The Fair Haven

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Can we greatly wonder? For, sad though the admission be, it is only
justice to admit that we Christians have been too often contented to
accept our faith without knowing its grounds, in which case it is
more by luck than by cunning that we are Christians at all, and our
faith will be in continual danger. The greater number even of those
who have undertaken to defend the Christian faith have been sadly
inclined to avoid a difficulty rather than to face it, unless it is
so easy as to be no real difficulty at all. I do not say that this
is unnatural, for the Christian writer must be deeply impressed with
the sinfulness of unbelief, and will therefore be anxious to avoid
raising doubts which will probably never yet have occurred to his
reader, and might possibly never do so; nor does there at first sight
appear to be much advantage in raising difficulties for the sole
purpose of removing them; nevertheless I cannot think that if either
Butler or Paley could have foreseen the continuance of unbelief, and
the ruin of so many souls whom Christ died to save, they would have
been contented to act so almost entirely upon the defensive.

Yet it is impossible not to feel that we in their place should have
done as they did. Infidelity was still in its infancy: the nature
of the disease was hardly yet understood; and there seemed reason to
fear lest it might be aggravated by the very means taken to cure it;
it seemed safer therefore in the first instance to confine attention
to the matter actually in debate, and leave it to time to suggest a
more active treatment should the course first tried prove
unsatisfactory. Who can be surprised that the earlier apologists
should have felt thus in the presence of an enemy whose novelty made
him appear more portentous than he can ever seem to ourselves? They
were bound to venture nothing rashly; what they did they did, for
their own age, thoroughly; we owe it to their cautious pioneering
that we so know the weakness of our opponents and our own strength as
to be able to do fearlessly what may well have seemed perilous to our
forefathers: nevertheless it is easy to be wise after the event, and
to regret that a bolder course was not taken at the outset. If
Butler and Paley had fought as men eager for the fray, as men who
smelt the battle from afar, it is impossible to believe that
infidelity could have lasted as long as it has. What can be done now
could have been done just as effectively then, and though we cannot
be surprised at the caution shewn at first, we are bound to deplore
it as short-sighted.

The question, however, for ourselves is not what dead men might have
done better long ago, but what living men and women can do most
wisely now; and in answer to it I would say that there is no policy
so unwise as fear in a good cause: the bold course is also the wise
one; it consists in being on the lookout for objections, in finding
the very best that can be found and stating them in their most
intelligible form, in shewing what are the logical consequences of
unbelief, and thus carrying the war into the enemy's country; in
fighting with the most chivalrous generosity and a determination to
take no advantage which is not according to the rules of war most
strictly interpreted against ourselves, but within such an
interpretation showing no quarter. This is the bold course and the
true course: it will beget a confidence which can never be felt in
the wariness, however well-intentioned, of the old defenders.

Let me, therefore, beg the reader to follow me patiently while I do
my best to put before him the main difficulties felt by unbelievers.
When he is once acquainted with these he will run in no danger of
confirming doubt through his fear in turning away from it in the
first instance. How many die hardened unbelievers through the
treatment which they have received from those to whom their
Christianity has been a matter of circumstances and habit only? Hell
is no fiction. Who, without bitter sorrow, can reflect upon the
agonies even of a single soul as being due to the selfishness or
cowardice of others? Awful thought! Yet it is one which is daily
realised in the case of thousands.

In the commonest justice to brethren, however sinful, each one of us
who tries to lead them to the Saviour is bound not only to shew them
the whole strength of our own arguments, but to make them see that we
understand the whole strength of theirs; for men will not seriously
listen to those whom they believe to know one side of a question
only. It is this which makes the educated infidel so hard to deal
with; he knows very well that an intelligent apprehension of the
position held by an opponent is indispensable for profitable
discussion; but he very rarely meets with this in the case of those
Christians who try to argue with him; he therefore soon acquires a
habit of avoiding the subject of religion, and can seldom be induced
to enter upon an argument which he is convinced can lead to nothing.

