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 ANITY 
 
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CHRISTIANITY TESTED BY REASON. 
 
 “ We do not believe that tbe Bible is in- 
 spired more than other religious books ; we 
 do not believe that any religious books have 
 any authority beyond the inherent reason- 
 ableness of any doctrines which they teach ; 
 whatever religious beliefs we accept must be 
 such as commend themselves to our reason,” 
 so many men in India think and say. Per- 
 sonally we believe that, if they knew the 
 Bible better than they do, they would ap- 
 preciate it more. Nevertheless, we are ready 
 to meet them on their own ground. It is 
 our deepest conviction that Christ knows the 
 head and heart of man ; that the intellect 
 and affections of man are so made as to 
 recognize, the supreme excellence of Christ, 
 if men are willing to give a candid and earnest 
 consideration to His teachings and offer of 
 help • and that, fairly judged by the reason, 
 He and His doctrines are all in the highest 
 degree reasonable. By “ reasonable ” we 
 mean the same in religion as in science, i. e. 
 credible on account of sufficient evidence. 
 There are a thousand things in the material 
 world which our reasons apprehend and the 
 truth of which we implicitly recognize in our 
 lives, which our reasons do not fully com- 
 prehend. That is, much of our knowledge 
 is partial and connected with mystery. It 
 is both true and reasonable that the same 
 should hold in our knowledge of spiritual 
 things. We strenuously insist that there is 
 not one teaching of Christ which is contrary 
 to reason, and which, rightly understood, 
 does not commend itself as entirely reason- 
 able. He made His disciples by appealing 
 to their minds and hearts to testify that He 
 was truth and spoke truth. We propose to 
 try to commend the Christian position to the 
 reason of our readers by such a statement of 
 it as commends it to our own reason. All 
 we ask is a candid and earnest consideration 
 of our statements. For every one knows 
 that a man is disqualified to act as judge or 
 juror, if he is biased, or if he neglects to give 
 careful attention to all evidence that is ad- 
 duced. We have no hesitation whatever in 
 submitting the Christian position to any 
 proper test of reason. Our only fear is that 
 
 India is now so absorbed in attention to 
 political and other subjects that many will 
 not give Christ and Christianity a careful 
 consideration. 
 
 To begin with, Christianity has a threefold 
 aspect ; it is a life, a history, and a philoso- 
 phy. Primarily and chiefly it is a life, a true 
 life of Jesus Christ in the souls of individual 
 men, making them different from what they 
 were before He began to live in them. In 
 the second place, Christianity is a history ; it 
 alleges that such and such events occurred 
 at certain times. Thirdly, it is a philosophy, 
 an interpretation of man and nature. Some 
 persons accept historical Christianity with- 
 out any grasp of it as a philosophy, or any 
 experience of it in daily living. A few have 
 an intelligent understanding of it as a philoso- 
 phy, who do not apply it to control their 
 lives. All persons who are true Christians 
 have a vital experience of Christ’s help from 
 day to day, though some of them have an 
 imperfect knowledge of it as a history, and 
 many of them could not give a clear account 
 of just how He helps them. With our 
 physical life, it is of comparatively little con- 
 sequence whether we understand the history 
 of our food, i. e. what the wheat is from 
 which our bread is made and where it grows • 
 or the philosophy of our food, i. e. how the 
 various constituents of the wheat are adapted 
 to the various parts of our bodies and how 
 they nourish these -the vital experience of 
 strength from eating the bread is the great 
 thing; this vital experience is the great proof 
 to us that bread is good for us and for others. 
 So it is with our spiritual life. It does not 
 make much difference if one does not know 
 all the history of Christianity or its philoso- 
 phy, if only he has an experience of Christ’s 
 help in his soul. In common with multi- 
 tudes of Christians we Jc now by experience 
 that Christ helps our souls. Nevertheless, 
 if a fellowman had no experience of food 
 which we had found helpful, and did not 
 believe it was good for him, we would give 
 him a statement of its philosophy, if we could 
 and would try to show him how it was fitted 
 to do him good. So we are thankful to ask 
 
 1^.14 
 
our non-Christian friends to examine the 
 philosophical reasonableness of Christ and 
 His teachings, believing that a fair consider- 
 ation of this will help them to try His aid. 
 And, after giving a philosophical explanation 
 about the food which we had found help- 
 ful and which we recommended to others, 
 just as we should urge men to try a little of 
 the food and see if it did not nourish them, 
 so while showing the reasonableness of Chris- 
 tianity we must ask our friends to try Christ’s 
 help just so far as they see Him to be reason- 
 able. For philosophy without life will nour- 
 ish neither body nor soul. 
 
 In attempting to state, and by the state- 
 ment to show, the reasonableness of Chris- 
 tianity as a philosophy, i. e. the truth of 
 Christ and His teachings, we first explain 
 that by the term Christianity we mean only 
 Christ and His teachings. Things have been 
 taught by Christians which were never taught 
 by Christ. Our only fear is that in touching 
 on some Christian doctrines we may ourselves 
 unintentionally make some statements or 
 offer some explanations which He would not 
 have made. And in giving explanations we 
 shall sometimes state less than we believe. 
 For in this connection we intend to give only 
 such reasons as seem to us incontrovertible. 
 Because Christians differ among themselves 
 on some points of the philosophy of their 
 beliefs. 
 
 We see from the writings of early Christian 
 philosophers, such as Origen and Clement of 
 Alexandria, that the thinkers of Greece and 
 Borne asked the advocates of Christianity in 
 those times if they could commend their faith 
 to reason. Those advocates gladly made the 
 attempt and satisfied their inquirers, so that 
 Christianity became the philosophy of the 
 Bo mau empire. Similarly most of the great 
 thinkers of modern times such as Des Cartes, 
 Pascal, Kant, Goethe, Bacon, Newton, includ- 
 ing even the leading scientists, such as 
 Herschell, Brewster, Faraday, Whewell, and 
 Sir William Thomson, have accepted Chris- 
 tianity as the true philosophy. We desire 
 India earnestly to put it to the test of reason, 
 in the firm conviction that Christ and His 
 teachings will appear to this land also to be 
 the highest reason. 
 
 The Man of Christianity. 
 
 Christianity being Christ and His teach- 
 ings, we naturally first take up Christ. 
 What has the reason to say about Him ? 
 
 Most persons will at the very least say, 
 “We believe that Jesus Christ was a very 
 wise and very good man.” Many add, “How- 
 ever, there have been other wise and r 
 teachers about religion, and we do not let' 
 any special need of help from Christ.” In 
 this last position there is shown such an 
 inadequate appreciation of the true character 
 of Christ, and of man’s own weakness, and 
 so little of moral earnestness and aspiration, 
 that it is hard to feel lespect for it. When 
 one complacently says that though Christ was 
 doubtless a very superior being, he himself 
 does not need any help from Christ, what 
 shall we say ! However, we start from the 
 position of most Indians that Jesus Christ 
 was a very wise and very good man. He is 
 also immeasurably the most influential reli- 
 gious teacher in the world. In the western 
 world there is positively no other great 
 teacher. And this Teacher is sending His disci- 
 ples all over the eastern world, to both educated 
 and uneducated peoples, and is asking them 
 to accept Him as their Teacher and Helper. 
 This being so, how can a thinking man 
 fancy that he does not need to have living 
 relations with this Teacher! 
 
 First, Jesus Christ is the Man of Chris- 
 tianity. What has the reason to say about 
 Him! When we try to describe Him we 
 feel an utter inability to do so with any 
 adequacy. We do not know and cannot 
 conceive of any point in which He could be 
 improved. His intellectual nature seems per- 
 fect. In respect to the things of which 
 He spoke, He never shows any trace of 
 ignorance on anything which man could 
 know, no trace of mental effort, every thing 
 is intuitive and perfect, no trace of one-sided- 
 ness. There are many departments of know- 
 ledge to which He never referred. But the 
 one department in which He moved is the 
 highest of all — the knowledge of men. He 
 knew men perfectly. The human soul is the 
 most intricate and wonderful mechanism on 
 which philosophers have studied. No man 
 ever came to Jesus without feeling, “This 
 man knows me. ” Look at the facts of His 
 life and see the way in which He always im- 
 mediately read every one’s character, and with 
 perfect wisdom adapted His words and actions 
 thereto. And up to to-day who else is there 
 who has lived whose teachings are so correct 
 and so profound in answering that most 
 momentous question, “How shall I live so as 
 to make the most of myself? ’’ and the similar 
 
question for mankind, “What is the true life 
 for society?” Matthew Arnold has well said, 
 “Try all the ways [to peace and welfare] you 
 can think of, and you will find that no way 
 brings you to it except the way of Jesus; but 
 this way does bring you to it.” 
 
