114

CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD.

of the vital differences between Christianity and all other religions; differences which are just such characteristics as we should expect in a religion given to man by his Creator, and from the wonderful history and results of that religion in the world, we may reasonably conclude that Christianity is the true religion given to man from God. Let us now turn to an examination of that revelation which purports to be from God.

[115]

CHAPTER FOURTH.

"Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which were, from the beginning, eyewitnesses and ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus; that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed." [Luke I. 1-4]

The Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.

As said in a preceding Chapter, we should expect that the Creator of man would reveal to man his will and some way of escape from sin and its consequences, and we find in the world a collection of sixty-six books, or parts, which purport to be such a revelation. The whole body of christians in the world, Roman, Greek and Protestant, accept them as God's revelation to man. Let us now proceed to examine, first whether these books are genuine, that is, whether they were written at the time they purport to have been written; second, whether they are authentic, that is, whether they were written by honest men, and are a truthful record; and third, whether they were written by Divine authority, or help.

It is not strange that some men have doubted the Bible and the truth which the Bible reveals. Men doubt everything. John Stuart Mill doubted all axioms. He said "two and two may make five in some other world; it is only because we find that they make four here, that we think that it is necessarily so." Spinoza, Goethe, Carlyle and Emerson doubted their own existence. 66 Nothing but God exists," said they, we are emanations from God, as ripples on a river."

After all the evidence which has been accumulated to prove the benefit which vaccination is to the world, there are many men who doubt. A society is formed to oppose it in

116

RATIONALISTIC THEORIES.

At

England, which publishes a periodical, opposing it; and some of the members of this society go to prison, rather than submit to it themselves. Thus, there have been men all through the ages who doubted Christianity and the truth of the Bible; but both Christianity and the Bible still stand. the beginning of the eighteenth century, Bishop Butler said that it was a common belief that nothing was left of revelation worth arguing about. About 1760 Voltaire predicted that before the close of that century Christianity would cease to exist, but the very house where Voltaire then lived and wrote, has since been used for a Bible depository, and, as we saw in a previous chapter, Christianity is increasing in geometrical ratio. "Hammer on ye rebel bands."

"Your hammers break, God's anvil stands."

Paulus,-1761-1851,-Professor at Heidleburg, denied the supernatural and attempted to explain all the miracles of the New Testament as natural occurrences. According to his theory, the Magi and their coffers were but Jewish pedlers; the star, a comet, or a passing meteor; the salutation of the angel to Mary, a joyous thought; the vision of Zacharias a flash of hallucination; his dumbness, a stroke of paralysis; the glory of the Lord shining around the shepherds, the rays of a lantern carried by a man just coming over a ridge of the mountain. After Paulus, came Baur,-1792-1862,-Prof. at Tubingen, with his tendency theory, which made Christianity a gradual growth. He conceded, however, that the epistles of Paul to the Romans, to the Corinthians and to the Gallatians, together with Revelation, were genuine, and that the latter was written by John, about A.D. 68.

Strauss next arose,-1808-1874, with his mythical theory; and then came Renan, born in 1823, with his legendary theory. Each of these theories was opposed to the others, and each one has annihilated the others; while the stubborn facts of the early existence of Christianity and of the books of the New Testament have not given any of these men time enough to make their theories work. Upon the question of the time of the appearance of the books of the New Testament, there has been a gradual change of opinion on the part of the opponents of Christianity, until they themselves, assign them to A.D. 60-140. Prof. Christlieb in his "Modern Doubt, etc." has well stated this point; he says, "Baur himself first placed the gospel of Matthew between the years 130 and 134; then in the year 115; and at last in 105-110. According to C. R. Koestlin, this gospel, in its present form, originated between 90 and 100; in its original form, between

DATE OF THE ORIGIN OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 117

70 and 80. According to Hilgenfeld, probably the most distinguished of Baur's disciples, it was composed in its present form entirely before the year 80; according to Holtzmann and Keim, before the destruction of Jerusalem, that is, about 66.

The gospel of Mark has these various dates assigned to it Koestlin, before 110; Keim, 100; Hilgenfeld, before 100; Volkmar, 73; Schenkel, in its original form, between 45 and 58.

