Credibility Of The Evidence Of The Resurrection Of Christ.

Our senses are the means by which we were made competent witnesses. They are the bed-rock of evidence. We know facts and truths, both comprehensible and incomprehensible, by the same means. We are as competent to testify of that which we do not comprehend as we are to testify of the most ordinary fact. As competent to bear testimony to the fact of a sweeping tornado as to the fact of a gentle breeze. As competent to bear testimony to the fact that water freezes and becomes hard as to testify to the truth of its being a fluid. As competent to testify to a fact that we never before experienced as to one that we have. Without this competency no man could be justly held responsible for slander or perjury.

We gain knowledge by means of our senses, and all lying and perjury is outside of our senses, having no connection with them. We can, in truth, testify to that which we have seen, heard, tasted, smelt or felt, and to such only. That which somebody else thus witnessed may be testified by him, but not by me, unless I, too, was connected with it by means of my senses. Wise men may be deceived in some things, but fools can not be deceived in others. Things addressing themselves to our senses are things about which we can not be so deceived as to truthfully deny that they ever occurred. I know a live man when I see him by the same means I know a dead man.

“Broad-Gauge Religion.”—Shall The Conflict Cease?

First. “A portion of the Church of England, comprising those who claim to hold a position, in respect to doctrine and fellowship, intermediate between the old High Church party and the modern Low Church, or evangelical party, a term of recent origin,” having originated in the last half century, “which has been loosely applied to other bodies of men holding liberal or comprehensive views of Christian doctrine and fellowship.”—Webster.

Side by side with these various shades of High and Low Church, another party of a different character has always existed in the Church of England. It is called by different names: Moderate, Catholic, or Broad Church, by its friends: Latitudinarian or Indifferent, by its enemies. Its distinctive character is the desire of comprehension. Its watchwords are charity and toleration.—Conybeare.

“Even Now Are There Many Anti-Christs.”

Col. Ingersoll says: “He (Paine) knew that every abuse had been embalmed in scripture, that every outrage was in partnership with some holy text.” If such was really true every rascal, scoundrel and villain should carry a copy of the Bible. Do they? Are they in affinity with the Bible? Are they even friendly to it? Things that are in affinity with each other are drawn together. “A fellow feeling makes us very kind.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” “Birds of a feather flock together.”

Before the Bible went to the Sandwich Islands Col. Ingersoll would have been hailed as a very proper object for a sumptuous feast. He would have acted wisely in making his [pg 230] last will before starting, but now, since that book has gone there which embalms every crime (?) he would find an asylum of safety in which to repose his weary limbs. How is this? Is every outrage in partnership with some holy text? If so, the Bible would be just one more reason for the continuance of cannibalism. The secret of Mr. Ingersoll's tirade upon the Bible may be accounted for when we measure the magnitude of his infidelity. It is no shallow sort of unbelief, but, on the contrary, it is deep seated, and one with the infidelity of his excelling predecessors. Ingersoll intends to have no superior in unbelief—you know he is ambitious. Let us give you a little speech that was made, by one of his particular friends and co-laborers in this unholy crusade, at Geneva, in 1868. Here it is:

“Brethren, I am come to announce unto you a new gospel, which must penetrate to the very ends of the world. This gospel admits of no half measures and hesitations. The old world must be destroyed and replaced by a new one. The Lie must be stamped out and give way to truth.

“It is our mission to destroy the Lie; and to effect this, we must begin at the very commencement. Now the beginning of all those lies which have ground down this poor world in slavery is God. For many hundred years monarchs and priests have inoculated the hearts and minds of mankind with this notion of a God ruling over the world. They have also invented for the people the notion of another world, in which their God is to punish with eternal torture (not a Bible term) those who have refused to obey their degrading laws here on earth. This God is nothing but the personification of absolute tyranny, and has been invented with a view of either frightening or alluring nine-tenths of the human race into submission to the remaining tenth. If there were really a God, surely he would use that lightning which he holds in his hand to destroy those thrones, to the steps of which mankind is chained. He would assuredly use it to overthrow those altars where the truth is hidden by clouds of lying incense. Tear out of your hearts the belief in the existence [pg 231] of God; for as long as an atom of that silly superstition remains in your minds you will never know what freedom is.”

