Vou. XXIII ALLEGHENY, PA., NOVEMBER 15, 1902 No. 22 VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER IS BELIEF IN MIRACLES ESSENTIAL TO CHRISTIANITY? No question in modein religious thought is weightier than this one which Professor Charles W. Pearson’s much-discussed utterance has served to bring once more into prominence. The problem, of course, is far from being a new one. Indeed, it has been noted in several quarters that the Methodist professor used much the same arguments as those embodied in Hume’s essay on miracles, published a hundred and fifty yearg ago. In none of the theological controversies of the past century was the conflict more earnest than in this one over miracles, Renan, Strauss, and Huxley ranging themselves actively on the one side, Bishop Lightfoot, Dean Farrar, and Mr. Gladstone on the other. The Rev. Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll, who is best known as a journalist, but who has also done considerable work in the field of theology as editor of the London Ewrpositor and “The Expositor’s Bible,” goes over the ground again in his new book, “The Church’s One Foundation.” The first few sentences of the book show that this “foundation,” according to Dr. Nicoll, is the miraculous Christ, and that, if there be no such Christ, “Christianity passes into the mist and goes down the wind.” He deelares*— “The chureh cannot without disloyalty and cowardice, quarrel with criticism ag such. It is not held absolutely to any theory of any book. It asks, and it is entitled to ask, the critic: Do you believe in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ? If his reply is in the affirmative, his process end results are to be examined earnestly and calmly. If he replies in the negative, he has missed the way, and has put himself outside the church of Christ. If he refuses to answer, hia silence has to be interpreted. ... No one argues against the right of philosophers to affirm that goodness is everything, that miracles are impossible, and that nothing in Jesus Christ has any importance except his moral teaching. But Christian believers in revelation are compelled to say that these philosophers are not Christians. If they refuse to do so, they are declaring that in their opinion these beliefs have no supreme importance. To say this is to incur the penalty of extinction. For Christianity dies when it passes altogether into the philosophic region. To believe in the Incarnation and the Resurrection is to put these facts in the foreground. Either they are first or they are nowhere. The man who thinks he can hold them and keep them in the background deceives himself. They are, and they ever must be, first of all. So, then, the battle turns on their truth or falsehood. It does not turn on the inerrancy of the Gospel narrative. It does not turn even on the authorship of the Gospels. Faith is not a belief in a book, but a belief in a living Christ.” Dr. Nichol holds that here is a discussion which every Christian believer must enter upon with the keenest zest, since ‘it is a controversy not for theologians merely, but for evcry man who has seen the face of Christ, and can bear personal testimony to his power and glory.” He continues:— “If we assume at the threshold of Gospel study that everything in the nature of miracle is impossible, then the specific questions are decided before the criticism begins to operate in earnest. The naturalistic critics approach the Christian records with an a priori theory, and impose it upon them. twisting the history into agreement with it, and cutting ont what can not be twisted. For example, the earlier naturalistie critic, Paulus, Eichhorn, and the rest, insisted on givire a non-miraculous interpretation. Strauss perceived the unseicntifie character of this method, and set out with the nivthien! hypothesis. Baur set to work with a belief in the all-sufficieney of the Hegelian theery of development through antagonism. Ife saw tendency everywhere. ... Dr. Abbott sets ott with the foregone conclusion of the impossibility of miracles. Matthew Arnold says: ‘Our popular religion at present conccives the birth, ministry, and death of Christ as altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of miracles, and miracles do not heppen.’” The trouhle with all these and similar critics, declares Pr. Nicoll, lies in the fact that they start out with the assumption that “God can not visit and redeem his people” and thet “His arm is chained and can not save.” Is it not much more rational, he asks, to take the view that miracle is “the fit accompaniment of a religion that moves and satisfies the soul of men, and that asserts itself to be derived directly from God?” He goes on to say:— “Miracle is part of the accompaniment, as well as part of the content, of a true revelation, its appropriate countersign Of course, those who take this