rl"

etc o*n

low to Meet Skepticism: Are We Conceding its Claims?

A PAPER

BEAD BEFORE TUB

General JlHoeiation of the Congregational Churcheb and
MinUterb of Indiana,

THOMAS RUTHERFORD BACON,
/i "
Pastor of the First Congregational Church in Terre Haute,

TEBBE HAUTE, MAT 17th, 1879.

PRIHTED BY ORDER OF THE ASSOCIATION.

INDIANAPOLIS:
.INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1879.

HOW TO MEET SKEPTICISM: ARE WE CONCEDING
ITS CLAIMS?

Some attention has been lately drawn- to the writings of a young
Englishman who has shown remarkable literary ability and great
intellectual acuteness. Through the pages of popular periodicals
he has published to the world the doubts and problems which pre
sent themselves to him, and which call imperatively for practical
answers. The reader can not doubt the man's absolute honesty in
the discussion, or his earnest desire to find the truth. Brought up,
apparently, in the English Church, he has found the authoritative
groundwork of his faith cut away and the superstructure fallen in
ruin. At this ruin he looks mournfully, without hope of its recon
struction. Through all his works, satire, sparkling fun and wit,
broad burlesque and serious discussion, there runs a vein of disap
pointment and sadness never quite lost in the pretense of uproarious
spirits, and giving a sombre hue to all soberer reflection. In it all
we hear the echo of the pitiful cry, "They have taken away my
Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."
From his dead faith he turns- to the various philosophies of the
day, which, curiously enough, have a physical basis in an hypothe
sis of empirical science, the hypothesis of evolution. Of each of
these philosophies he solemnly asks the question, " Is life worth
jiving?" and from none of them does he get a satifactory answer.
He desires to find some end which will make it worth while to
struggle and suffer and endure, some end which will bring its own
hope and its own reward, and with all his diligent searching he can
not find it here. He asks these leaders of modern thought for the
bread whereby a man may live, and they offer him nothing but

cold and unnutritious stones. In all his writings we find a strong
leaning toward the Roman Catholic Church, a yearning to dismiss
all his perplexities by turning to that mighty and kindly mother
who will not let her children walk for fear lest they stumble, but
who carries them safely in her arms, taking all the responsibility
and promising all good upon the simple condition of obedience.
An article published about a year ago sets forth most fully this
tendency of the writer. It is called "The Future of Faith," and
points out with apparently irresistible logic that if Christian faith
has any future in the world, it is in the Catholic Church alone. As
I wish to make this position of Mr. Mallock's the starting point of
our discussion, I shall try to explain it as well as may be in a few
words. The Bible is the fundamental authority of the Christian
religion, as represented by the Protestant Churches. Upon the
integrity and absolute truth of this book the Protestant has been
ready to stake the faith and well being of the whole human race.
We have said that with the truth of this book as the word of God
our religion stands or falls. For every question, " Why should I
believe thus and thus?" we have had one answer, "Thus saith the
Bible." Under the tests of modern scientific criticism the Bible has fallen
short of the claims which were made for it. Inaccuracies, mis
statements, discrepancies have been found in it. Worse than this,
some of its utterances display what all men acknowledge to be a
very imperfect morality. Moreover, it contains precepts which
even its most zealous defenders count as obsolete and inoperative.
Now, the slightest inaccuracy or imperfection, once admitted,
invalidates the claim that the Bible^ is in any literal sense the word
of God. God, if there be a God, does not make mistakes. If the
evidences which we find of imperfect moral conceptions are credi
ble, then they, too, invalidate this claim. The whole authoritative
foundation is destroyed, and religion without authority is nothing.
The Bible remains the most extraordinary and valuable book in
the world, but it must forego its claim to be considered the uncor-
rupted and incorruptible utterance of the Most High. Thus the
final and divine authority of Protestant Christianity is destroyed,
and that phase of religion must go down.

