CNT-18 THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER.

We have stated briefly a few of the facts bearing on this subject. There is room for but one conclusion. Christianity had a beginning. None of the writers of remote antiquity mention it. Neither Homer nor Hesiod, Herodotus nor Manetho, Plato nor Socrates, allude to Christ or his gospel. During the seventy years from BC 50 to AD 20, we may scan the writings of Diodorus, Caesar, Sallust, Cicero, Strabo, Livy, Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, without finding the slightest reference to the Chris­tian religion. The Jews, notwithstanding their isolation, were known and noticed; but Christianity, in its nature aggressive and expansive, was not mentioned—because it did not exist. A generation later we find in the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, Trajan, and others, distinct mention of Christ as the founder of Christian­ity, and of multitudes of Christians scattered through­out the Roman Empire. Somewhere within this narrow circle of a single lifetime, Christianity was established. If it had originated at an earlier date some trace of it would have been found. Its origin could not have been later, because all history agrees that it existed be­fore the year AD 65. When did it originate? Luke, in the third chapter of his Gospel, tells us when it was. The books of the New Testament must have been written in the first century of our era, because they are quoted in the second century, and have been quoted in every century since; and thus, by following an unbroken stream of testimony, we have followed the New Testa­ment writings back to: THE FOUNTAIN HEAD.

Having thus traced the New Testament writings, step by step, for more than eighteen hundred years, to the persons who wrote them, we at last reach their fount­ain-head, and find a Man, a Teacher, a Carpenter; sur­rounded by a few obscure, humble, unlettered Galileans. We find him claiming more than imperial power, and utter­ing commands with more than imperial authority. He directs his followers to go into all the world. He predicts that the message which he entrusts to them shall be pro­claimed to all nations; and he makes to them the strange and improbable declaration that wherever they go to do his work, He will be with them alway, even to the end of the age. We see him again with them in an upper cham­ber, where he breaks a loaf and divides it among them; he gives thanks over a cup, and bids them drink of it, and he charges them to repeat that act in remembrance of Him.

Suppose we could have sat that night as quiet specta­tors in the “large upper room.” Suppose it had been said to us, “Before the morning’s dawn, this Galilean Teacher will be betrayed by one of his disciples, denied by another, and forsaken by all; and before another sun shall set will be condemned by the priesthood of his own nation, mocked, and scourged, and crowned with thorns by the Roman soldiers, yelled after by a howling mob, sentenced to death by a Roman governor, led out and hung between two thieves upon a Roman cross, there to die in shame and ignominy, and thence be carried, amid the tears of his despairing followers, and laid in a stranger’s grave.

Suppose all this had been told, and then the question asked, “How many times will these Galileans ever gather to break the loaf and drink the cup in memory of their Master?” What would have been our answer? Should we not have said, “They will probably never meet again”? Should we not have supposed that, at the very latest, a few years would have eradicated the last trace of such an en­thusiast’s existence from the minds and memories of men? But eighteen hundred years have gone. Nations have risen and fallen; the city where they met has been deso­lated, and of all its gorgeous buildings not one stone left upon another; the Jewish nation has been scattered through all the earth—a race of wandering exiles for eight­een hundred years—Imperial Rome has bowed her proud head beneath barbarian yokes; civilization has lapsed into barbarism, and barbarism has been raised again to civ­ilization; nations, and languages, and laws have perished out of mind; the decrees of the Caesars are forgotten; the commands of emperors are not worth the paper on which they were written; but probably no week has passed for the last eighteen hundred years without witnessing the obedience of His followers to the command He then uttered. In every quarter of the globe, in lands then un­discovered, in nations then unborn, in languages then unspoken, His servants and disciples have met; in magnifi­cent cathedrals, in lowly cottages, in upper chambers, and in dens and caves of the earth;—with streaming eyes and quivering voices they have rehearsed the story of his life and death, and have broken the loaf and drank the cup in solemn memory of His dying love. And in every land and nation today where this tale has been told, and under every form of government beneath the sun, men keep this feast with humble reverence, and with sympathizing love. From that mysterious Center, that life which began in the manger of poverty, and closed upon the cross of shame, there has gone forth not only a Book, which has enlightened the nations, which has spread as no other writing ever spread, among all races, languages, and tribes; but there have come down to us other memorials and monuments, striking in their significance, and world-wide in their observance. The sacred baptism in which we are “planted together in the likeness of his death,” the cup of blessing, and the loaf we break, are not the only me­morials which tell us that He has been here. Throughout the globe, which before his coming was dark with the shadows of inhumanity and sin, has streamed the radiance of his life and love. In a world where purity was but a tradition, his light and blessing has restored in many a dwelling the happiness of an Eden which was lost; and instead of a thousand gladiators hacking each other to pieces to amuse the populace in the proudest and mighti­est city of the globe,—“Butchered to make a Roman holiday,”—the good Samaritan now goes his way, lifting up the wounded and the dying, and bringing comfort to the desolate and the sad. Instead of the public shows, and pageants, and slaughters, of antiquity, we have what they knew nothing of, hospitals, asylums, refuges, and reform­atories. Instead of the magnificent temples of classic Greece, with their swarming prostitutes and their licen­tious orgies, we have the church, the university, the col­lege, the seminary, and the common school. Instead of slavery, we have freedom; instead of cruelty, we have kindness; instead of darkness, we have light; instead of Satan, we have Christ. And this change has not been through the slow pro­gression of countless ages,—it has been a sudden, personal and radical change, by which old things passed away, and all things became new. There are today, after all the boasted progression of humanity, peoples where the gospel light shines not, who are as brutal, as cruel, and as base as were the nations of antiquity.

