Short talks to young Christians on the evidences

Preface

These talks to young Christians on the Evidences constitute the first series of a plan which includes three, the other two being one on the Doctrines and one on the Moralities. They were begun and for some time continued without a serious thought of publication. A busy pastor found himself surrounded by a large company of young converts, whose emotional experiences were all that could be expected, but many of whom knew little about the intellectual basis of Christianity. Frequent services of a revival character, which were still in progress, supplied abundant fuel for their zeal, and as the revival continued nearly five months with constant results, there was need of ballast lest the sails of zeal and emotion should carry too much wind.

Moreover, there had been two attempts by enemies of the work to bring on a lecture from the modern apostle of infidelity. These attempts both failed. But rumor declared that he would come soon, and a local paper printed the blasphemy which he would have uttered, if a wise Providence had not fastened him into unsympathetic snow-drifts, sixty miles aw^ay.

With the attention of young, and to a great extent uninformed, minds thus turned upon the utterances of an infidel, at a time when they were undergoing their first inner struggles with doubt, it seemed wise that some words of this sort should be spoken.

There were several difficulties in the way of any plan to reach the wants of these converts. The audience, while composed mostly of young people from sixteen to twenty years of age, had in it a number of children and another number of persons of mature years, who, young in Christian experience, were invariably present. Many were unaccustomed to study and some were well along in a college course.

To meet the wants of all, the colloquial style which prevails was chosen. I have, purposely, avoided learned terms and abstract arguments. My only desire was to find a way to interest, and so inform, such a variously composed throng. The hope has been that those who came would get some of the outline facts of the Evidences and more than all that they would be incited to pursue in private study the thoughts thus aroused.

The plan seems to have succeeded. The interest and attendance have been constant from the first. The period when depression and falling away usually begin among converts has gone by and the band is still unbroken, a fact which their pastor attributes in part, under divine grace, to the interest which they have manifested in these Tuesday evening talks; for there is among them a very perceptible feeling of intellectual as well as spiritual assurance and an air of confidence in the fact that Christianity welcomes the investigations of Reason no less than the devotions of Faith.

It was not until the demand arose among these young Christians themselves, and not then until it had been seconded by various requests from brethren in the ministry, that publication was seriously considered. It is not claimed that there is here anything new unless it may be the method which has sought to adapt the facts to such listeners. There is surely no pretence of literary excellence.

Contents

I. The Foundation . . . .7

II. The Bible— How It Was Made . 21

III. How the New Testament Developed . 39

I. The Foundation

Gen. i., i. In the beginning, God.

" #TN the beginning" of what? Try to ancso) swer that. You will find yourselves going further and further back in your thought. You will go back past cities and villages till you find the land a wilderness grand in its solitude, and the mountains lifting their lofty summits of eternal snow unseen by the eye of man. You will go back past the wilderness and the mountains and the seas, and you can think of a time when there was no sea, nor any mountains, nor any forest. You can come to a place in your thoughts where you are alone — where all human beings have deserted you — where there is no sound to relieve the ear, and no familiar sight to greet the eye, and no person to give you companionship. And yet you will not feel entirely alone. You cannot imagine that. Just as in your experience you may have sometime been all alone in a great forest and have still felt that you were not alone; and you have felt oppressed by the very solitude because it seemed to bring you so near to an Unseen Being; or as when you have been alone in your chamber at midnight and could not feel alone ; oppressed with solitude and yet feeling that another Being was there and knew every thought; so you cannot imagine yourself going back so far as to be entirely alone in the world. You can go back of the mountains and the seas, but you will still feel, although you may not distinctly think it, " Some Power made me, some Being caused my existence, and that Person is beholding me. I cannot be alone, for if I were alone

then I must have caused my own existence. But I know that I did not." So it is impossible for us to get beyond the thought of God. " In the beginning, God." In the beginning of what? In the beginning of everything. I can go back of the tree to the seed, and back of the seed to the chemical elements, but I can't go back of God. I can't think of a time when God was not. I cannot imagine things in any possible shape without God. " In the beginning, God." Try ever so hard, you can't get past that rocky bulwark.

