CHAPTER II.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS URGING TO A STUDY OF THE BIBLE AS A MOST INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT DOCUMENT.

Now, in this portion of our Essay we propose to state very briefly, and only in the way of suggestion, some special considerations which claim a more than ordinarily attentive study as due to the Scriptures.

A. THE BIBLE'S ANTIQUITY COMBINED WITH ITS PRESENT HOLD ON THE MINDS OF MEN.

Ar the outset it will be felt that the lapse of ages causes the light and worthless portion of any literature to perish or to be generally neglected. If any book has survived the trial of a thousand years, and especially if it still continue to be read by considerable numbers of human beings, there must be in its pages some curious information, some mighty charm, or some singularly lucid statements which well entitle it to the careful investigation of every man who wishes for instruction. How forcible is this plea on behalf of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Their every page is hoary with more than millennial antiquity. They are read and re-read with professed and often deepening devotion by multitudes of men. They are read to bless the infant as the pearly drops from the baptismal font fall upon its brow and symbolize, ere consciousness be developed, man's universal need of a new birth, God's merciful provision for human regeneration, and the parent's earnest desire and pious resolve that the infant shall be taught to live in imitation of the sinless One. They are read to give a sanction to the teaching of the school. They are read as the lesson and the text in the congregation. They are read by the mother to strengthen her for her trials and soothe her in her anxieties. They are read by the stalwart man that he may be hallowed, calm, and dignified amidst all the strivings of busy duty. The sorrowing and the bereaved read them

that they may learn the consoling hope of reunion in a tearless world. Even at the gaping mouth of the tomb they are read that they may tell of victory over death and the grave.

Whatever may be the mysterious charm of the Bible's pages, the antiquity of that volume, combined with the unique freshness of the hold it has on the minds of countless readers in their most solemn and most earnest moods, bespeaks for it a study of no ordinary care.

B. THE BIBLE THE ONLY BOOK WHICH, THROUGH THE AGES OF THE REFORMATION, THE SCHOOLMEN, AND THE FATHERS, IS POINTED BACK TO AS INFORMING US OF THE NATURE, ORIGIN, AND GROWTH OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.

ATTACHING, too, to its antiquity is this consideration. The testimony of heathen writers, like Tacitus and Pliny, is sufficient to show us that more than eighteen hundred years ago, in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, while Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of Judæa, a man named Christus* was

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"Christ, the founder of the sect commonly called Christians, was, in the "reign of Tiberius, capitally punished under Pontius Pilate, the procurator: "and this pernicious superstition was thus, for a while, repressed only to break "out afresh, not merely throughout Judæa, where the evil originated, but throughout Rome also, where all things atrocious and disgraceful congregate, and find many patrons."-Tacitus' Annals, xv. 44: written about A.D. 110. "Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a set of men attached to a new "and mischievous superstition."-Suetonius' Life of Nero, ch. 16: written about A.D. 120.

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The early prevalence of Christianity, and its historical origin with a Jew named Christ, are abundantly proved by these quotations from unfriendly and misinformed heathen writers. It is easy to understand how a religion, which inculcated the abhorrence of all idols, and the "hating" parents, friends, and life itself, in comparison with the love to be borne towards the Deity; and which, moreover, was accused of cannibalism, because, in terms, it spoke of "eating "flesh" and "drinking blood," should be so evil-spoken of by Tacitus and Suetonius. The true moral character of Christianity, however, as well as its early prevalence, is shown in the following testimony of a wise and learned heathen, whose business it was to inform himself accurately on this subject. Pliny reports to the Emperor Trajan (about A.D. 107), Those, whom anonymous informers accuse to me as Christians, constitute "a vast multitude, of every age, and of "both sexes." "The contagion of this superstition has spread,

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"not only through cities, but even through hamlets and rural districts." The worst that can be proved against these Christians is, that "they habitually "meet together, on a certain day, before dawn, to sing a hymn to Christ as God, "and to bind themselves by an oath" (sacramento), "not to the perpetration of any evil, but to avoid the guilt of theft, robbery, and adultery, and never to "break their word, or refuse the rendering back of that which has been entrusted "to their care."-Pliny's Letters, x. 97.

the well-known teacher of a new religion at Jerusalem; that this man was crucified, in the hope that his heresy might be stifled; but that, instead of this hope being realised, upon his death the number of his disciples spread, within a few years, so as to have reached Rome itself, and so as to count as an important sect in that metropolis, while, in the intervening provinces of the empire, the religion of this Christus had spread everywhere, and drawn to itself votaries, in town and hamlet, of every age and of both sexes, so that the interests of the idol-makers and idol-worshippers were seriously threatened -not to say materially damaged. Now, the remnants of this amazingly prevalent and suddenly spread religion are amongst us to this day; and, with various intermixtures of Judaism and heathenism, as well as of the patristic and scholastic theologies, this religion of Christus or Chrestus (as some have called him) has triumphantly held its sway in the general course of the world's history from the days of Pliny and Tacitus till our own time.

