M. H. Habershon

“ The mirror which reflects Divine truth has to be preserved and kept bright by human instrumentality. Superstition, in the murky atmosphere of sacerdotalism, clouds it; by false philosophy it is liable to be dimmed; while crude science or unsound criticism, removing the silver lining to make the glass more transparent, makes it useless. He does well who [5] is able to act as its conservator, and in some measure cleanse the surface, that obscurity may be removed and eternal truth discerned. ”

“ Because we cannot be sure that the Bible is in every detail the perfect transcript of Divine revelation, we are to abandon the only solace that humanity possesses, the only theory which accounts for the wickedness which, without its teaching, is such an anomaly to all else in creation, the only bond which binds society in brotherhood, and makes social existence capable of including happiness here, or the hope of life hereafter. ”

“ Who can fail to see that the hypothesis is incredible?
"We invariably find that an age which is fertile in literary productions is followed by a conservative period, in which the productions of the foregoing period are collected and digested—first the classical, then the post-classical. Does the second century, in other respects, bear the impress of a productive classical period in literature? On the contrary, its undoubted products breathe a spirit which bears the same relation to the New Testament writings as does the tenour of a post-classical age bear to that of the age preceding it. ”

“ Because we cannot positively settle certain questions of little comparative importance, are we to surrender our faith in essentials? Are we to let the conjectures and queries of German cavillers, with their "Yea, hath God said," destroy our cherished faith and hope? God forbid! It is not the preservation or infallibility of the apostolic writings which makes His incarnation, death, and resurrection, facts in the history of our race. The facts make the history, not the history the facts. ”

“ For it should be remembered that, on the one side, looking at the question from a primâ facie point of view, we have a faith which has the endorsement of the highest civilisation, the best morality, the truest culture, the noblest aspirations, and the greatest happiness which humanity has ever experienced; in contrast with a negation which has nothing to offer as a substitute, taking away the light that illumines the path of life, and leaving it in utter darkness. ”

“ The Holy Spirit, "the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant," to make us "perfect in every good work to do His will," must be recognised and duly honoured if the Bible is to be understood and Christianity successfully exhibited and defended. ”

“ To concentrate the doctrine in the Fourth Gospel and Paul's later epistles, and then repudiate the writings, is a mode of sustaining the denial of it which is far from being successful. This doctrine is evidently one of the essential elements of Christian truth. As the bread which sustains our bodily life, so the bread of the life of the soul, may be decomposed, but none of the elements must be left out of it if it is to be of use. In the Old Testament we find many passages which show the plurality in the Divine nature. ”

“ Have devout men, during the three thousand years which history chronicles, been under a delusion in believing that "there is a spirit in man, and the Almighty giveth him understanding"?
Is popular Christianity "wide of the truth, and a disfigurement of the truth," as an eminent writer the other day asserted? Such questions float in our literature and find their way into our homes and our sanctuaries. ”

“ Nor of the American War of Independence do the people [162] of the present generation depend entirely on writings or books for the proof that it took place. Two lives reach from date to date, and no evidence can be stronger than such.
Until we have better reason than our author has adduced for altering our estimate of these sacred writings, so often assailed, but maintaining serenely, century after century, their high pretensions as a message from heaven to culture our moral and spiritual nature, and guide us thither, we should be foolish, oh, how foolish! ”

“ If there are in this country, and in this day, thousands who believe, or pretend to believe, that the priests who are ordained to forgive sins can really do so, are we in a position to assume any great superiority over the Jews, Greeks, and Romans of eighteen centuries ago? If the most manifest and stupendous miracle were wrought to show men the folly of drunkenness, lying, and other sins, would not the results be just the same? ”

“ John Stuart Mill actually says in his essay on Theism (p. 240) that "Christ is never said to have declared any evidence of His mission (unless His own interpretations of the prophecies be so considered) except internal conviction." If Mr. Mill ever read the New Testament through, he would have found where it is written, "Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. ”

“ Because, with the truth of miracles, the entire citadel of Christianity stands or falls. For its beginning is a miracle, its Author is a miracle, its progress depends upon miracles, and miracles will hereafter be its consummation" (p. 285) .
"If the principle of miracles be set aside, then all the heights of Christianity will be levelled with one stroke, and nought will remain but a heap of ruins. If we banish the supernatural from the Bible, there is nothing left us but the covers" (p. 286) .
"The negation of miracles leads to the annihilation of all religion" (p. 286) . ”

“ Whatever may be said about the authority of the Acts of the Apostles, which relates the particulars of Paul's miraculous conversion so minutely, we have the evidence of it in Paul's own letter. Of course he would compare what was revealed to him with what the eye-witnesses could tell him; and if he could mistake a sunstroke, a trance, or a state of ecstatic dreaming for a Divine revelation, his character, judged of by his own writings, is verily incomprehensible. There is no such other enigma in all history. ”

“ As we read the Fourth Gospel in the light of this doctrine, how it harmonises with the "plan of salvation" which believers in all evangelical Churches call Christianity! The book professes to be written that men, believing in Jesus Christ, may have eternal life; records the testimony of John the Baptist that Jesus was the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world (i. 29) ; and announces the important dogma that the supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit is indispensable to overcome the unwillingness of the soul of man to receive the truths of the Divine revelation. ”

“ On the assumption that man is not a spiritual being, the investigation of what the Bible teaches is not likely to be successful. The most prominent statements will be foolishness. The primary fact that God is a Spirit will not be apprehended, and all analogous doctrines deemed the outgrowth of superstition. It is the vainest of all inquiries from such a foregone conclusion. Man is not placed at such a point of observation in the universe as to be competent to conduct a theological investigation, based on a negative hypothesis, regarding the essential proposition of all religious truth. ”