Many of you, perhaps all of you, have reached a point where you no longer try to get beyond God, or try to think that yourselves and everything else were made by nothing, and that there is no God.

But you will meet those who talk that way. You will meet those who deny God's existence. Just think of the text, "In the beginning, God" and hold to that. As long as you hold to that, you have an immovable foundation. Think how utterly impossible it is to get beyond that thought. Men may argue and stir up a great deal of fog between us and that thought; but when the fog clears away, you will find that the fog was not a wall — you can go on a long way beyond the fog. I remember one time when we were marching in northern Alabama, we had in view a distant chain of mountains, so distant that they seemed with their soft outlines almost to blend with the clouds. And toward evening a mist arose parallel with the mountains, and in the distance we could hardly tell which was which. In some places where the mist rose high enough it obscured the great, rocky hills, and we mistook it for the mountains themselves. But we were constantly drawing nearer, and presently the sun came out with an evening glory, which lighted the whole scene. Then the mists lifted, and the moun-

THE FOUNDATION. U

tains stood out rugged and grand, every outline distinct. There was no longer any doubt which was fog and which was mountain.

Men's arguments against God are like that. You mistake the fog for the mountain. You think you have reached the end in their talk, and can get along without God. But don't be so foolish. The slightest wind will blow that mist away. The mountain is beyond — grand, eternal, unchangeable it stands. "In the beginning, God," A fog may hide the mountain, but no fog can change it. After every fog has lifted you must reckon with the mountain, for your road leads straight up to the mountain. Through every mist at last you will come up to that Eternal Hill, and it will be well then if you can say, " I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help, My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. " (Ps. cxxi., 1-2.)

And when you think of it, why should anyone want to get rid of the thought of God? Why should anyone argue against the existence of God? Perhaps you and I have been wicked enough, at one time or another, to wish that there were no God in the universe. We, perhaps, would have been very comfortable to think that there was no God.

Now, why is it that so many deliver lectures, and write books, and think out arguments, to prove that there is no God ; to make a great fog so as to hide the mountain? When they get their fog well started they cry out at the top of their voices, " There is no mountain, I can't see any mountain, and you are very foolish if you think that you can see any mountain." I stood on the shady side of my wood-shed the other morn ing as the sun was shining in all his glory. I could not see the sun. I could see only the wood-shed. Suppose I had called out to those who were passing and enjoying the sunshine and saying to each other what a bright morning it was, "You are very foolish for thinking that there is any sun. I can't see anything but a wood-shed. There isn't anything but a wood-shed, and they who refuse to believe in the wood-shed and insist on believing in the sun are very foolish!" Now, there are a great many whose talk about God is as reasonable as that.

Some very wise people, in their way, are standing on the shady side of a few germs, and they say, " I can't see anything but the germs. There isn't any sun. You are fools for believing there is any God."

But the people who were passing, covered and warmed by the rising sun, would have laughed at me and my wood-shed. So there are millions who by faith and a Christian experience, are walking where the sunshine of God's love is pouring over them. They will pity and pray for any poor soul who tells them that there is nothing but a wood-shed instead of the sun, or a fog-bank instead of the mountain. They would laugh at him if the matter were less serious. " In the beginning, God. " There is the glorious Sun of Righteousness, which you will find after every wood-shed has been blown away.

Well, why is it that so many can't bear the thought, " In the beginning, God ? " Is it because they think that they could manage affairs in anyway really better if God were not? Is it because they think that the mountains and the moon and the stars were really made without God ? No, that's not it, for what does it matter to those who hate the thought of God, how or by whom they were made? There they are, and they are the same in all of their glory and their utility whoever made them. Is it because anyone is really afraid that God will do any wrong to any being in the world? Has anyone really ever thought such a thing? No! no! No one ever really thought so. Many have wickedly accused God. In great sadness and grief, perhaps, they have uttered hard words against God. But they know, in their hearts, that those words were not true. They know that they will have to repent of those wicked thoughts and words toward the kind and good God.

