FIFTY ADDITIONAL PROOFS.

UT the story of the resurrection is as much interwoven with the texture of the entire scriptures as it is with the moral character of Jesus, so that, to adopt the language of Renan, to tear it from the Book would be to rend the Bible to its foundations. Hence it is not only a legitimate mode of argument to consider the claims of the Old and New Testament to our belief, in connection with our study of the resurrection, but we are bound to consider them, because the resurrection and revelation stand or fall together. ' If the former can be established as a historical fact, the supernatural origin of the latter is clearly vindicated; and if the latter can be proved, the former can not be doubted. If, on the other hand, the resurrection of Jesus never occurred, the Bible is unworthy of our acceptance, the resurrection can no longer be believed. It remains, therefore, to present in most imperfect outline some of the evidences for the credibility of the Scriptures, which are offered for the candid and thoughtful consideration of the sincere inquirer after the truth.

1. Let us think of the antiquity of the book, its earlier portions dating back to a period six hundred years before the existence of Homer, the father of poetry, and more than a thousand years before Herodotus, the father of history; and yet it contains the acknowledged basis of the jurisprudence of the civilized world. Honest infidels have often been converted by reflecting upon the nature of the law given by Moses, and trying to see whether they could add anything to it, or take anything from it, so as to make it better. They have asked themselves, where did he get such a code of morals as that contained in the ten commandments, amid the idolatry and darkness and brutality of that early day, a code in which the wisdom of modern philosophy can detect no flaw, a code which, if obeyed, would confessedly make a paradise on earth.; and they have been constrained to acknowledge that it could come only from God.

2. This marvellous volume consists of sixty-six different books, occupying about sixteen hundred years in their production, and composed by about forty different persons embracing every variety of intellect, culture, and social condition; and yet so perfect and sublime is the unity of design and testimony, you can not discover the slightest difference of principle or even of opinion of any one of them from any other. Open at any part of the volume you please, and you will find its statements in entire harmony with all other parts, whether they relate to God or man.

3. The whole book is in thorough accord with what has been discovered concerning the material condition of the universe and with the voice of nature. In every newly fledged science the reckless assertion has been made that some mistake or misstatement is at last discovered in the Bible, and frequently foolish Christians are in a hurry to pervert and twist the text that it may be forced into unison with the false teachings of infidel and pretentious theories; or to dodge the issue by the paltry plea that the Bible was not designed to teach science and history. But in the end, when thorough research has elicited the full truth, it is found without a single exception that real knowledge confirms the superhuman intelligence of the scriptures. How exultant would be the shout of infidelity if it could show even one clear contradiction in these Scriptures to any fact universally accepted as proven by unbelieving scientists themselves, but this it has never done.

4. The moral government of the world, which Christians call providence, but which infidels regard as chance or law or nature, keeps step with the teachings of the Bible through the entire course of human history. The principles which underlie the one are brought to light in the other, and the results of a given course of conduct by nations, communities, families or individuals are found in the long run to be in accordance with the statements everywhere contained in the book.

5. There are many important truths which the Bible alone reveals, important as bearing upon the question of our present and everlasting happiness, which confessedly lie beyond the discovery of man's unaided intellect, as shown by the fact that they were not dreamed of by the wisest and best of men of ancient or modern times who reject its testimony.

6. It alone reveals the existence of one God, who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth; and this in the light of all human history is shown to be directly contrary to the known principles of human nature.

7. It makes known the only way of salvation, by which God manifests at the same time His love for the sinner and His hatred of sin, by which the perfections of His character are not only fully maintained but illustriously exhibited and glorified, by which not a spot sullies His righteousness; while His grace is untrammeled in its merciful errand to a guilty and ruined world.

8. This revelation of divine love is made in such manner as to uphold the strict purity of the doctrines, duties, and precepts of the entire Bible, for you can not discover from first to last the least allowance for sin, nor any excuse for the evils incident to fallen human nature.

9. The grandeur of its style and its manner of teaching stamp it as superhuman, for you will find nowhere outside of the Bible those artless, simple, but inimitable unfoldings of truth, before unknown or disregarded, which make the productions of the most cultivated minds seem trivial in comparison, and which have elicited the admiration of men of letters in all ages and all lands.

10. Its exaltation of God and stern condemnation of man, always vindicating the former, always telling of some evil in the latter, with the solitary exception of the man Christ Jesus, shows that it did not have a human origin.