 Jesus’ emotional nature was perfect. His 
 whole soul was in everything that He said and 
 did. He was not only full of sympathy and 
 love, under perfect control. He was love. 
 
 Other men belong to some age and country 
 and race. Jesus is the one perfect man who 
 belongs alike to every age and land and race. 
 
 * “ He was a Jew, but he is in no sense 
 Jewish. The Jewish character has been sordid 
 and worldly from the time of bargaining Jacob 
 to the present day • there was no sign of the 
 sordid and selfish in Jesus of Nazareth. It 
 has been narrow and exclusive; no character 
 in history so catholic as Jesus of Nazareth. 
 In its highest phases it has been Pharasaic, 
 ruled by a conscience always exacting and 
 generally ceremonial ; no life so free, so joy- 
 ous, so regardless of what I may call the 
 mere etiquette of religion as that of Jesus of 
 Nazareth. In these three great character- 
 istics of Hebrew character he is the antipode 
 of his race, yet in neither re-acting against 
 them . . . He is as free from asceticism as 
 from worldliness, from a sentimental philan- 
 thropism as from a narrow dogmatism ; and 
 
 from license as from bondage to the law 
 
 He is not Jewish, nor anti-Jewish, but 
 human. . . . There is no other character in 
 history which is thus accepted as the ideal of 
 manhood and the disclosure of Godhood by 
 men of all races, nationalities, creeds and 
 rituals. 
 
 “What is more inexplicable is the fact that 
 he, who transcends all distinctions of race, 
 transcends also the universal distinction of 
 sex, and is accepted alike by the most refined 
 and delicate women and the most heroic men 
 as their ideal. 
 
 “Transcending all distinctions of individual 
 idiosyncrasy, of race and nationality, and 
 even of sex, the character of Christ tran- 
 scends also all the progress of the ages. He 
 still marches at the head of humanity; and 
 the world, after eighteen centuries, has much 
 to learn before it has learned him, and much 
 to do before it has become him. The influ- 
 ence of most men dies with them ; if in some 
 few instances it survives, it grows less as the 
 years pass on. First a power, then an influ- 
 
 * Sec Abbott’s In Aid of Faith. 
 
 ence, then only a memory: of whom is not this 
 true, if we except Jesus of Nazareth? In his 
 case the reverse is true. He died in dark- 
 ness amid scorn and contumely. . . To-day 
 his name fills the world • . . and the last 
 eighty years of the Church’s life sees a great- 
 er accession to his followers, than the total 
 growth of all the eighteen hundred years 
 which preceded. 
 
 “Says John Stuart Mill, ‘Whatever else 
 may be taken away from us by rational criti- 
 cism, 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. It is of no use to 
 say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is 
 not historical, and that we know not how 
 much of what is admirable has been supper- 
 added by the tradition of his followers. . . . 
 Who among his disciples, or among their 
 proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings 
 ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and 
 character revealed in the Gospels 1 ... . 
 Nor would it be easy, even for an unbeliever 
 to find a better translation of the rule of 
 virtue from the abstract into the concrete 
 than to endeavor so to live that Christ would 
 approve our life’ ! ” 
 
 Christianity is Jesus Christ and what He 
 taught and does. Is it not most reasonable 
 to accept Him as the ideal man, and then to 
 believe and to follow His teachings? That is 
 what His first disciples did. So the way of 
 life is the only way even now to know Jesus 
 and to become like Him. Whoever will 
 follow the life of Christ and try to model 
 himself after the character of Christ will be 
 best able to understand Him. And is it un- 
 reasonable for those who thus come into vital 
 relations with Him and who cannot account 
 for Him on other grounds to accept Him as 
 more than man ? How was it possible for a 
 man of a narrow-minded race, without any 
 educational or other advantages, to become 
 the one perfect man of all ages, nations, and 
 races, if He were only a man ? Is a man 
 honest intellectually if he neglects to weigh 
 this important problem, and superficially 
 pushes Jesus one side as one about whom lie 
 need take little thought? Is a man honest 
 spiritually if he thinks and says that he has 
 no need of help from such a being as Jesus, 
 and simply is satisfied with admitting that 
 He was very wise and good ? Does he use 
 even his reason aright when he takes such an 
 attitude toward Jesus? We have no hesita* 
 
( 4 ) 
 
 tion in affirming that in Jesus Christ Christ- 
 ianity, tested by reason, supplies an ideal 
 Man who should be studied, loved, and imi- 
 tated. 
 
 The God of Christianity. 
 
 We have shown that Christianity is in the 
 highest degree reasonable in its ideal man. 
 Let us now see whether the God of Christi- 
 anity is One who meets the highest test of 
 reason. The Christian’s God is the God 
 whom Jesus Christ knows and reveals. The 
 first thing which Christ teaches us about God 
 is that He is Light, i. e., one whose nature 
 is to reveal himself. There are three ways 
 in which the Christian’s God reveals Him- 
 self — in nature, in man, and in Jesus Christ. 
 To a certain extent in all religions it is 
 taught that God is manifested in nature and 
 that he is an Infinite Power. But all that 
 most religions say is that nature gives as- 
 surance that there is a God and gives warrant 
 for the belief about Him that He is almighty, 
 wise, and good : nature does not give a vital 
 acquaintance with Him. Indeed it is impos- 
 sible for physical things, uninterpreted, to 
 express spiritual life. But with such an in- 
 terpreter as Christ all nature is in some way 
 a revelation of God as a personal Spirit of 
 infinite power, wisdom, and goodness. 
 
 In man there is a much fuller revelation of 
 God than in physical nature and in the brute 
 creation. Thinking men readily admit this, 
 and every man's consciousness is evidence 
 of it. Jesus Christ constantly assumed that 
 from their own natures men could know a 
 good deal of God. It was on this assumption 
 that He based His parables and made His 
 appeals. Thus He said, “ What man is there 
 of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he 
 give him a stone! If ye then, being evil, 
 know how to give good gifts unto your 
 children, how much more shall your Father 
 which is in heaven give good things to them 
 that ask him ? " That is, J esus C hrist teaches 
 that from everything which is good in our 
 own nature we may understand what God is 
 in an infinite degree. 
 
 These best impulses of our hearts teach 
 every man something of God. But at best 
 how imperfect a knowledge they give us. 
 God’s revelation of Himself is progressive. 
 First, revealing Himself in the physical world, 
 He expressed His thoughts by the evolution 
 of successively higher and higher stages of 
 
 existence. Then, when He had made the 
 world fit for the habitation of man, He creat- 
 ed man, a spiritual being, whom He made, 
 according to Biblical language, “in His own 
 image;” and therefore it is that from man’s 
 intellectual and moral nature we can know 
 something of God. But even the best man 
 knows that he is a very imperfect image of 
 God, and in mankind sin has sadly marred that 
 image. It is reasonable to suppose that even 
 if man had never sinned, according to His 
 progressive method of revealing Himself, God 
 would have made some fuller revelation of 
 Himself than He gives in ordinary men. 
 And the awful, universal fact that sin has 
 marred this revelation makes it seem even to 
 reason most urgent and probable that God 
 would give some fuller revelation of Himself. 
 Is it not reasonable that, when man did not 
 know, — as the history of mankind shows — 
 how to escape from sin and its consequences, 
 God would reveal Himself as a Redeemer 1 
 It would be unreasonable to believe that a 
 "ood God would not so reveal Himself. 
 
 O 
 
 Now it is a simple historical fact that when 
 Jesus Christ came into the world, He did give 
 a fuller revelation of God than men had ever 
 had before. He certainly claimed to be such 
 a revelation of God that by knowing Him 
 men would know God. Thus at one time 
 one of his disciples said to Him, “Lord, show 
 us the Father and it sufficeth us. ” He replied, 
 “ Have I been so long time with you, and yet 
 hast thou not known me, Philip ? he that 
 hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how 
 sayest thou then, Show us the Father?” At 
 another time He said to the multitude, “He 
 that believeth on me, believeth not on me, 
 but on him that sent me. And he that seeth 
 me, seeth Him that sent me” [t. e. God ]. 
 