He who would cure a disease must first know what it is, and he who
would convert an infidel must know what it is that he is to be
converted from, as well as what he is to be led to; nothing can be
laid hold of unless its whereabouts is known. It is deplorable that
such commonplaces should be wanted; but, alas! it is impossible to do
without them. People have taken a panic on the subject of infidelity
as though it were so infectious that the very nurses and doctors
should run away from those afflicted with it; but such conduct is no
less absurd than cruel and disgraceful. INFIDELITY IS ONLY
INFECTIOUS WHEN IT IS NOT UNDERSTOOD. The smallest reflection should
suffice to remind us that a faith which has satisfied the most
brilliant and profound of human intellects for nearly two thousand
years must have had very sure foundations, and that any digging about
them for the purpose of demonstrating their depth and solidity, will
result, not in their disturbance, but in its being made clear to
every eye that they are laid upon a rock which nothing can shake--
that they do indeed satisfy every demand of human reason, which
suffers violence not from those who accept the scheme of the
Christian redemption, but from those who reject it.

This being the case, and that it is so will, I believe, appear with
great clearness in the following pages, what need to shrink from the
just and charitable course of understanding the nature of what is
urged by those who differ from us? How can we hope to bring them to
be of one mind in Christ Jesus with ourselves, unless we can resolve
their difficulties and explain them? And how can we resolve their
difficulties until we know what they are? Infidelity is as a reeking
fever den, which none can enter safely without due precautions, but
the taking these precautions is within our own power; we can all rely
upon the blessed promises of the Saviour that he will not desert us
in our hour of need if we will only truly seek him; there is more
infidelity in this shrinking and fear of investigation than in almost
any open denial of Christ; the one who refuses to examine the doubts
felt by another, and is prevented from making any effort to remove
them through fear lest he should come to share them, shews either
that he has no faith in the power of Christianity to stand
examination, or that he has no faith in the promises of God to guide
him into all truth. In either case he is hardly less an unbeliever
than those whom he condemns.

Let the reader therefore understand that he will here find no attempt
to conceal the full strength of the arguments relied on by
unbelievers. This manner of substantiating the truth of Christianity
has unhappily been tried already; it has been tried and has failed as
it was bound to fail. Infidelity lives upon concealment. Shew it in
broad daylight, hold it up before the world and make its hideousness
manifest to all--then, and not till then, will the hours of unbelief
be numbered. WE have been the mainstay of unbelief through our
timidity. Far be it from me, therefore, that I should help any
unbeliever by concealing his case for him. This were the most cruel
kindness. On the contrary, I shall insist upon all his arguments and
state them, if I may say so without presumption, more clearly than
they have ever been stated within the same limits. No one knows what
they are better than I do. No one was at one time more firmly
persuaded that they were sound. May it be found that no one has so
well known how also to refute them.

The reader must not therefore expect to find fictitious difficulties
in the way of accepting Christianity set up with one hand in order to
be knocked down again with the other: he will find the most powerful
arguments against all that he holds most sacred insisted on with the
same clearness as those on his own side; it is only by placing the
two contending opinions side by side in their utmost development that
the strength of our own can be made apparent. Those who wish to cry
peace, peace, when there is no peace, those who would take their
faith by fashion as the take their clothes, those who doubt the
strength of their own cause and do not in their heart of heart
believe that Christianity will stand investigation, those, again, who
care not who may go to Hell provided they are comfortably sure of
going to Heaven themselves, such persons may complain of the line
which I am about to take. They on the other hand whose faith is such
that it knows no fear of criticism, and they whose love for Christ
leads them to regard the bringing of lost souls into his flock as the
highest earthly happiness--such will admit gladly that I have been
right in tearing aside the veil from infidelity and displaying it
uncloaked by the side of faith itself.