The gospel of Luke: Baur, 150; Zellar, 130; Hilgenfeld, before 120; Volkmar, 100; Koestlin, shortly before Matthew; Keim, 90; Holtzmann, with Mark, 75-80. Even as regards the gospel of John, the critical school has had to retire, step by step, from Baur's calculation, 160, to the beginning of the second century, at which time it is probable John was still living. Ewald considers that Mark wrote soon after the death of Peter; that the gospel by Matthew was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, 70; the Gospel by Luke between 75 and 80." These admissions are fatal to any theory of the spuriousness of the gospels. Dr. Lyman Abbott well asks with reference to the gospel of John, "How could a spurious gospel of a character so peculiar, so different from the earlier synoptic gospels, so utterly unhistorical, as it is claimed to be, gain currency as the work of the apostle, both among Christians and the gnostic heretics, if it originated only twenty-five or thirty years after his death, when so many who must have known whether he wrote such a work or not were still living?"

Let us now examine some of the evidences that the books of the New Testament were written in the time of the Apostles, when they purport to have been written. First: the Internal Evidences. As we examine these books, we find no appearance of deception or fraud, great changes came over the country during this era; it was taken by Babylon about 600 B.C.; by Greece, 330 B.C.; and by Rome, 60 B.C. ; so that its language, laws, money, manners and customs were constantly changing. At the time of Christ, there were two codes of laws and two systems of judicial procedure in force, the Jewish and the Roman; there were four languages, the Hebrew, the Aramaic, the Greek and the Latin; three kinds of money, Hebrew, Greek and Roman. Any writer, forging these histories, later, would have used general rather than specific terms in speaking of the money, the clothing, the courts, etc.

Prof. Rawlinson has well stated the mixed confusion of

the country at the time of Christ and subsequently, in his Bampton Lectures for 1859; he says, "A double system of taxation, a double administration of justice, and even in some instances a double military command, were the natural consequence, while Jewish and Roman customs, Jewish and Roman words, were simultaneously in use; and a condition of things existed full of harsh contrasts, strange mixtures, and abrupt transitions; within the space of fifty years, Palestine was a single, united kingdom under native rulers; a set of principalities under native ethnarchs and tetrarchs; a country, in part containing such principalities, in part reduced to the condition of a Roman province; a kingdom, reunited once more under a native sovereign; and a country reduced wholly under Rome and governed by procurators, dependent on the president of Syria, but still subject, in certain respects, to the Jewish monarch of a neighboring territory. The New Testament narrative, however, falls into no error in treating of the period; it marks incidentally and without effort or pretension, the various changes in the civil government, the sole kingdom of Herod the Great,-Matt. ii. 1; Luke i. 5,the partition of his kingdom among his sons,-Matt. ii. 22; xiv. 1; Luke iii. 1,-the reduction of Judea to the condition of a Roman province, while Galilee, Iturea and Trachonitis continued under native princes,-Luke iii. 17;—the restoration of the old kingdom of Palestine in the person of Agrippa the first,-Acts xii. 1. fol.;-the final reduction of the whole under Roman rule, and the re-establishment of procurators as the civil heads,-Acts xxiii. 24; xxiv. 27, fol.;-while a species of ecclesiastical superintendence was exercised by Agrippa the second,-Acts xxv. 14, fol. Again, the New Testament narrative exhibits in the most remarkable way, the mixture of the government, the occasional power of the president of Syria as shown in Cyrenius' taxing,-Luke ii. 2; Acts v. 37, the ordinary division of authority between the high priest and the procurator,-Matt. xxvii. 2; Acts xxii. 30; xxiii. 1-10,the existence of two separate taxations, the civil and the ecclesiastical; the census,-Matt. xxii. 17-21;--and didrachma,-Matt. xvii. 24,-of the two tribunals,-John xviii. 28, 33,-two modes of capital punishment, two military forces, Matt. xxvii. 64, 65,-two methods of marking time,Luke iii. 1;-at every turn it appears even in such little matters as verbal expressions, the co-existence of Jewish with Roman ideas and practices in the country, a co-existence, it must be remembered, which came to an end within forty years of our Lord's crucifixion." The historians immediately

the