ground do not denv, but rather firmly assert, the steadfast and glorious order (339-340) of nature. But they hold with equal firmness that God has made man for Himself, and that if He has sent His Son to die for them, the physical order can not set the rule for the way of grace. If God has relented, nature may relent. They believe that if there is a personal God miracles are possible, and revelation, which is a miracle, is also possible. They are not dismayed when they are told that the Gospel age was the age when legendary stories and superstitions and miraculous pretentions of the most fanciful and grotesque kind abounded. Nay, rather their faith is firmer, for they take these stories and compare them with the Gospel miracles, and they say, How is it that the stories of the New Testament are lofty and tender and beautiful and significant, while the rest are monstrosities? . ... Granting the entrance of the Son of God into human history, granting the miracle of the Incarnation of the Supreme, there is little to cause any difficulty. Without the Incarnation, without the Resurrection, we have no form of religion left to us that will control or serve or comfort mankind.” —Interary Digest. * * * It is comforting to find some few of God’s servants, tho still in “Babylon,” keen enough to discern the real situation, and courageous enough to lift up voice and pen in defense of his cause. Very evidently, however, the nominal “Christian ministry” has gone or is rapidly going so far into unbelief of the very fundamentals of Christianity as to forfeit all claim to the name Christian,—as Rev. Nicoll suggests. It is not Christian faith to acknowledge that Jesus lived a noble life, superior to that of other men, and that his teachings were superior to others of his day. It is not Christian faith to claim what the Bible denies respecting “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man;” nor to proceed on this basis to claim that Jesus was a son of God in common with all others of our race, and peculiarly acceptable in proportion as he was superior to others of his race. No, this is not Christianity: will not, and do not Jews, Mohammedans, Confucians Buddhists and many others,— admit all this respecting our Master,—and some of them more? Are these all Christians? And if not. are those ministers Christians who still wear the livery of Christ in colleges and pulpits, for valuable considerations, and who are still under solemn vows to a faith which they sometimes publicly. but more often semi-privately, disavow? Assuredly not. Let us get back to that honesty of thought and word which calls disbelief in the fundamentals of Christianity, “unbelief,” 7. e., “infidelity.” We are told that Infidelity has disappeared ;— that Renan, Paine and Ingersoll have lost their place and power as opposers of Christianity. The very contrary is true: every college and seminary, secular and theological, has become a hotbed of infidelity, in which the leaders in world-politics, world-business, and world-religion are being taught, under the sanction of the “highest authorities,” the very disbelief in the Bible which Infidelity has all along urged. The places of Renan, Paine and Ingersoll are more than filled by classical, scientific and theological doctors;—blind leaders of the blind. Let no one be confused by these false shepherds, who are rapidly leading astray their confiding flocks; saying, Peace and safety! All who follow them will soon find in their hearts an aching void,—a leanness of sou).—a Christleseness which will render miserable indeed all who have once “tasted of the heavenly gift and been made partakers of the holy spirit.” Christ and the apostles were either right or wrong in their teachings ;—their claims were either true or false. If false, everything built upon them must logically fall with them ;— including the very name Christianity, their synonym. If they were true, all that they taught stands together; and the name Christian belongs to these doctrines, and its application to other teachings is a sin; and its appropriation by others is grand larceny—robbery. The fundamental teachings of Christ and his apostles (true Christianity) are (1) The fall of man into sin and under its penalty—death. (Rom. 5:12, 17-19; 1 Cor. 15:22; 2 Cor. 5:14; Rom. 6:23). (2) The ransom of the race from condemnation by virtue of the sacrifice of Christ “finished” at Calvary. (1 Tim. 2:5, 6; Rom. 5:18; Jno. 19:30) (3) The salvation, or recovery of the race. or so many of the same as will accept the grace of God in Christ when brought to a knowledge of the same, by a judgment-trial and restitution, called resurrection. (Acts 3:19, 23; Jno. 5:28, 29) (4) The previous and preparatory trial, testing, judgment of an “elect”? class whose resurrection to “glory, honor and im [3106]
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