Humanity has never civilized itself. Its redemption comes from without, and is wrought by Almighty power. There are peoples on the globe today who within the memory of man were as vile, as godless, and as blood­thirsty as were the inhabitants of Babylon, Greece, or Rome. But today they are changed;—changed with­in a few brief years, and are living as becometh the re­deemed and pardoned followers of the Prince of peace. And the change that has so often transformed races of savages and cannibals into followers of the Lamb of God, is wrought, not by human progression, but by divine mercy; not in obedience to some subtle energy, working through countless generations, but in accord­ance with the mandate of Him whose gospel is “the power of God unto salvation,” and who, eighteen hundred years ago, in the midst of poverty and shame and rejec­tion, and with the cross of Calvary full in his view, de­clared, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come.”

There is no surer indication of power than is seen in the orderly execution of the mandates of an unseen and ab­sent leader. Mighty monarchs, in the last hour of life, when they had nothing more to give, and could neither reward nor punish, have found that none would do them reverence, and have died neglected; their own mercenary servants leaving them to their fate.

There are certain secret fraternities which sometimes are very efficient. Invisible leaders direct their course of action, and terrible oaths, enforced by horrid penalties, leave the members of these associations no choice but to obey or die. But their influence is usually short-lived, and most of them soon pass and are forgotten.

There is, however, today a brotherhood of men which has long existed in the earth, and which is subject to a control more mysterious than any other of which this world affords us an example. For eighteen centuries the members of this fraternity have felt themselves bound by laws which were paramount to every earthly obliga­tion. The ties of kinship, the charms of pleasure, the authority of monarchs, and all the motives that sway the hearts of men from the highest to the lowest, have given way to some more potent bond. Every earthly ambi­tion, appetite, passion, desire, and hope has been made to yield to the power which has swayed their souls. It has linked men together who were strangers and enemies before; it has, in an hour, made them friends to those whose faces they had never seen; it has bound in close sympathy persons of differing tastes, customs, manners, habits, and education; and has sent men forth, relinquish­ing their dearest ambitions and their highest hopes, so­journing as strangers in lands unknown, and separated from the fellowships and kinships in which their hearts had found delight. They have traversed deserts; they have crossed seas; their feet have pressed the sands of every shore; they have made their homes in far-off islands; they have climbed to Alpine heights; they have made their dwelling among barbarians, savages, and canni­bals; they have gone forth from abodes of luxury and ease, to lives of poverty and toil; they have braved the terrors of the arctic circle and have sweltered beneath the burning heat of the tropics; they have voluntarily consented to endure hunger, and thirst, and hardship, and reproach, and poverty, and toil; they have allied them­selves to suffering, and have endured scourging, and chains, and imprisonment, and death itself. These men have not been reckless, nor indifferent to their own inter­ests. They have been persons of wisdom, and under­standing, and culture, fitted to grace the highest positions in society; they have sacrificed the love of friends, and faced the fury of foes; they have left the delights of home for the struggles of exile; and they have done this, not for honor, not for grandeur, not for gain, not for fame.

They have endured without complaint; they have suf­fered without repining; they have died without a mur­mur of disappointment or a word of regret. And this has been going on for many, many centuries, and is going on today. There are thousands still ready to lead a forlorn hope, and ten thousands more of their comrades are standing behind them, ready to press forward and fill the broken ranks whenever a hero falls. They have fought on thus for ages, and yet they have not won wealth, nor honor, nor power. They have had a heritage of toil, and conflict, and affliction; they have been hunted through life, hated and defamed in death, and yet they have triumphed amid it all.