11. Its complete subordination of morality to the will of God as supreme, making that which man esteems to be the highest rule of life, and which constitutes his crowning glory, inferior to the pleasure of Another, and receiving its only authority and highest sanction from that pleasure, proves that the book did not spring from earthly sources.

12. But it also teaches a morality contrary to all natural impulses, claiming as virtues what the world instinctively scorns, like meekness, forbearance, non-resistance, self-abasement. Even professing Christians are often heard to say that it is right to resent an insult, making it manifest that the Bible lies athwart their deep-seated inclinations, and could not have taken its start in the mind or heart of man.

13. The Old Testament contains an almost unbroken record of the unbelief, ingratitude, idolatry, and meanness of the Jews, both leaders and people, and it is unnatural to suppose that this shameful record was made by Jewish writers, unless they were moved by a power higher than their own.

14. The New Testament brings its stern accusations against the entire human race, representing all alike as depraved, as at enmity with God, as by nature the children of wrath, the whole world lying in the wicked one; and it is unnatural to suppose that men of any nationality composed such a book of their own will.

15. Its necessity is demonstrated by man's ignorance of himself and of God, and by the failure of all the philosophers of the earth to construct a system of religion, which can meet our present need, and tell us anything of the future state of being.

16. It is precisely adapted to the wants of all, high and low, rich and poor, educated and illiterate; and as a matter of fact persons of every condition and in every land and of every race have found in it a message suited to their necessities, and a rule of life they can safely follow in all conceivable circumstances unto death.

17. Its commission to its disciples requires them to go into all the world, preaching the gospel to every creature, carrying its entreaties and warnings unto the ends of the earth, and thus it aspires to universal dominion but without a whisper of violence.

18. Wherever it has been proclaimed, multitudes of the most thoughtful have become convinced that it is from God, nor have they been inferior in intellect, in intelligence, in good behavior, nor in any other respect to those who have refused to heed its claims.

19. It has shown a marvellous power, which no other religion has exhibited, and which irreligion does not even pretend to wield, to arouse the conscience, to enlighten the understanding, to renew the will, to give another heart, to refine the life, to make the moral desert blossom as the rose, and to set free the prisoners of vice.

20. It authenticates its truth by numerous distinct prophecies, which have been fulfilled before the eyes of the world, as those concerning Ishmael and the Arabs, Egypt, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Philistia, Nineveh, Babylon, Chaldea, Tyre, the seven churches of Asia, or they are now in jDrocess of fulfillment as those concerning the Jews, Jerusalem, and the state of things among the nations, and all over the face of the earth.

21. It authenticates its truth by miracles, which are the appropriate and necessary evidence of a messenger from God, nor can we conceive of a divine Saviour without such deeds of love, compassion, forgiveness and restoration as His credentials to confirm His demand upon the faith and obedience of mankind.

22. It recognizes the rights of conscience, which proves it to be supernatural, or opposed to that which is natural to our race, by the history of Christianity itself, as in the name of Christianity fierce persecution has been carried on in the very face of the Bible.

23. It demands a separation between Church and state, or politics and religion, contenting itself with directing Christians to be subject to civil government; and this too is unnatural, or supernatural, as shown by the history of the church itself.

24. The corruption of Christianity has always been along the line of man's natural inclinations, proving how difficult it is to walk in obedience to a book which constantly crosses the desires of the human heart, and which thus manifests its superhuman origin.

25. The picture it gives of the life and character of Jesus Christ shows that it was not drawn by man's unaided hand, because nothing like it was ever seen before, and because we are incapable of portraying that of which the mind had no previous conception.

26. The words of Jesus and His apostles, which it records, prove it to be divine, for these words touch upon all the relations we sustain, upon every duty which springs out of these relations, and upon every topic of interest to the soul; and yet there is not one word nor even one illustration which is shown to be false by modern knowledge.

27. The book deals constantly and freely with the names of persons and places, with dates and innumerable details in its narratives; and yet after the strong light of unfriendly criticism has beaten upon it for eighteen hundred years, there has not been discovered the smallest discrepancy of fact, nor even the slightest anachronism.

28. It has gone forth into various lands, and wherever its precepts have been heeded, and in so far as they have been heeded, it has laid an arrest upon murder, adultery, falsehood, drunkenness, avarice, and other shapes of crime and vice that form such dark and continuous blots upon the pages of human history.

29. It is admitted by infidels themselves that if those who profess to follow its teachings were only sincere, it would bring with it incalculable blessings, and that no community could come thoroughly under the control of its influence without receiving a higher and nobler impulse toward all that is beneficent and valuable.

