CHAPTER VII.

CAN WE BELIEVE CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES?

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life * * that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you."—1 John i. l.

We have seen that the companions of Jesus wrote the books of the New Testament; that their statements of the existence, worship, morals, and faith of the Christian Church are confirmed by their enemies, and that multitudes of heathens were turned from vice to virtue by the belief of the testimony of these men. They testified that Jesus Christ did many wonderful miracles, died for our sins, and rose again from the dead; that they saw, and felt his body, and ate, and drank, and conversed with him for forty days after his resurrection; that he ascended up to heaven in their sight; that he sent them to tell the world that he will come again in the clouds of heaven, with his mighty angels, to judge the living and the dead; that he who believes these things and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. This is their statement. The question is, Can we believe them?

1. The first thing which strikes us in their testimony is, that it stands out utterly different from all other religions. There is nothing in the world like it, not even its counterfeits. The great central fact of Christianity-that Christ

died for our sins, and rose again from the dead-stands absolutely alone in the history of religions. The priests of Baal, Brahma, or Jupiter, never dreamed of such a thing. The prophets of Mohammedanism, Mormonism, or Pantheism, have never attempted to imitate it. The great object of all counterfeit Christianity is to deny it.

There is no instance in the whole world's history of any other religion ever producing the same effects. We demand an instance of men destitute of wealth, arms, power, and learning, converting multitudes of lying, lustful, murdering idolaters, into honest, peaceable, virtuous men simply by prayer and preaching. When the Infidel tells us of the rapid spread of Mohammedanism and Mormonism-impostures which enlist disciples by promising free license to lust, robbery, and murder, and retain them by the terror of the scimeter and the rifle ball; which reduce mankind to the most abject servitude, and womanhood to the most debasing concubinage; which have turned the fairest regions of the earth to a wilderness, and under whose blighting influence commerce, arts, science, industry, comfort, and the human race itself, have withered away-he simply insults our common sense, by ignoring the difference between backgoing vice and ongoing virtue; or acknowledges that he knows as little about Mohammedanism, as he does about Christianity. The gospel stands alone in its doctrines, singular in its operation, unequaled in its success.

2. The next important point for consideration is, that the Christianity preached by Christ and his apostles is a whole. —a single system, which we must either take or leave-believe entirely, or entirely reject it as an imposture. There is no middle ground for you to occupy. It is all true, or all false. For instance, you can not take one of Paul's Epistles and say, "this is true," and take another of the same man's letters, containing the very same religion, and "this is false. If you accept the very briefest of Paul's

say,

Letters, that to Philemon, containing only thirteen sentences on private business, you accept eleven distinct assertions of the authority, grace, love, and divinity of our Lord. Nor can you say you will accept Peter's Letters and reject Paul's; for you will find the very same facts asserted by the one as by the other; and moreover, Peter indorses "all the epistles of our beloved brother Paul" as on the same pedestal of authority with the other Scriptures. You can not say, "I will accept the letters and reject the history," for the letters have no meaning without the history. They are founded upon it, and assume or allege its facts on every page. Were the gospels lost, we could collect a good account of the birth, teaching, death, resurrection, ascension, and almighty power of the Lord Christ from Paul's Epistles; and these letters are just as confident in alleging the miraculous part of the history as the gospels themselves. Neither can you gain any advantage by saying, "I accept the gospels, but reject the letters," for there is not a doctrine of the New Testament which is not taught in the very first of them, the Gospel by Matthew. Further, the gospels contain the most solemn authentication of the commissions of the apostles, so that whoever rejects their teaching, brings upon himself guilt equal to that of rejecting Christ himself. "Lo, I am with you alway"-"He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me "Whosoever will not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city."

It is, if possible, more absurd to attempt to dissect the morality of the gospel from its history, and to say, "We are willing to receive the Christian code of morals as a very excellent rule of life, and to regard Jesus as a rare example of almost superhuman virtue, but we must consider the narra

tive of supernatural events interwoven with it as mythological," i. e., false. Which is much the same as to say, “We will be very happy to receive your friend if he will only cut his head off." Of what possible use would the Christian code of morals be without the authority of Christ, the lawgiver? If he possessed no divine authority, what right has he to control your inclination or mine? And if he will never return to inquire whether men obey or disobey his law, who will regard it? Do you suppose the world will be turned upside down, and reformed, by a little good advice? Nay, verily, the world has had trial of that vanity long enough. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terrors of the Lord, we

persuade men."

Take away the miraculous and supernatural from the gospel history, and there is nothing left for you to accept. There is no political economy nor worldly morality in it. It is wholly the history of a supernatural person, and every precept of his morality comes with a divine sanction. Further, you know nothing of either his life or his morality but from the gospel history, and if the record of the miracles which occupy three-fourths of the gospels be false, what reason have you to give any credit to the remainder? For, as the German commentator, De Wette, well says, "The only means of acquaintance with a history is the narrative we possess concerning it, and beyond that narrative the interpreter can not go. In these Bible records, the narrative reports to us only a supernatural course of events, which we must either receive or reject. If we reject the narrative, we know nothing at all about the event, and we are not justified in allowing ourselves to invent a natural course of events of which the narrative is totally silent." So, you

see, you can not make a Christ to suit your taste, but must just take the Christ of the gospel, or reject him.

If you reject the testimony of Christ and his apostles as false, and say you can not believe them in matters of fact, how can you respect their morality? Of all the absurdities of modern Infidelity, the respectful language generally used by its advocates in speaking of Christ and his apostles is the most inconsistent. He claimed to be a Divine Person, and professed to work miracles. The Infidel says he was not a Divine Person, and wrought no miracles. The consequence is unavoidable-such a pretender is a blasphemous impostor. And yet they speak of him as a "model man," an "exemplar of every virtue." What! an impostor a model man? A blasphemer and liar an exemplar of every virtue? Is that the Infidel's notion of virtue? Why, the devils were more consistent in their commendations of his character,"We know thee who thou art, THE HOLY ONE OF GOD." Let our modern enemies of Christ learn consistency from their ancient allies. We have also learned from our Master to refuse all hypocritical, half-way professions of respect for his character and teachings from those whose business is to prove him a deceiver, and whose object in speaking respectfully of such a One can only be to gain a larger audience, and a readier entrance for their blasphemy among his professed disciples. From every man who professes respect for Christ's character, and for the morality which he and his apostles taught, we demand a straightforward answer to the questions: “When he declared himself the Son of God, the Judge of the living and the dead, did he tell the truth, or did he lie? When he promised to attest his divine commission by rising from the dead on the third day, had he any such power, or did he only mean to play a juggling imposture? Is Jesus the Christ the Son of the Living God, or a deceiver?" There is no middle ground. He that is not with him is against him.