FAITH BORN OF NEED
take account of all the facts if, while searching the heavens above and the earth beneath, you neglect the facts of your own soul.
Let us see how the ostensibly scientific approach to Christianity works out. In pursuance of it we begin in a systematic way; we bring forward, first, our arguments for the existence of a personal God. And I for my part believe that they are rather good arguments; they have not altogether been demolished, I think, by the criticism of Kant. If, then, we have established the existence of God, the question arises whether He has revealed Himself in such fashion as that personal communion with Him becomes possible for mankind. Probably it will be admitted that if He has done so at all, He has done so in the Christian religion; Christianity will probably be admitted to offer the most plausible claim, at least,, among all the religions of the world to be based upon a real revelation of God. But has even the Christian claim accredited itself? It has done so — to put the matter in briefest compass and deal with it at the really crucial point — if Jesus rose from the dead; it has not done so if He did not rise. Now there is certainly some evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Admittedly His intimate friends believed that He had risen, and upon that belief the Church was founded. But what in turn caused that belief? Many answers have been proposed to this question; but none of them is thoroughly satisfactory, except the simple answer that the belief of the disciples was founded upon fact. So much will be rather widely admitted; the origin of the Christian Church is admittedly a very puzzling fact; only ignorance can deny the difficulty of the historical problem that it inyolves for all naturalistic historians.
But a difficulty, it will be said, is also found in the traditional solution, as well as in the naturalistic solutions. The difficulty appears in the supernatural character of the alleged event. If the resurrection were an ordinary event, the evidence for it would admittedly be sufficient; but then as a matter of fact it is not an ordinary event but a miracle, and against the acceptance of any such thing there is an enormous weight of presumption.
This objection I for my part am not at all inclined to take lightly. Indeed, if the evidence for the resurrection, as we have outlined it, stood alone, it might, I think, b'e insufficient. Even if a dozen men for whose character and attainments I had the highest respect were to come into the room and tell me, quite independently, that they had seen a man rise from the dead, I am not sure whether I should believe them for a moment. Why, then, do I accord to witnesses of so long ago — witnesses too, who lived in a comparatively unscientific age (though its unscientific character is often enormously exaggerated) — a degree of credence which I might refuse to trained observers of the present day? Why do I believe in the resurrection of Jesus when I might not. believe, even on the basis of overwhelming testimony, in the resurrection of one of my contemporaries?
The question seems at first sight hard to answer, but the answer is really not so difficult as it seems. The answer is that I believe in the miracle which is at" the foundation of the Christian Church because in that case the question does not concern merely the resurrection of a person about whom I know nothing, a mere x or y, but it concerns specifically the resurrection of Jesus; and Jesus was like no person who has ever lived. It is unbelievable, I say, that any ordinary man should be raised from the dead, but then Jesus was no ordinary man; in His case the enormous presumption against miracle is reversed; in His case, far from its being inconceivable that He should have been raised, it is inconceivable that He should not have been raised; such an one as He could not possibly have been holden of death. Thus the direct evidence for the resurrection is supplemented by an impression of the moral uniqueness of Jesus' person. That does not mean that if we are impressed by the moral uniqueness of Jesus' person, the direct evidence for the resurrection is unnecessary, or that the Christian can be indifferent to it; but it does mean that that impression must be added to the direct evidence in order to produce conviction.
But how do we know that Jesus' moral character is absolutely unique? We do so only because of our conviction of sin. Convinced of our own impurity, as revealed by the majesty of the divine law, we become convinced of His dissimilarity in kind from us, and thus we say that He alone was pure. Thus even in order to establish the fact of the resurrection, the lesson of the law must be learned. •. •
In another way also the conviction of sin is necessary in order that we may believe in the resurrection of Christ and thus accept the claims of Christianity. The resurrection, as we have seen, if it really took place, was a miracle; it involved an intrusion of the creative power of God into the course of the world. So stupendous an event is difficult to accept unless we can detect for it an adequate purpose; and the adequate purpose is detected only by the man who is under conviction of sin. Such a man alone can understand the need of re? demption; he alone knows that sin has introduced a great rent into the very structure of the universe, which only a creative act of God can close. The truly penitent man rejoices in the supernatural; for he knows that nothing natural can possibly meet his need. He rejoices even in the new consciousness of the uniformity and unity of nature which has been so widely disseminated by modern science; for that uniformity of nature only reveals with new clearness the sheer uniqueness of the redemption offered by Christ.
Thus even in order to exhibit the truth of Christianity at the bar of reason, it is necessary to learn the lesson of the law. It is impossible to prove first that Christianity is true, and then proceed on the basis of its truth to become conscious of one's sin; for the fact of sin is itself one of the chief foundations upon which the proof is based.
