issue extremely simple. He disdains to argue at any length the question whether miracles are possible or probable. He simply assumes that to believe in miracles is absurd. Admit this premise, and his conclusion is the most logical one that can be drawn. He holds that the impossibility of miracles implies the impossibility of such a phenomenon as a sinless man. In his opinion, to say that Jesus was a person whose like cannot be again expected, is just as much the affirmation of a miracle as is that of the resurrection of a dead man. And he is right. Herein even Renan violates his own doctrine; Schenkel, as to his general position, is still more assailable, while Schleiermacher, unwilling to admit the reality of a physical phenomenon the how of which he cannot comprehend, yet affirming in the case of Jesus with such sharpness and boldness a wonder in the realm of spirit just as incomprehensible, and infinitely more important, than the others at which he stumbles, reminds us of nothing else so much as of one who strains out a gnat and swallows a camel. To conclude, Strauss's work, far from being one whose doctrines are outlived, in reality represents a strong tendency of the times. Utter disbelief in the supernatural is the form which rationalism now inclines to take. In Strauss it finds one of its ablest representatives. The sight is in itself a sad one; but the Christian may even rejoice that the enmity of his foes, if it is not to be avoided, takes so violent a form. When it is maintained that Christianity owes its very existence to pure lies or silly fancies; when it is seen, moreover, that this is the most consistent form that the enmity can assume, we may take courage. The work is easier than when directed against the puzzling sophistries of half-way infidels, or the timorous doubts of half-way Christians. The enemy is not a smooth-tongued WordlyWiseman, but an unmistakable Apollyon, straddling quite over the whole breadth of the way. The scientific defender of Christianity can meet the opposer by a simple reductio ad absurdum; the practical defender needs only to use the sword of the Spirit and the shield of faith. ARTICLE III. THE PERMANENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE INTENTION OF ITS FOUNDER.1 - BY JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D.D., NEW YORK. In closing his epistle to the Romans - that compact and comprehensive exposition of the gospel in its adaptation alike to the Jewish and to the Gentile world - the apostle Paul gives, in few words, a summary of Christianity as a final revelation of the one absolute and universal religion. In Rom. xvi. 25-27, in the condensed phrases of a single sentence in form a doxology - the origin and the mission of Christianity are set forth in almost every feature and function that could characterize a revelation as being complete and final: its historic continuity in the scriptures; its gradual unveiling through the ages; its concentrated manifestation in the ministry of Christ; the universality of its sphere; the permanence and the absolute supremacy of its office as the religion appointed of God for the enlightenment and the reformation of mankind. In these particulars, the close of the epistle tallies exactly with its opening.2 There, Paul speaks of the gospel which God "had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures;" and here he describes the gospel as made known or opened up "by the scriptures of the prophets." There he speaks of Jesus Christ, his incarnation and his resurrection from the dead, as the very "gospel of God"; and here the preaching of Jesus Christ is the full revealing of that "mystery" which though "kept secret" as to the 1 The substance of this Article was delivered as a Baccalaureate Address to the Senior Class in Andover Theological Seminary, in July, 1864; and also a an Anniversary Discourse before the American Missionary Association, at its meeting in New Haven, October, 1864. 2 Rom. xvi. 25 seq., and i. 1–6. time and the manner of it, had been silently unfolding since the world began.1 There, he speaks of himself as having received from Christ an apostleship of this gospel" among all nations"; here, again, he describes the gospel as ap pointed "to be made known to all nations, by commandment of the everlasting God." And alike in the opening of the epistle and at its close, to secure a universal "obedience to the faith," as herein declared, is the purpose of God in "giving commandment" for the propagation of the gospel. And this was the very formula by which our Lord defined the object, the method, and the duration of the Christian ministry. "Go make all nations my disciples; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." Clearly, then, in the intention of its founder, and in the conception of its chief expounder and propagandist, the apostle Paul, Christianity, contemplated as an entire system of religious faith, unfolded with historical unity in the Bible, was designed to be the permanent, the universal, and the only religion of mankind; complete as a revelation of divine truth, and as the manifestation of the divine life and love; adequate to all the wants and all the phases of humanity, and adapted to all the coming ages of the world. Whatever theory of Christ and Christianity men may adopt; however widely they may differ in their estimate of the facts of the gospel, or in their interpretation of its doctrines; whatever place they may assign to Christianity among the elements of our civilization; whatever value they may give it as a system of truth, or a power for social and moral progress; whether they accept it as a divine. revelation authenticated by miracles, or construe it into a myth of purely human invention- there can be no question as to the claim of Christianity itself to have come from God to men, and to be, by divine appointment, the one, sufficient, Compare 1 Pet. i. 10-13. 1 authoritative, and unchanging system of faith and of morals, and the only hope of the world with respect to an enlight ened, spiritual, and saving progress. All this is claimed by him who said of himself that he "came into the world to bear witness unto the truth"; that he is "the way, the truth, and the life"; that he is "the light of the world," and that "the world must be saved through him"; and who said concerning the scriptures that testify of him and his kingdom," it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Completeness of adaptation to mankind, with a view to permanence of control in the sphere of morality and religion, and to universality of effect upon human society - this is written upon every page of the New Testament, from the announcement of the birth of Jesus as "a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Israel," to the commission of the apostles "to make known the gospel unto all nations for their obedience to its faith," and onward through all the recorded and the promised triumphs of Christianity, until "the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light" of the new and holy Jerusalem.1 Christianity, we repeat, in the intention of its Founder, is the complete and the final system of religious faith and practice for mankind; and the permanent, comprehensive, and universal agency for the moral advancement of the race. It is not one among religions; it is the religion. It is not one among agencies of moral reform and progress; it is the agency for constructing a true civilization. It is not one among systems of truth divinely accredited; it is the truth set forth by divine appointment to be everywhere received and obeyed. But there has arisen of late years a social philosophy which treats all religions as the natural development of the human mind in successive stages of its progress, and which regards Christianity as simply a stage in that development; not a supernatural religion, ordained to be universal and permanent, but a natural growth of its era, and destined in turn to give place to some higher product. of philosophic thought. Akin to this philosophy of social progress is the claim of some modern scientists, that their discoveries in nature antiquate the Bible as the crude product of an unscientific age, when mysteries were miracles, and the legends of superstition were accepted as supernatural facts. This form of disbelief has in it nothing of the rancor that marked the infidelity of the eighteenth century. It may be supercilious toward Christianity as a theological experiment that has had its day, or may affect to patronize it for certain ideas and principles worth retaining in the future of the race; but it does not denounce the Bible as wholesale imposture, or sneer at Christians as priest-ridden fools. Yet, because of this air of candor and superiority, which admits certain excellences in Christianity, but passes these to the credit of human nature, while it also claims that the world has outgrown the system whose virtues it retains, this form of disbelief challenges a more serious refutation than the old infidelity would now require. It goes beyond Mr. Parker's distinction between "the transient and the permanent in Christianity," and affirms that Christianity was in its very nature transitory, and is now ready to vanish away; that the claim of an historical revelation contained in a book, must yield to the "original revelation of consciousness 1"; that "the interior spirit of any age is the spirit of God," and that the spirit of each age must appoint for it a "creed of its own;" that "the new religion of nature," in whose articles "revelation is the disclosure of truth to the active and simple reason," and "regeneration the bursting of the moral consciousness into flower" this "theism of nature," interpreted by science, and developed from the human soul, must become the faith of the future, in place of the supernaturalism that has ruled in the faith of the past.2 1 Miss Frances Power Cobbe, in "Broken Lights," p. 190. |