This has the genuine Ingersoll ring upon the subject of “Liberty of Man, Woman and Child.” “When you have got rid of this belief in this priest-begotten God, and when, moreover, you are convinced that your existence, and that of the surrounding world, is due to the conglomeration of atoms, in accordance with the law of gravity and attraction, then, and then only, you will have accomplished the first steps toward liberty, and will experience less difficulty in ridding your minds of that second lie which tyranny has invented.

“The first lie is God. The second lie is Right. Might invented the fiction of Right in order to insure and strengthen her reign; that Right which she herself does not heed, and which only serves as a barrier against any attacks which may be made by the trembling and stupid masses of mankind.

“Might, my friends, forms the sole ground-work of society. Might makes and unmakes laws, and that might should be in the hands of the majority. It should be in the possession of those nine-tenths of the human race whose immense power has been rendered subservient to the remaining tenth by means of that lying fiction of Right, before which you are accustomed to bow your heads and to drop your arms. Once penetrated with a clear conviction of your own might, you will be able to destroy this mere notion of right.

“And when you have freed your minds from the fear of a God, and from that childish respect for the fiction of Right, then all the remaining chains which bind you, and which are called science, civilization, property, marriage, morality and justice, will snap asunder like threads.

“Let your own happiness be your only law. But in order to get this law recognized, and to bring about the proper relations which should exist between the majority and minority of mankind, you must destroy everything which exists in the shape of state or social organization. So educate yourselves and your children that, when the great moment for constituting [pg 232] the new world arrives, your eyes may not be blinded and deceived by the falsehoods of the tyrants of throne and altar.

“Our first work must be destruction and annihilation of everything as it now exists. You must accustom yourselves to destroy everything, the good with the bad; for if but an atom of this world remains the new will never be created.

“According to the priests' fables, in days of old, a deluge destroyed all mankind, but their God especially saved Noah in order that the seeds of tyranny and falsehoods might be perpetuated in the new world. When you once begin your work of destruction, and when the floods of enslaved masses of the people rise and engulph temples and palaces, then take heed that no ark be allowed to rescue any atom of this old world which we consecrate to destruction.”

A representative of the kingdom of darkness.

“Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they know not.”

What Is To Be The Religion Of The Future.

“Brahmanism has avoided the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy by assuming an impersonal deity in three modes of manifestation, while Christian thinkers have played around the logical contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen hundred years. We must utterly break with the idea of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind all phenomena.” [Hartmann's future religion.]

Must we do this? Is there any necessity for it? What have we to do with “the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy?” It was a mistake, that's all! “Christian thinkers have played around the logical contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen hundred years.” Have they? 'Tis well! Christianity requires no man to step into logical contradiction and stand there. They have done this “for fifteen hundred years.” Well, it has been about that [pg 233] long since men, in the prelude of the dark ages, began to speculate foolishly about the subject of the Divine existence. There was a purer atmosphere in the first centuries of the Christian era, in which primitive Christians enjoyed better conceptions of the Divine Being, to which it is the privilege of Christians to return. Is it the only alternative “to break with the idea of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind all phenomena?” No! We Christians affirm nothing that can necessarily be construed with the Catholic and Protestant “mistake” concerning the Trinity, nor anything that can be construed with ultra Unitarianism, which treats of our Lord and Savior simply as an extraordinarily inspired man. Neither are we under any logical necessity to “break with the idea of a personal God,” and form an alliance with Atheistic philosophy through the adoption of the idea of a Pantheistic “essence behind all phenomena.” Such speculative nonsense may be the best that a mind can do while it is in its own ignorance upon the subject of what it takes to constitute personality, and while it is also surrounded with nothing but the darkness of the dark ages, which has been the legitimate accompaniment of “the Catholic and Protestant fatal mistake,” but it is not the best that an intelligent mind, clothed with the sunlight of the gospel of Christ, and intelligently educated upon the subject of personality can do. No! The intelligently informed mind can stand upon the everlasting bed-rock of truth, which has been raised to the highest mountain top of Christian thought by the pure, unadulterated teachings of the Savior of men, which lie behind the fifteen hundred years of jargon upon the questions of Trinitarian and Unitarian “isms.”

