SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
A
DOUBTER'S DOUBTS about science and religion
CHAPTER NINE
THE IRRATIONALISM OF INFIDELITY
"CHRIST is still left" is the solace Mill would offer us
as we survey the wreck which rationalism makes of Faith. To that life he
appeals as supplying a "standard of excellence and a model for imitation." "Who
among His disciples," he demands, " was capable of inventing the sayings
ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the character revealed in the Gospels ?" Do
not such words as these suggest that if Christianity would waive its
transcendental claims and make terms with unbelief, the record of that life
might afford the basis for a universal religion, a really "Catholic" faith?
But who and what was this "Jesus" of the Rationalist, whose life is to be
our model? The answer to this simple question will expose the fallacy of the
whole position. The Christ of the Gospels was the Son of God, who worked
miracles without number, and who claimed with the utmost definiteness and
solemnity that His words were in the strictest sense a Divine revelation. But
as regards His miracles, the Rationalist tells us that His biographers were
deceived; and as for His teaching they mis-understood and perverted it. But if
they blundered thus in matters as to which ordinary intelligence and care would
have made error or mistake impossible, how can we repose any trust whatever in
their records? What materials have we from which to construct a life of Christ
at all?
And if we decide that these Scriptures are not authentic, and that
Christ was merely human, the Sermon on the Mount sinks to the level of a homily
which Matthew framed on the traditions of his Master's words. And as for the
Fourth Gospel, having regard to the time when it was written, and to the fact
that the Synoptics know nothing of its distinctive teaching, we must
acknowledge that for such chapters as those which purport to record "the most
sacred of all sacred words," spoken on the eve of the Crucifixion, we are
mainly indebted to the piety and genius of "the beloved disciple." The modern
Jew, moreover, cannot be far astray when he insists that Paul was the real
founder of the Christian system. His was " the boldest enterprise" as Dr.
Harnack declares, for he ventured on it "without being able to appeal to a
single word of his Master's." If men would but use their brains, they would see
that once we drift away from the anchorage of the old beliefs, nothing can save
us from being drawn into the rapids which end in sheer agnosticism. This does
not prove the truth of Christianity, but it exposes the untenableness of the
infidel position.
These infidel books habitually assume that, if we refuse
their nostrums, superstition is our only refuge. This is quite in keeping with
the amazing conceit which characterises them. Wisdom was born with the
Agnostics! They have monopolised the meagre stock of intelligence which the
evolutionary process has as yet produced for the guidance of the race! But
there are Christians in the world who have quite as much sense as they have,
who detest superstition as much as they do, and who have far more experience in
detecting fallacies and exposing frauds. And if such men are Christians it is
not because they are too stupid to become infidels.
For faith is not
superstition ; and in presence of a Divine revelation unbelief betokens mental
obliquity, if not moral degradation. Thoughtless people are betrayed into
supposing that there is something very clever in " not believing." But in this
life the formula " I don't believe" more often betokens dull-wittedness than
shrewdness. It is the refrain of the stupidest man upon the jury. A mere
negation of belief, moreover, is seldom possible; it generally implies belief
in the alternative to what we reject. The sceptic may hesitate, in order to
examine the credentia of a revelation. But no one who has a settled creed ever
hesitates at all. And the Atheist has such a creed; he believes that there is
no God. If we do not believe a man to be honest, we usually believe him to be a
fraud. If we refuse the testimony of witnesses about matters that are too plain
and simple to allow of mere misapprehension or honest mistake, we must hold
them to be impostors and rogues. And nothing less than this is implied in the
position held by men like Herbert Spencer and Leslie Stephen.