At the same time I am bound to confess that I never should have been
able to see the expediency, not to say the absolute necessity for
such a course, unless I had been myself for many years an unbeliever.
It is this experience, so bitterly painful, that has made me feel so
strongly as to the only manner in which others can be brought from
darkness into light. The wisdom of the Almighty recognised that if
man was to be saved it must be done by the assumption of man's nature
on the part of the Deity. God must make himself man, or man could
never learn the nature and attributes of God. Let us then follow the
sublime example of the incarnation, and make ourselves as unbelievers
that we may teach unbelievers to believe. If Paley and Butler had
only been REAL INFIDELS for a single year, instead of taking the
thoughts and reasonings of their opponents at second-hand, what a
difference should we not have seen in the nature of their work.
Alas! their clear and powerful intellects had been trained early in
the severest exercises; they could not be misled by any of the
sophistries of their opponents; but, on the other hand, never having
been misled they knew not the thread of the labyrinth as one who has
been shut up therein.

I should also warn the reader of another matter. He must not expect
to find that I can maintain everything which he could perhaps desire
to see maintained. I can prove, to such a high degree of presumption
as shall amount virtually to demonstration, that our Lord died upon
the cross, rose again from the dead upon the third day, and ascended
into Heaven: but I cannot prove that none of the accounts of these
events which have come down to us have suffered from the hand of
time: on the contrary, I must own that the reasons which led me to
conclude that there must be confusion in some of the accounts of the
Resurrection continue in full force with me even now. I see no way
of escaping from this conclusion: but it seems equally strange that
the Christian should have such an indomitable repugnance to accept
it, and that the unbeliever should conceive that it inflicts any
damage whatever upon the Christian evidences. Perhaps the error of
each confirms that of the other, as will appear hereafter.

I have spoken hitherto as though I were writing only for men, but the
help of good women can never be so precious as in the salvation of
human souls; if there is one work for which women are better fitted
than another, it is that of arresting the progress of unbelief. Can
there be a nobler one? Their superior tact and quickness give them a
great advantage over men; men will listen to them when they would
turn away from one of their own sex; and though I am well aware that
courtesy is no argument, yet the natural politeness shewn by a man to
a woman will compel attention to what falls from her lips, and will
thus perhaps be the means of bringing him into contact with Divine
truths which would never otherwise have reached him. Yet this is a
work from which too many women recoil in horror--they know that they
can do nothing unless they are intimately acquainted with the
opinions of those from whom they differ, and from such an intimacy
they believe that they are right in shrinking.

Oh, my sisters, my sisters, ye who go into the foulest dens of
disease and vice, fearless of the pestilence and of man's brutality,
ye whose whole lives bear witness to the cross of Christ and the
efficacy of the Divine love, did one of you ever fear being corrupted
by the vice with which you came in contact? Is there one of you who
fears to examine why it is that even the most specious form of vice
is vicious? You fear not infection here, for you know that you are
on sure ground, and that there is no form of vice of which the
viciousness is not clearly provable; but can you doubt that the
foundation of your faith is sure also, and can you not see that your
cowardice in not daring to examine the foul and soul-destroying den
of infidelity is a stumbling-block to those who have not yet known
their Saviour? Your fear is as the fear of children who dare not go
in the dark; but alas! the unbeliever does not understand it thus.
He says that your fear is not of the darkness but of the light, and
that you dare not search lest you should find that which would make
against you. Hideous blasphemy against the Lord! But is not the sin
to be laid partly at the door of those whose cowardice has given
occasion for it?

Is there none of you who knows that as to the pure all things are
pure, so to the true and loyal heart all things will confirm its
faith? You shrink from this last trial of your allegiance, partly
from the pain of even seeing the wounds of your Redeemer laid open--
of even hearing the words of those enemies who have traduced him and
crucified him afresh--but you lose the last and highest of the
prizes, for great as is your faith now, be very sure that from this
crowning proof of your devotion you would emerge with greater still.

Has none of you seen a savage dog barking and tearing at the end of
his chain as though he were longing to devour you, and yet if you
have gone bravely up to him and bade him be still, he is cowed and
never barks again? Such is the genius of infidelity; it loves to
threaten those who retreat, yet it shrinks daunted back from those
who meet it boldly; it is the lack of boldness on the part of the
Christian which gives it all its power; when Christians are strong in
the strength of their own cause infidels will know their impotence,
but as long as there are cowards there will be those who prey upon
cowardice, and as long as those who should defend the cross of Christ
hide themselves behind battlements, so long will the enemy come up to
the very walls of the defence and trouble them that are within. The
above words must have sounded harsh and will I fear have given pain
to many a tender heart which is conscious of the depth of its own
love for the Redeemer, and would be shocked at the thought that
anything had been neglected in his service, but has not the voice of
such a heart returned answer to itself that what I have written is
just?

