W. H. Turton

“ In short, Christianity has kept possession of the civilised world for sixteen centuries, and is as vigorous in its age as in its youth.
Its long reign is indeed so familiar to us that there is a danger of not noticing its importance. Can we imagine a man now who should found a religion, which nearly two thousand years hence should be still flourishing, still spreading, and still recognising him not only as its founder but its God? ”

“ We must also remember that we know more about ourselves where we are conscious of freedom, than we do about the surrounding universe, where we infer a rigid uniformity. Indeed, our own free will is the only force of which we have any direct knowledge, and the so-called forces of nature, such as gravity, are, strictly speaking, only assumptions which we make to account for observed facts. And, as we have shown, even these forces seem to have originated in the Free Will of the Creator; so as far as we can judge, free will, of some kind is the ultimate cause of all force. ”

“ Why should there have been any evolution at all? Why should a universe of dead matter have ever produced life? There must have been some motive in all this, and what adequate motive can be suggested?
We can only look for an answer in man, who is not only the highest creature on this planet, but as far as we know on any planet; so here if anywhere we must find the explanation. Evolution would then have God for its Cause, and man for its purpose—an undoubtedly adequate Cause, but is it an adequate purpose? For [85] the human race cannot exist for ever as it is. ”

“ And every fresh discovery man makes can only exalt him still higher for making it; so that the mind of man now shows him to be a far nobler being than could possibly have been imagined some centuries ago. And certainly, a mind that can discover the motions of distant stars, and the elements of which they are composed, cannot be thought insignificant. In fact, in one respect man is greater than any of the stars; for he can think about them, but they cannot think about him.
Moreover, man has not only a mind, but also a spirit, or free will, able to act right or wrong. ”

“ But we must now consider an objection. It is, that Christianity is really a selfish religion, looking only for future rewards, and teaching men to follow virtue, not for virtue's sake, but solely with a view to their own advantage. But this is an entire mistake, though a very common one. The Christian's motive, in trying to lead such a life as God wishes him to lead, is simply love. He has, as already said, an overwhelming sense of God's love to him. And though, doubtless, leading a good life will bring with it some future reward, yet this is not the true motive for leading it. ”

“ For a man might possess a moral sense, and be able to classify acts as right or wrong, yet have no direct means of knowing to which class any particular act belonged. He might have to work this out by reasoning; and in difficult cases we sometimes do so. But as a rule this is unnecessary. For mankind possesses a very remarkable something, called a conscience, which tells him at once, and without either argument or reasoning, that certain acts are right and others wrong. Conscience is thus like an organ of the moral sense, and may be compared to the eye or organ of sight ”

“ They are perhaps the hardest things a man has to bear in this world, and they have often had to be borne by the followers of Christ. Is it incredible, then, that He should have given them an example of the perfect way of doing so; gently rebuking His friends, praying for His murderers, and acting throughout as only a perfect man could act? No doubt such a life and death seem at first sight degrading to the Deity. But strictly speaking, suffering, if borne voluntarily and for the benefit of others, is not degrading ”

“ In the same way man's free will may be an anomaly, but the evidence for it is overwhelming.
Moreover, the anomaly is greatly lessened by the fact that man already occupies a very anomalous position. For as we have seen, his acts are often determined by his will, and this is utterly unlike anything that we find elsewhere in nature. Indeed the action of a will is as great an anomaly as its freedom; and with the possible exception of animals (see further on) we have no experience whatever of a will that can act and is not free. ”

“ The unknown difficulty of believing that the Eternal God could so love man as to humble Himself even to death to win man's love; and the known difficulty of believing that evidence so vast and so various, so cumulative and so apparently irresistible, could all unite in making a monstrous falsehood appear to be a momentous truth. ”

“ While, on the other hand, the establishment of the Christian religion is just what we should expect if the miracles were true. And of course true miracles, not false ones, are required to account for it. The most holy and the most powerful religion the world has ever seen cannot have been founded on falsehood or fable. In other words, if we deny that the Christian miracles occurred, and take from Christ all that is superhuman, we cannot imagine Him as the Founder of Christianity. ”

“ For each man is a separate spirit, a personal being distinct from all else in the world. And since he possesses a free will, his character is also distinct; for this depends to a large extent on how he uses his free will, what he says, and what he does, day by day. So it is out of the question to think that any two men are exactly alike. And this is the common belief of mankind, for however much we may think other people alike, we each feel sure that there is no one else in the world exactly like ourselves. ”

“ And even in other cases, when the evil cannot be foreseen, as in an unexpected earthquake, it is at least open to doubt whether it is any worse for a number of men to die like this, suddenly and together, than that they should all die in the usual way, slowly, one by one, and often after a long illness. It of course appeals more to the imagination, but it probably involves less suffering.
Thus we may say that human suffering, excluding that due to man himself, is by no means so great as it seems; that it is, as a rule, more than counter-balanced by human happiness ”

“ The greatness of man's sin, and the misery it causes in the world, are but too evident, apart from Christianity. Man is indeed both the glory and the scandal of the universe—the glory in what he was evidently intended to be, and the scandal in what, through sin, he actually became. And the Atonement was a 'vast remedy for this vast evil.' And if we admit the end, that man had to be redeemed from sin, impressed with the guilt of sin, and helped to resist sin ”

