Page images
PDF
EPUB

tianity is the true religion. 2. That Jesus, by whom it was given, is the one around whom universal history gathers. Hence it follows that the life of Christ was a real life. He undoubtedly lived and taught as the New Testament substantially represents; Providentially and by Law, He exhibited the true Fatherhood of God; lived as if with the touch of God, to quicken the dead; and, with the tenderness of God, to comfort the sorrowful. Christ was the highest and purest intellect the world ever possessed, and Christ confirmed the Old Testament record of creation, and enlarged the doctrine of God, so that in Christ we have example and proof that purest faith is married to highest reason.

Revelation, the Divine warrant for piety, far from opposing Intelligence, is a special message to our intelligence, and unites the reasoning power of the philosopher, the imagination of the poet, and the inspiration of the seer. This trinity of graces renders the power of the Bible— one book, greater than the whole literature of Greecemany books. This one Book, from a nation despised by all in former and by some in present time, holds the world in awe. It is read and preached in hundreds and thousands of churches. It is in the cottage of the lowly man, and abides with the honourable; it weaves the literature of the scholar, and sweetens the common talk of life. It enters the closet of the student, the king's chamber, and the counsel-hall. In sickness and sadness, in perils and partings, in life and death, it tempers our grief to finer issues, and gladdens joy with yet brighter hopes. Our best prayers are in "its storied speech," which tells of earthly duties and heavenly rest, as if Plato's wisdom, Newton's science, and Raphael's art, had sought to make it beautiful and good. No other book, sacred or profane, can pretend to the suffrages of so many men of great genius, of so many intelligent and educated adherents from so many nations and races, or has formed, like it, “a succession of men heroically bent on making it universal." A Book, thus winning reason's highest triumphs, the crown of poetry, and glorification by art, revealing wisdom from the depths, morality from the heights, and transforming the deathangel into a heavenly messenger; approves itself to the best

Erroneous View of Doubt.

13

and wisest of our race, unites intellect and piety in sacred bonds by authority of God.

Professor Huxley, in his lecture on the "Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge," said :—" The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such. For him scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification."

This is only half true. Making holes and filling them up again is a waste of labour. A continual undermining of

Ob

foundations renders even the firmest fabrics insecure. servers in natural science must maintain their independence, and science progresses not authoritatively but experimentally; if, for example, we doubt whether there is on the floor of the deep ocean a thing called Bathybius, the doubt may arise from our knowledge of the analogy of nature; but he who counts "scepticism the highest of duties" should doubt concerning his doubt, and deny any actuality or reality to knowledge. "Theological habits of thought are relatively useful, while scepticism, if permanent, is intellectually and morally pernicious." It is well to dig about trees, not to uproot them; and we all know, as to Scripture and science, theology and therapeutics, that the mass must wait outside and receive the result on authority. A thoughtful man has remarked,-" To bring into doubt in any way (and it is of little moment in what way, or on what pretext), that which the common sense of mankind has always assumed to be certain, is, if not to shake the evidence of all truth, yet to paralyse the faculty by which evidence of any kind is seized and held." 2

Even in natural knowledge the researches and discoveries of the most self-reliant investigators are worked out upon the foundation laid by previous authority, whether that 1 "Cosmic Philosophy :" John Fiske.

2 "Physical Theory of Another Life: " Isaac Taylor.

authority be censured, or amended and confirmed; and must be matter of faith to most men, only to be justified by those who have power to verify. Would the learned professor call it intelligence or stupidity, for common men to deny everything that they do not know by their own actual verification? Is the professor's own authority to be absolutely rejected? Did he never try to overcome authoritatively a fellow-labourer by the dogmatic expression of his belief? Must the botanist try, by his own star-measurement, every statement of the astronomer; and the patient demand proof, in the physician's prescription, that the drugs will heal? Or are godly men, with their prayerful, scholarly, critical, and historical investigations, the only men whose authority is to be absolutely rejected?

Doubt, in itself, is not a mark of knowledge; but is certain proof of ignorance. At the best, it is the halting step of prudence in pursuit of knowledge, but a contemptible thing indeed when men flaunt it as an encouragement to godless unbelief. What saith another professor?-"We encounter our sceptical 'as if.' It is one of the parasites of science, ever at hand, and ready to plant itself, and sprout, if it can, on the weak points of our philosophy. But a strong constitution defies the parasite, and in our case, as we question the phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated." As to the comfort of doubt, that is downright nonsense, there is no comfort in it; uncertainty and suspense are full of discomfort. Duty, far from delighting in it, does her best to get rid of it; and, obtaining confidence of conviction, reposes and rejoices in the truth, "La Philosophie est une tentative incessante de l'esprit humain pour arriver au repos."