But the
infidel will deny that he impugns the integrity of the Apostles and
Evangelists; he only questions their intelligence. He asks us to believe that
they were so weak and credulous that their testimony to the miracles, for
example, must be rejected. But the miracles were not rare incidences of
dark-room seances; they were public events which occurred day by day, and
usually in the presence of hostile critics. No person of ordinary intelligence,
therefore, could have been mistaken as to the facts. What then do we know of
the men on whose evidence we accept them? Their writings have been translated
into every known language. They hold a unique place in the classic literature
of the world, and the sublime morality and piety which pervade them command
universal admiration. Certain it is therefore that if the New Testament is to
be accounted for on natural principles, its authors must have been marvellously
gifted, both intellectually and morally. And yet these are the men whose
testimony is to be flung aside with contempt when they give a detailed
description of events which happened in open day before their eyes. To talk of
offering them a fool's pardon is absurd. If their narratives be false, we must
give up all confidence in human nature, and write them down as an abnormally
clever gang of abnormally profane impostors and hypocrites. But this
alternative is more untenable than the other. It is absolutely certain that the
men of the New Testament were neither scoundrels nor fools.
And no more
than this is needed to undermine the infidel position. It is not necessary to
prove that the Gospels are a Divine revelation; it will suffice to show that
they are credible records; and this much is guaranteed to us by the character
of the men who wrote them. As a test case let us take the miracle of the
feeding of the five thousand, recorded in all the four Gospels. I begin with
the First. And I will not speak of the writer as " Saint" Matthew, the Apostle
of Christ, but of Matthew the ex-tax-collector. Such a man, we may be sure, was
at least as shrewd and as suspicious as any of the infidels who with amazing
conceit dispose of his testimony. He records that on a certain day, in a
"desert place," be assisted in distributing bread and fish to a vast multitude
that gathered to hear the Lord's teaching-there were five thousand men "besides
women and children"; that the supply was five loaves and two fishes; that "they
did all eat and were filled, and they took up of the fragments that remained
twelve baskets full." And this is confirmed by the writer of the Fourth Gospel,
who also took part in the distribution of the food, and who gives details which
prove the accuracy with which he remembered what occurred. If we assume that
the other Evangelists were not present, their narratives become incidentally
important as showing that the miracle was matter of common knowledge and
discussion among the disciples.
Miracles of another kind the infidel gets
rid of to his own satisfaction by taking each in detail and appealing to what
we know of the infirmity of human testimony, or the effects of hysteria and the
power of mind or will over the body. But this miracle is one of many that
cannot possibly be accounted for on natural principles. And mistake or illusion
was no less impossible. That the "narrative arose out of a parable" is the
nonsense of sham sceptics and real fools.' For the witnesses were admittedly
neither idiots nor rogues, but men of the highest intelligence and probity. And
this being so the facts are established, and the only question open is, What
explanation can be given of them? What explanation is possible save that Divine
power was in operation?
The infidel therefore, so far from being the
philosopher he pretends to be, is the blind dupe of prejudice. And this is in
effect the defence pleaded for Voltaire by his latest English apologist. To him
we are told, l'infâme, "if it meant Christianity at all, meant that which
was taught in Rome in the eighteenth century, and not by the Sea of Galilee in
the first" ; "it meant the religion which lit the fires of Smithfield and
prompted the tortures of the Inquisition." In a word, Voltaire was ignorant of
the distincthm between Christianity and what is called "the Christian
religion." Not strange, perhaps, in the case of an eighteenth century
Frenchman, but inexcusable in the case of cultured Englishmen of our own times.
For the distinction is clear upon the open page of Scripture and of history.
How indeed can it be missed by any one who has read the story of the martyrs?
For the martyrs were the representatives and champions of Christianity: "the
Christian religion" it was that tortured and murdered them. But this is a
digression.
While the aggressive infidel has no special claim to
consideration, the honest-minded sceptic is entitled to respect and sympathy.
And never was the path of the truth-seeker more beset with difficulties For the
development of the rival apostasies of the last days, so plainly revealed in
Scnpture, goes on apace On the one side there is a national lapse toward the
errors and superstitions from which we supposed the Reformation had for ever
delivered us, and on the other there is an abandonment of the great truths to
which the Reformation owed its power.
