materialists, labor to explain away everything that belongs to the spiritual world, and to make man merely a compound of matter, a collection of atoms acted upon by different forces. According to them the soul is only another name for a part of the body, the brain, the molecules of which are moved by external forces and produce the results which we call thought and will.

These men say, " We have swept the heavens with our telescope and we cannot see God, we have penetrated the depths of earth and we find him not; all we can see is matter and force."

The error at the basis of Agnosticism and Materialism is in assuming that we can know nothing except through the senses, and it refutes itself so soon as it speaks of " force," for who shall define what " force" is ? And indeed upon the very ground of the Materialist there arise questions quite as perplexing as those he labors to set aside, for how can he account for the origin of matter and force ? Out of what original impetus did matter arise ? What is the primal cause for the existence of matter ? What is force ?

Is it not far easier to accept the universal belief that there is a God than to accept the contradictory suggestions of the few who deny God's existence ?

When we try to account for this widespread belief in the existence of God, there is brought to view the fact that the human mind has certain intuitive conceptions, and this is one of them.

By intuition we mean the mind's recognition of the truth of things the moment they are presented, and among these intuitive conceptions are time, space, substance, right, wrong, and cause. So soon as the thought of God is brought before the mind it is found that the mind grasps it. More than this, we are obliged to think of God, for the questionings that arise within us lead us on step by step, past the visible and the finite on towards a Great First Cause.

2d. A second reason for believing that there is a God is the evidences of design in the world about us.

" How do I know that it was a camel, and not a man, that passed my tent last night ?" asked an Arab ; and he answered thus, " Because I saw the foot-prints of the camel in the sand."

The evidences of design we see in the world indicate the work of an Almighty and All Wise Being.

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IS

The harmony of the works of creation is manifestly the result of arrangement and contrivance and predetermination, and of a Contriver who must be absolutely without limit as to His resources and the wisdom to apply them to the ends he designs.

The evidences of contriving skill are found in everything we examine, whether we study the mechanism of the human hand, or sweep the sky and watch the motions of a planet.

It is observed in minute things as well as in great, so that in no direction can we turn without beholding such an adaptation of means to ends that we must infer wisdom and power back of them.

Men have sometimes said that it was chance and not contrivance that governed these matters, that things came to be as they are simply by chance, just as one might throw a handful of letters of an alphabet on a table, and they would come together by chance to form a page of a book.

The very suggestion of such a thing shows its absurdity. But let us admit for argument's sake that a man might have his handful of letters of an alphabet, and that when he threw them on the table, they might group themselves to form the page of a book. That might be done once, let us admit for the argument's sake, but when we are told that every time he threw out the letters, they grouped themselves into the words of a book, we see how beyond belief the suggestion of chance is as explaining the orderly work that ever goes on in the natural world. If it were chance why do not the apple trees bear peach blossoms some years, why do not the rivers run up hill, and the birds sometimes swim under the waters of the sea ?

But, says the objector, " I do not mean that it continues by chance, only that it began so, and has become fixed." Fixed ; that means according to a law. When did the law begin ? At what stage ? Why not in the beginning as well as at any other point ? And if a law, who impressed that law ?

It involves endless absurdities to explain all of these wonderful adaptations of means to ends by saying that they came by chance.

Napoleon is reported as having said, " I look at this universe, so great and vast, composed of so many parts, and so magnificent ; and I say to myself that it cannot be the production of chance, but must be the work of some unknown Being who is almighty, and who excels men in the same degree as the universe does your finest works of art."

It has been claimed by some in recent times, that a very serious blow has been given to this argument from design by the new theory of Evolution or Development.

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This theory simply stated claims that forms of being are evolved one from another, the higher being developed from the lower, and that this evolution can be traced back and back to the primordial germs.

The most familiar shape in which this theory comes to us is with reference to our own species. Man, it is said, is not a separate creation, but is a development out of the lower forms of animal life, the links going on back to where you cannot tell the distinction between animal and vegetable.

This view is of course only a theory. It is as yet without such proof as to make it even probable ; but suppose it were proven that the theory of evolution were true, would it destroy our argument from design ? Would we have to say that this, theory had rendered our argument valueless ?

Not at all, for whether beings were developed link by link from germs, the higher forms rising out of the lower by slow degrees, or whether there were new creative processes at different stages — it is all the same so far as this point is concerned, for if the germ theory be true, then in the germ were its future possibilities, and as they were attained step by step they proved the wisdom and foresight and skill of Him who made the germ.

3. A third reason for believing that there is a God is the existence of conscience within men, by which they have a sense of accountability.

l8 QUESTIONS THAT TROUBLE

There is nothing we feel more certain about than of the existence of conscience. We know that it approves right things and that it condemns wrong things. We may be mistaken as to whether a particular thing be right or wrong, but that does not alter the fact that man has this faculty within him, and it is a powerful faculty. It is independent of our wills. We do not command and direct it, but it commands us. It corrects us. It punishes us. But where does it get its authority ? We call it a faculty within us, but we did not create it. We can, it is true, educate it, but we cannot make a conscience. It is already in us, and speaks to us upon moral questions — whether we want to hear it or not, and with authority too. Whence this authority ? Why should a man's conscience say to him, u You ought to do this," or " You ought not to do this," or " You did very wrong when you did so and so, and you are responsible for it"? Whence this authority ?