There is a clue which will help us to get at the reason why so many foolishly deny the existence of God. For, my friends, human hearts are in many particulars the same. Some sorrows are common to all; some things make everyone joyful. Sin produces some effects which will be alike in all; and so righteousness will produce some effects alike in all. Now we can look into our own hearts and find an answer to the question why the thought of God is so hateful and distressing to a great many. When was it that you first dreaded the thought of God? Or if you cannot think of the first time think of any time when the thought of God and His watchful eye looking through your very heart, was distressing to you; some time when you would have been very glad to believe that there was no God. I have not asked any one of you, but I can tell you when. It was not when you had been doing something which your heart said was right, like feeding the hungry or clothingthe naked, or obeying God's law, but it was at some time when you had been doing that which your heart said was not right. The first time you ever thought of yourself as a sinner was such a time. It wasn't the doing of right but the doing of wrong that made the thought of God seem terrible. It was at such a time that you would have been very glad to look at some one's fog-bank instead of the mountains; at some one's wood-shed instead of the rising sun.

And I have said human hearts are alike. Depend upon it young people, such experiences are the very causes which have led men, who are called learned or brilliant or scientific, to try in their books and lectures to stir up fog-banks, so that you cannot see the mountains, and to put up wood-sheds so that they cannot see the sun. Their hearts, with all of their learning, are not essentially different from yours and mine. They are not so good but that they have been conscious that their hearts were sinful. When they knew that the thought of God was painful to them just as it was to you and me. I tell you plainly that the Apostle describes their case exactly in one of his letters:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. (Rom. i., 21, 22, 25 and 28.)

The same testimony within which tells us there is a God, tells us also that He is of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity. That's why a sinful heart hates the thought of God, and would gladly get rid of that thought if it could. But, "In the beginning, God" — there He stands. The mountain is there. We are journeying on toward the mountain. All are journeying. Some by a way where, with clear light and an open countenance, they see the mountain and rejoice in its grandeur. Others, surrounded by a mist, are journeying too. We are all journeying, for

" Life is short, and time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though strong and brave, Still, like muffled drums are beating Funeral marches to the grave."

Some do not see the mountain. They deny that there is any mountain. But they are as surely journeying towards it as the others. They are in the wrong road — a road which will lead them up against the mountain, where there are only precipices, dark and frowning rocks and awful chasms. When they come to the mountain they will find that there is no way of ascent. God grant the mist may clear first. They themselves have made it. They themselves are responsible for it. But God grant it may clear. "In the beginning, God." My friends, do we accept that thought ? Do we gladly think of God, or do we try to think there is no God?

If we do try to get rid of the thought of God that is a testimony that our hearts are sinful, for only sin desires to escape from the thought and the eye of God. Why did Belshazzar tremble when he saw the handwriting on the wall ? He knew that God sent the hand, and he knew that he was a sinner. He was not at peace with God. Only sin dreads and tries to escape from God.

Well, if that be the effect now; if the very thought of God is painful so that we try to escape from it when we are unreconciled to God; if the effect is such that thousands write books and deliver arguments to try and believe their wish that there may be

TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS.

no God, what will it be for one to stand unreconciled in His presence ? No more comfortable fog-banks then! All naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do! ■

What shall we do with hearts which even now try to escape the thought of God?

There is only one way in the world whereby the sinner can think with pleasure that God is, and that His holy eye is upon him every moment. That is Christ. Christ is the way. Through his blood he destroyed the enmity and made peace. Many, many have recently found Christ, and in finding Christ they have found peace with God.

•• Not all the blood of beasts,

On Jewish altars slain, Could give the guilty conscience peace

Or wash away the stain.

But Christ, the heavenly Lamb,

Takes all our sins away; A sacrifice of nobler name

And richer blood than they."