 Jesus believed Himself to be, and taught 
 that He was the revealer of God. We would 
 rather not go into the philosophy of what this 
 means. For men have got mixed up on this 
 question and have wrangled needlessly over 
 it. Still as some stumble at it, we will say 
 a few words on it. First, what Jesus 
 says, what the New Testament declares is 
 that “God was in Christ;” that Christ was “God 
 manifest in the flesh;” that Christ was “the 
 image of God and the brightness of his 
 glory” that the “Word which was with 
 God and was God became flesh and lived 
 among men.” In a true sense God is forever 
 manifesting Himself in all good lives. “But 
 these lives are only single colors ; in J esus 
 
( 5 .) 
 
 Christ all the colors of the spectrum are woven 
 together into a single perfect ray. In others 
 they are maimed and broken by the human 
 atmosphere through which they are refracted; 
 in him they are as clear as when they first 
 issued from the sun. The noblest human 
 lives speak of God only in divers portions and 
 in divers manners, broken, fragmentary, im- 
 perfect;” Christ is the perfect Word. That 
 God should become a man is incredible; but 
 “ that God should so enter into a human 
 life, and so fill it with his own affluent being 
 that it should become the manifestation of 
 himself to men why should this be deemed 
 incredible?” 
 
 Secondly, Jesus Christ manifests not simply 
 the attributes of God, but God Himself. He 
 is not simply a messenger sent from God, but 
 the manifestation of God himself. He is not 
 like the moon, a reflection of the divine Sun- 
 He is that Sun Himself revealing Himself to 
 men through a colored glass of humanity, 
 because only in this way can the human 
 vision behold that Sim. God is in Him, so 
 that, according to His own words, any one 
 that believes in Him thereby believes in God. 
 
 Thirdly, Jesus Christ manifests what God 
 is, i. e. what He has been from eternity and 
 will be to all eternity ; not simply what He 
 was at a period eighteen and a half centuries 
 ago, nor what He has been only since He 
 tabernacled among us in Jesus Christ. 
 
 Returning now to our main point, the 
 Christian’s God is the God who reveals Him- 
 self in all nature, in all human lives, but pre- 
 eminently in Jesus Christ. That is, ask us to 
 describe God and we say He is like Christ. 
 To attempt to describe God is such a hopeless 
 task that one knows he can only imperfectly 
 perform it. Therefore it is well to look at 
 His incarnation. We must move from the 
 better known to the less known. Confessedly 
 it has been hard to get an adequate living 
 knowledge of God. Christ professes to be, and 
 in human experience has been, the best 
 means of knowing God. Therefore it is phi- 
 losophical to say that God, whom men need to 
 know, is like the Christ whom they do know. 
 
 Christianity says that God is like Christ. 
 That is, in order that men may have any 
 distinct conception of God, since it is necess- 
 ary to attain that conception beginning from 
 a human standpoint and in terms of 
 human experience, the supreme revelation of 
 God to men is Jesus Christ, whom Christiani- 
 ty teaches to be the incarnation of God. 
 
 Through Jesus Christ the thoughts, purposes, 
 ways of God are especially revealed. God is 
 like Christ. Is this satisfactory to reason? 
 As an historical fact Christ has taught men 
 concretely to know God as they did not 
 know Him before Jesus Christ came into the 
 world, and He is doing this all the time. 
 What does any one know of God’s character 
 which Christ does not better reveal than can 
 be known in any other way ? The God whom 
 Christ reveals is the Father of all spirits, in 
 whom all power and wisdom and goodness 
 dwell, whose nature is at once necessarily just 
 and necessarily merciful. Especially is He re- 
 vealed as the holy Redeemer, who must of ne- 
 cessity abhor all sin, and yet who feels infinite 
 compassion for every sinner; who reveals 
 Himself as the crowning influence to lead 
 men to forsake sin and to love holiness; who 
 must suffer till sin is put away and by suffer- 
 ing restore sinners to righteousness; who by 
 His Holy Spirit is everywhere seeking to 
 restore the divine image in all hearts; and 
 who at the end of this age will again reveal 
 Himself in a way of which at present we are 
 capable of receiving only faint hints. Our 
 reason tells us that it is reasonable that our 
 Heavenly Father, as He progressively makes 
 a more and more full revelation of Himself 
 to His human children, would give a full 
 revelation of Himself concretely in and 
 through a man. There is nothing which we 
 know of God which is not best revealed 
 through Christ. In other words, just as 
 reason approves of the Man of Christianity 
 revealed in Jesus Christ, so it bows before 
 the God of Christianity revealed through 
 Jesus Christ. Is not the great, great God, 
 the good, good God whom Christ reveals the 
 God whom our reason and our heart crave? 
 Would it not be blessed to have such a living 
 relation with Him as Christ offers to help 
 us to secure ? 
 
 The Holy Spirit. 
 
 Men needed such a concrete revelation of 
 God as was made by Christ in his human 
 relations. With much abstract teaching, and 
 without this concrete revelation man would 
 not have secured much knowledge of God 
 or living acquaintance with him. But the 
 human limitations of Christ constituted at 
 serious obstacle to men’s adequately knowing 
 God through him. For God is Spirit. He 
 is always everywhere. So long as Christ 
 

 ( 6 ) 
 
 remained in visible form on earth man would 
 unavoidably think that His help was avail- 
 able only when they could see him. Therefore 
 after He had done the work which needed to 
 be done by His incarnation, He said, Now it 
 is expedient for you that I go away. When 
 I go away I will send the Holy Spirit to you. 
 Being only Spirit, and invisible, He will show 
 you spiritual things, He will abide with you 
 forever, and will lead you into all truth. 
 That is, Christianity teaches that the Spirit 
 of God is everywhere working on the hearts 
 of men, trying to make them holy, and that 
 He especially uses the things of Christ, His 
 character, words, deeds, death, resurrection, 
 and His present life, to bring men into living 
 relations and hence into holy relations with 
 the Father. Does not this doctrine easily 
 commend itself to reason! Herbert Spencer 
 says that we are “ever in the presence of an 
 Infinite and Eternal Energy from whom all 
 things proceed.” Christianity teaches the 
 same thing, and says that this Infinite and 
 Eternal Energy is the Spirit of God. If God 
 is the Infinite and Eternal Energy, He must 
 be present everywhere, and must be active 
 everywhere. Men can easily believe that 
 God is active everywhere in all the opera- 
 tions of nature. But they do not believe in 
 His spiritual operations on the spirits of 
 men, because they are not themselves spirit- 
 ual minded. Hence, just as men think and 
 speak of the operations of nature as if they 
 were carried on by some “laws,” and do not 
 appreciate that “natural laws” are nothing ex- 
 cept God’s ordinary ways of doing His work, 
 so they fail to appreciate that many of the 
 common phenomena of their spirits show the 
 constant presence and activity of God. 
 
 Much of what is called “conscience’' is 
 only the voice of the Holy Spirit. When a 
 wicked man is proposing to do something 
 wrong and is even trying to persuade himself 
 that the proposed act is justifiable, and a 
 voice in his heart says to him, “That is wrong. 
 You should not do it,” whose voice is it! It 
 cannot be his own. He is trying to make it 
 easy to do what he wishes to do. If God is 
 everywhere, is ever active, is He not doing 
 something in that wicked man’s heart 1 Is it 
 any other than the voice of the Holy Spirit 
 Himself — though men ordinarily call it con- 
 science — which tells the man he ought not to 
 do the wrong 1 
 
 This is the universal work of the Holy Spirit. 
 But He has a more especial work. After 
 
 the use of an ordinary instrument when a 
 wise man has made himself one still more 
 efficient, He uses this better instrument. Is 
 God less wise 1 The revelation of God’s charac- 
 ter and wishes which Christ has made is 
 such an advance on every other revelation 
 that it is now His supreme instrument in 
 leading men to see their sin, to repent of it 
 and to turn to Him in loving trust and obe- 
 dience. Hence it is most reasonable that the 
 Holy Spirit should especially take the things 
 of Christ and rely on them in His work of 
 making men holy. As a historical fact it 
 was Clirist who first told the world plainly 
 about the Holy Spirit, and foretold what 
 His work would be. Having done His work of 
 revealing God and suffering for sin and having 
 risen again, and having also revealed the 
 ideal man, He Himself said, now “it is ex- 
 pedient for you that I go away. * # But if I 
 go, I will send the Paraclete [the Holy Spir- 
 it ] unto you. * * When he, the Spirit 
 of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all 
 the truth. * * He shall glorify me, for 
 he shall take of mine and declare it unto 
 you.” As a matter of fact that is what the 
 Spii-it of God is now doing. While He 
 speaks to all men in what is called conscience, 
 He finds the things of Christ His main reli- 
 ance in bringing men into holy and living 
 connection with God. A present God, who 
 lives in us, who inspires us with good 
 thoughts and purposes, who is a perpetual 
 helper and guide and comforter, who is so 
 strong, so wise, so tender, so holy, who makes 
 us realize what Christ did and was and is, and 
 what He is to make of us, this is the Chris- 
 tian’s Holy Spirit. As a doctrine this is rea- 
 sonable to the intellect. As a living experience 
 it is the consummate fact of our life. We 
 trust Him to take even this feeble, but sincere 
 statement about Him, to use it to impress 
 your mind and heart and make you conscious 
 of a personal call to you to let Him lead you 
 into holiness and to give you the inexpres- 
 sible comfort of a 'present God. 
 
