02 - Aids to Faith
II. AIDS TO FAITH. Of a remarkable phenomenon the cause or causes must be remarkable. Any humdrum explanation of a marvel denounces itself; in the matter of solution ’inadequate’ means ’unscientific!
Perhaps the wisest plan will be not to hurry to an explanation, but examine the phenomenon in detail, and that may give us glimpses of a real and sufficient solution. The CHARACTERS OF SCRIPTURE ARE A PART OF ITS TRUTH, AND AIDS TO REASONABLE FAITH IN A MATTER WHERE FAITH IS A BOON AND DISBELIEF A CALAMITY. The Bible contains many things that were hard to believe at the time, and many things that are very hard to believe now. It was the prophecies, I think, that encountered the most reasonable incredulity at the date of their delivery; but now it is the histories, or portions of them; for in our day so many of the prophecies, minute and improbable at the time, have been fulfilled to the letter, that old prophecy tends to convert the reason to faith. Well, in a minor degree the close study of character in Scripture commends to our reason the truth of many strange incidents with which these true characters are indissolubly united. This is mere preliminary discourse, so an example or two must serve. Many more will follow, if God should enable a broken old man to complete the work he has had the hardihood to begin.
Well, then, we are told in Judges, chapter xiii, that an angel, in the likeness of a man, foretold to Manoah, and also to his wife, that they should have a son, who should deliver Israel. The hospitable pair desired to feast this friendly prophet with a kid. But he declined, and advised them to oflfer it to God, So they offered the kid as a burnt-offering. Lo! as the fire rose high, their visitor went up in the flame, and then melted into the air. They fell trembling on their faces, quivermg with terror. This is a miracle; we never see miracles nowadays; and as it is natural, though fallacious, to think our narrow experience is the experience of all time and place, we find it very hard to believe them. But please follow this narrative into character.
’ And Manoah said unto his wife. We shall surely die, because we have seen God. But his wife said unto him, If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our hands, neither would he have shewed us all these things, nor would as at this time have told us such things as these.” ’ A great emergency always reveals people’s characters, and here are two characters suddenly developed in a pair that looked alike till then; but now one is all blind superstitious terror, the other all clear logic and good sense. Was this invented, and blind superstition assigned to the male, clear logic to the female? And that in the East, where women were deemed inferior, and by sure consequence made inferior.
Youth has its difficulties; but so has scepticism. Learned reason cannot readily believe that an Oriental writer invented this un-Oriental dialogue.
Keason suggests that this character-dialogue was reaUy spoken by some superstitious man and logical woman.
Well, but if so, A propoa of what were both speeches spoken?
Clearly it was a ptopos of something strange and thrilling that had stirred these two characters to, their depths, and elicited the hitherto unsuspected superiority of the wife, though Oriental.
It is hard to find a fact that could fit this character- dialogue so thoroughly as the recorded miracle does with all its details; yet the character-dialogue bears Truth engraved on its face, and so it becomes one of the aids to Faith — a humble one, of course.
John relates that Mary Magdalene told Peter and the other disciple Christ’s sepulchre was open, aoid His body risen again, and immediately both those disciples ran to the sepulchre; the other disciple outran Peter, and got there first, but hesitated at the entrance; then Peter came up and rushed in at once, and the other followed him.
Now, John did not trouble himself to account for this apparent inconsistency in the rapidity of those two disciples; he merely recorded the facts. But we, who study his lines far more than he ever studied them, come to this passage with the knowledge (1) that Peter was not a youth, and (2) that he was the most ardent and impetuous of all the Apostles. We therefore see what John does not indicate, the true significance of the two seemingly incongruous facts he records so simply; it was just this — the younger legs got first to the outside of the tomb; the more ardent and impetuous character rushed first into the awe-inspiring place where his Lord had lain. This stroke of character, unconsciously revealed by simple statement of fact, lays hold of our reason, and aids it — so far as it goes — to believe a thing that would be utterly incredible but for the weight and variety of the evidence, cotemporary, continuous, and monumentaL
Mary and Martha of Bethany are presented to us in three fragments of narrative-one by Luke, two by John, and no apparent concert between the writers — indeed, a clear absence of it. In the first passage, which is by Luke, they appear, one as a bustling housewife, the other a pious student; very distinct characters, though both thoroughly feminine; and there Luke leaves them (Luke 10:38-42). In the second passage, which is by John, bereavement eflFaces their superficial distinction for a time, and they are both tender women (John 11:21-25). In the third passage the keynote, struck by Luke, is returned to by John, and the women seem to differ entirely in his page as they had done in Luke’s (John 12:2-3).
