Modern Substitutes for Christianity Part 7

VI

The superiority of Theism to Deism simply consists in its being more Christian. With the ideas of G.o.d which 'Theists' hold, we can, as Christians, most cordially sympathise. We can sincerely say, 'Hold to them firmly, they are your life: let no man rob you of {165} them by any vain deceit.' But we cannot help also asking, 'Whence have you drawn those lofty ideas? where have you obtained so exalted a conception of the Divine Being in His mingled Majesty and lowliness, in His inconceivable greatness, and His equally inconceivable compa.s.sion?

We turn from the picture of G.o.d which, with so much labour, so much skill, so much moral earnestness, you have exhibited, and we behold the Original in Christ and His Teaching. However unconsciously, it is His Truth, it is His Features, that you have reproduced. You have been brought up in the Church of Christ, or you have been brought into contact with its influences, and you have imbibed its teachings, perhaps more deeply than some who would not dare to question its smallest precepts. Still, Christ's teaching you have not outgrown, from Christ Himself you have not escaped. You cannot go from His presence or flee from His Spirit. Those {166} views which you hold so strongly, which are to you the most enn.o.bling that have ever been given of G.o.d and of religion, where is it that alone they are to be found?

In places where Christianity has gone before.

No doubt, belief in G.o.d is not confined to Christian countries: worship of the Maker of heaven and earth exists where the name of Christ has never been heard, but not such belief, _such_ worship, as that for which those persons contend. The G.o.d Whom they adore will not be found anywhere save where Christianity has penetrated. In this country it is the desperate clinging to one portion of the Christian Faith when all else has been abandoned: in other lands, in India, for example, where representatives of this way of thinking are not uncommon, it is the rapturous welcome of one of the sublime truths of Christianity before which the idolatries of their forefathers are pa.s.sing away. It is safe to call it a transition stage: {167} it will either part with the fragment of Christianity which it retains and become merged in doubt and speculation and unbelief; or it will include yet more of the Christianity of which it has grasped a part: its belief in G.o.d will be crowned and confirmed by its belief in Christ.

For, speaking to those who cherish faith in the All-Righteous and All-Loving G.o.d as the only hope for the regeneration of mankind, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that where faith in Christ fades, faith in G.o.d has a tendency to become vague and dim. He ceases to be thought of as a Friend and Help at hand: He is resolved into a Creator infinitely distant or into a Law, immovable, inexorable, a blind, unconscious Fate. It is Christ Who gives life to the thought of G.o.d.

It is the Word made Flesh that makes the Eternal Word more real. The attempt of the Deists to purify religion by the preaching of a G.o.d who had not {168} revealed Himself, and could not reveal Himself, in a Son, came to nothing. Voltaire's chapel at Ferney still stands, but n.o.body worships in it. Religion seemed to slumber: belief in G.o.d seemed to be decaying, when the preaching of the name and the work of Christ again aroused it into life. And so it is now. Whatever the ability, whatever the sincerity of the advocates of belief in G.o.d without reference to Christ, it lacks motive-power, it lacks the missionary spirit. If we may judge by the past, Theism without Christ is a faith which will not spread, which will not lay hold on the labouring and the heavy laden: which may be maintained as a theory, but which will not be as a fire in the souls of men diffusing itself by kindling other souls.

It is from Christ alone, from Christ the manifestation of what G.o.d is in Heart and Mind, from Christ the manifestation of what man ought to be, from Christ Who said, 'In My Father's house are many {169} mansions: he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' that there comes with an authority to which, in face of the difficulties besetting the present and the future, the human soul will bow, with a soothing power to which the human spirit will gladly yield--it is from Christ alone that there comes the Divine injunction, 'Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in G.o.d, believe also in Me.' It is as He is clearly seen and truly known that the clouds of error and superst.i.tion vanish from the Face of G.o.d, and men are drawn to worship and to trust.

[1] Longfellow, _Song of Hiawatha_.

[2] Keble, _Christian Year_.

[3] Bishop Gore, _The Christian Creed_.

[4] Appendix XX.