Again, I have been told by some that they have been aware of the
necessity of doing their best towards putting a stop to infidelity,
and that they have been unceasing in their prayers for friends or
husbands or relations who know not Christ, but that with prayers
their efforts have ended. Now, there can be no one in the whole
world who has had more signal proofs of the efficacy of prayer than
the writer of these pages, but he would lie if he were to say that
prayer was ever answered when it was only another name for idleness,
a cloak for the avoidance of obvious duty. God is no helper of the
indolent and the coward; if this were so, what need to work at all?
Why not sit still, and trust in prayer for everything? No; to the
women who have prayed, and prayed only, the answer is ready at hand,
that work without prayer is bad, but prayer without work worse. Let
them do their own utmost in the way of sowing, planting, and
watering, and then let them pray to God that he will vouchsafe them
the increase; but they can no more expect the increase to be of God's
free gift without the toil of sowing than did the blessed Apostle St.
Paul. If God did not convert the heathen for Paul and Apollos in
answer to their prayers alone, how can we expect that he will convert
the infidel for ourselves, unless we have first followed in the
footsteps of the Apostles? The sin of infidelity will rest upon us
and our children until we have done our best to shake it off; and
this not timidly and disingenuously as those who fear for the result,
but with the certainty that it is the infidel and not the Christian
who need fear investigation, if the investigation only goes deep
enough. Herein has lain our error, we have feared to allow the
unbeliever to put forth all his strength lest it should prove
stronger than we thought it was, when in truth the world would only
have known the sooner of its weakness; and this shall now at last be
abundantly shewn, for, as I said above, I will help no infidel by
concealing his case; it shall appear in full, and as nearly in his
own words as the limits at my disposal will allow. Out of his own
mouth shall he be condemned, and yet, I trust, not condemned alone;
but converted as I myself, and by the same irresistible chain of
purest reason; one thing only is wanted on the part of the reader, it
is this, the desire to attain truth regardless of past prejudices.

If an unbeliever has made up his mind that we must be wrong, without
having heard our side, and if he presumes to neglect the most
ordinary precaution against error--that of understanding the position
of an opponent--I can do nothing with him or for him. No man can
make another see, if the other persists in shutting his eyes and
bandaging them: if it is a victory to be able to say that they
cannot see the truth under these circumstances, the victory is with
our opponents; but for those who can lay their hands upon their heart
and say truly before God and man that they care nothing for the
maintenance of their own opinions, but only that they may come to
know the truth, for such I can do much. I can put the matter before
them in so clear a light that they shall never doubt hereafter.

Never was there a time when such an exposition was wanted so much as
now. The specious plausibilities of a pseudo-science have led
hundreds of thousands into error; the misapplication of geology has
ensnared a host of victims, and a still greater misapplication of
natural history seems likely to devour those whom the perversion of
geology has spared. Not that I have a word to say against TRUE
science: true science can never be an enemy of the Bible, which is
the text-book of the science of the salvation of human souls as
written by the great Creator and Redeemer of the soul itself, but the
Enemy of Mankind is never idle, and no sooner does God vouchsafe to
us any clearer illumination of his purposes and manner of working,
than the Evil One sets himself to consider how he can turn the
blessing into a curse; and by the all-wise dispensation of Providence
he is allowed so much triumph as that he shall sift the wise from the
foolish, the faithful from the traitors. God knoweth his own. Still
there is no surer mark that one is among the number of those whom he
hath chosen than the desire to bring all to share in the gracious
promises which he has vouchsafed to those that will take advantage of
them; and there are few more certain signs of reprobation than
indifference as to the existence of unbelief, and faint-heartedness
in trying to remove it. It is the duty of all those who love Christ
to lead their brethren to love him also; but how can they hope to
succeed in this until they understand the grounds on which he is
rejected?