“ Once, and only once in the history of the world, have men appeared who asserted that they were actual witnesses of miracles, and who faced all forms of suffering and death solely in consequence of this. Again, once, and only once in the history of the world, has a long series of prophecies, uttered many centuries apart, united in a single Person, in whom they one and all find a complete fulfilment. ”

“ In other words, we observe that heat is followed by expansion, and we therefore assume that the one is the cause of the other. But calling it a law of nature for heat to expand bodies, does not in any way account for its doing so. And the same is true in other cases, so that a law of nature explains nothing, it is merely a summary of the facts to be explained.
It should also be noticed that a law of nature effects nothing. It has no coercive, or compelling power whatever. The law of gravitation, for instance, has never moved a planet, any more than the rules of navigation have steered a ship. ”

“ Heaven has been called the last act in God's drama of the universe. And considering the magnitude of the previous acts—the formation of the solar system, the development of organic life, etc.—we should expect this last act to be on a scale equally vast and magnificent, and as far above anything we can imagine as the life of a butterfly is above the imagination of a chrysalis. ”

“ Thus Darwin says:—'When we reflect on this struggle we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.' And Wallace says:—'The popular idea of the struggle for existence entailing misery and pain on the animal world is the very reverse of the truth. ”

“ Moreover, Christianity proves that sin is not a necessity in human nature; for it alone of all religions can point to One Who, though tempted as we are, was yet without sin. And Christ's temptations were probably greater than any that we can have. For it is only when a man resists a temptation that he feels its full force, just as only those trees that were not blown down, felt the full force of the gale. ”

“ Here, then, is the explanation of Hume's argument. So long as a marvel, contrary to experience, is regarded only as a marvel, the probability must be always against its truth. But if we inquire as to how it was brought about, and find that some cause is said to have been at work, as to the influence of which we are ignorant, then the argument is no longer applicable. We have simply no experience of the proper kind to appeal to.
Now this is precisely the case with regard to miracles. As marvels they seem contrary to experience ”

“ And then we see that God's attributes are all, so to speak, on the same scale; and His Goodness is as far above any human goodness, as the Power which rules the universe is above any human power; or the Wisdom which designed all nature is above any human wisdom. Hence, if the Incarnation still seems inconceivable, may it not be simply because the love of God, like His other attributes, is so inconceivably greater than anything we can imagine? ”

“ Thus our knowledge of every subject is but partial, and it finally leads us into the Unknowable.
But now comes the important point. This partial knowledge, which is all we can obtain in either Science or Religion, is all we require. It is not a perfect knowledge, but it is sufficient for all practical purposes. Whatever the force of gravity may be in itself, we know what it is to us. We know that if we jump off a cliff we shall fall to the ground. And so in regard to Religion. Whatever God may be in Himself, we know what He is to us. ”

“ God is thus the Cause of all natural forces now, just as He was their Creator in times past; and what are called secondary or natural causes, have probably no existence. They may, indeed, be called secondary forces, but they are not causes at all in the strict sense; for a cause must be free, it must have the power of initiative. Thus man's free will, if it is free, would be a real secondary cause, but the forces of nature are mere links in a chain of events, each of which is bound to follow the previous one. ”

“ For this, as just said, depends on their own free use of their own free will; and if God were to force them to decide in the same way, they would cease to be free. And from this it follows that each man is not only unique, but irreplaceable. No other can be made like him. Therefore, as we each have something special about us, God may take a special interest in each of us. Doubtless such an idea seems very wonderful; but no one who has any knowledge of the marvels of nature will think it, on that account, incredible. ”

“ Now Christianity does attempt (in its doctrine of the Trinity) to state what God is in Himself, and without any reference to ourselves, or to nature; and that this should be to a great extent inconceivable to our minds seems inevitable. For the nature of God must be beyond human understanding, just as the nature of a man is beyond the understanding of animals; though they may realise what he is to them, in his power or his kindness. ”

“ From this it is clear that for anyone to deny a man's statement, without disputing either his veracity, knowledge, investigation, or reasoning, is very like denying that one angle is greater than another, without disputing that it is neither equal to it, nor less than it. We have now to apply these general rules to the testimony in favour of the Resurrection of Christ. And, as we shall see, the denial of these four points corresponds to the four chief alternative theories, which, may be called the Falsehood, the Legend, the Vision, and the Swoon Theory. ”

“ For every event which the forces of nature could possibly bring about of themselves would, since they have been acting from eternity, have been brought about long ago. Therefore present events are not new, but must have occurred before.
This is no doubt a possible theory. For example, if we assume that the universe will in process of time work itself back into precisely the same condition in which it was long ago as a nebula or anything else, when it will begin again precisely the same changes as before; then, and only then, is it possible that it has been going on doing so from all eternity. ”

“ There are, however, many other arguments for proving that man believes that he has a free will, for it is shown by his acts. It is this known freedom which enables a man to set before him an end, and deliberately work towards it; in other words, it enables him to design, and makes him a personal being, as we have used the term. And it is needless to point out that the evidence of human design is universal. Again, human language affords a conclusive proof that man has always and everywhere believed himself to be free ”