[5] _Phases of Faith_.

[6] _The Soul: its Sorrows and Aspirations_.

[7] _The Soul: its Sorrows and Aspirations_.

[8] _The Soul_.

[9] _Alone to the Alone_.

[10] _Alone to the Alone_.

[11] _Alone to the Alone_.

[12] Appendix XXI.

[13] _The Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit_.

[14] J. Warschauer, _Coming of Christ_.

[15] Whittier, _Our Master_.

[16] R. B. Bartlett, _The Letter and the Spirit_: Bampton Lecture.

[17] Appendix XXII.

[18] Tennyson, _In Memoriam_.

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VI

THE TRIBUTE OF CRITICISM TO CHRIST

'For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.'--DEUTERONOMY x.x.xii. 31.

'He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, Some say that Thou art John the Baptist; some Elias; and others Jeremias or one of the prophets.'--S. MATTHEW xvi.

13, 14.

'What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?--S. MATTHEW, xxii. 42.

'And there was much murmuring among the people concerning Him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay, but He deceiveth the people.'--S. JOHN vii. 12.

'Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.'--S. JOHN vi. 67, 68.

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VI

THE TRIBUTE OF CRITICISM TO CHRIST[1]

Of the investigations of modern criticism the most serious are those which have concerned the person of our Lord. It has been felt both by a.s.sailants and by defenders of the Faith that, so long as His supremacy remains acknowledged, Christianity has not been overthrown. Other doctrines once considered all-important may fall into comparative abeyance: whether they are upheld or rejected or modified, matters little to Christianity as Christianity. But more and more it has grown clear that Christ Himself {174} is the Article of a standing or a falling Church. If this doctrine is not of G.o.d, if He is not the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Christianity, whatever benefits may have been a.s.sociated with its career, must be ranked among religions which have pa.s.sed away. But so long as He is admitted to be the Authority and standard in the moral and spiritual realm, so long as His name is above every name, the work of destruction is not accomplished.

Hence, renewed attempts have of late been made to tear the crown from His brow, to reduce Him to the level of common men, to relegate Him to the domain of myth, even to deny that He ever existed. Although, in certain quarters at present, this last and extreme position is loudly a.s.serted, it is hardly necessary to occupy much time in examining it, the trend of all criticism, even of the most rationalistic, being so decidedly opposed to {175} it. To deny that He existed is commonly felt to be the outcome of the most arbitrary prejudice, the conclusions of Whately's _Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte_ remaining grave and weighty in comparison. That Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught and was crucified, that, immediately after His Death, His disciples were proclaiming that He had risen, and was their living inspiration, these are facts which can be denied only by the very extravagance of scepticism. And the admission of these simple facts implies a great deal more than is commonly supposed.

I

It is the fashion for hostile critics to say, 'Christianity is not dependent upon Christ: it is the creation of the semi-historical Paul, not of the unhistorical Jesus. There is at best no more connection between Christendom and Christ than between America and {176} Amerigo Vespucci.[2] See how much Christians have been obliged to give up: see how belief after belief has had to be surrendered; see how they are now left with the merest fragment of their ancient Creed, how evidently they will soon be compelled to part with the little to which they still desperately cling.' The conclusion is somewhat hasty and premature.

The fragment which remains is after all the main portion of the Creed of the early disciples. Where that fragment is declared and held and lived in, there is the presence and the power of the Christian Faith.

We need not trouble ourselves about sundry points which, at one epoch or another, have come to be denied or ignored: we need not say anything either for them or against them. We have to take our stand on what is accepted, not on what is rejected. And for the moment we may {177} venture to take our stand only on what is accepted by the critics least bia.s.sed in favour of the traditional views of Christendom. Those who have come to imagine it to be a mark of advanced culture to break with all religion, to confine their attention to the fleeting present, to reject all that claims to have Divine sanction, may listen with respect to the words of some who appear in fancied hostility to Christianity.