The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hahd„utterly refuses
to submit the Bible to any such tests. It claims for itself an
authority derived from God alone. It shows for itself a continuous
organized existence, dating certainly from the second century; and
if we admit its claims, which in this respect are conceded by all
Protestants, the organization had an earlier beginning. And this
long history has been one mighty display of power, a power world
wide in its reach, unbroken by vicissitudes, and, as a whole, benefi
cent to mankind. While empires and thrones have crumbled,
while generation after generation has arisen and perished, while
institutions once deemed eternal have been forgotten, this great
Church has kept upon her stately way, conquering and to conquer.
In the early Christian centuries she was recognized as the deposi
tory and custodian of the apostolic traditions, and as such was
looked up to by all the provincial Churches of the empire. Grad
ually she assumed an acknowledged pre-eminence and spread her
power over all Western Europe. With a divine might she ruled
kingdoms and empires. During the dark ages she spread her pro
tecting wings over the poor and distressed in every land to save
them from the spoiler. Within the walls of her cloisters and mon
asteries was kept alive the flame of sound learning when it was
like to go out in the darkness of medieval Europe, and thence
came the earliest impulses toward the revival of letters. When
Protestantism arose and snatched whole nations from their allegi
ance to her, the result was a revival of religion within her borders
and the closer and more perfect arrangement of her discipline and
power. When, in these latter days, she has lost the last trace
of that temporal power to which she clung so tenaciously, the
result has been a revival of the Catholic religion in Catholic lands
scarcely paralleled since the great reaction of the sixteenth cen
tury. Through all this marvellous history the power of the
Church has been perpetuated by the persistent claim of a direct
divine inspiration, an absolute authority derived from God. This
great Church to-day says to man, "Accept and believe the Bible,
because I say it is true, and I have the right to speak. I have the
keys of heaven and hell, delivered unto me by the Lord Jesus."
In proof of her claim she points to her history, to her actual, iden
tical, organized existence from the days when Peter was the Bishop

of Rome until now. A man can consistently resign his privilege
of reasoning upon divine things and yield himself to her for guid
ance, for she speaks as one having authority, and not as the Prot
estant scribes. Here a man may find religious faith, but there is
no middle ground between this surrender of reason and blank
rationalism. For the only authority which Protestant Christianity
offers has broken down under the investigation which it has
invited. Thus I have given, in my own form, the line of thought of an
article hastily read and imperfectly remembered, but a line of
thought sufficiently startling to leave a distinct impression upon
the mind. I have said that the logic of the writer is apparently
irresistible; I go further, and say that this logic is actually irresist
ible, if we once admit the premises. We acknowledge three
sources whence we derive the knowledge of religious truth — rea
son, feeling, and authority. The human reason, applied to author
itative religious teaching, bears its legitimate fruit of emotional
experience, and the outcome of the three is doctrinal conviction.
When these three are most nearly in their proper equilibrium, the
resulting convictions will be nearest to. truth. When either one of
them has undue predominance, the religious convictions will be
onesided and erroneous. When reason is predominant, we have
rationalism. When feeling has too much weight, the result is mys
ticism. When the reliance is upon authority alone, belief becomes
mere traditionalism. We can dispense with either reason or feel
ing and still have some kind of religious belief; but without a rec
ognized authority there can be no faith, nothing but speculation
and vain philosophy. What, then, can we say for a religion that
asks the fullest and most critical investigation of its authoritative
basis, and then frankly acknowledges that this basis is broken
down by the examination which it has invited. And do we not
thus acknowledge ? We say that the Mosaic account of the cre
ation is not correct. We have grave doubts as to the extent of
the deluge and the ages or the very existence of the antediluvians
whose names are recorded. We admit that the history of the
Jewish people is like other histories compiled from earlier docu
ments. We admit that there are found, in some of the writers,
moral conceptions which are very shocking to our sense of right,

as, for instance, in that familiar Psalm whose beauty is marred for
us by the closing lines, "O, daughter of Babylon, which art to be
destroyed, happy shall be he that rewardeth thee as thou hast
served us. Happy shall be he that taketh and dasheth thy little
ones against the stones." We acknowledge that discrepancies
exist in the chroniclers of the Old Testament and in the evangel
ists of the New. We count as nothing the direction of Paul that
women shall keep silence in the Church, and the medical advice of
James to annoint the sick with oil. All this we have conceded to
skepticism, or, rather, to the spirit of free inquiry, for quite as
much of the criticism that has led to these results has come from
believers as from unbelievers. But we seem to have conceded to
skepticism because all the modern attacks upon Christianity follow
in these lines. Protestantism has boldly declared its willingness to
stake all upon the absolute integrity of the Bible. That integrity
has been disproved, and where in the world are we? The founda
tions are destroyed, and what shall the righteous do?
There are two possible methods of meeting these difficulties.
One very common one is to refuse to listen to criticism, to refuse
to admit the possibility of error, to resort to unreasonable methods
of interpretation and harmonizing, to shut the eyes and cling des
perately to old doctrines and traditions. For those who pursue
this course I have the highest respect. They know that this revela
tion of God is true from their own experience of its power, the
Holy Ghost bearing its witness in their hearts. It is more than
all the world to them, and they can not let it go. They deem
that the whole revelation will be lost if they admit the truth of
such judgments as these. This attitude I honor. It is the atti
tude forced upon them by an earnest belief. It may be well
enough for them. They may thus find release from harrassing
doubt and perplexity. But we can not expect that others, honest
inquirers after truth, who have had no experience of this power of
God, will accept such a position, or will be inclined to treat it with
very great respect. They Will not admit forced harmonies and
interpretations and hypotheses which are repugnant to reason.
This first method of meeting these difficulties may be satisfactory
to those who believe already, but it utterly fails to establish the