 Salvation. 
 
 In former articles showing that Christ and 
 His teachings, when simply stated, in the 
 highest degree commend themselves to the 
 human reason as philosophical and true, we 
 have thus far spoken of the Christian doctrine 
 of God. We now consider the relations and 
 work of the Christian’s God to man as a 
 
( 7 ) 
 
 sinner, how God and man are reconciled, and 
 how man is led to see and forsake sin and to 
 live in loving obedience to God. 
 
 Salvation — salvation from sin, and secur- 
 ing a holy character both in this world and 
 in the world to come — this is the one great, 
 practical aim of Christianity. What has 
 reason to say about this aim and the way in 
 which Christianity seeks to secure it 1 So 
 far as we have to consider what have been 
 and what are the workings of God’s heart in 
 this matter we have in hand a most profound 
 subject on which we need light from Him. 
 Christ professed to give such light. In a 
 brief statement and from a limited stand- 
 point all aspects of the Christian position 
 cannot be stated. Its essence is that Christ 
 came into the world to show God’s feelings 
 in regard to the sinfulness of men and His 
 desire to save them from it; that Christ by 
 His life, sufferings, death, and resurrection 
 has done that which leads men to forsake 
 sin and enables God to forgive their sin, and 
 which is used by the Spirit of God to develop 
 a holy character more and more in them. 
 Is this true, and is it reasonable 1 
 
 We must first understand who Christ is 
 and what He does. We have before shown 
 that Christ is God’s special manifestation of 
 Himself. Men needed to know God as they 
 did not and could not, unless God revealed 
 Himself still more than He had done. It 
 being God’s nature to reveal Himself, it was 
 most natural and probable that He would 
 reveal Himself by the method which is best 
 adapted to man’s needs, i. e. by a visible, 
 perfect indwelling among men. This is the 
 Christian doctrine about the person of Christ; 
 and the doctrine of His work is that He 
 sought and seeks to bring sinful man into 
 harmony with God. In Biblical language the 
 Christian doctrine of atonement is this, “God 
 was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
 himself.” The method of His work is largely 
 expressed in the Biblical expression, “He 
 was wounded for our transgressions, he was 
 bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement 
 of our peace was upon him; and with his 
 stripes we are healed.” What does this mean, 
 and is it reasonable? 
 
 It means that God suffered and suffers for 
 the sins of men, that without such suffering 
 neither could He put away sin and forgive it, 
 nor without it are men enabled to put away 
 sin, and that as a matter of fact through His 
 sufferings God and men are reconciled and 
 
 man is brought into harmony with his Maker 
 and Father. To the reasonableness of this 
 doctrine two conflicting objections are offered. 
 One is that it is not possible for God to for- 
 give sin or to remove its evil consequences. 
 The other objection is that God forgives sins 
 without any suffering on His part or any 
 special suffering on man’s part, and therefore 
 that the sufferings and death of Christ have 
 no essential part in the reconciling of a holy 
 God and sinful men. 
 
 In reply to the first objection we call atten- 
 tion to two undeniable facts. First, though 
 all physical nature and also the Bible un- 
 questionably teach the important and whole- 
 some lesson that “whatsoever a man soweth, 
 that shall he also reap,” yet they both also 
 teach the equally important complementary 
 truth that even physical nature is largely 
 remedied. “There is a dumb prophet of re- 
 demption in nature, whose voice might well 
 prepare us to listen for a voice of pardon in 
 the spiritual realm. The effects of physical 
 sin are not irreparable. On the contrary, the 
 moment the sin ceases, the work of reparation 
 begins. The broken bone, reset, begins to 
 knit together; the cut flesh begins to close 
 up; and where the tissue has been burned 
 away, nature mercifully produces new tissue 
 to take its place. The dyspeptic ceases to 
 violate the laws of health, and the stomach 
 begins to repair the ravages which he has 
 made in it. If nature is unable to repair 
 the wrong, there are reparative agencies 
 in the world outside ready to give their aid 
 in such force and number that it is beginning 
 to be believed that there is no disease which 
 humanity has brought upon itself by its 
 violation of natural law, for which there is not 
 somewhere, stored up in God’s pharmacopoeia, 
 an instrument of repair.” The second unde- 
 niable fact in answer to the first objection 
 that sin cannot be forgiven is that, not only in 
 physical nature are the effects of sin some- 
 times removed, but that men actually do for- 
 give one another and put away the sins of 
 others. Cannot the good God do as much as 
 men? Wicked men leave been made good. 
 Wicked nations leave been raised and improved. 
 
 In reply to the second and contrary objec- 
 tion that God forgives so easily that He can 
 do it without any suffering, and that the suf- 
 ferings of Christ have no essential connection 
 with the remission of human sin, we fearlessly 
 appeal to the testimony of human nature and 
 of history. Can even a good man see wrong 
 
( 8 ) 
 
 done by any one, can be suffer wrong against 
 bimself from any one, even from bis own 
 children, without feeling pain? Is it not 
 indisputable that the more intelligent and 
 holy the man, the more pain he suffers from 
 the sins of others? If he is benevolent and 
 loving as well as upright, will not his wound- 
 ed love and uprightness lead him to make 
 efforts that cost him much to bring back the 
 offender from his wrong doing? And will : 
 the wrong doer feel pain and repentance for , 
 his sin if his injured parent or friend takes ; 
 the whole thing lightly? On the con- 
 trary, is not the pain which he gives those 
 whom he respects and who love him, the | 
 most potent influence in reforming him? All 
 human experience gives but one answer to 
 these test questions. If this is true of good 
 men in their relations with sinners, must it 
 not be even more so with the holy and good 
 God? Beyond a peradventure God suffers 
 the keenest pain at the sins of men. But 
 men do not appreciate this, and for this 
 reason they keep on sinning regardless of 
 God and of such suggestions as He gives them 
 in attaching physical suffering to wrong do- 
 ing in the body, and mental and moral de- 
 gradation to mental and spiritual wrong 
 doing. Would this not make Him suffer 
 still more, and in time would He not reveal 
 this? According to His uniform practice of 
 x-evealing Himself more and more fully (as 
 we have before shown) when the time came 
 for Him to make that highest revelation of 
 Himself, which as a historical fact He made 
 by His only begotten Son Jesus Christ, was 
 it not unavoidable that He should manifest I 
 His intense pain at the sins of His human 
 children? Even if our former arguments 
 did not fully convince you that Jesus Christ 
 is, in a supreme sense, the revelation of God, 
 or is God manifest in the flesh, there is a 
 new proof of this position in the necessity 
 which we are now considering. The holy 
 God, whose nature is to reveal Himself, must 
 somehow show the intense grief which He 
 feels at the sins of His human childx-en and 
 at the indifference to sin which they manifest. 
 Can you, friends, suggest a way more godlike, 
 more fitting, to help men out of sin than the 
 sufferings and death of Jesus Christ? At 
 any rate as a historical fact, have they not 
 been the most efficacious means of teaching 
 men how God grieves over sin and of leading 
 them to grieve over their own sins and to 
 forsake them ? 
 
