SCEPTICISM DOES NOT REASON.

453

social behaviour, the Bible comes home at once to the understanding of the rudest part of mankind; and is very nearly the same book to the peasant, as to the doctor of divinity. But

the morality of the Bible excepted, no ethical system, oriental or western, has ever appeared which might not fairly be described as a splendid enormity, or a glittering fragment, which owed all its value to the spoliation of some spurned and forgotten qualities." "

X. It is certain that of this evidence, thus varied and comprehensive, thus congruous and cumulative, our opponents are unable to rebut or to refute one single particle.

" 13

.

"Nothing can be more contemptible than the argumentative resources of modern infidelity. It does not reason, it only postulates; it dreams and it dogmatizes.' Sceptical publications, whether of the present or of former ages, are filled from one end to the other with objections against Christianity rather than with answers to the arguments for it. And these are two very different things. "There are objections against a plenum, and objections against a vacuum; but one of them must be true." Objections may be raised by any body, and against any thing: but they invalidate nothing. The histories of Cæsar and Napoleon are liable to objections quite as formidable as any that have ever been urged against the Bible. “This is a prominent feature on the face of the controversy between Christians and their opponents, which must strike every observer. The writings of Infidels—even those little deserving notice-have in almost every instance been carefully answered, from point to point, by Christian authors; and, in the last century, this was done so effectually, that the Infidels were notoriously driven out of the field, and reduced to a silence in England which has only of late years begun to be broken." And now that it has been broken, no advantage has been gained on the side of Disbelief. "Our English disbelief can pretend to nothing of originality; for it is all a copy after the German; and yet German theories, though they have broken down, in quick succession, at home, have been imported, as if still good,

Professor Garbett: "Modern Philosophical Infidelity;" p. 5.

and have been done into English without scruple: is there one of these theories that is not insufferably absurd?”* But on the Christian side, there are many works of high characterwell known, standard and popular books. . . to which, as far as we know, NO INFIDEL HAS EVEN PROFESSED TO WRITE AN ANSWER.'

"15

Christianity is a fixed and not a floating thing. It "comes to our times as the survivor of all systems; and after confronting, in turn, every imaginable form of error, each of which has gone to its almost forgotten place in history, itself alone lives"— lives, not as a creature of the mind's development, a thing of mere sentiment or intuition, but lives with its firm footing in history, and its powerful hold of men's hearts. Isaac Taylor has rightly said, that every particle of the German infidelity disappears, when once it is proved that Jesus rose from the dead. But the idealist, entrenched behind his speculative philosophy, will not listen to the proof. He pretends to supersede the question of historical testimony, by raising abstract questions. And this idealism of his own, he dignifies with the name of a religious philosophy, or a philosophical religion, for which we are invited to barter our actual and historical Christianity.

From the abstractions of these dreamers however, we make our appeal to undeniable facts. Until our opponents have disproved the resurrection of Jesus, they have done nothing to the purpose. At present we may say of that resurrection what we have already seen to be true of the Life and Character of Jesus: there is no infidel theory of either in the field. And the same is true of the character of the Apostles. Let any man read in succession the fourteen Non-Supernatural Epistles. He will spontaneously say of them, "Whatever I may think of this Theology, which is so new and amazing, it is manifest that these writings embody, with great harmony of intention, an elevated and consistent morality; it would be well for the world if it would receive it. It is also manifest that the writers, whether they be right or wrong in their religious

14 Restoration of Belief, p. 111.

15

Bp. Fitzgerald: in the Cautions for the Times;" pp. 503, 504.

THE UNBELIever's creed.

455

belief, are sincere in their profession of it :-it appears also that they are sober-minded, and of good judgment ;—it is clear that they are earnestly affected in relation to whatever is of undoubted importance, and that they treat slightingly what we all feel to be indifferent." Let him then take up any one of the Supernatural Epistles: e.g., that to the Romans. In reaching the close of it he is startled to find the writer, with whose inmost thoughts he had become familiar, boldly affirming that, in a missionary circuit of several hundred miles, he had wrought miracles, in each town and city as he passed. Under the perplexity that has thus arisen, the alternative is just this:

Either, To yield our belief to Christianity, as a supernatural dispensation;

Or, To suppose that "the apostolic men, not one of them, but all, stand as a class by themselves, of which no other samples have occurred among the myriad varieties of the species for they are wise, and mad: they are always virtuous, and always wicked: they are prudent and they are absurd, and they are both in an extreme degree. They are at all times consistently inconsistent with themselves, and with human nature."" He who imagines this to be a caricature, will do well to try and put into his own words, his own idea of the apostles, the facts duly taken into the account, on the supposition that no miracles were wrought in attestation of their ministry. He will then perceive how absolutely unavoidable is the sceptical absurdity here enunciated. After all, what does it matter? It is but one of a thousand: a single article in the unbeliever's creed."