BEFORE THE SICKNESS OF LAZARUS.
’ And a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me ’ (Luke 10:38-40).
Mary, not a word. WHEN LAZARUS WAS LYING DEAD.
Martha, who was the greater gossip, and heard news soonest, ran to meet Jesus outside the village, and at sight of Him, the first cry of her true woman’s heart was, ’Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died!" An hour later Mary heard He was in the village, and she ran, the gentle Mary, and clung passionately to His knees; and what was the first cry of her woman’s heart? "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died." The very words Martha had spoken; and if you ask me why such opposite characters said the same thing, I must reply out of Molifere, ’Ne voyez-vous pas que c’est la Nature pure qui vous parle?
Calamity efiaces even broad distinctions, if they lie above the hearts. Behold the bustling housewife and the gentle student equally merged in loving, trusting woman! (John 11:21-32).
AFTER LAZARUS WAS RESTORED TO LIFE.
Jesus came to Bethany, and supped with that family He had made the happiest in Judsea.
Lazarus was amongst those who sat at meat
Martha served, Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard — very precious — and anointed the feet of Jesus (John 12:2-3).
Now, did physician Luke sit down in one place and coin these two names, and invent their characters, so opposite in household matters? Did fisherman John sit down in another place, and adopt Luke’s names, yet out of his own invention present Luke’s bustling housewife and his absorbed student as one woman in the depths of the heart? Did this same John afterwards go back in his invention, Heaven knows how, to Luke’s keynote and present his one-hearted mourners as women differing greatly in every-day Kfe, and especially in their way of honouring a beloved guest? This solution is incredible, and no man sees its absurdity more clearly than a veteran writer of fiction; such a man knows the artifices of art and the limits of art. Now, here the artifices are absent, and the limits surpassed.
No; the sisters of Bethany were real creatures, written about piecemeal by two independent writers, who each recorded what little he knew about them.
Thus handled, they differ from each other in domestic character, but agree in the deeper affections, and they never differ so much from each other as they both do from the male of our species. But in truth nobody doubts that these were real characters that diflFerod, and real hearts that agreed.
What has not been universally observed is that the reality of the characters is inseparable from the truth of the narrative, and stands or falls with it. The whole record occupies only five verses in Luke and fourteen in John, and the characters are not created on the modem plan; they exist only by the facts. Try to believe the characters, yet doubt the facts; you will find you cannot really do it. If you are as honest and resolute as the thing deserves, you will come to this, either both the characters are a daring fiction concocted miraculously by a fisherman and a doctor, writing in different places and at different times, or else the facts, which exhale the characters like a rose its perfume, are as true as those characters are.
If the Old and New Testament, looked into, should be found to teem with examples of this sort, was I wrong to say that. The characters of Scripture are a part of its truth, and aids to reasonable faith in a matter where faith is a boon and disbelief a calamity ’? But if the characters of Scripture are both a marvel of the mind and also aids to faith, surely we ought to give up skimming them, and study them. Put them at their lowest, and they are a gold-mine; and in that mine surface-washing has been productive; but to dig is bettor.
I begin purposely with one of the smaller characters. A place is not vouchsafed him in the old collections of Bible characters, and even of late he has been disposed of in a page or two as one of ’ the lesser lights.’ But who knows? we may rate him higher if we study, not skim, him.