 We do not see how any one can question 
 what has been said, but we wish to enlarge 
 on the point that the law of human nature 
 shows how profoundly philosophical is the 
 Christian doctrine of the atonement in its 
 influence in turning men from sin. That law 
 of human nature is, that the great redemptive 
 power over the lives of men is the power of 
 a loving heart suffering for another’s sins. 
 In Binghampton, New York, there is an 
 asylum for drunkards. Its superintendant 
 says: — “ Some men are sent here under 
 compulsion — almost driven here by their 
 friends; and no such man is ever cured. 
 No man ever lias gone from this asylum 
 cured of his inebriety unless there was some 
 one — a sister, a mother, a wife, a maiden — 
 who prayed for him, hoped for him, and wept 
 for him at home.” Friends, human nature 
 is the same everywhere. What is there in the 
 physical world, what is there in simply the 
 intentions of our own hearts even when 
 quickened by God, what is there in the life 
 and teachings of any great religious teacher, 
 which shows us how intense is God’s pain at 
 our sin, how ready He is to do everything in 
 His power to help us give up our sins and 
 become like Him, comparable with the power 
 of Jesus Christ’s character and sufferings? 
 He Himself says that He came to “give his 
 life a ransom for many.” While living lie 
 foretold the effect of His death in the words, 
 “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men to me.” 
 Philosophy shows that the power of His un- 
 exampled self-sacrifice for sin is profoundly 
 fitted to help men from sin to holiness. His- 
 tory shows that it has been unparalleled as such 
 a power. Experience is showing that the love 
 of God as revealed in Christ’s life and suffer- 
 ings is to-day “the power of God unto salva- 
 tion.” Now, friends, is not your intellect con- 
 vinced that it would be good for you to know 
 more of this Christ? Does not your heart 
 tell you that Christ can help you out of sin 
 into loving relations to your heavenly Father? 
 He is near us all. Will you not ask His 
 help? 
 
 Retribution. 
 
 Salvation' — this is the chief end which 
 Christ seeks to accomplish for simmers. And 
 by salvation He means union with God through 
 likeness to God. Yet He also taught that man 
 is in such a true sense the arbiter of his own 
 destiny that he can resist God’s will and all 
 
( 9 ' ) 
 
 
 
 God’s efforts to restore him to union with 
 Himself; and that as long as anyone does 
 this, he deserves and brings on himself the 
 retribution which God has indissolubly linked 
 to sin. In short, the Christian doctrine of 
 retribution involves three points : — God has 
 connected sin with its own retribution of 
 misery; man can remain incorrigible in sin ; 
 those who endlessly remain incorrigible will 
 suffer endless retribution. Are these points 
 reasonable ? 
 
 Has not God connected sin with its own re- 
 tribution of misery ? Did not the poet, Bry- 
 ant, speak the truth when he wrote : — 
 
 “God hath yoked to guilt 
 Her pale tormentor, misery. ” 
 
 What is more the teaching of all natural 
 science to-day than the intimate and immedi- 
 ate connection of cause and effect. There is 
 no arbitrariness in the working of any divine 
 laws, physical or moral. Do not drunkenness 
 and licentiousness and dirt and carelessness 
 bring their own righteous retribution to tlie 
 body of every man ? Do not mental laziness 
 and the pretence of knowing something which 
 one does not know and allowing a bias to 
 control the judgment bring their own retribu- 
 tion to the mind of every man? Do not un- 
 truth, pride, selfishness, impure imaginations, 
 bitterness inevitably being their own retribu- 
 tion to the soul of every man? The man is 
 blind who does not recognize this. 
 
 Can man remain incorrigible in sin ? The 
 simple, sad fact is that multitudes keep on 
 sinning more and more from childhood to old 
 age and death, and leave this world with their 
 faces in the direction of more sin. Moreover, 
 men do this in spite of the strenuous exertions 
 of God to dissuade them from sin. Every phy- 
 sical, mental, and spiritual suffering which is 
 linked to sin is an effort by God to draw men 
 away from wrong-doing. Every suggestion of 
 conscience is God’s voice of warning and en- 
 treaty. Every good example among men, 
 every helpful tie of friend and relative— such 
 as that of a godly parent, wife, child and as- 
 sociate — is God’s loving-hand di’awing men 
 from sin to holiness. The teachings, example 
 and ever-living influence of Christ on those 
 who know about Him are God’s revelation of 
 His inmost heart pleading with men to forsake 
 sin. Nevertheless, the sad, sad fact remains 
 that some men resist all these divine influ- 
 ences and go deeper and deeper into sin. 
 There is no more solemn truth than the ! 
 
 2 
 
 awful power of the human soul to reject all 
 love, even the love of the Almighty God. 
 
 Moreover, all human nature, all experience, 
 and all the teachings of Christ, show that God 
 influences and entreats, but He never compels 
 or coerces. By its nature love cannot be 
 coerced. The terrible assumption of man’s 
 power to resist all gracious influences under- 
 lies all Christ’s life and teaching. “Hence His 
 arguments, entreaties, persuasions ; His in- 
 carnation, His tears, His nights of prayer, 
 His Gethsemane agony, His breaking heart, 
 His tragic death, * * * His resurrection, His 
 perpetual intercession, His ever-living presence 
 with His Church.” One could hope that al- 
 mighty love had resources which could even- 
 tually avail to draw every sinner back to God. 
 But calm reason sees no assurance for the hope. 
 Habit is the strongest law of human nature. 
 When a man has persistently resisted all such 
 warnings, persuasions and loving entreaties of 
 God as have been described above, with his 
 habits hardened into a confirmed character, the 
 scientific law of continuity gives reason only 
 to infer that the man will persist in his present 
 spirit. Whatever God can do, He will do. It is 
 not lapse of time, but persistence in evil which 
 controls Him. Every consideration of reason, 
 then, indicates that man can remain incorri- 
 gible in sin despite God’s best love. 
 
 Granting that God has connected sin with 
 its own retribution of misery, and that man 
 can remain incorrigible in sin, it logically 
 follows as a conclusion that those who end- 
 lessly remain incorrigible will suffer endless 
 retribution. What the nature of endless re- 
 wards will be, what the nature of endless mis- 
 ery, Christ does not plainly indicate. But a 
 few times He uses the solemn fact that there 
 are to be such endless results of holiness and 
 sin to warn and encourage men. At present 
 philosophy and Biblical research are earnestly 
 engaged with a study into the conditions and 
 nature of these eternal results. But no great 
 thinker questions the certainty, the wisdom, 
 or the benevolence of the controlling law of 
 God which underlies this whole subject; that 
 guilt brings misery. It is not future punish- 
 ment, but present sin from which Christ 
 seeks to save us. And men who are not afraid 
 of pride and selfishness and impurity and all 
 neglect of God to-day will not be deterred 
 from it by fancying that God does not rule 
 now and postpones righteous retribution to a 
 vague future. Like God’s law of gravitation 
 which knows no limitations of time or place, 
 
His law of righteous retribution is always 
 here ancl always now in operation. “Like the 
 spark and the sting of an electric shock, sin 
 and retribution ai’o one.” Whether in the 
 highest heaven or in the lowest hell, every 
 soul receives payments by the law which is ex- 
 pressed in Biblical language thus : “To them 
 who, by patient continuance in well doing, 
 seek for glory and honor and immortality 
 [there is] eternal life; but unto them that are 
 contentious, and do not obey the truth, but 
 obey unrighteousness, [there is] indignation 
 and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon 
 every soul of man that doeth evil.” Is not 
 this reasonable? Is it not solemnly true? 
 
 Miracles. 
 
 In our first article on the present subject 
 we made the important preliminary remark 
 that Christianity has a threefold aspect; it is 
 a life, a history, and a philosophy. Primari- 
 ly and chiefly it is a life — a true life of Jesus 
 Christ in the soul. To one who has such a 
 true and living connection with Him there is 
 as little difficulty to his reason about the 
 truth of Christ as there is to the reason of 
 a child in accepting continual help from his 
 parent, or to the reason of any man in de- 
 lightful intercourse with a friend. Still to 
 a thoughtful child and friend, at some time 
 an explanation of the nature and character of 
 his parent and friend and of their relations 
 to him is a great help. It enables him to 
 appreciate them better, it enlarges his own 
 soul and makes him a nobler person. So an 
 understanding of the philosophy of Chris- 
 tianity helps our apprehension of Christianity 
 as a life. 
 