For there ARE grounds, insufficient ones, untenable ones, grounds
which a little loving patience and, if I may be allowed the word,
ingenuity, will shew to be utterly rotten; but as long as their
rottenness is only to be asserted and not proved, so long will
deluded people build upon them in fancied security. As yet the proof
has never been made sufficiently clear. If displayed sufficiently
for one age it has been necessary to do the work again for the next.
As soon as the errors of one set of people have been made apparent,
another set has arisen with fresh objections, or the old fallacies
have reappeared in another shape. It is not too much to say that it
has never yet been so clearly proved that Christ rose again from the
dead, that a jury of educated Englishmen should be compelled to
assent to it, even though they had never before heard of
Christianity. This therefore it is my object to do once and for ever
now.

It is not for me to pry into the motives of the Almighty, nor to
inquire why it is that for nearly two thousand years the perfection
of proof should never have been duly produced, but if I dare hazard
an opinion I should say that such proof was never necessary until
now, but that it has lain ready to be produced at a moment's notice
on the arrival of the fitting time. In the early stages of the
Church the viva voce testimony of the Apostles was still so near that
its force was in no way spent; from those times until recently the
universality of belief was such that proof was hardly needed; it is
only for a hundred years or so (which in the sight of God are but as
yesterday) that infidelity has made real progress. Then God raised
his hand in wrath; revolution taught men to see the nature of
unbelief and the world shrank back in horror; the time of fear passed
by; unbelief has again raised itself; whereon we can see that other
and even more fearful revolutions {1} are daily threatening. What
country is safe? In what part of the world do not men feel an uneasy
foreboding of the wrath which will surely come if they do not repent
and turn unto the Lord their God? Go where we will we are conscious
of that heaviness and oppression which is the precursor of the
hurricane and the earthquake; none escape it: an all-pervading sense
of rottenness and fearful waiting upon judgment is upon the hearts of
all men. May it not be that this awe and silence have been ordained
in order that the still small voice of the Lord may be the more
clearly heard and welcomed as salvation? Is it not possible that the
infinite mercy of God is determined to give mankind one last chance,
before the day of that coming which no creature may abide? I dare
not answer: yet I know well that the fire burneth within me, and
that night and day I take no rest but am consumed until the work
committed to me is done, that I may be clear from the blood of all
men.

CHAPTER II--STRAUSS AND THE HALLUCINATION THEORY

It has been well established by Paley, and indeed has seldom been
denied, that within a very few years of Christ's crucifixion a large
number of people believed that he had risen from the dead. They
believed that after having suffered actual death he rose to actual
life, as a man who could eat and drink and talk, who could be seen
and handled. Some who held this were near relations of Christ, some
had known him intimately for a considerable time before his
crucifixion, many must have known him well by sight, but all were
unanimous in their assertion that they had seen him alive after he
had been dead, and in consequence of this belief they adopted a new
mode of life, abandoning in many cases every other earthly
consideration save that of bearing witness to what they had known and
seen. I have not thought it worth while to waste time and space by
introducing actual proof of the above. This will be found in Paley's
opening chapters, to which the reader is referred.

How then did this intensity of conviction come about? Differ as they
might and did upon many of the questions arising out of the main fact
which they taught, as to the fact itself they differed not in the
least degree. In their own life-time and in that of those who could
confute them their story gained the adherence of a very large and
ever increasing number. If it could be shewn that the belief in
Christ's reappearance did not arise until after the death of those
who were said to have seen him, when actions and teachings might have
been imputed to them which were not theirs, the case would then be
different; but this cannot be done; there is nothing in history
better established than that the men who said that they had seen
Christ alive after he had been dead, were themselves the first to lay
aside all else in order to maintain their assertion. If it could be
maintained that they taught what they did in order to sanction laxity
of morals, the case would again be changed. But this too is
impossible. They taught what they did because of the intensity of
their own conviction and from no other motive whatsoever.

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