authority of the Scriptures as against the scientific criticism of the
day. The second method of meeting this difficulty is to look about,
carefully and reverently, to see whether we have not been mistaken
in our definition of the primary authority of our religious belief.
Is the real and final foundation of our faith the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments ? We have claimed that this faith rested
upon a wholly man-made formula of the doctrine of inspiration ;
have we been right in so doing? I say a wholly man-made form
ula, for no one whom we count inspired has ever given us a state
ment of this doctrine. Never, from lips of prophet, or apostle, or
the Lord of Life, came any declaration of what inspiration is, or of
where it ceases. The fact is declared, by Paul and by Peter, that
Scripture is inspired, but that is all. Men, reasoning upon this
fact of inspiration, have framed a doctrine which seemed, at the
time, to be sufficient, but which, like all human works, has been
found imperfect and lias now been cast aside. What are we to do,
then ? Shall we wait until men have time to frame a new doctrine,
and then take our stand upon that? If we wait, we die; and the
doctrine will never be framed. Is it not possible that while we
thought we were standing upon this formula, our feet were really
set upon the Rock of Ages ? The formula is gone, but we still
stand. Ah ! yes, the true foundation of our faith is not the doc
trine of inspiration, but the fact of revelation — " for other founda
tion can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
It is very necessary that we should find the ultimate basis and
authority of our faith. In looking for it let us be careful to dis
tinguish between the doctrine of inspiration and the fact of revela
tion, for they are very different things, though they have been
very greatly confounded. The doctrine of inspiration, being a
human inference from facts, is liable to change as knowledge of
the facts become fuller and more systematic. All the great doc
trines of the Church require re-statement from time to time, as the
habits of thought and critical methods of man vary from age to
age ; but the facts from which they are drawn never change — the
great fact of revelation is unchangeable. If God has revealed
Himself, that fact remains. If He has done something for man,
if He has actually accomplished something, by entering, supernat-

urally, into human history, this event can not be blotted out by
years or changed by any subsequent variations of human thought.
What He has done can not be undone. Succeeding ages may see
it in new lights! and with different eyes, but the revelation remains,
an eternal, unchangeable, imperishable fact. If we make this fact
the ultimate ground and authority of our religious belief, we have
a firm foundation which shall never be moved.
Let us now leave out of view the matter and doctrine of inspira
tion, and fix our eyes upon the fact of revelation. Since, as always,
the letter killeth, let us see whether the Spirit will give life. Let
us look at the testimony of these writers, taking for granted that
they are credible witnesses, and nothing more. What has God
done ? how has He revealed Himself by action in history ? The
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews begins his discourse by tell
ing his fellow-countrymen that the same God who had spoken by
the mouths of prophets unto their fathers, had, in these latter days,
spoken unto them by his Son. But, as he goes on to verify this
statement, he quotes not one word that Christ has spoken— not one
of those divine utterances which fill the gospels with light and
life — for he has to tell of actions, that speak louder than words.
He tells how God gave His only begotten Son to die for the sins
of men; how He, by whom the worlds were made, being the
brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His
person, and upholding all things by the word of His power,
became a partaker of flesh and blood, and took upon Him the
seed of Abraham ; how He suffered, being tempted, and learned
obedience through the things that He suffered; how, despised
and rejected, He was crucified by cruel men; how the God of
Peace brought Him again from the dead, and hath crowned Him
with glory and honor. Thus God spake. Had the word been
thundered from the clouded heavens, had it been written across
the glittering sky, it would have been true, it would have been
credible, but it could not thus have shown the love and care of
God. But the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we
beheld His glory — the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth. God is love; but had He only spoken the
word we could not have understood it. No riches of temporal
blessing could have manifested it, for no amount of such gifts

