The Enemy as a Witness

“Their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies themselves being Judges.” — Deut. 32: 31.

No testimony can be stronger than the favorable testimony of an enemy. It is expected that he will speak against us, and, when he speaks in our favor, it is certain that he has been compelled by the facts in the case todoso. Butwhoare the enemies of Christianity? Jesus said ‘‘ He that is not with me is against me,’’ and on this principle we must group all who have lived and died without confessing Christ before men as his enemies, though they are not to be classed with open infidels and atheists.

Benjamin Franklin was such a man. Shrew4d, calculating, stingy, he gained a wide reputation for common sense, and, though his ‘* Poor Richard’s Almanac’’ has done more to make close-fisted Baptists than almost any other force, we are inclined to forgive him after reading what he had to say of the Book we love and the god-man we worship. ‘*‘ Young man,” he says, ‘‘my advice to you is that you cultivate an acquaintance with and firm belief in the Holy Scriptures, for this is your certain interest. I think Christ’s system of morals and religion, as he left them tous, the best the world ever saw or is likely to Bee.””

Thomas Jefferson is claimed by some infidels as on their side, but the following words do not indicate it: ‘*I have said and always will say that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.”?

Daniel Webster cannot be accused of weakness of mind.

He was not a man to be carried away with what is ‘suited only for children and weak-minded women.’’? He could sift evidence, weigh arguments and discover fallacies as well as any man whom American history has produced. Hereis his tribute to the Bible and the Christ it reveals: ‘‘If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but, if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity. The Bible is the book of all others for lawyers as well as divines, and I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and rule of conduct. I believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God. The miracles which he wrought establish in my mind his personal authority and render it proper for me to believe what he asserts.’? Daniel Webster was acquainted with the objections urged against miracles, now so adroitly woven into popular novels. They are not new. For centuries they have been marshaled out in one form or another to do their work of darkness. But they had little weight with a mind like his, that knew how to distinguish between the spurious and the false, and was willing to accept facts when clearly proved, whether they were in harmony or conflict with preconceived notions. To say that miracles cannot be performed; therefore, the miracles recorded in the New Testament are not to be believed was a species of sophistry which his great mind could not endure, for he had before him the clearest and most unimpeachable evidence that miracles were performed by Jesus Christ, and no bare assertion to the contrary had any weight with him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: ‘‘Jesus is the most perfect of all men that have yet appeared.’’ Charles Sumner wrote to Rey. Jonathan Stearns: ‘‘I believe that Christ lived when and as the Gospel says; that he was more than man — namely, above all men who had as yet lived, and yet less than God. I pray you not to believe that I am insensible to the greatness and goodness of his character. My idea of human nature is exalted, when I think that such a being lived and went as a man among men.’? Emerson and Sumner did not see,as Daniel Webster saw, the impossibility of maintaining that Jesus was a great and good man without admitting that he was God, for, as we have seen in a former sermon, he claimed that he was God, and no good man could be a hypocrite, claiming to be what he was not. The admission made by all that he was good carries with it irresistibly the conclusion that he was God.

Napoleon Bonaparte, with a mind as discriminating and logicalas Webster’s, held the same view. ‘*I know men,”’’ said Napoleon, ‘‘and I tell you Jesus Christ wasnotaman. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. ‘There is between Christianity and other religions the distance of infinity. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Uponsheer force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men will die for him. In every other existence but that of Christ how many imperfections. From the first day to the last he is the same; majestic and simple; infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. He proposes to our faith a series of mysteries and commands with authority that we should believe them, giving no other reason ‘than those tremendous words, I am God’” On one occasion General Bertrand expressed to Napoleon his doubt as to the divinity of Christ. ‘If you do not believe that Jesus Christ was divine,’’ replied Napoleon, ‘*I did wrong to appoint you general.’? He meant to imply that the man who, with all the evidences before him could not be convinced of the divinity of Christ, would not do to trust with important conclusions on any matter. If such facts will not convince, then no array of facts on other subjects will convince, and in great crises generals should know how to draw correct conclusions from facts before them. The difference between Napoleon and General Bertrand was doubtless the difference between believers and most unbelievers of to-day. Napoleon had taken the pains to investigate the subject; General Bertrandhad not. ‘‘The Bible,’’ continues Napoleon, ‘‘ contains a complete series of acts and of historical men to explain time and eternity, such as no other religion has to offer. If it is not the true religion, one is very excusable in being deceived; for everything in it is grand and worthy of God. The more I consider the Gospel, the more I am assured that there is nothing there which is not beyond the march of events and above the humanmind. Even the impious themselves have never dared to deny the sublimity of the Gospel, which inspires them with a sort of compulsory veneration. What happiness that Book procures for those who believe it.”’

