1875 410-415

THE BIBLE TRUE
OR
ARGUMENTS, ARTICLES, PAPERS, EXTRACTS AND MISCELLANEOUS MATTER, FROM VARIOUS SOURCES TO PROVE THAT
THE SCRIPTURES ARE THE AUTHENTIC AND GENUINE RECORDS OF DIVINE REVELATION
AND THE ONLY SOURCE AT PRESENT AVAILABLE TO MAN OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE, AND THE WAY BY WHICH IT IS TO BE SECURED
“Concerning Thy testimonies, I have known of old that Thou hast founded them for ever. Thy word is true from the beginning.”—(Psalm 119:152, 160.)
“Come hither, and hear the word of the Lord your God.”—(Jos. 3:9.)
“He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully: what is the chaff (dreams) to the wheat?”—(Jer. 23:28.)
“When ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God.”—(1 Thess. 2:13).
“The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”—(2 Peter 1:21.)
“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son.”—(Heb. 1:1).
“The sword of the Spirit is the word of God.”—(Eph. 6:17).
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”—(2 Tim. 3:16).
“Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed.”—(Prov. 13:13).
“Their root shall be as rottenness and their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Jsrael.”—(Isaiah 5:24).
“J.M.” circulates (in lithographed MS.) ten reasons for giving up his belief in the Scriptures. Will “J.M.” boldly let us know who he is. His statement that he once belonged to the Christadelphians and that he desires to retain their respect requires this. We shall go into his “reasons,” in due course and shall show them to be without weight.
Science and Revelation
The necessity for revelation, after science has done her very best; and the separate and distinct sphere occupied by the one from the other, were never more strikingly made manifest than in the address recently delivered in Manchester, by Professor Tyndall, to the British Association. Professor Tyndall, a great man among sceptics, admitted that science did not in any degree lessen the wonder with which we look at the material universe. At best he said it only marshals the phenomena of nature under the head of ordered sequences which are called laws; but the great ocean of the unknown simply recedes as we advance, and all the researches that science may make to the end of time will never abridge by one hair’s breadth the infinite expanse of mystery. Across that boundless ocean the curiosity of the intellect will always sail towards an ever vanishing horizon. And, as Professor Tyndall said, the region of mystery lies, not merely in the distance, but also at our very feet. When he has looked in the springtide at the sprouting leaves, and grass, and flowers; when he has seen the general joy of opening life, he has asked himself, ”Can it be that there is no being or thing in nature that knows more about these matters than I do? Can it be that I in my ignorance represent the highest knowledge of these things existing in the universe?” Dr. Tyndall’s answer is clear and decisive. ”The man who puts that question to himself, if he be not a shallow man, if he be capable of being penetrated by a profound thought, will never answer it by professing that creed of Atheism which has been so lightly attributed to me.”
On this the Daily News has some good remarks; Commenting on the change that has come over the unbelieving school—(a change induced by maturer thought, a more searching criticism of the facts and documents by which revelation is commended to our faith, and a profounder acquaintance, with the ordinances of the universe), “the Daily News says, the greatness of the change will be perceived if Professor Tyndall’s handling of religious themes be compared with the manner in which the same kind of man would have discussed them a hundred years ago. ”The materials for the comparison form one of the largest chapters in the history both of English and French literature. Bolingbroke and the Deists often attacked Christianity with a rancour and a virulence which are scarcely comprehensible to the men who share much of their negative creed in these days of more elevated aspirations and broader sympathies. Gibbon’s chapters on the rise and the growth of Christianity are one prolonged sneer at its supernatural claims and its sanctity. But a man of Gibbon’s great powers would never dream of writing in such a style to-day. If an unbeliever, he would yet feel that the origin of Christianity was too solemn and awful a theme to be made the sport of satire, and he would be as reverential as the devotees of the Church themselves. An immense change has come over the sceptical literature of even France. Rénan’s “Life of Christ” is the most flagrant offence which it has committed in these days; but that book is a religious idyll compared with the criticisms which the philosopher of Ferney directed against the Old Testament and the New. Rénan has felt the sacred character of the Christian religion so deeply that he would treat with intellectual disdain any man who should now make it a theme of satire; and the legends of the Church have been so abiding a study that their tone of sanctity has passed into his own doubting pages.