“ To comment on what are called profane oaths in such a way is not to enlighten the minds of the vulgar, but to mystify and conceal the truth of Christianity. It is one thing to believe that there is in existence the spiritual being whose evil doings our Saviour's coming into our world frustrates, whose power is great, whose emissaries are innumerable, and whose baneful suggestions and influence the Holy Spirit alone can withstand, and quite another [20] thing to believe that Satan could give miraculous attestation to a lie, as God did to the truth. ”

“ He who wrote the "Antithesis," and, as our author says, anticipated in some of his opinions those held by many in our own time; he who wrote,—"If the God of the Old Testament be good, prescient of the future, and able to avert evil, why did he allow man, made in his own image, to be deceived by [116] the devil, and to fall from obedience of the law into sin and death? [42] How came the devil, the origin of lying and deceit, to be made at all?" [43] surely he is an instance of a man in that age possessing the critical faculty. He has the boldness to question, and say,—"Yea, hath God said?" ”

“ How a man, with the wickedness of such a city as London daily forced on his notice, and a knowledge of the history of the race in his memory, could have penned such a sentence as the following, it is difficult to conceive. "The whole theory of this abortive design of creation, with such important efforts to amend it, is emphatically contradicted by the glorious perfection and invariability of the order of nature." ”

“ If it be assumed that the defence of the authority of the New Testament writings and of evangelical views is necessarily based on the synodical authority of the early Church, there may be some weight in his objections; but Christianity has a position independent of ecclesiastical pretensions to infallibility, and the latter may be overthrown without the great institution established by Divine mercy for the recovery of humanity from sin and its consequences being in the slightest degree damaged. ”

“ Our author produces such a mass of evidence from the early writers, confirmatory of the truths of the Gospel, that his criticism tends to opposite conclusions. Supposing he can prove that the canon of Scripture is not unassailable, he has not accomplished much. It is of more value to have confirmation of the facts and principles of Divine truth, than to be assured that the authorship, [160] construction, compilation, or arrangement of the Scriptures, are just what the Church of Rome authoritatively pronounced. ”

“ A good cause may be injured by injudicious and feeble advocacy, but I trust I am not presumptuously meddling with a theme which only an erudite scholar and theologian should deal with. I beg you to bear in mind, however, that if I or others fail in the contest for truth, there still will remain the indubitable proofs of Divine revelation in all their variety and superabundance. ”

“ To appeal to the spiritual discernment of a disbeliever in Divine illumination would be like expecting a man who is not of the mystical craft of the Masonic brotherhood to use the signs (if such there be) of a Freemason. Yet the argument in defence of the reality of Divine revelation is not complete without a reference to that "Spirit of Truth" which Jesus Christ promised to send "to testify of him," and to "bring all things to the remembrance" of those disciples who were to "bear [7] witness, because they had been with him from the beginning." ”

“ As, therefore, the devil is the father of lies, so are we to understand he is the God of this world. [19] Not in any other sense. He is potent, but not omnipotent; knowing, but not omniscient; has his representatives distributed among the scenes of sin and death in our world, and himself goeth "to and fro in the earth," [9] but he is not omnipresent. It is Oriental demonology which teaches that two equal principles—good and evil—are alike dominant, not "the truth as it is in Jesus;" Persian superstition, Gnostical heresy, not Divine revelation. ”

“ So we have here reliable evidence that John wrote both the Apocalypse and the book whose author leaned on our Lord's bosom at supper. Not only this from Polycarp. There is extant "The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians," which Irenæus believed to be genuine, and in it we find these words: "For whosoever doth not confess Jesus Christ hath come in the flesh, is antichrist." I compare this with the words in John's Epistle: "And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in [140] the flesh, is not of God, and this is that spirit of antichrist." ”

“ The truth of Christianity does not, at all events, rest on the quotations of the early Fathers, and our author would have accomplished but little had he proved that there were none found. In the first ages of the Church, when the events were fresh, [161] the voice of the preacher was the channel which conveyed the saving gospel to the souls of men, and there was not the same necessity for reference to the written records as in after times. When a century had elapsed after the death of Christ, then the records of the first disciples became of importance. ”

“ Many are averse to the miraculous through fear of superstition, and they overlook the sharp discrimination of Scripture between belief and superstition, between miraculous power and [34] witchcraft. Whereas the sorcerer pretends to make supernatural powers subservient to his person, the prophet or apostle accounts himself only the instrument of God. It is God who alone works. The Son Himself seeks through His works not His own honour, but that of His Father. ”

“ Any argument for the mere existence of our Synoptics, based [48] upon their supposed rejection by heretical leaders and sects, has the evitable disadvantage that the very testimony which would show their existence would oppose their authenticity. There is no evidence of their use by heretical leaders, however, and no direct reference to them by any writer, heretical or orthodox, whom we have examined. We need scarcely add that no reason whatever has been shown for accepting the testimony of these Gospels as sufficient to establish the reality of miracles and of a direct Divine revelation. ”

“ If there are some passages of Scripture that seem to favour this false view, it behoves us to suspect, having regard to the whole tenour of Scripture affecting the doctrine, that the correct interpretation has not been arrived at.
The existence of Satan, and his influence, personal, and by the legions who fell with him, are of course superhuman ideas, and in the category of the miraculous; but there is a wide difference between the most striking sign of his spiritual power and the Divine miracles wrought to attest the truth. It is God "who alone doeth great wonders." ”