Does man need a revelation from God? Before undertaking an investigation of the evidences of Christianity, it will be necessary for us to learn whether man needs it. If man does not need Christianity, it is unnecessary for us to examine its claims. Christianity claims to be a positive institution, and has had a positive existence in the world for more than eighteen hundred years. It claims to have come from God. The blessed Jesus said, "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me." He also said that believing on him is the work of God. And Nicodemus, in behalf of the infidel Jews, said, "We know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."
Infidelity does not claim to have come from God. It is not an institution. It is a negation of Christianity and the facts upon which it is based. It does not claim to have anything in it essential to man's present or future happiness. It assails Christianity without presenting a substitute.
Man does not need infidelity. As to whether he needs Christianity, or the Revelation which it vouchsafes to him, we can determine very soon. We have only to compare the history of that part of the world which enjoys its light, with those parts which do not.
Before going into this comparison, let us permit infidels to speak for themselves upon this point. If I had not read the writings of infidels, and heard them talk, I could not have believed that they could declaim as they do against the need of a revelation and the possibility of God's making one. I have hardly been able to believe my ears as I have heard infidel lecturers utter the following: "It is impossible for God to make a revelation to man, or even for one person to make an infallible revelation to another. We can know nothing only what we learn by experience. The mother as she sees her babe catching for the blaze of the candle, cries out,3'It will burn,' but all to no effect. The child never learns the fact until it gets its fingers burned. So we can never learn a fact by external revelation: all we know or can know we learn by experience."
The above is not an isolated case. Nearly all of the infidel and Spiritualist writers speak in the same way. Mr. Tiffany says: "It is a self-evident truth that God cannot make an infallible revelation of his word and will to man." Dr. Hare says, "The Bible of the Spiritualist is the book of nature—the only one which by inward and outward evidences can be ascribed to divine authorship." Joseph Barker says, "It is not possible to fix in writing the standard of right and wrong. What is right for one may be wrong for another. Each man has his law within himself, which, if he will follow it, will guide him as surely as the instinct of the bird will guide it on the wing." Another infidel writer says, "You need not preach Bible to me, I know my duty well enough without it." Parker advocates a religion which "bows to no idols, neither the church, nor the Bible, nor yet Jesus. Its redeemer is within, its salvation within, its heaven and its oracle of God."
Many more extracts from infidel writers, both ancient and modern might be given upon this point, but let the above suffice.
Now I am led to inquire something about these wonderful men, who have so much "self-consciousness," "light of nature," "inner-light," "reason," &c., that they need none of the advantages of revelation. Who are these prodigies, and whence came they? Are they different from other men? Does reason teach them what others can only learn by the aid of external revelation? Let us see. If you will examine their history you will find that they made their advent into the world just like other folks, and that notwithstanding they are now so incapable of receiving anything by external revelation, they were once helpless infants, without self-consciousness enough to know their own names, or how to satisfy their appetite for food and drink without the aid of an external revelation!
Follow the history of these same individuals and you will find that all they know they have got just like others, by external revelation. Not one of them has learned by experience that arsenic or strychnine is poison. Not one of them ever could have learned even his alphabet by his "inner light," or "self-consciousness." Try it in any way you please and their poor, blind reason is incapable of revealing a single new fact to them.
To take the most simple form of illustration. My infidel friend finds a nest of eagle's eggs. He has never seen a bird upon the wing. I tell him that from these eggs will emerge animals which will move off with great rapidity through the air, but his "inner light" and "self-consciousness" does not tell him so. He therefore refuses to believe it. "For it is impossible," according to Emerson, "to receive anything upon the testimony of another." He weighs one of the eggs, and finds it heavy enough to sink in water. He breaks it and examines it minutely. He declares that it is unreasonable, and he is not to be humbugged by such marvelous stories. But at length the young eagles burst the shells of the other eggs and come out. He takes one of them and weighs it, and finds it much heavier than air. Not daunted in the least by his last failure, he says, "Nature does not teach that this animal should float in the air." But soon the bird spreads its wings and bids defiance to his short-sighted reason by soaring off through the air. Here the bird has taught him a lesson in one moment that unaided reason never could have taught him.
If "nature," "reason," and the "inner light," are incapable of guiding in the smallest matters, how dare we risk our eternal salvation upon them? Reason will no more teach a man moral principles, than it will teach him his own name, or the name of the State in which he lives. And infidels and Spiritualists, notwithstanding they boast so greatly of being guided by reason, dare not trust it unaided by revelation in the smallest matters. They must acknowledge that it is in vain that God has given us reasoning faculties unless he has given us something upon which they can act; and that is revelation.