30. With all the imperfections and short-comings of those who profess to be governed by its authority, it has built orphan asylums and charitable institutions, and sought out the poor and suffering, and carried a better civilization to heathen countries, and lifted all upon whom it has laid its hand to a higher plane, none of which things can be said of infidelity as an organized effort or system.

31. It offers a definite, positive, and tangible object of faith and hope to the acceptance of men, while infidelity only tears down, but can not build; only denies, but can not affirm; only takes away, but can not fill the dreary void it leaves in the soul and in the life.

32. It has encountered from the beginning the most bitter opposition and unrelenting hostility from Judaism, from the Roman empire, from the heathen world, from the foul apostacy of the dark ages, from human nature, from the unfaithfulness of its own friends; and it has won its way without arms, without influence, without learning, without wealth to its recognized supremacy.

33. The lives of its writers were above reproach, their enemies themselves being judges, nor is it possible that a succession of impostors or fanatics could so speak and so record their thoughts, that even those who do not believe in their inspiration have been led to say with Huxley, " By the study of what other book could children be so much humanized, and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between two eternities; and earns the blessings or the curses of all time, according to its effort to do good and hate evil?"

34. It exhibits the most marked and obvious superiority to the Jewish Talmud, the Koran, the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, the apocryphal gospels of the New, the writings of the so-called "Fathers," and the sacred books of all other religions, a superiority so great that it is instantly perceived by every candid reader, whether he be a Christian or intelligent infidel.

35. As to the relative value of the Bible, perhaps the present distinguished Prime Minister of Great Britain, Hon. W. E. Gladstone, whose familiarity with classic literature is unsurpassed, will be accepted as a competent witness. He says, "No poetry, no philosophy, no art of Greece ever embraced, in its most soaring and widest conceptions, that simple law of 'love towards God and towards our neighbor,' on which ' two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,' and which supplied the moral basis of the New Dispensation. There is one history, and that the most touching and profound of all, for which we should search in vain through all the pages of the classics — I mean the history of the human soul in its relations with its Maker; the history of its sin, and grief, and death, and of the way of its recovery to hope and life, and to enduring joy. . . . All the wonders of the Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than is the single Books of Psalms."

36. As to the relative value of Christianity, perhaps the testimony of the brilliant Essayist and historian, Macaulay, will be accepted. Writing of India and Christianity, he says, "I altogether abstain from alluding to topics which belong to divines; I speak merely as a politician, anxious for the morality and temporal well-being of society; and so speaking I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to discountenance that religion which has done so much to promote justice, and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, and domestic happiness — Which has struck off the chains of the slave, which has mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women from servants and playthings into companions and friends, — is to commit high treason against humanity and civilization."

37. The Bible reveals man to himself precisely as he is, and knows himself to be; and it is not surprising that a native Chinaman, engaged by Dr. Morrison to assist in the translation of the Scriptures, came rushing one day into the presence of the Missionary with the exclamation, " Whoever made this book made me."

38. It places all the race of mankind on a common level, obliterating the artificial distinctions of birth, wealth, culture, and social position, recognizing only two classes, the saved and the unsaved, the children of God and the children of the devil, giving an equal offer of eternal life to the rude men who sweat and swelter in mines, and furnaces, and factories, and to whom the gospel of science and enlightenment and progress is only a hideous mockery. All this is supernatural.

39. It has beyond question raised woman from the degradation to which she is consigned where its power is unknown; and precisely in proportion as its influence is felt in the home and social circle, does she ascend to her rightful position as an help meet for man; nor can there be found in the whole range of heathen literature anything half so beautiful and touching concerning her proper treatment as we read in the book, now alas! too often derided by those whom it has blessed.

40. The frank admissions of its writers as to their own ignorance and stupidity, and their ingenuous record of events that would seem to militate against the claims of their God, as the fall of David and Peter, the betrayal of Judas, the doubt of some whether Jesus had risen, prove that neither forgers nor fanatics could have composed the book.

41. Their remarkable reticence concerning many things into which man's curiosity instinctively seeks to pry, but which could not add in the least to the knowledge of his present duty, shows that they were under the mastery of a higher than human wisdom.

42. It is absolutely certain that good men did not write the Bible, because they everywhere affirm that they spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, proclaiming the words which God told them to utter, and if this is not true, they uttered what they knew to be false.

43. It is absolutely certain that bad men did not write it, because they would be strangers to the lofty conceptions of holiness, to the majestic ideas of God, to the terrible denunciations of hypocrisy and evil of every kind, which pervade the entire book.