 Viewing Christianity as a history, i.e. the 
 belief that certain events connected with 
 Christ occurred at certain times, the main ap- 
 plication of reason is in weighing the credibil- 
 ity of the evidences for the alleged facts. View- 
 ing Christianity as a philosophy, i. e. as an in- 
 terpretation of man and nature in their rela- 
 tions to God, there is a wide sweep for the 
 exercise of reason. This is the field which we 
 have traversed thus far in this paper. To 
 our reason the Christian conception of man, 
 of God, of what God has done and is doing 
 to reveal Himself to His human children, 
 of what He has done and is doing to win 
 man from sin into loving and holy relations 
 with Himself, and of his wise law of retribu- 
 tion, seems profoundly philosophical. We 
 
 hope that our consideration of these subjects 
 has helped others in their apprehension of 
 the philosophical truth of Christ and His 
 teaching. We propose now to take up one or 
 two aspects of Christianity as a history. Yet 
 as a preliminary we shall first consider one 
 subject which is essentially philosophical. 
 
 Like all historical truth, the truth of Chris- 
 tianity depends on the trustworthiness of the 
 testimony for it. That testimony has been 
 subjected for centuries to every kind of test, 
 and on account of its having been submitted 
 to these crucial tests, a large part of the human 
 race believes the truth of the alleged facts 
 of Christianity. However, with a certain class 
 of minds one aspect of these alleged facts 
 has caused and still causes an attitude of doubt 
 or of open disbelief. That aspect is the 
 miraculous character of some alleged facts. 
 One chief reason for this difficulty has been 
 an incorrect apprehension, by both friends 
 and doubters, of what are termed “natural 
 laws” and “miracles.” It has not been suf- 
 ficiently borne in mind that a law implies a 
 law-giver, and that no law, regarded simply 
 as an expression of will or as a command, 
 executes itself. As often as it is executed 
 it has to be enforced by a person. Similarly 
 what are termed “natural laws” are not 
 impersonal forces, but simply God’s uniform 
 and ordinary method of conducting affairs. 
 But no wise man or ruler who ordinarily 
 works in one way, feels hindered thereby from 
 sometimes varying his pi’ocedure or from 
 using unusual forces or methods. Nor would 
 he deem an occasionally unusual course as 
 implying any reflection on his ordinary habit. 
 All that he does is l.y a use or by a combina- 
 tion of some of his many resources to produce 
 a result at a given time which he does not 
 care ordinarily to effect. Why is it not reason- 
 able to believe that God would do the same 
 thing ? What we understand the alleged 
 miracles of Christianity to be is nothing else 
 than some unusual acts of God. Such mira- 
 cles were no “ violation of natural laws,” as 
 even Christians have sometimes supposed. 
 They were no results of after-thought. They 
 never caused in the minds of those who saw 
 them, or of those who now read of them, any 
 question of the excellence of God’s ordinary 
 mode of working as shown in what we call 
 “ natural laws.” They were simply unusual 
 acts revealing His character in a way to 
 draw His children nearer to him, and some- 
 
( 111 ) 
 
 ( 
 
 times suggesting possibilities and truths of 
 which men knew little or nothing, but which 
 it would be helpful to know. 
 
 Physical science gives analogies of what 
 wc are saying. When a man lifts his foot, 
 the natural law of gravitation pulls on his 
 foot and tends to keep it in contact Avith the 
 ground just as uniformly as when he does 
 not lift it. But, being a free agent, by the 
 exercise of his will he can bring another force 
 into use and effect a result different from 
 Avhat Avould be if only the laAv of gravitation 
 Avere at Avork on his foot. Moreover, in con- 
 nection with physical science men are gradu- 
 ally discovering subtler and more powerful 
 forces, i. e. modes of God’s working, than 
 they formerly knew. This revelation of the 
 poAver and wisdom of God causes no dimu- 
 nition of respect for Him and for such modes 
 of His operation as Ave formerly knew. On 
 the contrary they increase our reverence for 
 Him. 
 
 Noav the alleged miracles of Christianity, 
 if true, are simply unusual acts of God. 
 All that a fair man needs to do is to consider 
 the evidence for the alleged facts. In physi- 
 cal science it has been positively affirmed a 
 priori that certain things were impossible, 
 Avhicli afterwards proved to be true. All 
 that true science teaches us to do is to 
 Aveigh with an unbiassed mind the testimony 
 for every alleged fact. If it seems absolutely 
 inconsistent Avith accepted principles, we 
 are rightly more sIoav to belieA’e and require 
 stronger proofs. And yet the scientific Avay is 
 to examine the proofs. Applying these prin- 
 ciples to the alleged miracles of Christ, Ave 
 admit that it is not Avrong to ask for the 
 best of proof. Therefore Ave shall take one 
 chief miracle, viz. the alleged resurrection of 
 Christ. The improbability that an ordinary 
 man had arisen from the dead is so great 
 that almost any amount of testimony would 
 hardly convince men of the truth of such 
 an alleged event. But Christ Avas not a com- 
 mon man. And Ave shall ask our readers 
 now to consider how the character of Christ, 
 the needs of man, the results of Christ’s life, 
 and several unquestionable facts of human 
 history give much added credibility to the 
 remarkable testimony to the resurrection of 
 Christ. We hope this Avill lead them to see 
 that it is highly reasonable to accept its truth 
 and to act upon it. 
 
 The Resurrection of Christ. 
 
 No one doubts that Jesus Christ lived in 
 Palestine nearly nineteen centuries ago, that 
 He Avas put to death by the Romans, and that 
 He Avas buried. Did He rise from that tomb 
 on the third day 1 ? This must be decided 
 by the evidence. Still some very Aveighty 
 considerations make it much more credible 
 a priori that Jesus Christ should rise from 
 the dead than that another person should do 
 so. We mention some of these. 
 
 1. We have previously sought to sIioav 
 that Jesus Christ is a peculiar revelation, is 
 the supreme revelation of God to men, is 
 God manifest in the flesh. As a matter of 
 fact He gave a revelation of God such as men 
 did not have before and such as has not been 
 equalled since. Moreover, He gave such a 
 revelation of the future relations of God and 
 man as men had not had, and such as has ever 
 since most poAverfully affected the world. 
 
 ( 1 ) From very ancient times, as Ave see 
 for example, from some Egyptian practices 
 and doctrines and from the Hindu doctrine of 
 the transmigration of souls, some men have 
 had some conjecture about the continued 
 existence of the soul of men after the separa- 
 tion of the soul and body by death. Some 
 philosophers, like Plato, have philosophized 
 on this subject. Yet Iioav vague and un- 
 satisfactory it all Avas. Noav is it not highly 
 probable that God, Avliose nature it is more 
 and more to reveal Himself, Avould some- 
 time give men more light on this important 
 subject 1 And Christ being the supreme 
 revelation of God, does it not just fit in Avith 
 His nature and work to reveal in His own 
 personal history Avhat is to be the future of 
 men after their souls and bodies have been 
 separated % If they are to be raised from tho 
 dead, it is important to know this. And 
 there is no Avay of impressing it on men like 
 an actual historical exhibition of its truth. 
 
 ( 2 ) Again, it seems antecedently essential 
 to the mental and moral integrity of Christ 
 that He should rise from the dead. Here Avas 
 a man avIio for the brief space of only three 
 years, in a somewhat obscure country, Avent 
 about Avith a few uninfluential disciples from 
 the humbler ranks of society, Who must have 
 foreseen that which came to Him, viz. the hos- 
 tility of all other religious teachers and finally 
 death at their hands, Who kneAv that by His 
 death His timid disciples Avould be terrified 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS, • g g g 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 and perplexed, Who never took pains to write 
 anything about Himself, nor to direct His 
 disciples to do so, Who yet spoke in the most 
 confident and lofty tones of what these timid 
 disciples were to do afterwards, how they 
 should go into all the world and make multi- 
 tudes of other disciples, and that He should 
 “draw all men” to Himself. How can we 
 explain even the mental integrity of such a 
 being, Whom every thoughtful person knows 
 to have been the wisest man who ever lived, 
 unless we account for it by His certain ex- 
 pectation of some such supreme proof of 
 Himself and His teachings as His resurrec- 
 tion from the dead? 
 
 Besides, His moral integrity makes His 
 resurrection a necessity. Later on we shall 
 show another phase of this point. Here we 
 only speak of His teachings before His death. 
 He not only predicted His resurrection in 
 plain words, e. g., 
 
 “The Son of man shall be delivered unto 
 the chief priests, and unto the scribes, and they 
 shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver 
 him to the Gentiles ; and they shall mock 
 him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit 
 upon him, and shall kill him 3 and the third 
 day he shall rise again;” 
 
 but also in veiled language which no one 
 could have invented He similarly predicted His 
 resurrection thus: — 
 
 “As Jonah was three days and three nights ! 
 in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man | 
 be three days and three nights in the heart , 
 of the earth.” 
 
