Chapter I

IN these days of unrest many Christians are distressed by doubts whether the Bible may be received with the settled and simple faith accorded to it in the past. They have been corrupted or disturbed by the Christianised scepticism which prevails; and, to use an apt illustration, their anchor has dragged and they are drifting. It may be, therefore, that one who has known similar experiences, and is no stranger to such doubts, may be able in some measure to help others who are thus troubled. In the history of Christendom, Churches of every name, and — as judged from the inquirer’s point of view — of every degree of orthodoxy or of error, have agreed in regarding the Bible as a divinely inspired and infallible revelation. No detailed proof of this statement is necessary here, for not only is its truth acknowledged, but the grounds on which the historic belief

2 I is challenged lie entirely apart from all appeals to authority.

And no appeals of this kind shall prejudice my discussion of the question. Being by temperament and habit a sceptic, they weigh but little with me personally, and I have found a firmer basis for my faith. But there are two sides to this. Many there are who loudly protest against appeals to authority, and yet their own faith in Holy Scripture has been jettisoned solely because contemporary scholars of a certain school have declared against the old beliefs.

If authority is to decide the question, the issue is not doubtful. For every one of these apostles of unfaith, scholars of equal eminence may be cited on the other side. And behind them is the overwhelming testimony of ‘the whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the whole world,” who, all down the ages until recent times, have spoken with one voice upon this subject. If our nineteenth century critics are to be listened to, are these to be refused a hearing?

Nor can we forget the martyrs, who in unnumbered thousands — their names are written in heaven, but earth has kept no record of them — braved every kind of agony of mind and body

Cu. I.] THE MARTYRS’ TESTIMONY 3

that could be devised by religious hate — the most fiendish type of hate that fallen human nature knows. It was not strong men only who swelled their ranks. Weak women there were, too, and even children were not wanting. What was the secret of ¢hezr triumph? Was it ‘the general sense of Scripture corrected in the light of modern research”? In the solitude of the dungeon and amidst the horrors of the torture chamber they were sustained by words from the Bible, which they took to be the words of God. Words, for example, such as these: “He hath said ‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,’ so that we may boldly say ‘ The Lord is my helper,’ and “J will not fear what man shall do unto me.’” But further knowledge and higher culture, forsooth, would have taught them that the words, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,’ are but an inaccurate quotation from a book which is now known not to have the authority that for thousands of years has been attributed to it; and that the added words are by ‘“‘a sub-apostolic writer” whose treatise is separated by no hard and fast lines from similar writings outside the canon of Scripture.

So at least the critics would have us believe. But if we are to shut out the testimony of the martyrs, as well as that of ‘Christian people dispersed throughout the whole world,” including contemporary scholars equal in fame to the critics, let us not be guilty of the unfairness and stupidity of assuming at the start that the critics are right. Let us refuse appeals to authority on either side, and deal with the question on its merits.

And this leads me, by way of further preface, to enter a protest against the shallow and jaunty scepticism of the day. The issues at stake are tremendous, and in dealing with them no degree of earnestness and solemnity can be excessive. One of the apostles of unfaith will tell us that “Milton and Shakespeare and Bacon, and Canticles and the Apocalypse and the Sermon on the Mount, and the eighth chapter of Romans. are all inspired.” That “there is a true inspiration in the instinct of the owl; that it is heard in the rushing of the wind; that it is seen in the springing of a blade of grass; that it murmurs. along the streams that flow among the hills.” Such trifling is deplorable. A mere peasant can see that if this be the meaning of inspiration, we must fall back upon natural religion. If the Bible be nothing more than what such writers: see it to be, Christianity rests on no rational basis. This is no argument in proof that the Bible is.

Cu.I.] THE “ENCYCLOPADIA BIBLICA” 5

inspired; but it ought to check all levity in dealing with the question. If my bank-notes are forgeries, I am a ruined bankrupt; this does not prove them genuine, but it will prevent my parting with them unless compelled to do so by cogent proof that they are counterfeit.

But it will be said, perhaps, that in England at least no scholar of repute among the Higher Critics assumes a position which is really destructive of Christianity. Though they challenge the authority of various books of the Canon, they leave untouched all that is vital. Let us test this. The Lucyclopedia Biblica is the most recent exposition of the views of this school. Its editor is Professor Cheyne, of Oxford,! a man who is a teacher of teachers, and whose name stands high as an authority on all subjects of this kind. The following extracts are culled from the article on the Gospels : —

“Several of the reported sayings of Jesus clearly bear the impress of a time which he did not live to see” (§ 136).