There is no way of accounting for it unless you suppose the existence of a Supreme Lawgiver, an ultimate authority Who has given conscience its province and its power.

The fact that there is this voice in us points to a Being who has implanted it, an Arbiter upon all moral questions, and to Whom men are responsible.

Cicero said, " The moral law was not devised

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by men, but is an eternal law. Its ultimate basis is God who commands and forbids. And thus law is as old as the mind of God himself. Hence the law upon which all obligation is founded is truly and pre-eminently the mind of the Supreme Divinity."

Tertullian described conscience as "a mind naturally conscious of God." Yes, of Him as decreeing what is right, and of holding men responsible for what they do.

It is sometimes said that conscience never gives us any intimation of the existence of Deity, but that it is simply the wisdom that men have accumulated concerning the injurious effects of evildoing, and the benefits arising from well-doing; that, in other words, conscience simply records the sage conclusions of men as to what is expedient.

But this view cannot be correct, for the existence of conscience is seen in very early life, before there is any reasoning or study on the part of the child ; and conscience is found in men so remote from the opportunity of gaining the knowledge of othei men's experiences that it appears to be an independent experience of their own.

There is no possibility of explaining away the existence of this moral faculty. It is not a product of education, it is not the resultant of men's experiences as to what is best for them ; but it is a faculty which has been implanted within us, and its very existence, to say nothing of its operations, points to the existence of Deity to Whom men are accountable.

But the arguments given above are only a small part of the number that may be adduced to prove the existence of Deity.

Others will be considered in connection with other topics as we go on.

Surely sufficient has been brought before the attention of the reader to show him that to disbelieve in the existence of a Deity requires one to be indifferent to the force of evidence, or ready to accept objections.

Usually men who affect to disbelieve are governed by one of three reasons : ist. They may think it an evidence of culture to get away from old beliefs. They forget, however, that because a belief is old it is not necessarily antiquated. If it is true it will stand. This belief in God will stand. It is rooted in the very nature of man. Man must cease to be man before he can really disbelieve in a God. Do not think then that here is an old superstition which advancing culture will cast away. If it were a mere superstition it would have been left behind long ago, but because it is a truth it will accompany all of man's progress.

2d. They may try to disbelieve in God because the thought of Deity interferes with their sinful purposes.

A man who contemplates doing evil finds himself checked by the thought of responsibility to God and may wish there were no God, but all his wishing will not sweep Deity out of the universe. A man may blind himself and then declare that the sun has ceased to shine, but other men say, " The sun is shining, but you are blind.''

It will be found that in the majority of cases no one wants to deny God unless there is the allurement of an evil life which makes the thought of Deity a present inconvenience, and threatens to make it a torture.

3d. They may flippantly deny without ever having taken the trouble to examine the evidences.

Here is one of the peculiar temptations of young men, to pronounce opinions upon very insufficient evidence ; to say a thing is not so without having gone to the foundation principles; and to fall in with any current of opinion that seems brave and manly because it claims to be independent.

It would seem very absurd if one who knew nothing of music as a science were to maintain, in the presence of a musician, that certain combinations of musical tones did not belong to such and such a chord.

The musician would smile at his ignorance.

A chemist who heard a young man pronounce certain amalgamations impossible would refer him to the books and to experiments, and would decline further controversy until the objector was better instructed in the fundamental principles of chemistry.

And so, however painful it may be to hear people, who have never seriously examined the arguments that prove God's existence, deny that there is a God, we can only say to them that when they have given more study to the matter they may be less ready to deny 4 what others believe to be one of the intuitions of their own nature, to be testified to by the evidences of design in the world, and believed so universally.

After all there is no such thing as absolute disbelief. Men may want to disbelieve, and may try to disbelieve. They may shock others by uttering their infidelity, but there come periods when they show by their actions, if not by words, that they cannot get rid of the thought of God.

Some who have been prominent as deniers of Deity have finally confessed their errors, or have exhibited such terror at the thought of dying and passing into His nearer presence that their previous expressions have been negatived by their last actions.

It is not a question about believing or not believing in a God, but whether we will so believe that it may be a comfort and help and joy to us — or a terror.

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QUESTIONS.