 (3) The resurrection of Christ seems a 
 necessary complement to that which He 
 claimed to be His chief work, viz. the salva- 
 tion of men. Death, as it now is, is the fruit 
 of sin. A completeness is given to His work 
 only when He show's that God can overcome 
 sin so as to turn even its evil results into 
 blessing and victory, that there is victory 
 over even death, and that God’s grace abounds 
 even more than sin. This completeness 
 could be secured only by the resurrection. 
 
 ( 4 ) To us who are far removed from that 
 time and who cannot ask questions of those 
 w ho professed to be eye-witnesses of Christ 
 after His resurrection, it is no small considera- 
 tion that the actual results of belief in that 
 event have been momentous and momentous 
 for "ood only. Ever since that alleged event 
 there has been in the world a profound convic- 
 tion of a life of the soul after death, multitudes 
 
 of sorrowing hearts have been . comforted by 
 tho hope of meeting departed friends in 
 another world, those who have suffered trial 
 and wrong have been sustained by the hope 
 of rewards hereafter, and those who have 
 been tempted to do wrong have often been 
 restrained by the anticipation of certain 
 retribution beyond the grave. 
 
 Such preliminary considerations prepare 
 us for taking up the remarkably convincing 
 evidence for the resurrection of Christ. 
 
 2. ( 1 ) The first unquestionable fact is 
 
 that the tomb in which Christ w r as buried 
 was empty on the third day. Even enemies 
 concede this. If that tomb had not somehow 
 become empty, there would have been no pos- 
 sibilitj r for the report that Christ had risen. 
 Or, if it had been started, the Jews and 
 Romans could immediately have stopped it 
 by saying “Look in the tomb : there is his 
 body now. ” It is only wonderful that the 
 Jews did not put another corpse into the 
 tomb to stop the report. 
 
 (2) Though the Jews and the soldiers who 
 were guarding the tomb started the report 
 that Christ’s disciples had stolen his body, 
 the impossibility of this explanation is seen (a) 
 from the fact that what the disciples wanted 
 to do was to run away and hide from perse- 
 cution. They had neither thought nor courage 
 to oppose the Jews and Romans in what they 
 were doing. ( b ) They could not have stolen 
 the body from the Roman soldiers, if they 
 had wished to do so. (c) The dead body of 
 Christ would have been only a terror to them. 
 
 (3) The disciples who had fled from Christ 
 when He was arrested, and had denied that 
 they knew Him, and had been terrified lest 
 they also should be seized and punished, from 
 the third day on manifested an entire revolu- 
 tion of character. Instead of being timid, 
 they were now most bold, testifying before the 
 multitudes and before the authorities that 
 they had seen Christ after His resurrection, 
 even though punished and persecuted for 
 saying so. Timid men are not made so bold 
 by an imagination. 
 
 (4) The mental and moral condition of the 
 disciples was not one of credulity and hope. 
 On the contrary some of them disbelieved 
 even the testimony of their associates who 
 claimed to have seen the risen Christ, and it 
 was only after incontrovertible evidence that 
 they believed. 
 
 (5) At intervals during forty days, in dif- 
 
< 18 ) 
 
 ferent places, under different circumstances, 
 to single persons, to companies of two, ten, 
 and once of five hundred, there appeared One 
 whom they all accepted as their risen Lord. 
 
 (G) The contemporaries of these Christians 
 so believed these witnesses that multitudes 
 who were enemies became Christians. 
 
 (7) This event so affected the disciples 
 that very soon after the event they began to 
 observe Sunday, the day on which Christ rose, 
 as their weekly day of worship and gladness 
 in place of Saturday the day which the Jews 
 had always observed and still observe. It is 
 not reasonable to believe that such an im- 
 portant institution as the Christian Sabbath 
 is founded on a fancy. 
 
 (8) We have unquestionable written ac- 
 counts showing the universal belief of the 
 early church in this event, composed within 
 twenty-five years of Christ’s death. The 
 letters of Paul to the Churches at Thessalo- 
 nica and Corinth and Rome and in Galatia 
 are acknowledged by all good scholars to 
 have been written within twenty-five years 
 of that event, and they give indirect and 
 direct proof of the very general belief in 
 Christ’s resurrection. 
 
 3. Other explanations have been attempt- 
 ed of this singular event. In the light of 
 calm and impartial examination it is seen 
 that they all are far less credible than the 
 simple, natural one that He rose from the 
 dead. 
 
 (1) It has been suggested that the disci- 
 ples stole the body of Christ and told the lie 
 that He had risen. But (a) they would 
 not have dared to try to steal Christ’s body: 
 (6) they could not have done it: (c) the dead 
 body would not have given them the courage 
 which they showed, but would have increased 
 their fears: (d) it would not have appeared 
 in different places to different persons: (e) 
 everyone knows that the disciples were not 
 imposters and liars. 
 
 (2) It has been imagined that Jesus did 
 not die, but swooned on the cross, and after 
 being put into the tomb came to conscious- 
 ness, somehow got out, and that the people 
 believed this to be a resurrection from the 
 dead. His prediction that He would be put 
 to. death, the testimony of the soldiers who 
 conducted the crucifixion and other matters 
 discredit this theory. But the one overwhelm- 
 ing disproof is that if J esus had not died and 
 risen, but only revived from a swoon, He 
 
 would never have let men believe such a lie 
 about Himself. 
 
 (3) It has been imagined that the eager ex- 
 pectancy of the disciples that their Lord 
 would rise from the dead created out of their 
 hopes an hallucination that the Lord had 
 risen. But ( a ) the disciples had no such eager 
 expectancy: and ( b ) even if they had had it, 
 no hallucination would have been enough to 
 give them the courage which they showed, 
 nor would it have converted enemies into 
 friends. 
 
 (4) It has been suggested that little by 
 little, as the years and generations rolled by, 
 the spiritual confidence of the more elevated 
 Christians dwelt on the immortal influence 
 of their Master, which in grosser minds grew 
 into a belief in His material resurrection. 
 But, [a) this implies that the tomb was never 
 empty, which must have been the case: ( b ) 
 the belief grew up immediately, and not after 
 years and generations: (c) this cannot ac- 
 count for the courage of the disciples, the 
 spread of Christianity, the early keeping of 
 Sunday and many other undeniable facts. 
 These are the only alternatives to the belief 
 in the reality of the resurrection. ISot one 
 of them is a living opinion to-day. “The faith 
 in the reality of the resurrection has Avon its 
 victory through centuries of battle, over active 
 opposition or inert doubt. It Avon the belief 
 of the disciples, in spite of their settled and 
 hopeless despair. It Avon the assent of Greek 
 and Roman, in spite of a sneering materialis- 
 tic infidelity more callous than any skep- 
 ticism of modern times. It created a church; 
 gave to the world a neAV day of rest; inspired 
 humanity Avith a neAV Avorship; changed the 
 very features of its civilization.” It is most 
 reasonable to believe in this event and in the 
 Christ who rose and noAv li\-es to help every 
 man. 
 
 Evolution. 
 
 One of the chief causes Avhy there is a more 
 or less vague impression in many minds that 
 Christianity cannot bear the most searching 
 tests of reason is the assumption that it is at 
 variance Avith the ascertained facts and the 
 probable hypotheses of natural science. It 
 must be confessed that much of this mistaken 
 impression is due to Christians avIio have too 
 hastily condemned ucav scientific theories as 
 anti-Christian. Still it is also partly due to 
 some scientists Avho have presented neAV tlieo- 
 
( H ) 
 
 ries -which contained much that was valuable, 
 in implied or openly expressed connection 
 with a philosophy that is really anti-Christian. 
 
 Latterly this assumed hostility between 
 science and Christianity, or more strictly 
 between science and theism, has mainly had 
 reference to the doctrine of evolution. But 
 the history of human thought shows that this 
 is only a repetition of an old, old experience. 
 When modern astronomy was not fully de- 
 monstrated nor generally accepted, it was 
 hotly contested that there was utter incom- 
 patibility between it and Christianity. The 
 same was the case with modern chemistry and 
 geology. But eventually it was easily seen, 
 not only that there is no incompatibility 
 between any of these sciences and Christian 
 truth, but that they confirm the latter and 
 amplify its application. Already it is prov- 
 ing the same with all in the doctrine of evo- 
 lution that is established and that is essen- 
 tial to it. 
 