II. The Bible— How It Was Made

|NE of the difficulties which a young Christian sometimes meets is this : "How do I know that the Bible is really what it professes to be? How do I know that it shows me the way of duty and the way to heaven?" Sometimes such a question will come into the mind as a doubt. Sometimes it will be asked by some one who desires to get you into the dark. And I am very glad to devote this talk to answering such questions, because some of you have already been met by those who ask them; and perhaps you have been troubled because you could not answer to your own satisfaction, or theirs.

Now, I don't suppose that your answer would do such persons very much good, for frequently they are cavillers and are dishonest. There is a testimony in the heart which says that we ought to serve God, and they have not obeyed that voice of duty. So they are trying to find arguments against God's word to silence the voice of conscience. If they can ask you questions which you cannot answer they are greatly comforted, although it is no sign that they know anything about the subject. I have known a child three years old to ask questions which no wise man could answer.

I have another reason for wishing to help you answer such questions. It is this: If such questions are asked, and you do not know the answer, it is likely to make you doubt in your own minds. You may begin to say: "I believe this is the word of God; but I can't tell why I believe it. Why should I believe it when I don't know anything about its history, how it was written, or when it was given to the world?"

And, on the other hand, if you can give at once an intelligent reason for your faith, every time you do so that faith will be greatly strengthened. It will help you, and keep you from getting into doubt, although it may not help the objector, if you can give a reason for your faith. It is for your own sakes, therefore, to help you to be intelligent in these matters, and to keep you from doubt, that I try to help you answer such questions. And you know the apostle says "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you, a reason of the hope that is in you." I. Pet. iii., 15.

Some people talk as though we must be willing to shut our eyes, and take these statements as if we were blind, if we would be Christians. On the contrary, our Lord would have us open our eyes and look at facts intelligently. He would help us to see, as He opened the eyes of the blind men who came to Him. Ignorance in reference to these things is alone to be dreaded. The more we know of these facts the more reason will we have to cling to our blessed Bible — the more shall we see that it is the very word of God to man.

I remember very well how these things appeared to me shortly after my conversion. I did not doubt the truth of God's word; I did not doubt that it was inspired — I accepted it. But I had never given any attention to these things, and I had no intelligent notion of how God gave the Bible to the world. If I had been asked why I accepted it, I could only have said, "I have an inner conviction that it is true/' I had an indefinite idea that somehow God wrote it, or told men how to write it, and then handed it, ready-made to the world. If any infidel had encountered me with questions about these things I should have been in the dark at once. I long felt the need of such help as I shall try to give you here to-night.

Of course, I can't give you a complete history of the Bible in twenty minutes. That would require volumes. But I want to give you a few facts which may be easily remembered, and one argument for the truth of the Old Testament which seems to me sufficient for every honest mind.

And first, we must remember that this Bible did not come straight from the hands of God as we have it now — all in one large volume. I heard the other day of a young man who thought he knew all about the matter, who was telling, out of his abundant wisdom, that thousands of years ago there were many sacred books; that the Bible was only one of them, and that the people got together and chose which should be the sacred book of the people! And so the Bible was chosen by a kind of vote, instead of some other sacred book, and that is how it happens to have so much influence to-day!

Such talk as that only reveals the depth of its author's ignorance. It shows that he knows nothing about the way in which the Bible originated. Besides that, we are to remember that no such process could give the Bible or any other book influence. Any book will have just such influence as its merit can command. If a new book of poems is issued it may have a few readers at first out of curiosity; but if it is published and republished for centuries, it will be because there is some genuine merit in it.

So the Bible has a wider influence throughout the world than any other book. That influence lasts and keeps on growing from generation to generation, and from century to century, through thousands of years. No vote or choice of any body of people a thousand or two thousand years ago could give the book any influence now. The only reason why that influence continues longer and spreads more widely than that of any other book in the world is that the Bible has a great value which no other book in the world ever had. If it had not its influence could not continue to spread as it does. The doctrine of inspiration would not help it any if it had not a great and genuine value. If the Bible did not do for the world what it professes, if it did not make people better, if it did not comfort the sorrowing, encourage the weak, and lift up the fallen; if it did not change people for the better, no doctrine of inspiration would help it. People would very soon find out that it was a fraud, and would let it alone. It would have been forgotten ages ago. There wouldn't have been any need of translators and printing presses to help circulate the Bible in every language of the world to-day. It is because people find that the Bible does help them that they want it and keep on demanding it. It helps men and women to reform their lives and gives them hope of heaven; it points out how people can have peace with God, and how we can stand with joy in His presence. Therefore it is that people keep on demanding it.

