IV. CONDITIONS OF HEART WHICH FRUSTRATE FAITH
CHAPTER IV CONDITIONS OF HEART WHICH FRUSTRATE FAITH
Jesus knew the pyschological make-up of man and thus He knew what would thwart and what would promote the growth of faith. In the parable of the sower He has shown us that not merely the nature of the seed sown, but also the condition of the soil into which the seed falls, will determine whether or not fruit will be brought forth. The parable is, among other things, an explanation of why all did not accept Jesus' message. And it placed the responsibility for the wrong condition of the heart on man himself.
The proof that this parable is an explanation of why all men do not believe is found not only in Jesus' reference, which we shall quote in a moment, concerning the condition of their hearts in general, but it is also shown by the explanation of the parable itself. Jesus said: "Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith: By hearing we shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive; for (and this is the reason, J. D. B.) this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed: lest happily they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should turn again, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear . . . Hear then ye the parable of the sower. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the evil one, and snatcheth away that which has been sown in his heart. This is he that was sown by the way side. And he that was sown upon the rocky places, this is he that heareth the word, and straightway with joy receiveth it; yet bath he not root in himself, but endureth for a while; and when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, straightway he stumbleth. And he that was sown among the thorns, this is he that heareth the word: and the care of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. And he that was sown upon the good ground, this is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it: who verily beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." (Matthew 13:13-23). Let us examine this parable and show how that the various conditions of heart may keep people from examining and understanding the word. And these conditions will continue as long as they are willing for them to continue. If and when they become willing they, too, can understand and obey the word.
I. THE HEART WHICH HEARS NOT
It is possible for an individual to become so engrossed in some things that he fails to see other things. For example, one who is engrossed in a book, or a certain piece of research, may not hear the noise around him, and may have to be addressed several times before he becomes conscious that someone has spoken to him. This, of course, is very helpful provided that an individual does not fail to hear and to do those things which are most needful for life. It is possible to become so engrossed that one fails to see the good or to heed the danger which is before him. People have walked into telephone poles because they were engrossed in something and failed to notice where they were going. Pre-occupation, when overdone, can become an enemy to the development of character and spirituality.
There are people who become so engrossed in some small area of scientific investigation that everything else becomes unimportant and somewhat unreal for them. Through years of concentration on matter and its relationship they may be led to conclude that matter is all that exists, and yet in this very instance it has been mind and not matter which has been intently studying matter. Other things may be neglected until he no longer responds to things which once fascinated him. Darwin wrote that "Up to the age of thirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure; and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare especially in the historical plays. I have also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. . . .my mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. . . If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the part of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." John Locke, who recognized that "the works of nature are contrived by a wisdom" which surpasses our faculties to conceive completely, stated as follows that truth which we are considering. "Because matter being a thing that all our senses are constantly conversant with, it is so apt to possess the mind, and exclude all other things but matter, that prejudice, grounded on such principles, often leaves no room for the admittance of spirits, or the allowing any such things as immaterial beings. . . when yet it is evident, that by mere matter and motion, none of the great phenomena of nature can be resolved."
Tyndall, by no means a believer in the Bible, recognized this truth when he pointed out that the devotion of a life to a different classes of ideas, and he had reference to a particular scientist, "tended rather him less instead of more competent to deal with theological and historic questions."
This pre-occupation may be centered not only in science, but in social relationships; business; the pursuit of wealth; or anything else which so fills one's mind that nothing which is not in line with it can enter. What the mind is filled with and set on determines what the mind will see. It will tend to pass over all that is foreign to its desire and purpose. What it does take in it construes in terms of its own interests and purpose. Because it has no desire for the spiritual, because it considers the religious to be of no value, it passes by without any adequate examination. It is unwilling to bother with it for it is foreign to what the person has in mind to accomplish in life. Some live in such a hurry that they are robbing themselves of an opportunity to study seriously the goal of life. When questions concerning God; the origin and the destiny of life; of the meaning of life; arise in their consciousness they impatiently brush them aside and busy themselves about other things. They are too busy to try to meet the deeper needs of their own nature.
The effect, on one's attitude toward life and God, of so much ceaseless hustle and bustle has been well stated by Alvin Hobby. "Life in all its phases has been speeded up to such a degree that it is hard for the average person even to keep up. Like an incident in Alice in Wonderland, you have to run as hard as you can and keep on running just to stay where you are!
"Consequently, we are in a hurry from the cradle to the grave. We are always wishing for tomorrow or next week--just any time but the present. This is a fast age, and we have to keep up some way, somehow, and even push things a little sometimes. If we don't, we'll soon get hopelessly behind. The sign at the railroad crossing reads, 'Stop! Look! Listen! Instead we skip, hop, and hasten! And many of our proverbs have necessarily been changed and given a modern version. 'We never do today that which can be put off until tomorrow.'