1. What are the two principal ways of knowing a fact ?

2. Can we know God by our senses ?

3. Is any other evidence as reliable as that of the senses ?

4. What did Cicero say as to the universality of the belief in God ?

5. Is this belief only a remnant of superstition ?

6. Have nations ever changed their views of Deity ?

7. Can you give illustrations from History of these changes ?

8. Has Atheism any system that can stand from age to age ?

9. What is meant by Agnosticism ?

10. What is Materialism ?

11. What are meant by intuitive conceptions?

12. Does the human mind intuitively accept the idea of a God?

13. What is the force of the argument from design ?

14. Show the error of attributing the origin of the world to chance.

15. What is meant by Evolution ?

16. Is the Development theory contrary to the idea of God?

17. What is meant by Conscience?

18. What argument is drawn from the testimony of Conscience ?

19. What is Cicero's statement concerning the moral law?

20. Is Conscience simply the result of education ?

21. How is unbelief wrongly cited as an evidence of culture ?

22. How does a love of sin suggest denial of God's existence ?

23. Is it fair to deny that there is a God without giving attention to the evidences of His existence ?

24. Is there after all absolute unbelief ?

25. Have some unbelievers finally confessed their error ?

26. What choice have we in believing ?

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II

What Reasons are there for thinking that the Sacred Scriptures contain a Revelation from God to us?

There is a collection of books usually known as the Sacred Scriptures or the Holy Bible.

Copies of them are found in nearly every home in Christian lands, and extracts from them are read in the churches upon occasions of public worship.

These books are referred to as of divine authority, and the claim is made that men were inspired by the Deity to write them.

When we examine the books we find here and there statements on their own pages that the authors were inspired.

Let us go over a portion of their history, and then examine this claim that is made that they really contain a Divine Revelation.

In the first place we find that there are thirtynine books in what is called the Old Testament, and twenty-seven in the New Testament, making sixty-six in all. Some of them are lengthy histories while others are very brief letters. The oldest of them were written at least over 3300 years ago, and the latest about 1800 years ago, and their writers were men of very different stations, abilities and education.

Moses, one of these authors, was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. David and Solomon were kings, Ezra was a priest, Isaiah a prophet, Matthew was once a tax-gatherer, Luke a physician, Paul a learned Pharisee, and others were fishermen.

The collection known as the Old Testament was in the keeping of the Jewish Church, and was by that people so jealously guarded that they would suffer no alteration to be made in the text.

The collection known as the New Testament originated during a period of some sixty or more years after the death of Christ. Four persons wrote accounts of the life and sayings of Christ, and one of them gave a brief history of the establishment of the Christian Church. The other books are the letters written to Churches planted in different places, and to individuals, and the closing book is a narration of a series of visions which one of the Apostles had.

There seems to have been no effort at first to bring this collection together. Some Churches possessed copies of a Gospel and several epistles, others had others, but in course of time the books that were deemed to be genuine and authentic were gathered together, and a declaration was made by the Christian Church that such were worthy

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of credit and reliable in every way, because they agreed with the faith.

These two collections are appealed to now as containing a divine revelation to men. Now how do we know that it is so ?

It may be well to remark first that there is nothing improbable in the supposition that the Deity could make a revelation to men. No one can deny that if for any reason it pleased the Divine Ruler to make known His will He could do so. There are scores of ways in which He could do it.

Then it is probable that if man needed a revelation the Deity would make one.

We must think of God as good, and as planning the happiness of the creatures He has brought into existence. If to advance their happiness it seemed desirable that men should know something of God's wishes and purposes it is, to say the least, highly probable that the Deity would ia some way make them known to men.

And now we have taken two very important steps, towards the answer to our question. First that God could make a revelation, and second that if needed he would make one.

The claim is pressed that He did make one, and in this way : From time to time He raised up men whom He inspired to teach their fellow men, giving them superior knowledge, and enabling them to declare to others what the will of God was.

In declaring God's will these men used various methods. Some wrote histories, others poetry, some prophecy and still others, letters.

Inspiration did not destroy their individuality, and it may be that some of them did not fully realize that they were divinely guided.

Nor did any one of them claim to exhaust the Divine Revelation, but each one told the truth as it was made known to him.

Moses wrote of the beginning of our race, and especially of the history of the Jewish people; David composed many of the devotional poems to be used in the public worship of the Jewish Church ; the prophets told of events that were to come, but more particularly of the birth of a Deliverer; the evangelists told the story of Christ's work and words ; and the writers of the Epistles gave directions concerning the things to be believed and done by the Christian disciples.

Revelation then is the sum of all the essential truths made known by these different writers.

It will not do to select one writer, say, for example, Jeremiah, and say that God's will is fully contained in what that one man wrote, for that was only part of it.

If now we compare the writings of these different authors, will we find such substantial agreement between them as to warrant our believing

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them to have received their knowledge from the same Divine source ?

Let us take a few points and apply this test. Let us see if they agree as to the character of God, as to the nature of man and the existence of sin in the world. We know very well that there are, and have been, widely differing views upon these three great points held by men in the world. Witness the prevalence of idolatry, the poetical views of man's innocence, and the denial of the universality of sin in man's nature.

Now do we find agreement upon the three points above specified in the writers of the Scriptures ?