Without at present referring to the badness or the goodness of this religion, it must surely be an important problem for every student of his own human nature, and for all who wish to consider the possible relation of duty or otherwise in which we may stand to a Creator, to ascertain what were the original and pure ideas of Christus and his immediate followers by the dispersion of which they changed the worship of the civilized world, and produced such a revolution as was then, at all events, without a parallel, and as deserved, according to the testimony of the heathen historians, the astonishing description that "it had turned the world upside down." Where, then, are we to seek for the genuine principles by which Christus and his disciples or apostles effected this manifestly stupendous revolution? Is it probable that the system now called Christianity is identical with Christ's religion? Do all the sects which assume to themselves the epithet "Christian" rest their teaching upon the same principles as did Christus of old? If so, those principles should be common to all the sects: but if, on the other hand, many of the sects have quite different principles-some insisting on the authority of the Pope; some on the decisions of general councils; some on the written pages of the Bible; some on the inner light kindled by the Holy Spirit in every individual believer's mind; some asserting the unmixed sinfulness of human nature; some ap

pealing to the good that is left in fallen man as the very stock on to which Christian excellence is to be grafted; some teaching the indispensableness of a human ministry or priesthood to the continuance of vital religion; some vindicating the sufficiency and independence of each member of Christ as in direct communion with the head of the Church; some asserting, some modifying, and some denying the everlastingness of future rewards or punishments-if thus the various sects have manifold and diverse principles of their Christianity, then how shall the inquirer decide which are the more recent additions or alterations? and which are the primal doctrines of Christ? What teaching was it that really checked the adoration of Jupiter and Venus, and the other ancient deities? What portion of modern Christianity is a subsequent innovation which has, advantageously or otherwise, been superadded to that potent scheme which made probably-almost certainly*—as many converts to itself in the first fifty years of its existence as have been made for it in all the last eighteen centuries? Nay, how know we that the mysteries of the primal faith have not been wholly lost to us?

These are startling interrogatories, and, apart from the antiquity of the Bible, we see not how they can reasonably or satisfactorily be answered. The slightest acquaintance with history suffices to show that Christianity has undergone at least two, and probably three, great transformations. In the sixteenth century, that which we, both so-called Catholics and so-called Protestants, regard as Christianity underwent an historically manifest change. Out of the then current systems of religion and theology, the mental difficulties and labours of Luther and Melancthon, Calvin and Zuingle, and other such-like men, did, in the providence of God, develope the various systems which bear the generic title of Protestantism. In direct antagonism to this development of Christianity grew up the still more recent system which is Romanism. The Catholic Church had embraced Wickliffe and many another, who thought as he did, until his opinions were thrown into form by the various theses, confessions, and sets of Articles to

*Of course, this statement is made proportionately, not numerically. There are, doubtless, more millions of Christians now than there were in the first century: but does the number of modern Christians bear the same proportion to the world's present population as was borne by the number of believers at the end of the first century to the then existing population of the world?

which the first half of the sixteenth century gave birth. Then it was that a reactionary movement from 1545 till 1563 pronounced itself in the decrees of the Council of Trent. Thus, from the more comprehensive Christianity of the fifteenth century, all was changed. That, which had been the one-not unanimous but united-church then, was now divided into Protestantism on the one side and the Tridentine or Romanist

system on the other. Which of these three systems was most like to, or was identical with, primal Christianity?

Or, yet again, the student of history is aware that, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there flourished those peculiar teachers who, from their views prevailing in the educational institutions or schools of that day, received the title of Schoolmen, while their doctrines were called the Scholastic and their whole system Scholasticism.

Scholasticism, in all its speculations, set much by the ancient philosopher Aristotle, who, more than three hundred years before the birth of Christ, had been a sage and teacher among the Greeks. The philosophy of the Schoolmen based itself on what it, often most erroneously, supposed to be the meanings of Aristotle's various sayings. These sayings were the principles out of which, by logical processes of words, the Schoolmen deduced their sciences. It was the work of Descartes, and Bacon, and others, at a subsequent period, to teach the world that (whereas the pure Sciences, like Mathematics, might be learned by a deductive process, in which the mind worked out logical courses of thought from certain first truths, called definitions, and axioms, and postulates) the mixed or practical Sciences, like Chemistry, Physiology, &c., must be learned by diligently observing the phenomena of nature, and thence gathering, by an inductive process of reasoning, those general truths or principles, the knowledge of which is Science.

If the physical sciences thus became mere wordy trash under the treatment of the Schoolmen, so also did they base the science of morality on verbal definitions until, to a lamentable extent, the eternal differences betwixt good and evil were lost sight of amongst the wire-drawn niceties of subtle theoretical disquisition apart from the corrective observation of practical common sense.

How fared Christianity in its course through the times of these Schoolmen? Were they so busy with the physical and moral questions mooted amongst them that they had no time