When that fact of sin is recognized, and when to the recognition of it is added a fair scrutiny of the historical evidence, then it seems thoroughly reasonable to believe that Christianity is true. Anyone whose mind is clear, no matter what his personal attitude may be, will, we think, accept the truth of Christianity; but no one's mind is clear who denies the facts of his own soul: in order to come to the Christian view of Christ it is necessary only to be scientific; but no one can be truly scientific who ignores the fact of sin.
We are not ignoring the emotional and volitional aspects of faith; we are not denying that as a matter of fact, in, humanity as it is actually constituted, an intellectual conviction of the truth of Christianity is always accompanied by a change of heart and a new direction for the will. That does not mean that Christianity is true only for those who thus will to accept it, and that it is not true for others; on the contrary it is true, we think, even for the demons in hell as well' as for the saints in heaven, though its truth does the demons no good. But for a thing to be true is one thing and for it to be recognized as true is another; and in order that Christianity may be recognized as true by men upon this earth the blinding effects of sin must be removed. The blinding effects of sin are removed by the Spirit of God; and the Spirit chooses to do that only for those whom He brings by the new birth into the Kingdom of God. Regeneration, or the new birth, therefore, does not stand in opposition to a truly scientific attitude toward the evidence, but on the contrary it is necessary in order that that truly scientific attitude may be attained; it is not a substitute for the intellect, but on the contrary by it the intellect -is made to be a trustworthy instrument for apprehending truth. The true state of the case appears in the comprehensive answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism to the question, "What is effectual calling?" "Effectual calling," says the Catechism, "is the work of God's Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, He doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel." That does justice to all aspects of the matter; conviction of ism and misery as the prerequisite of faith, the enlightening of a mind blinded by sin, the renewing of the will; and all these things produced by the Spirit of God.
In the second place, instead of following the purely intellectual way that has just been discussed, men sometimes try to come to Christ through the sense of beauty. And indeed it is a beautiful thing — this life of Christ rising like a fair flower amid the foulness of the Roman Empire, this strange teaching so simple and yet so profound. But there is at least one objection to the sense of beauty as the way of approach to Christ— it cannot be forced upon those who desire it not. There is no disputing about tastes: one man may admire Jesus, another may prefer the pagan glories of ancient Greece or of the Italian Renaissance; and if it is a merely~€sthetic question, no universally valid decision can be attained. If the way of approach is merely through the sense of beauty, then the universality of the Christian religion, at any rate, must be given up.
Is the life and teaching of Jesus, moreover, so beautiful after all? Jesus said some things that offend the sensibilities of many people, as when He spoke of the outer darkness and the everlasting fire, and of the sin that shall not be forgiven either in this world or in that which is to come. These things cannot be called exactly "pretty"; and by many men they are simply ignored.
Some years ago I heard a preacher who, after the customary abuse of Calvin and others, obtained a smile from his congregation by quoting something that Cotton Mather had said about hell. The question that might have occurred to me as I listened was why the preacher had to go so far afield. Why should he have had recourse to Cotton Mather, when Jesus would have done just as well? There are words of Jesus about hell, just as terrible as any that can be found in the writings of the theologians; and those words might have obtained as good a smile — from that congregation — as the words of Jonathan Edwards or Cotton Mather or the rest.
There is, however, one class of persons from whom those words would have obtained no such smile, and to whom they would have seemed not to mar one whit the beauty of the teaching of our Lord. These are the persons who have passed through the strange experience of the conviction of sin, the persons who hold the same view of sin and retribution that Jesus held. To such persons, and to such persons alone, the beauty of Jesus is without a flaw. That beauty cannot be appreciated without a knowledge of the holiness upon which it is based; and the holiness is unknown except to those who have been convicted of their own sin through learning the lesson of the law.
In the third place, men try to come to Christ through the desire for companionship; they seek in' Him a friend who will be faithful when other friends depart. But companionship with Jesus is not always the comfortable thing that it is sometimes thought to be; Jesus did not always make it easy to be a disciple of Him.
"Let the dead bury their dead," He told the enthusiast who came eagerly to Him but was not willing at once to forsake all. "One thing thou lackest," He said to the rich young ruler, and the young man went sorrowing away. "He that is not with me," He said to men who wanted to enjoy His companionship without definitely taking sides, "is against me," "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children.... he cannot be my disciple." It was a very serious thing, in those Galilean days, to be a disciple of Christ.
And it was a serious thing not only in the sphere of conduct but also in the sphere of thought. There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that a man in those days could think as he liked and still be a follower of Jesus. On the contrary the offence lay just as much in the sphere of doctrine as in the sphere of life; the exclusive claims of Jesus — that a man should if necessary forsake all to follow Him — were grounded in the stupendous view which He held of His own Person and mission; no man could really enjoy the companionship of Jesus who did not admit His absolute sway..