44. Of what other book or books can it be said that at least 250,000,000 have been published during the last 70 years, and translated into 250 of the languages and dialects of earth; and how could this have been possible, unless it carried with it in great and innumerable blessings the proof of its divine origin?

45. If there is a personal God, as Deists acknowledge, and if He is a merciful God, as infidels admit, the probability that He would give us a written revelation amounts to a demonstration, when without it our sinfulness, ignorance, and utter helplessness and hopelessness are proved by the entire history of the race.

46. There is now preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford a manifesto, drawn up and signed by 617 of the most scientific men of Great Britain, who say, " We, the undersigned students of the Natural Sciences, desire to express our sincere regret that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in our own times into occasions for casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. We conceive that it is impossible for the word of God as written in the book of Nature, and God's word written in Holy Scripture, to contradict one another, however much they may appear to differ. We are not forgetful that physical science is not complete, but is only in a condition of progress, and that at present our finite reason enables us only to see as through a glass darkly, and we confidently believe that a time will come when the two records will be seen to agree in every particular."

47. That the Bible has outlived, not only the fires of persecution, and the assaults of infidel science, but the corruption of the church itself, torn with dissension and strife, filled with false doctrine and worldliness, wounding the Lord that purchased her redemption with His precious blood in the house of His friends, and furnishing a shelter in the greatest of trees for the foulest fowls of the air, is a mighty proof that it originated with God, and is kept by the power of God.

48. Notwithstanding the defection of so many, there are millions of the best people now living, and there have been millions in preceding centuries, who attest its supernatural origin by their personal knowledge of its power to break the shackles of sin, to deliver from the assaults of temptation, to guide in perplexity, to comfort in sorrow, to elevate, enlarge, and ennoble the aims of life, and to light up a dying bed, if need be a martyr's stake, with the substantial hope of a glorious immortality.

49. A trial, after all, is the best test of its truth. As the poet and philosopher, Coleridge, says in his Aids to Reflection, "Try it. It has been in existence eighteen hundred years, and has one individual left a record like the following? . . . 'Both outwardly and in the discipline of my inward acts and affections, I have performed the duties which it enjoins, and I have used the means which it prescribes. Yet my assurance of its truth has received no increase. Its promises have not been fulfilled; and I repent me of my delusion.' If neither your own experience nor the history of almost two thousand years has presented a single testimony to this purport; and if you have read and heard of many who have lived and died bearing witness to the contrary; and if you yourself have met with some one, in whom on any other point you would place unqualified trust, who has on his own experience made report to that ' He is faithful who promised, and what He promised He has proved Himself able to perform:' is it bigotry if I fear that the unbelief, which prejudges and prevents the experiment, has its source elsewhere than in the uncorrupted judgment; that not the strong, free mind, but the enslaved will, is the true original infidel in this instance?"

50. It has uniformly commanded the confidence and reverence of really great men, which would have been impossible, if it were unworthy of respect, as shallow and ignorant infidelity claims it to be, chiefly, it is to be feared, because infidelity prefers sin, or dreads the future punishment which the Bible threatens, or is too conceited to surrender pride of opinion in presence even of perfect demonstration, or too indifferent to investigate the subject, or too unwilling to be convinced to listen to arguments on the other side. But when we hear Sir Matthew Hale saying, "If I omit praying, and reading a portion of God's blessed word in the morning, nothing goes well the whole day;" when we hear Sir Isaac Newton saying, " We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy;" when we hear the biographer of Chief Justice Marshall saying of a brilliant lecture which the distinguished lawyer delivered in defence of the Bible, "An attempt to describe it would be an attempt to paint the sunbeams;" when we hear John Quincy Adams saying, " In what light soever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is our invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue;" when he hear Daniel Webster saying, in the inscription cut upon his tombstone at Marshfield by his own order, " My heart has always assured me, and re-assured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a Divine Reality;" when we hear Robert C. Winthrop saying at the unveiling of Mr. Webster's statue in New York, " I can not help wishing that this declaration were engraved on one of the sides of yonder monumental base, in letters which all the world might read;" when we hear Jean Paul Richter saying that Christ, " being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, turned the stream of civilization out of its channel, and still governs the ages;" when we hear Carlyle calling the book of Job "the sublimest poem of all ages," and Humboldt praising the 104th Psalm as "a concise and complete description of the whole cosmos — a psalm of the world;" and when we know that similar testimony has been given by hundreds and thousands of men in various pursuits and professions, the young Christian need not fear that he is standing alone against the false and impudent assertion of infidelity that men of sense do not see anything in the Bible to admire. Contrast those who have appeared as voluntary witnesses in its behalf with the crowds that gather about the blasphemer Ingersoll, and let every one determine for himself with which company he prefers to be identified. With one or the other each must have his place.