"This hurry and uneasiness soon becomes a part of us. To a certain extent, it carries over to our 'recreation,' and we are not content unless we are on the run all the time. This soon leads to intemperance in general. There are so many places to go and so many things to do that we find it hard to get to bed before eleven o'clock any night: and many times it is much later. Then, after a few hours of sleep we arise with a bad case of 'the morning-after' feeling, a bad temper, and a bad taste for humanity in general.
"But, it's a great life--for awhile! Matters soon go from bad to worse because many seem to think that the best way to forget the effects of one drunk is to get on another. But the things we follow for pleasure, if carried to excess, may soon become actually boresome to us, so that we try to change from one thing to another, until we come to the realization of the fact that we have set a pace that we cannot maintain without disastrous results both physically and mentally: and then we are downright miserable. We are disgusted with life: everything goes wrong: and nothing really matters any longer.
"It is said that misery likes company, and this is likely true. So, in a feeble attempt to justify our wretched condition and give our dying consciences a little ease, we try to place the whole world on a level with us. Nobody is honest. Everybody is a cheat and a pickpocket--if given a chance, and has a selfish motive for everything he does. And then, as a final step, we kill our dying consciences (if not already dead) and dispense with all moral and spiritual obligations and responsibilities simply by saying that all religion is so much bunk and that 'Our Father who is in heaven is dead'."
This is the type of heart that Jesus referred to in the parable of the sower as the wayside hearer. "The wayside hearer hears the word, but does not understand it,--or, to use a phrase which expresses at once the literal and the figurative truth, does not take it in. Thoughtlessness, spiritual stupidity, arising not so much from want of intellectual capacity as from preoccupation of mind, is the characteristic. . .Their mind is like a footpath beaten hard by the constant passage through it of 'the wishes of the flesh and the current thoughts' concerning common earthly things. For a type of the class we may take the man who interrupted Christ while preaching on one occasion, and said: 'Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.' (Luke 12:13). He had just heard Christ utter the words, 'And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates and powers,' (Luke 12:11) , and these suggested to him the topic on which his thoughts were habitually fixed--his dispute with his brother about their patrimony. And so it happened to him according to the parable. The truth he had heard did not get into his mind, hardened as it was like a beaten path by the constant passage through it of current thoughts about money: it was very soon forgotten altogether, caught away by the god of this world, who ruled over him through his covetous disposition. It may be regarded as certain that there were many such hearers in the crowd by the lake,--men in whose minds the doctrine of the kingdom merely awakened hopes of worldly prosperity,--who, as Jesus afterwards told them, laboured for the meat that perisheth, not for the meat that endureth unto everlasting life. (John 2:27). Such were they who 'received seed by the wayside'."4As Arnot said: "The place is a thoroughfare; a mixed multitude of this worlds affairs tread over it from day to day, and from year to year. It is not fenced like a garden, but exposed like an uncultivated common. That secret of the Lord, 'Enter into thy closet,' and 'shut the door', is unknown: or if known, neglected. The soil, trodden by all comers, is never broken up and softened by a thorough self-searching. A human heart may thus become marvellously callous both to good and evil. The terrors of the Lord and the tender invitations of the Gospel are alike ineffectual. Falling only upon the external senses, they are swept off by the next current; as the solid grain thrown from the sower's hand rattles on the smooth hard road side, and lies on the surface till the fowls carry it away.”
And thus the heart is so preoccupied that it does not try to understand the message. "He does not recognize himself as standing in any relation to the word which he hears, or to the kingdom of grace which that word proclaims. All that speaks of man's connection with a higher invisible world, all that speaks of sin, of redemption, of holiness, is unintelligible to him, and without, significance."
This danger is not only one to which non-Christians are exposed, but also Christians if they are not careful. One may listen to the word that is preached, or read the Bible, simply as a mere form and never apply or meditate on what he has read. "The soul may be sermon-hardened, as well as sin-hardened. One may get into the habit of having the verities of the gospel presented to him, and resisted by him, that by and by he takes no note whatever of what is said by the preacher, and it falls on the outside of him, like rain upon a rock, or snow upon a roof. There is little danger of this, perhaps, in an age or in a place in which gospel privileges are rare, but it becomes very real and insidious in days like our own, when these blessings are so commonly and so regularly enjoyed; and there are too many in all our congregations like Tennysons 'Northern Farmer' of the old school, who said about the parson,
'And I always came to his church, before my Sally were dead, And heard him a-bumming away like a buzzard-clock over my head; And I never knew what he meant, but I thought he had something to say, And I thought he said what he ought to have said, and I came away.'
"This is a very serious peril, and has to be strenuously looked after, especially by those who have from their early years been constant attendants on the sanctuary. The preacher may do much to counteract it, indeed, by cultivating fresh methods of presenting and enforcing the truth, and by adjuring all stereotyped phraseology in his discourses: but the hearer, also must use means to neutralize it, and should seek to stir up his attention when he enters the place of worship, by pausing a little to ask himself why he is there, and to lift up his heart in prayer to God, for the open ear to hear, and the open heart to receive, the message which his Lord has, in his providence, prepared for him." To fail to recognize and avoid this danger may lead one to become involved in such a sense of the unreality of Christianity, a feeling that it is composed of mere words, that he may finally drift away from it and repudiate it.