“But perhaps the most striking example is presented by Mr. Mill’s book on Theism. He belonged to a philosophical school which has often seemed to take a positive delight in assailing the objects of devotion. His father had put aside all theological beliefs, and even aspirations, with the rigour of a zealot, and the creed of negation was the only religious teaching that he gave to his gifted son. Had John Mill lived fifty years ago, he might have found that creed sufficient, and he might have gone to the grave untroubled by broodings over the dark hereafter. But no man can withstand those moral influences which wrap him round like an atmosphere, and affect him with every breath that he draws. The spirit of Mill’s time forces the ablest men to ask whether the last word about the universe is spoken by science, whether the clumsy instrument of the reason can be trusted to tell us anything certain about the infinite mystery of the grave, and whether an everlasting truth may not underlie all the shifting forms in which men have clothed their hopes of an everlasting future. Mill was so far true to his early training that he tried hard to show how small was the intellectual warrant for the misty aspirations; but the “Time-Spirit” led him again and again to the brink of the abyss after logic had made its final declaration; and his last book reveals him in the attitude of one looking across the ocean of eternity with wistful eyes and something of a fond expectancy. Thus he presents one of the most pathetic figures in all the literature of negation. His aspiration for something to believe in beyond this petty life will speak to doubting intellects with intense force. He and such as he testify not that this age is sceptical, but that even sceptical minds hunger for a religion in which they can believe. The last century tried to feed the mind on the husks of dry and negative logic; but again has come that yearning for something higher which has often before been the harvest of new faiths. When essentially scientific intellects like Mill and Tyndall link reverential hopes to strict deduction of the reason, the most careless observer may detect an immense transformation of opinion, and the most timid heart may take comfort.”
So says the Daily News; and its speech must be allowed to possess a peculiar interest for all who know the truth. “Hungering for a religion in which they can believe” is a happy description of the higher class of minds, acquainted with nature, but digusted with the puerilities of priestcraft and knowing the Bible only in connection with them. It is a valuable testimony to the fact that “nature” cannot supply the knowledge of God or throw any light on human destiny; and a still more valuable indication of the fact that there is something higher than nature, and a life more noble than any yet known to the sons of men. It may be likened to the needle pointing to the pole before the pole was discovered, or to the evidence that led the great astronomer to infer the existence of the asteroids before it was known there were such heavenly bodies. A knowledge of the truth puts its possessor in the privileged position of being able to explain the conflicts that distract the intellectual world, and to see his way through the labyrinth where others are lost. He turns his back on the priest and preacher, as the scientist does: but he grasps the Bible to his bosom, as the scientist does not, having in the understanding of it, attained to the possession of a religion that he can believe in, without closing his ear to science like the dogmatist, or to the voice of Jewish historic evidence like the scientist—a religion which solves the problem of human existence, mellowing the present with the tranquillity of faith and gilding the future with the brightness of well-founded and rational hope. This is truly a great possession, the value of which is enhanced by the foregoing newspaper picture of intellectual unbelievers “looking (vainly) across the ocean of eternity with wistful eyes.” Christ is the solution of all anxiety in this direction, and he is to be obtained in the belief and obedience of the truth. “If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”
Infidelity Versus Christianity
Brother Grant of Grantown, forwards for the supply of this department a pamphlet containing a conversation between three imaginary characters on the claims of Christianity to be considered a divine revelation. Readers will be obliged to him, as we are, for a good contribution to “The Bible True.” Without going through the conversation, which in some parts is rather weak, we give the following as the substance of the arguments used:
“How can you know the force of evidence before you examine it? Your demand is like that of a child that cries for food till it is brought to its mouth ready furnished. We might as well throw our faculties to the winds, as expect knowledge without their exercise. Such exercise is, itself, a mark of that honesty of mind, without which no person in your state can ever know the great facts by which God has revealed His character. You ask for evidence, and yet you expect to be instructed and benefited without submitting to be taught, or to learn. We must prove our love to truth by searching after it. There are millions of facts of which you know nothing, yet that is no proof of their non-existence, or that the evidence of their existence is not sufficiently strong and clear. God has revealed himself by such mighty signs and wonderful works as ought to have shaken, and as, in fact, have shaken the world. Thousands of thousands of the wisest and best of mankind in every age have believed on the same evidence as you are privileged with.
