Evidences of Christianity.
By Moses Hull
I do not design in this chapter to prove that the Bible is the revelation which God should give: my only desire is to show the necessity of a revelation. But I cannot refrain from asking here, if our Bible is not of superhuman origin, if the character of a Christian as presented in that book is not divine, why are there so many counterfeits on it? Why so many counterfeit Christians? Men do not counterfeit infidelity. Why is this? Why do not men put on the cloak of infidelity to secure a character for honesty, soberness, chastity, or benevolence? The reason is obvious. Copper coin is too cheap for men to counterfeit. Let infidels prove themselves to be the most sober, chaste, honest, virtuous, self-denying people in the world. Let them build churches and school-houses, establish missionaries and benevolent institutions. Let them prove themselves to be what Christians have been for the last eighteen hundred years, and then you may look out for counterfeit infidelity. But to return to the subject. How is it that heathens who know nothing of the Bible, have never been found boasting of the all-sufficiency of the “inner light.” They have always lamented11the need of a revelation from “One who careth for us.” Men in all ages have had devotional feelings, but without a revelation could not tell how to direct their worship. Go to Athens and you will find the people of that city, notwithstanding their “reason,” “inner light,” and “self-consciousness,” worshipping thirty thousand gods. And not yet satisfied, fearing that among all of their gods they had not yet found the true one, another altar was erected and dedicated “to the unknown God.” See Acts xvii. Gibbon says: “The deities of a thousand groves and a thousand streams possessed in peace their local and respective influence; nor could the Roman who deprecated the wrath of the Tiber, deride the Egyptian who presented his offering to the beneficent genius of the Nile. Every virtue and even vice acquired its divine representative, and every act and profession its patron, whose attributes, in the most distant ages and countries, were uniformly derived from the character of their peculiar votaries. It was the custom of the Romans to tempt the protectors of besieged cities by the promise of more distinguished honors than they possessed in their native country. Rome gradually became the common temple of her subjects, and the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of mankind.” Decline and Fall, Vol. i, pp. 32, 35, 36. Prof. Tholuck says: “In this mania for foreign gods, the nobles and the emperors themselves set the most corrupting examples. Germanicus and Agrippina devoted themselves especially to the Egyptian gods. So also Vespasian. Nero served all gods, with the exception of Dea Syra. Marcus Aurelius caused the priests of all foreign gods and nations to be assembled, in order to implore aid for the Roman empire against the incursions of the Marcomanni. Commodus caused himself to be initiated into the mysteries of the Egyptian Iris and Persian Mithras. Severus worshipped especially the Egyptian Serapis; Caracalla, chiefly the Egyptian Iris, and Heliogabalus the Syrian deities, though he was desirous of becoming a priest of the Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian religions.” Tholuck on Heathenism, Biblical Repository. These cases are selected from the most enlightened of the ancient heathen nations. They are not exceptions, nor was this age an exception. Go to India to-day, and you will find as devoted a people as there is on the earth, worshipping everything from an onion to the sun, and many of them giving their lives in attestation of their sincerity. They feel the need of a revelation so deeply that they are willing to follow anything pretending to be an oracle from the gods, even if it commands them to cast themselves and their children before Juggernaut and let it crush them under its ponderous wheels. And think you that everybody would be running for a physician if there was no such thing as disease? As the abundance of patent medicines is the proof of disease and the necessity of a remedy, so the abundance of things that come pretending to be a revelation from God, shows how deeply mankind feel the necessity of such a revelation. If as Parker says, “Everything that is of use to man lies in the plane of our own consciousness,” why this universal craving for a revelation from God? Discourse, p. 171. Socrates acknowledged the insufficiency of human reason in the following language: “We must of necessity wait till some one from Him who careth for us shall come and instruct us how we ought to behave ourselves toward God and toward men.” Plato said, “We cannot know of ourselves what petition will be pleasing to God, or what worship we ought to pay to him; but it is necessary that a law-giver should be sent from heaven to instruct us. . . . O how greatly do I desire to see that man.” Again, “This law-giver must be more than man, that he may teach us the things that man cannot know by his own nature.” Plato, Republic, Books iv & vi. Fables of Infidelity, p. 68. Not only have those who have no revelation from God spoken thus, but those who have had the benefit of the inspired seers of God have appreciated its value, and from experience spoken in its favor. Solomon has said, “Where there is no vision the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” Prov. xxix, 18. Solomon had intercourse with all the nations of the earth. He knew what nations had prophets among them, and he saw that they prospered. He was acquainted with the nations also who were destitute of the teachings of the Spirit of God, and saw what ignorant, marauding savages they were, and wisely gave the solution of the cause of the difference in the language above quoted. “The people perish.” Yes, look at the history of France during the three years’ reign of infidel terror, and answer whether the people do not perish. Now let the scenes of France be acted in America. Let the Bible be burned and the goddess of reason adored, and the scenes of Paris and Lyons will soon transpire in New York and Philadelphia. Then I apprehend that even infidels will “wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east for the word of the Lord.” Amos viii, 11, 12. And I am certain that no minister will be needed to expound the text, “Where there is no vision the people perish.” But I have asserted that men need a revelation to teach them morality. Where is the strictly moral man that knows nothing of the Bible? Am I referred to a Solon, a Pythagoras, a Socrates, a Plato, a Zeno, or a Seneca? Their morality did not equal that of the Aborigines of the far West, and their education was not equal to that of the Sunday-school scholars of this country. Oaths are of frequent occurrence in their writings. Alexander Campbell says of them, “I also know something about them, and of the schools in which they were brought up, the schools which they founded, and the lives which they led. I will not draw their frailties from their dread abode.” Debate with Owen, p. 5. The little morality that these ancient heathen had, they drew, either directly or indirectly, from the oracles of God. Plato says that he learned the moral principles which he advocated from the Jews. Mr. Campbell says of them, “But they were educated men.” In what schools of tradition were they brought up? They received instruction. They did not create it. The glimmering, flickering lamp which gave them light, was kindled by the radiations from a fire that God kindled on mount Sinai, in Arabia, from a mystic lamp that shone in a tabernacle pitched by Moses in the desert, and from the temple which Solomon the wise raised in Jerusalem. Sinai is older than Athens or Parnassus; and mount Zion than Mars hill. Moses was born more than a thousand years before Pythagoras, Solon, Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Zeno, or Seneca. Some of these were contemporaries of the Jewish prophets. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, antedate them all more than fifteen hundred years. David sang before Homer, and Solomon wrote his Proverbs and his Ecclesiastes before Solon the oldest of them was born.” Debate with Owen, p. 6.