Goethe, the brilliant German poet, did not model his character according to Bible teaching, else he would have been a Christian and a better man, but this fact, much as we may lament it, makes all the stronger the tribute he pays to the literary excellence of the Book. ‘‘It is a belief in the Bible,’’ he says, ‘‘which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. No criticism will be able to perplex the confidence which we have entertained of a writing whose contents have stirred up and given life to our vital energy by its own. The farther the ages advance in civilization the more will the Bible be used.’’ And Goethe might have said with equal truth, ‘‘ The more the Bible is used the farther the ages will advance in civilization.’? Witness England, Scotland and the United States with the Bible, in contrast with Spain, Italy, Mexico, and pagan countries without the Bible.

Thomas Carlyle, ‘‘rough, tough and gruff,’ but true, called Jesus ‘‘our divinest symbol. Higher has the human thought not yetreached. A symbol of quite perennial, infinite character: whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into and anew made manifest.’> James Anthony Froude, the historian, expressed what all honest inquiry must lead to, when he said: ‘*The most perfect being who has ever trod the soil of this planet was called the man of sorrows.’? Charles Dickens is classed by some among the distinguised unbelievers. The following clause in his will shows what became of his unbelief when he came to think of going out of the world: ‘*I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teachings of the New Testament.” This suggests the words of Shakespere, which you can find in the introduction of any good copy of his works: ‘‘I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.’’? Is there an infidel in the land with brass enough in his composition to class Dickens and Shakespere with shallow-brained fanatics who are to be pitied because they do not know any better, or to accuse them of accepting without investigation what a more thorough search would have led them to reject.

Even Byron, dissolute as he was, was compelled by his study of Christ’s words, works and character, to exclaim, ‘* If ever man was God, or God-man, Jesus Christ was both.”’

We will now take a step farther and consider the admissions of men who have openly opposed the claims of Christ and the Bible, some of whom have spent their lives in trying to destroy Christianity. A church-house in Japan was built partly of stones which were once cast at some missionaries by an infuriated mob. The missionaries preserved these missiles of destruction and used them in constructing a house to the glory of God. It is our purpose now to gather from the writings of men whose personalities have been as so many missiles hurled against Christianity some stones, that we may work them into the walls of the temple of truth. It has been said that God can use the very devils as a chain-gang to work the Christian’s road to heaven. Certain it is that he ‘‘makes the wrath of man to praise him.’’

Let us begin with Matthew Arnold, the modern ‘apostle of sweetness and light.’? We are glad to find that he has a few sweet things to say about the sweetest of all Books and its author: ‘*To the Bible’? says Mr. Arnold, ‘‘ men will return because they cannot do without it. The true God is and must be pre-eminently the God of the Bible, the eternal who makes for righteousness, from whom Jesus came forth, and whose spirit governs the course of humanity.’? Diderot, a French infidel, made this confession: ‘*No better lessons can I teach my child than those of the Bible.’? Professor Huxley no one will accuse of having any partiality for the old Book, and yet he is compelled to admit that he does not see how we can get along without it. ‘*I have always been strongly in favor of secular education without theology,’’ he says, ‘but I must confess that I have been no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of moral conduct, is to be kept up in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on these matters without the use of the Bible.”’

John Stuart Mill, the born sceptic, whose writings have done more perhaps than any other man’s of this age to unsettle belief, yet gives us a foundation stone for the temple of Christ’s divinity. ‘* Who among his disciples,’? he asks, ‘** or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings of Jesus, or imagining the life and character ascribed to him? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not Saint Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; and still less the early Christian writers. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to his mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now 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 his life.”’ Another admission that he was good, indeed the best, which is equal to saying that he was God.

Rousseau, whose writings did so much to bring on the French revolution, was an infidel, and yet he says of Christ: ‘*Can it be possible that the sacred personage whose history the Scriptures contain should be a mere man? Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die without weakness and without ostentation? When Plato describes his imaginary righteous man, loaded with all the punishments of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he exactly describes the character of Jesus Christ. What an infinite disproportion between the son of Sophroniscus and the Son of Mary. Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words — the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing — the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for his most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a God.’’ Poor Rousseau and poor France! How much happier both would have been, if they had worshipped and served this Son of God and Son of Man. The world might then have been spared the pain of reading the blackest page in modern history. Of the Bible Rousseau writes: ‘*Peruse the books of philosophers with all their pomp of diction. How meagre, how contemptible are they when compared with the Scriptures. The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration.’’ Rousseau spoke thus because he had read the Bible. Some other men who have written against the Bible confessed that they were ignorant of it. Thomas Paine looked into it long enough to catch a glimpse of Christ, and, in one of his better moments, he said: ‘*The morality that Christ preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind.’? But Thomas Paine’s opinion of the Bible should have little weight, for he virtually confesses his ignorance of it when he wrote of a Sripture quotation: ‘I know not how this passage is pointed, for I keep no Bible.’? He wrote his bitterest denunciations of the Book in a house where there was no Bible. David Hume, who wrote against the credibility of miracles, confessed that he had never ‘‘ read the New Testament with attention.’? Edward Gibbon, who made some flings at the Old Book, confessed that he had read only the Gospel of John, and the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Men who do not like the light of the sun are those who have never seen the sun.