But all this, observe, has a direct bearing upon the resurrection of Jesus, and goes to confirm it mightily. If one tithe of the evidence is valid, presented in the outline of the fifty arguments just offered in defence of the divine origin and authority of the Bible, then the book that contains an account of His resurrection must be accepted as true. Such a book can not be a tissue of lies, and as it implies and involves the resurrection of the promised Saviour from the third chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, we are bound to believe that He actually rose, and is now on the right hand of God, and thence will come to judge the world. How much is wrapped up in this, as it affects the duty, the example, the influence, the happiness of man here, and his destiny hereafter, eternity alone can unfold. " Indisputably," wrote Lord Byron to Mr. Shepherd, "the firm believers in the Gospel have a great advantage over all others, — for this simple reason, that, if true., they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment, since (at the worst for them)' out of nothing, nothing can arise,' not even sorrow." Perhaps any reasoning skeptic would say the same thing; and it is marvellous in the light of such a confession, that so many choose to walk all their life-time in the darkness of unbelief, and even to go down into the grave without a ray of light or hope to disperse its gloom. Surely man is his own worst enemy here, as he is in the indulgence of his baser appetites.

It is often declared, however, by those who claim to be honest and anxious to find the truth, that their skepticism is unavoidable, because they find it impossible to believe the Bible. To such it is earnestly recommended that they confine their studies and investigations to the one question, Did Jesus rise? They have probably been travelling over too much ground, and they have become confused by the multiplicity of arguments and suggestions and thoughts that meet them in a wide and apparently boundless field of inquiry. But they can readily see that if by patient and even laborious research and reflection they are convinced of the resurrection of Jesus, the great problem is solved, and the gigantic difficulty is settled. From that moment not a doubt can remain of the validity of His title as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. From that moment they can not hesitate to bow at the foot of the cross in adoring gratitude for the generous sacrifice. of Himself to put away sin, and to stand with exultant hope beside His open grave in anticipation of the eternal glory for soul and body that is to be the portion of the believer at His second coming. As Napoleon said, "Christ speaks, and at once generations become His by stricter, closer ties than those of blood — by the most sacred, the most indissoluble of all unions. He lights up the flame of a love which consumes self-love, which prevails over every other love." It is not merely a system of doctrines you are asked to believe, but a risen personal Christ you are urged to trust.

Remember, too, that He is not a distant and indifferent Being, far removed from the possibility of sympathy with your infirmities, for the two men in white who stood beside the disciples, as they watched with astonished gaze His ascension from the mount of Olives, said to them, "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." He is the same Jesus yesterday, to-day, and forever, having the same forbearance, and patience, and tenderness that marked His treatment of the vilest sinners when He was on the earth, and therefore inviting you to come, though laden with doubts, and fears, and questionings. He knows the sincerity of your desire to find the truth, and if you begin to call upon Him even in your blindness and darkness, He will lead you step by step, it may be, until you rejoice in the clearest light and largest liberty. Many a skeptic, who knew not whither to turn in his distress, has commenced his inquiries with the one thought. Did Jesus rise? This has been pursued with the firm purpose to arrive at the facts, and it has been followed up to the fixed conviction that the gospels contain a narrative of an event that actually occurred, and this by the fullest persuasion that the book of which these gospels form a part is from God, the only safe and reasonable rule of faith and practice for this life, as it is the only foundation of hope when we are called to face the tremendous realities of eternity.

One of the strongest men of the present century was the philosophical historian, and profound thinker, Arnold of Rugby. No one questions his ability or his honesty. Like multitudes of earnest souls he was sorely perplexed by the mysteries surrounding him, and was sometimes cast into the tempestuous sea of doubt. But hear him in one of his lectures to the students under his care. These are his weighty words: "The evidence of our Lord's life and death and resurrection may be, and often has been, shown to be satisfactory; it is good according to the common rules for distinguishing good evidence from bad. Thousands and tens of thousands of persons have gone through it piece by piece as carefully as ever judge summed up on a most important cause. I have myself done it many times over, not to persuade others, but to satisfy myself. I have been used for many years to study the history of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us, that Christ died and rose again from the dead."