There were some indeed to whom His yoke was easy and His burden was light; there were some who rejoiced in His lofty demands as the very hope of their lives. These were the men who had come under the conviction of sin — the sinners, who without a plea except in His mercy heard the gracious words, "Thy sins are forgiven thee."
As it was then, so also it will be, today: the companionship of Jesus is indeed a gracious thing for burdened souls; but it is a terrible thing for those who have any trust in a righteousness of their own. No man can call Jesus friend who does not also call Him Lord; and no man can call Him Lord who could not say first; "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord." At the root of all true companionship with Jesus, therefore, is the consciousness of sin and with it the reliance upon His mercy; to have fellowship with Him it is necessary to learn the terrible lesson of God's law.
Finally, men seek to come to Christ through the desire for a worthy ideal; indeed that way is just now the most commonly followed of all. "I may not be very orthodox," says many a modern man, "but I am a Christian because I believe that the principles of Jesus will solve all the problems of my life and also all the problems of society."
The most obvious objection to this way of approach to Jesus is that it will not work; an ideal is quite powerless to a man who is under the thraldom of sin; and the real glory of Jesus is that He breaks that thraldom, and instead of giving merely guidance, as an ideal would do, gives also power.
There is, however, also another objection. Jesus, it is said, can be taken as the supreme and perfect ideal for humanity. But is He really a perfect ideal? There is one difficulty which modern men find about taking Him as such — the difficulty due to His stupendous claims. There can be no real doubt, in the mind of a historian who examines the facts, but that Jesus of Nazareth regarded Himself as the Messiah; and there can also be no real doubt but that He regarded Himself as the Messiah not merely in some lower meaning of the term, but in the lofty meaning by which it designated the heavenly Son of Man, the glorious figure who appears in the seventh chapter of Daniel in the presence of the Ancient of Days. This Jesus of Nazareth, in other words, who is to be taken as the supreme moral ideal of the race, actually believed, as He looked out upon His contemporaries, that He was one day to sit upon the throne of God and be their Judge and the Judge of all the earth! Would not such a person have been, if not actually insane, at least unbalanced and unworthy of the full confidence of men?
There is only one way of overcoming this difficulty — it is to accept the lofty claims of Jesus as sober truth. If the claims are denied, then — argue as men will — the Galilean prophet ceases to be a supreme and perfect ideal. But the claims can be accepted as true only when one takes the same view of Jesus' mission as that which Jesus took, only when one regards Him as the divine Redeemer who came voluntarily into the world to save mankind from the guilt and power of sin. If Jesus is only an ideal, He is not a perfect ideal; for He claimed to be far more: but if He is the Saviour from sin, then He is the perfect Example that can never be surpassed. But He can be accepted as the Saviour from sin only by those who hold the same view of sin as that which He held; and that view can be held only by those who have learned the lesson of the law.
The fact is, then, that there is no other way of coming to Christ except the old, old way that is found in the conviction of sin. The truth of Christianity cannot he established hy the intellect unless an important part of the argument is based upon the fact of sin which is revealed by the law of God; the beauty of Jesus, which attracts the gaze of men, cannot be appreciated without a knowledge of the holiness upon which ~it is based; the companionship of Jesus is possible only to those who say first, in deep contrition; "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord"; the example of Jesus is powerless to those who are in the bondage of evil habit, and it is not even a perfect example unless He be the divine Redeemer that He claimed to be. The true schoolmaster to bring men to Christ is. found, therefore, now and always in the law of God- — the law of God that gives to men the consciousness of sin.
A new and more powerful proclamation of that law is perhaps the most pressing need of the hour; men would have little difficulty with the gospel if they had only learned the lesson of the law. As it is, they are turning aside from the Christian pathway; they are turning to the village of Morality, and to the house of Mr. Legality, who is reported to be very skillful in relieving men of their burdens. Mr. Legality has indeed in our day disguised himself somewhat, but he is the same deceiver as the one of whom Bunyan wrote. "Making Christ Master" in the life, putting into practice "the principles of Christ" by one's own efforts — these are merely new ways of earning salvation by one's own obedience to God's commands. And they are undertaken because of a lax view of what those commands are. So it always is: a low view of law always brings legalism in religion; a high view of law makes.V a man a seeker after grace. Pray God that the high view may again prevail; that Mount Sinai may again overhang the path and shoot forth flames, in order that then the men of our time may, like Christian in the allegory, meet some true Evangelist, who shall point them out the old, old way, through the little wicket gate, to the place somewhat ascending where they shall really see the Cross and the figure of Him that did hang thereon, that at that sight the hurden of the guilt of sin, which no human hand could remove, may fall from their back into a sepulchre beside the way, and that then, with wondrous lightness and freedom and joy, they may walk the Christian path, through the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and up over the Delectable Mountains, until at last they pass triumphant across the river into the City of God.