That the books of the New Testament were written by the authors to whom they are ascribed is the universal testimony of contemporary historians, infidel and Christian, as well as of those who lived and wrote immediately after the time when the books of the New Testament are said to have been written. Moreover, there is no counter or opposing testimony, which is a thing unaccountable, if the fact stated could have been contradicted. Had it been possible for Jews, infidels, or other enemies of Christianity, to have proved that the books of the New Testament were forged, or not completely authenticated, they would not all—to a man—have remained silent, but with hearts strongly inclined, and with heads well qualified, they would at once have detected the fraud, and gloried in a thorough and triumphant exposure of it. The Jews were most inveterate enemies to Christianity. They put its founder to a violent death, and persecuted His followers with implacable fury. They anxiously wished to strangle the hated new religion at its birth. Had it been possible for them to have impeached the authenticity or the genuineness of the Christian books, it is not honestly conceivable that they would have allowed them to remain unscathed. Is there one instance on record of a few poor, hated, despised, and uninfluential individuals imposing upon the world a hated and forged history against the efforts of a nation? Would the inhabitants of Palestine have received the gospels if Jesus Christ had not appeared amongst them, and done all the mighty works which the Scriptures record of Him? Or would the churches at Corinth, Rome, Galatia, and throughout Palestine, have acknowledged, as authentic, the writings of Paul, if he had never preached among them? It may be suggested that some impostor under Paul’s name, or under the name of some of the other apostles, might have safely attempted the invention and distribution of such writings among these and all the other churches. Such an attempt would have been preposterously foolish, as the imposture, at farthest, could only have lasted till the next visit of the apostle, or apostles, when the fraud would have been detected and the impostor exposed. Very probably the imposture would have been detected before, either by another epistle or message, by pen or by voice, through other brethren, who were frequently travelling to and from the apostles to the churches. The very idea of such an attempted imposture is ridiculously absurd, and is one of the vain dreams to which sceptics have been driven by stress of argument. Can anything be more preposterously absurd than the imagination that all the Christian churches in three quarters of the globe, who had the apostles or their friends continually visiting among them, would have received all their gospels and epistles from an impostor, under the names of Paul, Peter, John, Luke, &c., without detection or contradiction, and that the forgery should have been perpetuated from that day down through succeeding centuries, undetected by Jews, Infidels, and jarring Christian sectaries? The faith that can take in such a marvel is worthy of the dreamy philosophers that gendered it, and need not stick at swallowing any other miracle.
The genuineness of the books in question is proved by the fact that almost every sentence of the New Testament is quoted both by the early friends and enemies of Christianity. They could not have quoted from writings that did not exist before; and from their quotations it is demonstrated that the text then was just what it is now; as, according to all scholars, the words found in our New Testament harmonise with these quotations. Does it not strike you as a wonderfully clear and striking proof of the genuineness of the New Testament writings, that although the Christian sects, and Jews, and Infidels, have always been on the watch to detect any addition or subtraction, or alteration in them, they have not been able to discover a single material alteration in the thirty thousand old manuscript copies which have been collected from all quarters of the world?
The credibility or good character of the writers has never, so far I know, been called in question; and as they were quite competent to give evidence, there is no reason why their testimony should be rejected. In the second place, the high regard in which the writers and writings were held by the churches which possessed the best means of judging—many of the members of which had seen their works, and experienced their healing powers—is another evidence of their credibility.
You seem to think that God should always be working miracles to convince man that he is still living and acting among them. This shows that you do not understand why God worked miracles. When God works to convince men of His power and presence, He does so for all time. When, for instance, at the call of Joshua, He made the sun halt in his march, it was to convince men of coming ages that he holds the sun in His fist. When, at the prayer of Elijah, He sent fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice and the altar, it was to prove to the generations to come that the invisible worker was among them like the air they breathe, marking all their acts and ways. When Jesus fed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes, it was to demonstrate that the same hand of power is with us still, giving us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with joy and gladness. So, likewise, when He went about from day to day among the multitudes, “healing all manner of diseases,” it was to give the world to come as well as men then living, clear evidence that Jesus was the long-looked-for Messiah. The first question is, “Hath God wrought?” That “the ways of the Lord are equal,” is true, whether we can see how or not. It would manifest great boldness and presumption for anyone to say, “Unless you shew me how a work of God agrees with His other works or ways, I will reject and disown it.” But we have another answer. The Jewish nation, among whom mighty works were done by Jesus and His apostles, were so fully possessed of the prejudice2 that their Messiah was to be a mighty conquering prince, that there was no room in their heart for the thought that He was to be a poor despised person, of mean appearance and a great sufferer. We have no such prejudice, and, therefore, we need not the same signs and wonders to remove it. Did God continually work wonders, it would leave no room for that faith which honours God. We have a standing proof of the difference between Jew and Gentile prejudice in the fact that while his countrymen generally rejected him, notwithstanding the mighty works done in all their towns and villages, the Gentiles, who generally despised the Jewish nation, acknowledged Jesus to be the promised Messiah. The fact that tens of thousands believed that Jesus was the Messiah shortly after his crucifixion makes the fact of the resurrection all the more clear and convincing. That tens of thousands of those very Jews who, while Jesus was alive, could not bear to hear his name mentioned without rage and spiteful scorn, should, after crucifying him as an impostor, all at once change their mind and acknowledge him as their Messiah, is something strange beyond all precedent. Some unheard-of event must have happened, for certainly such a change of sentiment and revulsion of feeling never before took place in this world’s history. Now, you have been among all sorts of sceptics during these years past, and have heard all their attempts at an explanation of the facts I have mentioned; and I am certain that apart from the resurrection, you have heard nothing that can commend itself to an honest mind.”
(To be continued.)