A LAYMAN'S VIEW OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES

THIS is one of several addresses upon similar subjects that I have delivered before religious gatherings of various kinds. This one was repeated several times. The largest audience to hear it was at a meeting in the Dominion Methodist Church, Ottawa, which I addressed at the request of the pastor, the Rev. Dr. Rose.

Is man to live beyond the grave or does death end all? This is the question of momentous importance, overshadowing all other problems of time. We can form opinions as to the probable course of life here, and can call to our aid in doing this the experience of others, but death limits man's field of observation, and our own unaided intelligence cannot penetrate beyond.

To all who have passed the meridian of their days, it becomes evident that life is in a measure a failure, if there is nothing beyond it. The rewards of labour and effort here are elusive, and unsatisfactory, and when the closing scene comes, the retrospective view gives little to satisfy the high aspirations of the soul.

The idea of spiritual extinguishment as an accompaniment of death is a horror, of great darkness, from which the mind instinctively recoils, when we part from those who are dear to us.

"Love will dream and hope will trust

That somehow, somewhere, meet we must."

Whether there is a future state, and if so, then what the nature of our existence in that state will be, are questions that may reasonably demand our careful consideration, and

if there is any evidence bearing upon the question, whether real or assumed, it is entitled to our candid examination, for our interest in the matter is deeper than words can express.

That there is a Supreme Intelligence may be assumed to be self-evident. The hosts of heaven in their endless and perfectly-timed movements, the world with its animal and vegetable life, its bursting flowers and ripening fruits, the processes of growth, the changing seasons, the wonderful evidences at every hand of originating design, and the operation of carefully-devised natural laws, forbid the conclusion that all is the result of chance.

Man instinctively recognizes the existence of intelligence and power superior to his own. The instinct of worship is well-nigh universal, whether in the realms of pagan superstition, or in the more advanced ceremonials of the monotheistic races. With these rites of worship of every character are associated desires ranging from the crude and sensual wishes of the savage, to the lofty spiritual aspirations of the enlightened man.

If all things have not come by chance and there is a Supreme Being, who created all things, and commands all the forces of nature, we may readily reach the conclusion that He is a beneficent being from the character of the provisions made for the welfare of His creatures. If this God has not only created the beast, but has also created man, and has endowed him with the intellectual powers that he possesses, it is not an unwarranted stretch of the imagination to suppose that some form of revelation as to the requirements of the Creator in the present life, and as to whether man's interests reach beyond the grave, would be given. Such a revelation would naturally be expected, and without it the work of the Creator would seem to be incomplete.

If a revelation was to be given, it would be impossible to devise a better method than the one we suppose has been adopted. Personal appearance and message from angelic envoy, the awe-inspiring utterances from Sinai, the words of divinely inspired prophet, lawgiver and messenger, the

assumption of the form of humanity, and the careful teaching, by precept and example, of the triune God, in the person of the Son, and the active spiritual influence of the third person in the Godhead, the Holy Ghost, all form a gradually ascending scale of effectiveness and power in the unfolding of divine teaching and purpose that man would be incapable of suggesting, much more, of improving upon.

The Bible professes to contain God's message to man. This claim entitles it to fair consideration. Thorough examination and study will demonstrate the nature and character of the internal evidence that it affords. Much of the criticism of this book is not founded upon accurate knowledge of its contents, or its teaching, and is dictated by prejudice or ignorant misconception, rather than by conviction founded upon proper rules of evidence and a desire to arrive at the truth.

The student of the Bible does not need to be assured that it is a wonderful book, a perennial fountain of knowledge. Its matter never grows trite or stale. New beauties are continually developed. Its freshness and interest is never destroyed by constant reading. It is a matchless compendium of history, laws, precepts, prophesies, poetry, biography, revelation and religion. It is able to satisfy the deepest wants of our nature, and it deals authoratively with the duties of the present, and with the interests of the future.

Man never, in the true sense, civilized himself. He may acquire a veneer of polish, but, unaided by divine revelation, he is only capable of reaching a civilization such as that of Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt, Athens or Rome, and the evolution of society ends in debasing superstitions, distorted conceptions of truth, lack of lofty ideals, trivial aims and purposes, effeminacy, selfishness, cruelty, vice and corruption.

It is a part of Christian belief that God brought the influence of His teachings and His truth to bear upon the fortunes of the world through the medium of a chosen people, who received His oracles, and witnessed to the truth, and through whose agency the message of heaven was transmitted to man.

The history of this peculiar people furnishes an intensely interesting study. Through all the ages since the exodus from Egypt, its separate existence has been preserved. Its kings and conquerors, its prophets and poets, its conquests and reverses, its connection with religion and revelation, its loss of a national home, and its retention of identity, give to it a history peerless and unique. A Lilliputian critic now and again enlarges upon the alleged mistakes of Moses. Criticism is an easy task, fault-finding requires the smallest possible equipment of brain, but the reputation of Moses is likely to survive these attacks, and his position in the estimation of men is not likely to be lowered by them. As a geologist he cannot be fully comprehended even by the schools of the present day. Looking back into the æons of chaos and star-dust, he indited a true cosmogony. The creative action in the beginning—for matter is not self-existent-is described in the words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The nebulous mass of star-dust and vapour, out of which the earth, air and sea were to be evolved by condensation and cosmic change, is described in the single, all comprehensive, sentence, "The earth was without form and void." The condensation of vapour and its gathering into seas, the formation of the earth's crust through the cooling of the surface of the molten mass, and its upheaval above the waters through the agency of the fires beneath, are fittingly described in the words, "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear." The removal of the pall of vapour and darkness, the letting in of light from the firmament of heaven, the ordaining of the sun to rule by day and the moon to rule by night, and the division of time into day and night, times and seasons, when the evening and the morning were the fourth day or period, all of these and other successive stages of development are boldly outlined. The cosmogony of Moses, and the revelations of science, so far as they go, are in accord, but Moses is still in advance of science.

Moses dealt with ethnic affinities, and we have in Genesis x. 2, something of deep interest to us, as to the ethnology of the future. Mention is there made of the coming appearance of Gomer, the Celt; Magog, the Slav; Madai, the Indo-Iranian; Javan, the Greco-Roman; and Tiras, the Teuton. One step more and this prophetic and wonderful reference to the future development of families and races of mankind would have reached the Anglo-Norman and the Anglo-Saxon.

The Hebrew people emerged from a condition of slavery in the land of Egypt. While in bondage, they were not without knowledge of the true God through the traditions of their fathers concerning revelations made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They emerged from the land of Egypt a quasicommunity of 3,000,000 fugitive slaves, under the command of Moses, the divinely prepared, and divinely ordained leader. To this horde the law was given from Sinai, and statutes and ordinances were given, under divine prompting, by Moses. This great host of escaped bondmen speedily became a community and gradually took on the form and institutions of a nation. In government it was a theocracy, for God was king, a democracy, for all were equal, and a fraternity, for there were no beggars. Religion was the foundation of its institutions, its laws were the Decalogue and the Mosaic code. Seventeen offences were declared to be capital crimes. In England 175 years ago, there were 200 capital crimes on the statute-book. By the Hebrew law, idolatry was punished with death. This was necessary, as no greater crime against the life of the nation could be perpetrated, the purpose of the law's existence being to witness against idolatry, and for the truth. Female chastity was strictly guarded. In the prosecution of its conquests some heathen nations were exterminated, and the severity of the conqueror may seem unduly great to us in this age; but it must be remembered that no possible compatibility could exist between the heathen institutions of the Canaanitish nations and the monotheistic institutions of the Jews, and the very life of the latter depended upon the avoidance of contact with the former, and