We are not a.s.suming that because men are great in Science or History or Philosophy they must be great in spiritual things. Their achievements in their own sphere, let us gratefully recognise; their uprightness, their single-heartedness, let us imitate; and if by chance they are sincere Christians as well as able men, let us rejoice; if they are not professing Christians at all and yet bear witness to the beneficial influence of Christianity and the unique power of the words and character of Christ, let us hail with {178} pleasure their tribute of admiration as a testimony impartial and unanswerable to the pre-eminence of our Lord, but let not our faith in G.o.d, our knowledge of our Saviour, be dependent on their verdict. The Faith of the Gospel does not stand or fall with their approval or disapproval. In matters of criticism we do well to defer to scholars, in matters of science we do well to defer to men of science. But in matters pertaining to the inner life, to the development of character, to the knowledge of things pure and lovely and of good report, such men have no exclusive claim to be listened to. And it would be absurd to say that we cannot make up our minds as to whether Christ is worthy to be revered and loved and followed until we have ascertained what is said about Him by authorities in physics, or geology, or astronomy, by statesmen or novelists or writers of magazine articles, by inventors of ingenious machines or authors of {179} sensational stories. If they speak scoffingly, if they do not recognise any sacredness in His Spirit and Life, it will be impossible for us to take Him as our Moral and Spiritual Guide.

We might almost as well say that we will not trust the truthfulness or goodness of our father or mother or brother or friend of many years, unless, from persons eminent in literature or science or politics, we have testimonials a.s.suring us that our affection for those with whom we are so closely a.s.sociated is not a delusion. That is a matter, we should all feel, with which the great and distinguished, however justly great and distinguished, have really nothing to do. It is a matter for ourselves, a matter in which our own experience is worth more than the verdict of people, however learned in their own line, who do not, and cannot, know the friend or relative as we know him ourselves. Still, we regard it as an additional {180} compliment to his worth, and an additional confirmation of our own faith, if those who have been jealously scrutinising his conduct declare that they can find no fault in him.[3]

If it is made plain that the positive teaching of men unconnected with any Church, untrammelled by any creed, is a virtual a.s.sertion of much that is most dear to Christianity, if it is made plain that even where there is strong denial there is also much reference to Christ, it may have more weight than the most cogent arguments or the most glowing appeals of orthodox divines or devout believers. The Evangelists delight to record instances of unexpected, unfriendly, unimpeachable testimony to the power of Christ. It is not only that the simple-minded people were astonished at His doctrine, but that the soldiers who were sent to silence Him {181} returned, smitten with amazement, saying, 'Never man spake like this Man.' It is not only that a grateful penitent washed His Feet with tears, but that the unprincipled governor who sentenced Him to death declared 'I find in Him no fault at all.' It is not only that an Apostle confesses, 'Thou art the Christ the Son of the Living G.o.d,' but that the centurion who watched over His Crucifixion exclaimed, 'Certainly this was a Righteous Man: this was a Son of G.o.d.' It is similar unprejudiced witness that we may hear around us still, the witness of those who profess to have another rule of life than ours, and to be in no degree influenced by our traditions. We must not expect too much from this kind of evidence: we must not expect clear logical proof of every article rightly or wrongly identified with the popularly termed 'orthodox'

Creed. It would destroy the value of the evidence {182} simply to quote orthodox doctrines in orthodox language. What we rather offer is the testimony of those who have resigned their grasp on much that we may deem essential. It is because in a sense we may call them 'enemies' that we ask them to be 'judges' in the great controversy. It is exactly because they are incredulous, or sceptical, or irreligious that we cite them at all. We confine ourselves to the utterances of men who are commonly cited as hostile to the commonly accepted Faith of Christ, or who do not rank among the number of His nominal disciples, or who at least have discussed His claims by critical and historical methods, endeavouring fairly to take into account all the facts which the circ.u.mstances warrant. We say to those who disown the authority of Christ: It is not to the words of Evangelists or preachers that your attention is sought: it is to the words of those whom you {183} profess to respect, of those because of whose supposed antagonism to Christianity you are rejecting Him. We ask you to listen to them and to consider whether He of Whom such men speak in such terms is to be so lightly set aside as you have fancied.