Pecaut, another French infidel of note, as he looks at the character of Christ, is constrained to put this wreath of praise upon His head: ‘*Christ’s moral character rose beyond comparison above that of any other great man of antiquity. Noone was ever so gentle, so huinble, so kind as he. In his spirit he lived in the house of his heavenly father. His moral life is wholly penetrated by God. He was the master of all, because he was really their brother.’’

It is- difficult to believe that Ernest Renan was not an earnest believer, after we have read what he says of Jesus Christ, and yet we know that he lost his professorship in the University of Paris on account of his infidelity. While studying the character of Jesus, he can hardly refrain from falling at his feet and worshipping him as he deserves. ‘* All history,” he says, ‘‘is incomprehensible without him. He created the object and fixed thé starting point of the future faith of humanity. He is the incomparable man to whom the universal conscience has decreed the titie of Son of God, and that with justice. In the first rank of this grand family of the true sons of God we must place Jesus. The highest consciousness of God which ever existedin the breast of humanity was that of Jesus. Repose now in thy glory, noble founder! Thy work is finished. Thy divinity is established. Thou shalt become the corner-stone of humanity so entirely that to tear thy name from this world would rend it to its foundations. Between thee and God there will no longer be any distinction. Complete conqueror of death, take possession of thy kingdom, whither shall follow thee, by the royal road which thou hast traced, ages of adoring worshippers. Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; his legend will call forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; and all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus. Even Paul is not Jesus.. How far removed are we all from thee, dear master. Where is thy mildness, thy poetry? Thou to whom a flower didst bring pleasure and ecstacy, dost thou recognize as thy disciples these wranglers, these men furious over their prerogatives, and desiring that everything should be given to them? They are men; thou art a God.”’

In harmony with this are*the words of England’s great statesman, politician, and author, Benjamin Disraeli: ‘* The wildest dreams of their rabbis have been far exceeded. Has not Jesus conquered Europe and changed its name to Christendom? All countries that refuse the cross wither, and the time will come, when the vast communities and countless myriads of America and Australia, looking upon Europe as Europe now looks upon Greece, and wondering how so small a space could have achieved such great deeds, will find music in the songs of Zion and solace in the parables of Galilee.’’

Mr. Charles Darwin, who declared that the natives of Terra del Fuego were too low to be improved, sent to a missionary society a contribution of twenty-five pounds after he had visited the island and had seen what Christianity was doing for them.

Now why is it that men who are known to the world as infidels make such concessions? Simply Decause infidels are not made by studying the Bible and the character of Christ. They are infidels while, as in the case of Ernest Renan, they look at the caricatures of Christianity seen in its representatives, or while they puzzle their brains over mysteries which cannot be solved any more than other mysteries in nature. When they turn from these things .to Christ, as revealed in the Scriptures, their respect is won, their admiration, and sometimes adoration, is called forth.

Another explanation may be found in the experience of Mr. Hegard, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Copenhagen, and until recently the champion of atheism in his country. He has just published a revised edition of his works, and here is an extract from its introduction: ‘*The experiences of life, its sufferings and grief, have shaken my soul and have broken the foundation upon which I formerly thought I could build. Full of faith in the sufficiency of science, I thought to have found in it a sure refuge from all the contingencies of life. This illusion is vanished; when the tempest came, which plunged me in sorrow, the moorings, the cable of science, broke like thread. ‘Then I seized upon that help which many before me have laid hold of. I sought and found peace in God. Since then I have certainly not abandoned science, but I have assigned to it another place in my life.’’ Such experiences make ‘men revise their books and their ways of living. May we not hope for such a revision of some books published in America? I have the authority of a man of integrity and wide learning in New York city for saying that “of twenty infidels, lecturers and writers, who have been prominent in the last thirty years, sixteen have abandoned their infidelity and openly professed faith in Christ and joy in hissalvation.’? Truly ‘* The morning light is breaking.”’

M. Renan sums up his infidelity in these onde ‘We are living on the perfume of an empty vase. Our children will have to live on the shadow of a shadow. Their children, I fear, will have to live on something less.’’ To be sure, the assets of infidelity have run low. It is bankrupt, and can’t pay half a cent on the dollar. Compare with this Paul’s assets of Christianity. ‘‘I have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will give meat that day; and not tome only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.’? Poor infidelity has no ‘‘henceforth.”’ If it has, it is like going into an unexplored cavern in Mammoth ‘Cave, not knowing but that you may fall down a precipice a thousand feet. Christianity is following the guide who throws his light upon our way, till we come into the dayofaglorious ‘‘henceforth.’? The death-scene of Thomas Paine, now well authenticated, and the words of Ethan Allen to his dying daughter, tell us plainly that infidelily has little stock in trade upon which its followers may draw in emergencies. Better be wise like Professor Hegard and give up ‘‘the perfume of an empty vase,’’ for the vase full of richest treasures, ‘‘ shadow of a shadow ’’ for the eternal substance; for truly ‘‘ Their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.”’