“God is a spirit.” That settles the question of “person” with every well instructed Christian mind. “What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him; even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.” The Spirit of God is the Supreme intelligence. And, being such, he is the Supreme person, for where there is intelligence there is person. The attributes of personality [pg 234] belong to intelligence, and they belong to nothing else. If you have an intelligent essence, it is, of a logical and scientific necessity, a person. Let some Pantheistic “wiseacre” grapple with this thought.

The fatal mistakes are not all confined to Catholics and Protestants; Pantheists and Scientists have made full as many mistakes. The great mistake upon the subject of the Divine existence, which Scientists and Pantheists have made, is the conclusion that person is simply and necessarily material, or animal existence. So they say, if God is a person he must be a great big almighty man, having great arms and legs, etc. I have the first Atheist or Pantheist to meet in conversation that understands the truth of science in reference to this question of person.

It is claimed that a Monotheistic Pantheism, that is, the idea of one essence, not person, but essence, is to unite, or make one, the whole human family upon the scientific (sciolistic) base that man himself is one grand part of the grand all-pervading, impersonal essence.

Religions have their practical results, and, consequently, bearings upon human society. The Monotheistic idea, which, it is claimed, is to equalize all beings and things throughout this vast universe, in the conception that all are parts of the same grand all-pervading essence, can have only the following results: First, to wipe out all ideas of a future retribution, for want of judge, for want of governor; second, to destroy all distinctions consequent upon the ideas of a divine moral kingdom, or Kingdom of God among men; third, to loosen up the religious and moral restraints by removing the religious sanctions, or promises and threats, which relate to the future retribution.

The advocates of this universal religion of the future, which is simply universal non-religion, say “Protestantism is the grave digger of Christianity.” “But Christianity stoutly refuses to be buried alive,” and the multitude of facts that are continually transpiring demonstrate a living, active existence; “its blood circulates; its pulse is certainly beating;” its [pg 235] force is not spent in the least; it is always giving but is never growing lean; “it has a long lease of life.” All the trees of the forest stand together in one grand old struggle for life. It may be that Christianity will be under the necessity of struggling, for many years to come, with the Godless forms of Pantheism and Atheism, which are simply two different phases of the same Godless philosophy; but the seeds of the great Christian tree, in these United States, are being shaken down into the tender and warm soil of millions of hearts in all our Sunday-schools, and it will be many a year before Christianity dies.

Bill Of Indictments Against Protestants.

First. The idea of total hereditary depravity which never can be correlated with accountability.

Second. The idea of those who were never converted being rewarded according to their own deeds, when they were never upon trial; for a man must have ability to try before he can be tried, and that ability must extend to the accomplishment of that to which the trial relates. Wesley's Discipline says, The condition of man since the fall of Adam is such that he can not, by his own natural strength, turn and prepare himself to faith and calling upon God, without the grace of God by Christ going before to give him good will, and working with him when he has that good will.

If it is improper to say that a man can by his own natural strength turn and prepare himself to faith and calling upon God, it is, also, improper to say he is naturally accountable, for where ability ceases, accountability also terminates. But a prop is found in “the grace of God by Christ going before to give a good will, and to work with that good will.” So the grace of God by Christ must go before to displace a bad will by giving “a good one.” But this fails to relieve the doctrine from embarrassment; for if the sinner is unwilling, has a bad will, it is claimed that the Spirit goes away and [pg 236] leaves him to die in his helplessness. Does the Omnipotent Spirit go to a man to give him a good will, and then refuse to give it because the poor man has it not already? Do you say he resisted? Well, well; suppose he did? What, is that in the way of an Omnipotent Spirit? Who can explain such nonsense?

If I had a son laboring under the conviction that the Bible is the source of such teachings, and he was to become disgusted and fall out with it on that account, I should be proud of his common-sense. Is the poor man mocked in that manner? If he dies in his sins, on account of his not being in possession of a good will, can his future reward be according to the deeds done by himself? No! He was never on trial—he had no ability to try. There is just as much sense in the idea that an ape is on trial. Adam, the first, ruined him; and Adam, the second, did not help him. Can a man be justly condemned because he was not what he never had the power to be?