What mighty force has bound such a brotherhood together? What mysterious power has launched them into the world, and held them steadfast through the roll of passing centuries? Under whose command did they go? Under whose direction have they acted? They spurn human authority in matters of the highest moment; they bow to no ruler’s behest; emperors cannot awe them, kings cannot control them, warriors cannot frighten them. What, then, is the spring of their action, what the motive that has separated them from all earthly associa­tions, and made them such a wondrous power in the world? Who is it that has spoken his commandment in their ears? Is it an Alexander, who conquered a world? There is not a man on the globe who cares for any law that Grecian conqueror made. Is it a Caesar, who ruled the mightiest empire of his age? Who cares for a Caesar now? Is it a Charlemagne, with the iron crown of Rome on his brow, or a Napoleon, with obedient myriads at his feet? These men are dead; and from their tombs there comes no voice of authority, no whisper which even a child would fear to disobey. By whose command, then, are these men of varied nationality, character and station, controlled? Whose word is it which severs every tie, and speeds them on their mighty errand? At whose direction do they brave the fury of the ocean and endure the terrors of the storm? Who bids them to cross the steppes of the desolate North, and the burning deserts of the South? Who sends them threading their paths through tropic jungles, or climbing snow-clad heights amid the grind of glaciers and the thunder of avalanches? At whose word presses forward that thin, wavering, bleeding, skirmish-line of heroes, who only fall to make room for others as noble and heroic as themselves? Have they a commander? Do they acknow­ledge and follow a leader? Who can it be? It is a Com­mander whom they have never seen; a Leader whose voice they have never heard. And who is he? One who had neither wealth nor prestige; a poor, despised Jew, trained in a carpenter’s shop at Nazareth; a man whom no mortal eye has seen for almost two thousand years; a person whose existence is doubted, whose authority is denied, whose words seem to many as idle tales; but who promises poverty, who foretells reproach, and who sets the loss of all things as one of the conditions of fellowship with him. Standing on the slope of Olivet, nearly two thousand years ago, he said to a few poor fishermen and lowly toilers, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Mat 28:18-20. This solitary command, uttered ages ago, is the obli­gation, and warrant, and encouragement of this mighty fraternity. It is this command which has held the elect of God steady in their allegiance, and devoted to their Master’s service. It is, to doubters and scoffers, the mandate of a dead Jew, the word of an impostor who has not been seen for nearly two thousand years;—a dream, a fancy, an idle tale. But somehow that word has power. Millions of men who never saw that Leader, are ready today to peril life itself to obey his commands. No emperor that ever lived had a sway so grand and glorious as that of the lowly Nazarene.

How is it that every great conqueror of earth has gone to the grave of forgetfulness, and no one heeds their wishes or their words, while this man, without position, without power, without authority, without law, or force, or wealth, or fame, has yet issued commands which are respected in every quarter of the globe, and which will live when nations die, and have a force which the de­crees of monarchs never had? What manner of man is this, whose secret whispers are heard through all the ages, and whose mandate, spoken in the ears of a few lowly dis­ciples, rolls its reverberations down to time’s remotest hour, penetrates the heart, convicts the conscience, con­trols the judgment, and rules the lives, of unnumbered myriads of the sons of men? Surely, a power like this must have a higher than human source. Surely, one whose words are mighty as these words are, must be clothed with an unearthly energy, which demonstrates him to be not merely like the first man, “of the earth earthy,” but like “the second man, the Lord from Heaven.” Not long since, three little children, a boy of ten years, with his two little sisters, one seven and the other four, living in Klum, in Eastern Prussia, wished to go to Sedalia in the state of Missouri, to join their parents who were already settled in America. None of their relatives were so situated as to be able to accompany them, and hence they were under the necessity of taking their journey alone. An aunt in Berlin furnished each of the young travelers with a little Book, on the first page of which she wrote the name, age, birthplace, and destination of the bearer; Writing below in large letters, in German, and English, and French, a single sentence taken from that book. And she told them whenever they found themselves in any trouble or difficulty, to just stand still and open those little books, and hold them up before them. The children started from their German home, traveled until they reached the seaport, embarked on board the steamer, crossed the great Atlantic, landed in America, traveled by rail more than a thousand miles westward into the heart of Missouri, showing their little passports when needful, to all with whom they came in contact; and in no case did they fail to obtain every kindness, ten­derness, and protection which could be given, every heart warming with love, and every hand being stretched forth in helpfulness to the little ones who were thus cast upon the kindness of passing strangers whom they had never seen before and would never see again, but through whose kind assistance they safely reached the far-off home of their grateful and rejoicing parents.

What little book was this, which proved to them such a precious passport? Was it a volume of the decrees and laws of an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Charlemagne? Was it an ukase of the Russian autocrat, or a decree of the emperor of Germany, which made for them a way over land and sea? No! It was none of these. It was a copy of that same New Testament which has been so wonderfully preserved through these eighteen hundred years. And what was the sentence, in German and En­glish and French, which commanded the attention, the respect, and the service of strangers, of whatever na­tionality? Was it a passage from an Eastern Veda? a maxim of Confucius? an utterance of Buddha? a com­mand of some high and mighty potentate? a commenda­tion from some vast and influential brotherhood? No! It was none of these. The sentence which opened their way and proved to them more effective than the mandate of a monarch, or the safe conduct of an emperor, was this: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me,’ saith Jesus Christ.” Are such words the vaporings of a vain pretender, a hypocritical impostor, a mere dead and buried Jew? Do they not prove themselves to be the words of a living, an Almighty Christ, who sitteth at the right hand of the throne of God, and who has said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away”? And shall not we listen to His utterances which come with such eternal power, while He says, “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last day.”