17

16 "I will not tell you that your supposition as to the apostolic character is 'uncharitable,' is ‘unwarantable,' is 'ungenerous,' and the like; for I am content to tell you, what is simply the fact, That it is a jumble of incoherencies to

which no semblance of moral, or of immoral unity can be given. I do not tell you that your conception is wrong and unfair;—for it is no conception at all-it is a naked absurdity!"— (Isaac Taylor: Rest of Bel. pp. 218, 219.

17 THE UNBELIEVER'S CREED.

"I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God, and God is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no. I

Then again, what about the Gospels themselves? Is there to be found among the Rationalists any single theory which has not been laughed to scorn by themselves? Bauer (as already noticed) has returned to the hypothesis of the Wolfenbüttel fragments, which ascribes the Gospels to deliberate fabrication. But to this the followers of Paulus of Heidelberg still reply that the thing is impossible. The fabrication of the Gospels by Galilean Jews, would be a greater miracle than any there recorded. Besides, Christianity is a FORCE in the world :force available for the good of man, not because it is Wisdom, but because it is Power. Whence comes its power? Whence will it come after the world has been persuaded that in the book of history the Gospels must be catalogued along with Frauds?

:-a

Perhaps however, the republication of Strauss's Leben Jesu is to be taken as an indication of a return to the mythical theory :—a theory indeed, which though inexpressibly absurd, is yet quite as reasonable as any other on the side of unbelief. A theory which, while it fails to account for a single fact, stands out in direct contradiction to every conceivable possibility.

To apply it to the single instance of the Resurrection :—The Apostles had been disappointed, and their faith had failed. Hope, Faith, and Courage, had been buried in their Master's tomb. These might rise again with Him, but they could not raise Him, when they were not themselves revived. And the question is, What revived them? It is idle to say "an altered view of the prophecies," because that is only suggesting again the same question in another form-What altered their view of the prophecies? Was it some fact? Or was it merely a fancy?

The choice is indeed a hard one; but Scepticism, when driven to the last, will boldly prefer an absurdity to a Miracle. Perhaps the Myth arose of itself, or else it was produced by

believe also, that the world was not made; that the world made itself; that it had no beginning; that it will last for ever, world without end. "I believe that a man is a beast, that the soul is the body, and the body is the soul; and that after death there is neither body nor soul. 'I believe there is no religion; that natural religion is the only religion; and that all religion is unnatural... Lastly, I believe in all unbelief."

ABSURDITY OF THE MYTHIC THEORY.

457

SOMETHING. "SOMETHING," says Strauss, "sensible to the ear or eye, sometimes perhaps the aspect of SOME UNKNOWN PERSON, gave them impressions of an appearance of Jesus."

But this is not all. Let the cause be what it will, or let Myths be mushrooms that spring naturally in some soils without any cause at all, still it is impossible that, in such a case, the Myth should have arisen, or, having arisen, should have been propagated. For if the idea of Christ's Resurrection occurred to the disciples at all, it must have occurred to them. as a thing to be proved. SOMETHING may have made it congenial to their own minds; but nothing could have bewitched them to believe it would turn out congenial to the minds of priests and people reeking with the blood of a murdered Messiah. And they must, therefore, have plainly perceived that, in spreading such a story, their personal safety was at stake. We read, accordingly, of their being "straitly threatened" by the Jewish rulers, as intending to bring “on them this man's blood."

Now was ever Myth generated under such circumstances as these?

"Still less is it possible that a Myth should have been propagated under such circumstances. The character of Jesus may have produced as strong an impression as you please on his few immediate followers: but to talk of an impression made on a vast multitude who never could have known him familiarly, by a man of low birth and mean fortune-who never performed any dazzling exploit, who was crucified, dead, and buried, and whose body, if He did not rise, must have been forthcoming-an impression so strong as to alter all their strongest national prejudices,-to revolutionize the Faith of their childhood, and persuade them, on no evidence at all, that He had risen bodily, and bodily ascended into Heaven,-this is to talk such nonsense as infidelity alone can venture on, when engaged in the desperate task of evading a Miracle. In the most Mythic age that ever was, this would have been impossible. Myths have been founded on many a religion, but no religion yet was ever founded on a Myth." Christianity, from the first, both professed and believed itself, to stand upon the evidence of testimony: not on preconceived fancies.