“The conclusion is inevitable that even the one Evangelist whose story in any particular case involves

* To give him his full title, the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., D.D., Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford, and formerly Fellow of Balliol College; Canon of Rochester.

less of the supernatural than that of the others, is still very far from being entitled on that account to claim implicit acceptance of his narrative” (§ 137).

“With reference to the resurrection of Jesus ... the appearance in Jerusalem to the two women is almost universally given up.... The statements as to the empty sepulchre are to be rejected” (§ 138).

“As for the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand, so also for the withering of the fig tree,we still possess a clue to the way in which the narrative arose out of a parable” (§ 142).

“It is very conceivable that a preacher on the death of Jesus may have said, purely figuratively, that then was the veil of the temple rent in twain.”

“We must endeavour to ascertain how many, and still more what sorts of cures were effected by Jesus. It is quite possible for us to regard as historical only those of the class which even at the present day physicians are able to effect by psychical methods, — as more especially ‘cures of mental maladies.

“It is not at all difficult to understand how the contemporaries of Jesus, after seeing some wonderful deed or deeds wrought by him which they regarded as miracles, should have credited him with every other kind of miraculous power without distinguishing, as the modern mind does, between those maladies which are amenable to psychical influences and those which are not. It is also necessary to bear in mind that the cure may often have been only temporary” (§ 144).

No one who reads the foregoing extracts will be surprised at the writer’s raising the question

Can AN END OF CHRISTIANITY z

“whether any credible elements were to be found in the Gospels at all.” ©“All the more emphatically” therefore he enumerates nine passages which he saves from the general wreck.! These, he goes on to say, ‘“‘might be called the foundation pillars of a truly scientific life of Jesus; ... they prove that in the person of Jesus we have to do with a completely human being, and that the Divine is to be sought in Him only in the form in which it is capable of being found in a man; they also prove that He really did exist, and that the Gospels contain at least some absolutely trustworthy facts concerning him.” 2

Any person of ordinary intelligence can see that this teaching makes an end of Christianity altogether. The public facts of the life of the great Rabbi of Nazareth are not questioned. What the world saw nineteen centuries ago, the world believes to-day. And those facts, combined with His traditional teaching, may be made the basis of a Christianised Buddhism which would possibly

* These are, Matt. xi. 5 (Luke vii. 22); Matt. xii. 31, f.; Mark iii. 21; vi. 5, f.3 viii. 12; viii. 14-21; x. 17, f.3 xiil, 22, and xv. 34 (Matt. xxvii. 46).

2 § 138. I trust no one will judge me harshly for thus reproducing here this blasphemy. I deem it a duty to do so because so many Christians are trifling with the infidel movement in ignorance of its aims and methods. The article cited is not by the Editor.

be the best of all human religions. But Christianity is not a human religion, but a divine revelation of transcendental truths and of facts that are of such a nature that no amount of mere human testimony could accredit them.

“The first of these facts, upon which all the rest depend, is that the Nazarene was the Son of God. The founder of Rome was believed to be the divinely begotten child of a vestal Virgin. And in the old Babylonian mysteries a similar parentage was ascribed to the martyred son of the Queen of Heaven. What reason have we then for distinguishing the birth at Bethlehem from these and other kindred legends of the ancient world?”!

He was, we read, “declared to be the Son of God... by the resurrection from the dead.” But even this is filched from us: “the statements as to the empty sepulchre are to be rejected.” Some of the German sceptics formerly accepted the public proofs of the resurrection, and therefore their teaching seemed to imply belief in that supreme miracle. Among the initiated, however, they explained the “resurrection” by denying the death. The cumulative evidence that the Nazarene was

* The Buddha of Christendom, p. 96.

Cui] CREDULITY OF THE CRITICS 9

seen alive after the Crucifixion was proof that He had not really died. As He hung upon the cross He swooned, and before He recovered consciousness He was laid in the sepulchre. The superstitious imagination of the disciples, unnerved by the terrible ordeal they had suffered, gave a colour to the facts; and ere the Gospel narratives came to be written, the resurrection legend had gained shape and substance. But the Oxford infidelity of to-day is far in advance of German infidelity of half a century ago. The Gospels are now romance pure and simple, with no foundation save the public facts, and a few isolated passages which prove that the great Teacher was really an historic personage.

And the objective foundations of our faith being thus destroyed, Christianity in its subjective phase is the merest superstition. Not one of the nine authentic passages, thus saved from the wreck, will avail us here. Faith is impossible. We must fall back on mere opinions. And he who would die for his ofzmzons is a silly fanatic. The man who has nothing to rest upon but Professor Cheyne’s Bible, and yet believes in ‘ the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting” is obviously a credulous person who would believe anything.