The fact is, those who believe in revelation have reasoning faculties, and use them, as well as infidels. But they do not permit reason to take the place of evidence. They could no more reason without a revelation upon which to base their reasoning, than they can see with their eyes where there is no light, or hear with their ears where there is no sound. Revelation is the same to man's reasoning faculties, that the light of the sun is to the eye, or sound to the ear.
Suppose an infidel were delivering a lecture upon the science of astronomy, and were to assert that the sun is a light-bearer to the earth, and I were to dispute my indebtedness to the sun for light, asserting that I could see with my eyes, would you not consider me a fit subject for the lunatic asylum? Yet my position would be as consistent as the one which says we do not need revelation because God has given us reason.
"All religions have their miracles and revelations," says the rationalist, "and if we admit that the Bible contains a divine revelation, we must admit the same for the revelations of other religions." Mr. Barker supposes that if we admit the superhuman origin of the Bible, we must also admit the Vedas, the Shasters, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon are of superhuman origin. What profound reasoning! It does seem that common sense takes its flight from some of the opposers of Christianity! What would the infidel think if he were to hear me argue that there are no genuine bank bills because there are so many counterfeits? I think I hear him say that counterfeits are the strongest evidence of the genuine. Amen! Is not the same rule good in this case?
We have found that we need revelation to teach us the most simple truths. Now let us inquire into moral and religious truths and see if we shall succeed any better without a revelation than in temporal matters.
It is certain that opposers of Christianity never have succeeded in agreeing among themselves in the most important matters. To use the language of another, "There is no agreement among deists as to what their natural religion consists in, or as to the truth of what some of them consider its most fundamental doctrines. Their chief writers are altogether at variance as to whether there is any distinction between right and wrong other than the law of the land or the custom of society, whether there is a providence, whether God is to be worshiped in prayer and praise, or the practice of virtue is not the only worship required, whether the practice of virtue forbids or encourages deceit, suicide, revenge, adultery, and all uncleanness . . . whether God has any concern with human conduct."
So it appears that the "inner light" does not guide all who follow it, alike. It taught Herbert that the "indulgence of lust and anger is no more to be blamed than the thirst of a fever or the drowsiness of a lethargy." It taught Hobbes that "every man has a right to all things and may lawfully obtain them if he can." It taught Hume that self-denial, self-mortification, and humility are no virtues, but useless and mischievous! that pride and self-valuation, ingenuity, strength of body, &c., are virtues; that suicide is lawful and commendable; that adultery must be practiced if we would obtain all the advantages of this life; that female infidelity when known, is a small thing, when unknown, is nothing. It taught Bolingbroke that modesty is inspired by prejudice, and has its sole foundation in vanity; that man's chief end is to gratify the inclinations of the flesh, that adultery is no violation of the religion of nature. It teaches A. J. Davis that war, polygamy, adultery, etc., are right. He would not be guilty of the crime of blaming any one for any thing that he does.
But we are not done yet. Infidels will not deny that their brethren in India or Hindostan, have the same "reason," "light of nature," and "self-consciousness" as themselves. How does it happen that human sacrifices are not as common among them as among their brethren on the other side of the Atlantic? "The book of nature" is open to the Fejee cannibals as well as to the heathen in this country. It has led them to feast on the limbs of women and children. Why are not our Barkers, Davisses, Dentons, etc., led in the same direction?
The heathens to whom I refer have never been cursed with that hard-to-be-got-rid-of book—the Bible, as our infidels in this country have. Nature has had full chance to do its work among them. Why will not our heathen friends here take them for an example? Certainly if they are not a specimen of what nature can do, I know not where to find one.
Again, if nature is a sufficient guide, why is it that those who have had no other guide have always found themselves panting after a revelation? Even those who have rejected the Bible have run after conjurers, star-gazers, sooth-sayers, spirit mediums, or have been left to doubt even their own existence. One of Hume's friends said that "an unfortunate disposition to doubt everything seemed interwoven with the nature of Hume, and never was there, I am convinced, a more thorough and sincere skeptic. He seemed not to be certain of his present existence, and could not therefore be expected to entertain any settled opinion respecting his future state."
McIlvaine quotes Hume as saying of his Philosophical Abstracts, "They have so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable than another. Where am I, or what? From what cause do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me, and on whom have I any influence, or who has any influence upon me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty."
"Most fortunately it happens that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature itself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation and lively impressions of my senses, which obliterates all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of blackgammon, I converse and am merry with my friends; and when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any further."
How humiliating the above facts. No law for Mr. Hume to "meditate upon day and night." No revelation to which he could appeal for the desired light. All he could do was to call his mind off from the subject by a "game of blackgammon." But he could not keep his mind off; his "chimeras" and "deliriums" would return. How different with the servant of God. David says, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Ps. xxiii, 4. "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee." Isa. xxvi, 3.