No Refuge but in Truth | Page 2

Old Testament of a physical kind, such as those in the account of creation and the belief in the revolution of the sun. Of the New Testament the most important books, the first three Gospels, our main authorities for the life of Christ, are manifestly grafts upon a stock of unknown authorship and date. They betray a belief in diabolical possession, a local superstition from which the author of the Fourth Gospel, who evidently was not a Palestinian Jew, was free. There is discrepancy between the first three Gospels and the fourth, notably as to the day and consequent significance of Christ's celebration of the Passover. It is incredible that God in revealing himself to man should have allowed any mark of human error to appear in the revelation.
We have, moreover, to ask why that on which the world's salvation depended should have been withheld so long and communicated to so few.
There remains of the Old Testament, besides its vast historical interest, much that morally still impresses and exalts us. Of the New Testament there remains the moral ideal of Christ, our faith in which no uncertainty as to the authors of the narratives, or mistrust of them on account of the miraculous embellishment common in biographies of saints, need materially affect. The moral ideal of Christ conquered the ancient world when the Roman, mighty in character as well as in arms, was its master. It has lived through all these centuries, all their revolutions and convulsions, the usurpation, tyranny, and scandals of the Papacy. The most doubtful point of it, considered as a permanent exemplar, is its tendency, not to asceticism, for Christ came "eating and drinking," but to an excessive preference for poverty and antipathy to wealth which would arrest human progress and kill civilization. We have, however, a Nicodemus and a Joseph of Arimathea, as well as a Dives and a Lazarus. Nothing points to a Simeon Stylites. Self-denial, though not asceticism proper, is a necessary part of the life of a wandering preacher, which also precluded the exhibition of domestic virtues. The relation of Jesus with his family seems to have been hardly domestic; we have no record of any communication between him and Joseph; in his last hour he provides a retreat for his mother.
We cannot appeal from reason to faith. Faith is confidence, and for confidence there must be reason. The faith to which appeal is made is in fact an emotion rather than an intellectual conviction.
But apart from the Bible, have we any revelation of the nature, the will, the unity, the existence of deity? It must apparently be owned that, though we tremble at the thought, we have none. We are left upon this shore of time gazing into infinity and eternity without clue or guidance except such as we can gain either by inspection of our own nature with its moral indications and promptings or by studying the order of the universe.
We find in man, it is true, a natural belief in deity, which we might think was implanted by his creator; but it is not found in all men, and in the lower races it assumes forms often so low and grotesque that we cannot imagine its origin to have been divine. Between the God of the Christian and the god of the red Indian there is, saving mere force, no affinity whatever. This we must frankly own to ourselves. The god of the Mexican demanded human sacrifice.
On earth the creative power seems to be, as it were, contending against itself. Good of every kind is in conflict with evil. Slowly and fitfully, with many reverses, good seems to prevail. Humanity as a whole advances, and if we could believe in its collective advance toward an ultimate perfection which all who have contributed to the advance should share, we might have a solution of the great problem. But of this we have no certain assurance. Multitudes come into being who to progress can contribute nothing. There is evil of all kinds that so far as we can see can be followed by no good effect. Plague and famine, with a great part of the common misfortunes of human life, seem merely evil. So, plainly, do the sufferings of animals, sometimes on a terrible scale and apparently quite useless. As long as effort, even painful, is the price of perfection the price must be paid and we acquiesce. But in innumerable cases there appears to be no room for that explanation. The rocks display the fossil remains of whole races of primeval animals produced apparently only to become extinct. Of the earth itself, man's destined habitation, large portions are utterly uninhabitable. The legendary war between the powers of good and evil, God and Satan, Ormuzd and Ahriman, was a fable naturally