People see that wherever the Bible has gone, there things are changed for the better. Once, as you know, our mother country, England, was inhabited by barbarians, halfnaked savages, who slew each other for human offerings to their idols. The Bible was taken to the British Isles. Its truths were preached there, and all the barbarisms were changed to what we see at present. At one time Britain was as barbarous as Central Africa is to-day. The Bible has only begun to be carried into the center of Africa, and has only begun to influence a few tribes, so they are barbarians there still. The same change goes everywhere with the Bible. The Sandwich Islands and the Micronesian Islands have been and are being changed in the same way by the Bible.

Now, it is because people see these great changes going on by means of the Bible that they love it. They see changes in individuals, in families, and in nations. Whereever the Bible has not come there you find people at best only part civilized. Whereever it has been received, there you find them at the front. It is because the Bible has in it something which does the great work of changing and comforting human hearts that people love it the world around. No other book ever written has had the power to change men. Remember that, young people, when some one asks you why you love the Bible. It isn't some vote of some body of men hundreds of years ago, nor alone because of the belief in inspiration, that people love the Bible, but because it satisfies their souls and reforms their lives as no other book,

If some one were to come with a medicine which he should claim was inspired, and if every one who took the medicine should die, people wouldn't keep on taking the medicine, no matter how many should claim that it was inspired. But if they should find that the medicine was a sure cure; that it really did what was claimed for every one who took it, they would keep on taking it. So people love the Bible and keep on studying it, because it does for the world just what it professes. You can know how much attention to pay to those who say that the Bible is kept before the people because of its claim to be inspired. We do believe it is inspired, but what makes us believe it? Would we keep on believing it inspired if it should deceive us in matters which we test daily?

And there are ways in which we can tell in this life whether it deceives or not. By its fruits we know. It says that wherever it goes there will be light. Is that true? Have the nations where it has gone been made better or worse by it? There is our answer. Point to the fruits. Ask why it is that so many millions keep on reading the Bible. Ask why it is that every nation where it has gone has been made better by it. Ask whether millions upon millions — among them the best scholars in the world — could be deceived into thinking that the Bible makes them better if it did not really make them better.

But I was to tell you how the Bible came into the world. It did not come all at one time. It was not written by the hand of God and then put into the hands of men; but it was a growth, according to the needs of the people. It was written in different parts or books, by different men, in different ages of the history of God's people. The different men who were called of God to write the different parts of the Old Testament were chosen from time to time during more than a thousand years. Moses was the first. He wrote the first five books of the Old Testament about one thousand four hundred and fifty years before Christ. Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, was inspired to write out his prophecy about four hundred years before Christ. So you see we have the books of the Old Testament written during a period of a thousand years by numerous persons, scattered all the way through that long period.

To illustrate: When the children of Israel came out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea there was no written Bible. But God was then calling them to do a great work as His people, and the things about to happen — God's wonderful revelation on Mount Sinai, and his providences in crossing the sea and in the wilderness — would be of great consequence to all the ages following. So Moses was inspired to make a record of all those things. He went up into the mount and there talked with God, and God gave htm there His holy law. Well, when that record of the journey out of Egypt and through the wilderness was written, the people had one book of the Bible — Exodus. The meaning of that word is going out from. The book of Exodus is the inspired history of the Israelites going out from Egypt. In the same connection, directed also by the inspiring Spirit of God, Moses wrote out the history of the beginning of the world, and the people received that book in written form at or nearly the same time. Genesis means beginning. The book of Genesis is the inspired history of the beginning of the world.