These apostasies moreover are well
organised under zealous and able leaders. And while their discordant cries are
ever in our ears, "truth is fallen in the street." In the National Church the
great Evangelical party has effaced itself, and fallen into line behind the
champions of the pagan superstitions of "the Christian religion." And though in
the "Free" churches, as in the Establishment, there are great numbers of true
and earnest men who refuse to bow the knee to any Baal, the only corporate
testimony ever heard is "the gospel of humanity," which, as Scripture warns us,
will lead at last to the worship of the Antichrist. We are pestered by the
nostrums of "feather-headed enthusiasts who take the first will-o'-the-wisp for
a safe guide, and patch up a new religion out of scraps and tatters of
half-understood science," or of quasi-Christian ministers who are busy" framing
systems of morality apart from the ancient creeds" and "trying to evolve a
satisfactory creed out of theosophical moonshine."
In the past,
superstition and rationalism were the open enemies of the faith, but now they
are entrenched within the citadel, and half the churches and chapels in the
land are places to be shunned. Organised Christianity is becoming an organised
apostasy, and the time seems drawing near when practical expression must be
given to the cry, "To your tents, 0 Israel ! " "The very Church of God which
ought to be the appeaser of God is the provoker of God." These words seem as
apt to-day as when they were written fifteen centuries ago.
I will here
avail myself of the language of a great commentator and divine, Dean Alford of
Canterbury. After speaking of the apostasy of "the Jewish Church" beginning
with the worship of " the golden calf," he proceeds as follows :- "Strikingly
parallel with this runs the history of the Christian Church. Not long after the
Apostolic times, the golden calves of idolatry were set up by the Church of
Rome. What the effect of the captivity was to the Jews, that of the Reformation
has been to Christendom. The first evil spirit has been cast out. But by the
growth of hypocrisy, secularity, and rationalism the house has become empty,
swept and garnished: swept and garnished by the decencies of civilisation and
the discoveries of secular knowledge, but empty of living and earnest faith.
And he must read prophecy but ill who does not see under all these seeming
improvements the preparation for the final development of the man of sin, the
great repossession, when idolatry and the seven [other more wicked spirits]
shall bring the outward frame of so-called Christendom to a fearful end."
(Footnote - 1 Greek Test. Coin., Matt. xii. 43-45. Alford is not
speaking here of the Spiritual Church, the Body of Christ, of which Christ
Himself is at once the Builder and the Head (Matt. xvi. x8 ; Eph. i. 22, 23),
but of the Professing Church on earth, the administration of which was
entrusted to men. The one ends in glory, the other in apostasy and judgment.
The religion of Christendom confounds the one with the other; and it also
confounds the Church with "the kingdom of heaven," the "keys" of which were
committed to the Apostle of the Cir-cumcision. The following weighty words
relating to the Church on earth are quoted from Canon T. D. Bernard's Progress
of Doctrine (The Bampton Lecture, 1864) :- "How fair was the morning of the
Church! how swift its progress! what expectations it would have been natural to
form of the future history which had begun so well! Doubtless they were formed
in many a sanguine heart: but they were clouded soon. . "While the Apostles
wrote, the actual state and the visible tendencies of things showed too plainly
what Church history would be; and at the same time, prophetic intimations made
the prospect still more dark. . . "I know not how any man, in closing the
Epistles, could expect to find the subsequent history of the Church essentially
different from what it is. In those writings we seem, as it were, not to
witness some passing storms which clear the air, but to feel the whole
atmosphere charged with the elements of future tempest and death. . "The fact
which I observe is not merely that these indications of the future are in the
Epistles, but that they increase as we approach the close, and after the
doctrines of the Gospel have been fully wrought out, and the fulness of
personal salvation and the ideal character of the Church have been placed in
the clearest light, the shadows gather and deepen on the external hi.story. The
last words of St. Paul in the Second Epistle to Timothy, and those of St. Peter
in his Second Epistle, with the Epistles of St. John and St. Jude, breathe the
language of a time in which the tendencies of that history had distinctly shown
them.. selves; and in this respect these writings form a prelude and a passage
to the Apocalypse."
Chapter Ten
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