Third. The idea that the Lord would command men to convert themselves, knowing, at the same time, that they could not do it. He commands men to convert. He “commands all men everywhere to repent.” He knows, also, that they can do it; so Protestantism, to the contrary, is an everlasting disgrace to our religion. The original term translated by the word convert is in the imperative active in many places. Our translators put it in the passive in the third chapter of Acts, where it is imperative active in the original. Why they did this no scholar can tell, unless it was to favor their Calvinistic ideas upon conversion. The term occurs forty-seven times in the New Testament, and it is translated thirty-eight times by the words turn and return.

Paul says he “showed to the people that they should turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.”

This great thought harmonizes with all that is taught upon the subject of future rewards. A man can turn, and he is therefore accountable. To make man responsible, it must be shown that he is capable, or able. This is the one great fact [pg 237] that lies at the foundation of future rewards and punishment. Take this fact away and the justice of God is imperiled by the teachings of the Bible upon the subject of the future retribution. I know that men who are under the influence of the traditions of their fathers and mothers turn from the truth upon this question and say hard things against it; but I know, also, that those same men speak the same sentiment when they talk about the future judgment.

Fourth. The idea that the Divine Spirit must convert the man, and that it passes the unwilling soul without giving him ability that he may be tried, for a man must be able to attain the desired object, otherwise trial is mere mockery. So, according to this kind of teaching, justice is mocked, and the sinner is sent to perdition without anything more than a mock trial; i.e., without being tried. If this be not true, the theory of helplessness growing out of Adam's sin is utterly false, and man's salvation, under all dispensations, is presented to us as a matter that was, and is, disposed of by himself, he being able, in his own natural strength, to turn and prepare himself to faith and calling upon God. Again, all men pray. It is instinctive to pray. It is an instinct that defies reason and philosophy. If men have not “natural strength to turn and prepare themselves to faith and calling upon God,” then they are not naturally responsible nor accountable.

Fifth. The idea that the Spirit goes to the unwilling sinner to give him a good will, and then, because the man is not willing already, departs from him, leaving him in his sins to continue in his helpless, wicked condition until, having passed a mock judgment, he is banished to outer darkness, for if the man was never able to do otherwise on account of his helplessness, why should he be condemned? Tell him it is for his own deeds and you mock his good sense.

Sixth. The idea that Christ died for an elect few, and damns all the balance because they don't believe he died for them, when he did not.

Seventh. The idea that Christ died for a few, and commissioned his disciples to preach the fact to all nations—to every [pg 238] creature, as “glad tidings of great joy,” which was “to be unto all people,” when it is, according to the doctrine that he did not die for all, positively no good news to any soul that was passed by.

Eighth. The idea that all who are finally lost, will be in that sad condition because of unbelief, when, if they had believed that Christ died for them they would have believed a falsehood, because Calvinists say no soul for whom Jesus died will be lost.

A Summary Of Truth.

First. By the transgression man's eyes were opened, and he became as God, to know good and evil.

Second. He has always had intellectual and moral ability to turn and serve God, and so enjoy his divine favor.

Third. He has been required in every dispensation to do this.

Fourth. Christ died for all men.

Fifth. All men may turn and be saved.

Sixth. God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness shall be accepted with him.

Protestants, do you believe the Bible? Then throw away your errors. Let the lower lights be burning!

The Unreasonable Conduct of a Pope.—“Pope Sixtus V. expended in three years (from 1586 to 1589) 5,339 scudi, (about $83,500) in destroying a portion of the Baths of Diocletian; and 2,560,000 cubic feet of masonry were broken up. These facts are recorded in a book of accounts found in the Vatican library, at Rome.”—The Toujee Tourist, of April, 1880.

Truth Is Immortal.

Philosophy has sometimes forgotten God, as great people never did. The skepticism of the last century could not uproot Christianity because it lived in the hearts of the millions. Do you think that infidelity is spreading? Christianity never lived in the hearts of so many millions as at this moment. Many forms under which it is professed may decay, for they, like all that is the work of man's hands, are subject to the changes and chances of mortal beings, but the spirit of truth is incorruptible; it may be developed, illustrated and applied; it can never die; it never can decline. No truth can perish. No truth can pass away. The flame is undying, though generations disappear. Wherever immortal truth has started into being, humanity claims and guards the bequest. Each generation gathers together the imperishable children of the past and increases them by the new sons of the light, alike radiant with immortality.—Bancroft.