The argument strengthens in the region of morality and religion. Irresistible mathematical evidence would confound all characters and dispositions; subvert rather than promote the purpose of the Divine Counsel, which is to produce obedience as the free-will offering of love. Do we then ignore reason in religion? Certainly not. Religion is intensely practical, and experimentally realised and verified in the soul 1 "Scientific Use of the Imagination:" Professor Tyndall.

Revelation is made to Reason.

15

of a devout man, as is science in the mind of a physicist. Faith implies knowledge; and, as knowledge is definite, the faith, confessed in our creed, is understood in the explicit and implicit meaning; and is expressed in our symbols as definitely, clearly, precisely, as is any problem in science. The shallowness, sometimes imputed to devout men, belongs rather to the narrower mental sphere of objectors, who set a higher value on a little technical knowledge than on good sense, exercised and approved by greater general knowledge. Revelation is made to reason, not to unreason; and reason is that foundation on which Divine revelation erects a spiritual superstructure. There is without doubt in the simple-minded, and in them alone, a sense of certainty in relation to Scripture," which is neither the offspring of reason, nor the result of culture; but, like life itself, a direct inspiration of the Almighty." To such men the Bible carries its own evidence, and truth, like wisdom, is seen by its own light. This spiritual discernment, the property of millions who never framed a syllogism, is the work of that faculty in us by which we recognise excellence. Hence we conclude that the material frame of man is to human intelligence what human intelligence is to piety.

Faith shrinks not from inquiry which has truth for its aim. To take the excuse of the head out of the way of the heart is well, to clear the mind helps to purify and elevate emotion. Certainly we would not have doubt come in at the window because inquiry is denied at the door; but a great hurt and injustice are done when, to use Dr. Johnson's illustration, the Apostles are tried once a-week for forgery. It is well for an age to be occupied in proving its creed; but reason, the basis of faith, must not become its substitute. Wilful continuance in doubt, so far from being an evidence of superior wisdom, indicates little love of truth, weakness of will, and insincerity of purpose. Even the seeking of proof implies not only a want of belief, but a lack of knowledge as to the things to be proved; and the sooner a man, or an age, reasonably passes from the proving to the evolving, from the arguing to the appropriating, the earlier will the real height of the argument be attained.

1 "A Story of the Bible," p. 29: Interpreter Series.

Many a man allows the best part of his life to be crippled by doubt, and the halting so hinders his soul's progress, that old age comes like an untimely winter. He is not a tree from which God gathers fruit, but a barren and leafless trunk in a landscape of desolation. Let past years of doubt suffice for us individually, past ages of unbelief suffice for us nationally. It is time that we reproduce the many glorious examples of Scriptural piety, those ancient spectacles of truth, faith and holiness. It is time to prove that Christianity, which confessedly gives purest morality to individuals, is able to sanctify whole nations. It is time to show that in Christianity we have not only the emotion which, with loving power, holds ten thousand hearts, but the wisdom which delights and satisfies profoundest minds.

Is this capable of verification? It is capable; and though no serious man considers a popular assembly the proper court for the decision of deep truths; yet, as the verdict of public opinion checks the tendency of closet speculation to become visionary, we appeal to the general conscience whether religious faith, in its devout dynamic nature, does not, by ruling the inner and outer man, raise the whole life to a higher stage. We are sure of affirmation. It is, indeed, because religion has ever furnished sanction to morality that creed and conduct are always associated in our minds. There is not only an excellency proving every part of Christian faith separately considered, but a relation and vigour in the several parts taken as a whole, which win our love and reverence. We long for the realisation—that supreme epoch in which every man shall love the Lord with all his heart and his neighbour even as himself; when "the beast shall have been worked out," and the ape and the tiger be dead within us. Nor is that all; Scripture, in making men holy, renders them also more intelligent by giving stability and elevation of thought, with enlargement of appreciation as to the Divine. Observers of character are surprised at the remarkable betterment which is wrought in those who are called "regenerate." So soon as a man sets himself to do the will of God, he seems to be taught of God as to the doctrine. "A vision and faculty divine," or at least a moral and religious interest, possesses

« EelmineJätka »