0.4-Testimonials

Testimonials The author is a lawyer, very learned in his profession, acute, critical, and used to raising and meeting practical doubts. Author of a treatise on the law of evidence, which has become a classic in the hands of the profession which he adorns, and teacher in one of the Law Seminaries which do honor to our country in the eyes of Europe, he brings rare qualifications for the task he assumes. That he should, with the understanding and from the heart, accept the Gospel as the truth, avow it as his Hope, and seek to discharge a duty to his fellow-men by laying before them the grounds on which he founds this acceptance and this hope, are cheering circumstances to the Christian, and present strong appeals to the indifferent. To his profession, to the lawyers of the country, however, this work makes a strong appeal. They are a very secular profession. Their business is almost wholly conversant with material interests. Their time is absorbed in controversies, of passion, or of interest. Acute, critical, and disputatious, they apparently present a field unpropitious for the acceptance of a religion, spiritual, disinterested, and insisting on perfect holiness. Still, they necessarily need to know and must enforce the rules of finding truth and justice; the principles for ascertaining truth and dispensing justice are the great subjects of all their discussions, so far as they are discussions of any general principle. From this cause it is, that this profession has numbered among its members, in every age, Christians of great eminence, and in our own day and country, we cannot turn to the eminent men of this profession in any large community, without the satisfaction of finding our Faith embraced by those whose habits of practical as well as speculative investigation, render them evidently the best able to appreciate its claims and to detect any imperfections in its proof. So we trust it always may be; and we are assured that the best models of the mode of investigating matters of legal controversy as the proof of facts, are writings on the evidences. Paley’s treatise and that of Chalmers, on the oral testimony in favour of Christ’s mission, Paley’s examination of the writings of the apostle Paul, are, we are assured, the best models extant for forming the habit of examining oral and documentary evidence. These are subjects on which it is of vital importance, in a secular view, that a lawyer’s habits should be right: in a spiritual view the importance is unspeakable. Mr. Greenleaf has doubtless felt this truth, and has also felt that his position would give to his labours some authority with his brethren and with the public. He has given himself honourably to the labour, and spread its results before the world. It is long since Infidelity has found its advocates among the truly learned. Among the guesses and speculations of a small portion of unsanctified medical men, she still finds now and then a champion. Historians and philosophers have long since discussed her pretensions. And now from the Jurists and Lawyers, the practical masters of this kind of investigation, works are appearing, whereby not only an earnest reception of the Gospel is manifested, but the mode and means of investigation are pointed out and shown to correspond with those principles of action and of credit by which all human affairs are governed. We lose in respect to our own investigations on this subject by its very sacredness. We have an idle dread, that it is not open to free investigation; to severe practical tests. We need to be invited, to be pressed to examine this subject freely. Dr. Chalmers in one department of this inquiry has led the way. Mr. Greenleaf in another has also presented an example. And it will not be competent, after these men have thus investigated and taught the rules and laws of investigation, for any man who is not willing to arrogate superior claims to learning and ability, to turn aside superciliously from an examination of the Gospels. Such are our views of this work which we commend to all; to the legal profession, from the character of its topics and the rank of its author to men desirous of knowledge, in every rank in life, because of its presenting this subject under such treatment as is applied to every day practical questions. It does not touch the intrinsic evidences of the Gospel: those which to the believer are, after all, the highest proofs. But it is to be remembered, that these are proofs which are not satisfactory until an examination of the outward evidence has led men to the conviction, that the Gospels cannot be false.

-Extract from the New York Observer, October 24, 1846.

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It is the production of an able and profound lawyer, a man who has grown gray in the halls of justice and the schools of jurisprudence; a writer of the highest authority on legal subjects, whose life has been spent in weighing testimony and sifting evidence, and whose published opinions on the rules of evidence are received as authoritative in all the English and American tribunals; for fourteen years the highly respected colleague of the late Mr. Justice Story, and also the honored head of the most distinguished and prosperous school of English law in the world. -North American Review

It is no mean honor to America that her schools of jurisprudence have produced two of the first writers and best esteemed legal authorities of this century-the great and good man, Judge Story, and his worthy and eminent associate, Professor Greenleaf. Upon the existing Law of Evidence (by Greenleaf) more light has shone from the New World than from all the lawyers who adorn the courts of Europe. -London Law Magazine

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{eS module note: I wanted to add one more testimonial. This one is from Josh McDowell.... Dr. Simon Greenleaf, in my country, is probably one of the greatest legal minds in the history of America. He was the professor, the famous royal professor of law at Harvard University Law School. He wrote the three great volumes on the Laws of Legal Evidence, which were used to evaluate evidence in the court of law to see if it is credible. He was a skeptic, not a believer and he used to mock and put down the Christians in his law classes at Harvard. Well one year, some Christians in the law class got tired of it so they challenged Greenleaf to take his three volumes on the Laws of Legal Evidence and apply his expertise and these principles to the evidence for the resurrection of Christ. Now that wasn’t a bad challenge. After much persuasion, he had to accept it or lose all of his integrity. He started to apply his principles of evaluating evidence to the resurrection. In the process, he became a believer. He went on to write a very large book on testimony – The Four Evangelists, According to the Laws of Legal Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice [that’s what this eS module is!]. And this great legal mind concluded, that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the best established facts of history, now listen – according to the laws of legal evidence administered in the courts of justice.}