 The doctrine of evolution is an old doctrine. 
 From the time of Lucretius it has been re- 
 presented as a doctrine of necessity and apart 
 from the action of God. When Darwin re- 
 vived the doctrine, he treated the subject 
 entirely apart from the action of God. Hence 
 Christians and theists naturally looked on 
 evolution as anti-theistic. But such scien- 
 tists as Mivart, the Duke of Argyle and 
 Professor Asa Gray, and such philosophers as 
 McCosh have shown that it is not a question 
 of creation versus evolution, but of creation 
 by evolution or without evolution , and when 
 the anti-theistic bias was seen to be no part 
 of evolution, the whole subject was gi-eatly 
 cleared. At the present time some doctrine 
 of evolution is accepted by the best Christian 
 scientists and philosophers. And like all 
 truth it is seen to honour God and, in certain 
 respects, to confirm the Christian system. 
 
 The principle by which there will come a 
 solution of the apparent conflict between evo- 
 lution and Christian theism has been -well 
 generalized thus *“The main fact in evolu- 
 tion is force working uniformly; but evolu- 
 tion does not explain force; it receives it 
 from some will, which is its only possible 
 origin. But will is an attribute of personal- 
 ity, and is the basis and a large part of reli- 
 gion. We have, therefore, in religion an 
 original factor which is found in the process 
 of evolution, — not as an essential element, 
 but simply as a method of op eration. Reli- 
 
 * See Dr. T. X. Hunger’s, The Ajywal to Life. 
 
 \ gion, therefore, is not compassed by the 
 evolutionary process and laws, but is direct- 
 ly related to the eternal will that imparts 
 its force to the process of evolution. In 
 other words, religion is not correlated to a 
 method of force, but to force itself, that is 
 to the eternal will. Religion, therefore stands 
 in freedom, for will is free.” In other words, 
 force is not a self-acting entity, but the method 
 of the action of an intelligent cause. 
 
 When the doctrine of creative evolution is 
 explained as meaning the orderly creation by 
 law', i. e. by the uniform action of God, who 
 is immanent in the universe, and who deve- 
 lops everything from simple primary forms 
 to the most complex organisms, by the ad- 
 justment of what are called natural forces, 
 there is no antitheistic tendency in the 
 doctrine. It is not necessary now to give 
 evidences in support of evolution. It is 
 enough to say that it finds support in astron- 
 omy, chemistry, geology and biology, and 
 that it now meets little opposition. Most 
 thoughtful men accept it as the true expla- 
 nation of the universe up to man. Some 
 extend its operations to the physical, but not 
 to the intellectual and moral, elements of 
 man. Others make it embrace all. But 
 the doctrine of creation of the entire man 
 by evolution no more contradicts the Chris- 
 tian system than creation of the lower orders 
 by evolution. It adds to the unity of the uni- 
 verse to accept one method of God’s action in 
 all its parts. It fits in with the unity of 
 action of an all-w T ise God to accept one key 
 that turns all wards of His universe, past, 
 present and future. 
 
 The doctrine of evolution not only per- 
 fects our conception of the unity of God, but 
 it strengthens the argument from design by 
 which His goodness is proved. Evolution 
 affirms and shows that in all the upw r ard 
 movement in the universe from the first 
 particles up to man there has been design and 
 one controlling purpose. Here is design on 
 the grandest scale. Moreover it obviates all 
 the difficulties which formerly met the argu- 
 ment from design in imperfect and crude 
 forms. It was difficult to reconcile with a 
 noble conception of God the creation of long 
 orders of creatures of uncouth forms v’ho 
 simply devoured one another, till the evolu- 
 tionary philosophy taught that they all were 
 transient, but necessary forms “in an ever 
 growing process, yielding to more shapely 
 and complex orders, and so climbing by an 
 
( 13 ) 
 
 ever finer transition to some final ancl per- 
 fect end.” 
 
 Moreover, evolution properly considered, 
 brings God nearer to us than any previous 
 theories of creation. Every operation of all 
 nature is thus represented as an act of the 
 God who is immanent in all His works, and 
 who is thus ever revealing Himself. The 
 Miltonic conception of creation by one original 
 fiat put God at the beginning, and then repre- 
 sented the universe as going on like a ma- 
 chine, having little connection with God ex- 
 cept His preserving the machine. The evo- 
 lutionary philosopher with sympathetic in- 
 sight into nature recognizes the truth of 
 Tennyson’s line, 
 
 “ Closer is he than breathing, and nearer 
 than hands and feet.” 
 
 As the evolutionary philosophy is better 
 understood men see that it is no discredit to 
 men that, as our bodies bear some organic 
 relation to the lower forms of life, so our 
 mental and moral qualities have their first 
 intimations in the brute world. Moral qual- 
 ities are not found in brutes, but the grounds 
 of these qualities are there. Their presence 
 there is a prophecy of the future, showing 
 the divine purpose to develop moral beings 
 at the right time. Again, just as botany 
 shows that though a flower is evolved from a 
 leaf, it becomes a flower only by ceasing to 
 be a leaf, so, though moral qualities are 
 evolved from brute qualities, they become 
 moral only by ceasing to be what they were. 
 In other words, they get their essential 
 nature not from their connection with lower 
 forms or with the process, but from the 
 divine mind which is behind and in the 
 process. “It may be set down as an axiom 
 that the end of a process cannot be identi- 
 fied with the process.” 
 
 Some Christians have felt especial difficulty 
 about evolution because this seemed incom- 
 patible with the Biblical account of the intro- 
 duction of sin into the world. But evolution 
 does not question that man is a moral being 
 having freedom, consciousness, moral sense 
 and personality. It only says that God made 
 him such by slow development from lower 
 forms. Even if the evolutionary hypothesis 
 should be established, that in all respects 
 man is developed from the lower forms of 
 creation, on that very hypothesis there is no 
 scientific reason against the theory that when 
 man became a free agent crowned with moral 
 
 sovereignty, his past brutish connection 
 pulled him down. “As in creation the chemic 
 needed more of God to become the organic, 
 and as the organic needed more of God than 
 could be fouud in the chemic in order to be- 
 come vital and conscious, so man may need 
 God in all his fulness and in the perfection 
 of his manifestation in order to become per- 
 fectly man. Hence a revelation: hence the 
 incarnation. If the whole progressive cre- 
 ation is a progressive revelation of God, when 
 its process culminates and ends in man, it is 
 the very thing we might expect; namely, that 
 there should be a full and perfect manifesta- 
 tion of God in the form and with the power’s 
 needed to lift humanity up to the level of its 
 destiny:” i. e. the evolutionary philosophy 
 itself looks forward to an incarnation like 
 Jesus Christ. Hence the latest phase of 
 science, like all the previous sciences of 
 astronomy, chemistry and geology, adds its 
 indirect and its direct testimony to the reason- 
 ableness and truth of Christ; and Christ is 
 Christianity. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 We hope that our readers have been help- 
 ed to see that there are the strongest reasons 
 for believing that Christianity is true as a 
 history and true as a philosophy. If so, it 
 is sure to be true as a life. If true as life, 
 it is of the utmost practical importance, for 
 it is nothing less than Christ Himself, the 
 ever-living Christ, coming into the most 
 helpful relations with our lives, revealing 
 God to us, giving us His thoughts, belief”, 
 loves and so making us like Himself — in 
 part in this world and more fully in the 
 world to come. This result is so important 
 that, even if any one is not fully convinced 
 in regard to Christianity as history and phi- 
 losophy, yet their reasonableness is at least 
 so great that it is prudent and desirable to 
 try the alleged helpfulness of Christianity, 
 i. e., to act as if Christ were truly alive and 
 seeking to have helpful relations with our 
 souls. That is, a man would do well to say, 
 “In order to know experimentally whether 
 Christ is such a living power as I need, I 
 will give Him a trial. I will try to under- 
 stand what His directions are, and will follow 
 them as well as I can, and will ask His help 
 in it all.” Friends, if you will do this honest- 
 ly for a little while, our word for it you 
 will know the truth of Christianity, i. e . of 
 
Christ, as a life. And when you have this 
 vital testimony, you will also better under- 
 stand Christianity as a philosophy. This is 
 the way in which Christianity has made its 
 disciples from the first. This is the way 
 in which Christ wishes you to test Him 
 
 now. His words are, “I am come that they 
 might have life, and that they might have 
 it more abundantly. And this is life eternal 
 that they might know thee the only true 
 God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."