10
could _ impoverish Him; but when He gave His wehVbeloved Son
to suffer death for us, He showed, beyond peradventure, the
length and breadth and .height and depth of His unspeakable love.
Do you wish to know the love of God, his sympathy for weak
mankind, His compassion for the erring, His desire that men
should turn from the error of, their ways and live ? Do you wish
to know His justice, His mercy, and His truth? Then look back
across the hurrying years, the clashing doctrines, and the varying
creeds through the mid-day darkness of that day before the Pass
over, and behold the central cross of the three that stand in the
place which is called Calvary. The dead lips of Him who hangs
there speak, as no living lips could ever speak, of the fullness of
God's free grace. The life which there ended is a fuller revelation
of God than could have come from the mouths of prophets or
apostles. The words of Christ Himself— ^splendid, precious, and
memorable as they are — would lose half their value, many of them
would be wholly meaningless to us, were it not for the life and
deeds which are behind the words. The Epistles of Paul would
be flat, stale, and unprofitable, were it not for the divine action
which called them forth, and which gives them power and mean
ing. Do you wish to know the power and glory of God? how
He, from darkness and death, can bring life and immortality to
light ? Then look across the hoary sea which never yet has given
up its dead, across the continents, ridged and scarred by the graves
of unnumbered generations who have lain down to an unbroken
sleep, and behold the rock-hewn sepulchre in the garden, in the
early light of the first Easter day. "Why seek ye the living
among the dead? He is risen: He is not here: He is gone
before you into Galilee." The empty tomb declares to us that
there is no power that can thwart the power of God; that against
His truth the gates of hell shall not prevail ; that His own hand
has bound the orderly sequences of nature into the strong chain
of material law, and that this chain which He hath made can
never fetter His free Spirit. The spoken word is good, but the
Word made flesh alone can tell us all the love and power of God.
The glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of
the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, the Holy Church

11
throughout all the world, have the Word which was in the begin
ning with God, as the high and eternal warrant for their faith.
Christ foretold by prophets, Christ born of a virgin, Christ cruci
fied by men, Christ risen from the dead by the power of His end
less life, Christ ascended into glory. Thus saith the Lord.
You see that the course of my thought leads me to answer the
question, How shall we meet skepticism ? as follows :
We must clearly define the ultimate authoritative basis of our
faith. This basis is the supernatural action of God in history, the
fact of revelation. The Scriptures maintain their supreme import
ance because they contain the record of this revelation. If we
take this position, the only question which skepticism can raise is
in regard to the historical value of the records, and we need have
no fear as to the result of such questionings. Errors and inaccu
racies and imperfect ethical knowledge can no more invalidate this
history than they can invalidate the history of the reformation or
that of the English people.
I. We must take our stand upon facts, and not upon the doc
trines which we infer from the facts. This first answer is the chief,
and includes all others that I have to give, but in order to illustrate
this I will briefly give some others.
2. We must cease from that cowardly fear of scientific hypoth
eses and speculations which has been characteristic of so many
worthy Christian men in these latter days. Scientific hypotheses
are like Christian doctrines, framed to explain known facts, and
they may change as the knowledge of the facts is wider, . or as
more accurate habits of thought prevail. I may, personally, find
so much of beauty and so clear a manifestation of God's power and
wisdom in the theory which bears Mr. Darwin's name that I choose
to believe it, but as I refuse to rest my hope of eternal life upon the
endurance and truth of any theological formula, I also refuse to
let it stand or fall with any scientific hypothesis.
3. We must cease to try to interpret scientific discoveries
according to our preconceived notions and theories. There are
two classes of men who are just now making a great deal of noise
with very little result. One man examines every atom of the
human body with microscope and crucible, and says that he can
not find the human soul, and thence infers that there is none. He

12
is honest in his investigation and in his statement of fact. His
inference, we see, is untrue. We call him a materialist. Another
man, believing that there is a human soul, enters upon the same
investigation, with the alleged purpose of finding it. He looks
through the same microscope, peeps into the same crucible, and
declares, by his hope of heaven, that he sees it. This man is just
as gross a materialist as the other, and is intellectually dishonest.
4. Finally, we must ever remember that the faith which is able
to save the soul, is not the acceptance of any body of doctrines,
but the trusting of the soul to Christ.
I must guard myself against one misapprehension, in closing.
It must not be supposed that I undervalue the great doctrines of
the Church, or regard them as having no authority; but I do most
earnestly assert that they have not a supreme value, because they
have not a final authority. The word made flesh is the fullest and
most authoritative utterance of the Most High.
[Note. — I should have treated this subject in greater detail, had not my time been
limited. I was obliged to confine myself to pointing out the attitude which the
Protestant Churches should assume in resisting skeptical attacks. I am quite aware
that I have laid myself open to the accusation of despising the doctrine of inspira
tion ; had there been more time at my disposal, I might have thought it worth while
to guard myself against this imputation. As it is, I must let the subject go, with
the remark that I deem inspiration a part of revelation, but a subordinate part.
Revelation can stand while men are re-formulating this doctrine. T. R. B.]

08540 2189