The person who allows his thinking to be so dominated by things of this world that he refuses to think on the purpose of life: the longing of his own spiritual nature which may manifest itself from time to time only to be ignored or thwarted; and to weigh the claims of religion; has placed himself under the influence of the evil one to the extent that for the time being he has access to the person's heart and through evil thoughts, passions, lusts, and various forms of preoccupations, snatcheth away the seed. For this the individual is responsible since the weapons which Satan is using against him are weapons which he himself has placed in the devils hands. Only because he is willing to have it that way does the devil have such easy access to his heart. When he is willing to have it otherwise, he can hear and heed the word of the kingdom.
II. THE SHALLOW, UNTHINKING INDIVIDUAL
"Moving with the tide", fitly characterizes the lives of some individuals. When the tide flows in favor of religion, when their crowd is going that way, they go that way. When the crowd turns, they turn with it. They are the ones who receive the word but who have no root in themselves and when difficulties arise because of the word they reject the word. "The characteristic of this class is emotional, excitability, inconsiderate, impulsiveness. They receive the word readily with joy; but without thought. The latter trait is not indeed specified, but it is clearly implied in the remark concerning the effect of tribulation, persecution, or temptation on this class of hearers. They had not anticipated such experiences, they did not count the cost, there was a want of deliberation at the commencement of their religious life, and by implication a want of that mental constitution which ensures that there shall be deliberation, that is the fault of the class now under consideration, not the mere fact of their receiving the word with joy. . .the joy of the good and honest heart is a thoughtful joy, associated with and springing out of the exercise of the intellectual and moral powers upon the truth believed. The joy of the stony ground hearer, on the contrary, is a thoughtless joy coming to him through the effects of what he hears upon the imagination and the feelings. Joy without thought is his definition. "
Of course a religious experience of this character cannot last; it is doomed to prove abortive. For tribulation, persecution, temptation in some form, will come, not to be withstood except by those whose whole spiritual being--mind, heart, conscience --is influenced by the truth: and even by them only by the most strenuous exertion of their moral energies. A man who has been touched only on the surface of his soul by a religious movement, who has been impressed on the sympathetic side of his nature by a prevalent enthusiasm, and has yielded to the current without understanding what it means, whither it tends, and what it involves,--such a man has no chance of persevering under the conditions of trial amidst which the divine life has to be lived in this world. He is doomed to be scandalised by tribulation, to apostatise in the season of temptation. For he bath not root in himself, in his moral personality, in the faculties constituting personality--the reason, conscience, and will--which remain hard, untouched, unpenetrated by the fibres of his faith: his root is in others, in a prevalent popular enthusiasm: his religion is a thing of sympathetic imitation. He is not only-- temporary, but likewise in the sense of being a creation of the time, a child of the zeitgeist. He comes forth as a professor of religion 'at the call of a shallow enthusiasm, and through the epidemic influence of a popular cause.' And this fact largely explains his temporariness. When the tide of enthuasiasm subsides, and he is left to himself to carry on single-handed the struggle with temptation, he has no heart for the work, and his religion withers away, like the corn growing on rocky places under the scorching heat of the summer sun. "
As Welsh pointed out, unbelief sometimes becomes the fashion; just as it is sometimes fashionable to believe. "One observes how commonly professed belief in Christianity is a matter of mere social fashion and traditional convention, not hypocritical, but imitative and superficial. Equally may men's minds be caught by an epidemic of doubt, falling victim to a social vogue or disbelief. Is there not a social infection of scepticism, a craze for questioning, abroad today?
'Had I been born three hundred years ago, They'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes."
And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course." But now, "He may believe: and yet--and yet -- How can he?'"
"In estimating the significance of present-day unbelief, we have to recall the fact that the same infection visited Britain during the latter part of the seventeenth, and again of the eighteenth century. May it not be a recurrent epidemic? A century ago Voltaire, Rousseau, and the French Encyclopaedists killed the Christain religion. Voltaire pronounced it dead. But the room where he penned its obituary afterwards became a Bible Depot. How many lives this faith of Jesus has shown that it possesses! Its power of Resurrection, its power to outlive perversions and criticism, is surely a sign that in it lies the Truth eternal. Just when our modern prophets are declaring that the old faith is losing its hold, it is commanding more of the general intelligence of the world, and displaying more activity all around our globe, than it has done in any century of the past. 'The lesson of life,' says Emerson, 'is to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours'."
III. CHRISTIANITY CROWDED OUT
The wayside heart never gave the word an opportunity because its attention was centered on other things. The thorny heart is somewhat like it, not that it did not receive the word, but that it later permitted the word to become crowded out. It may be crowded out because of the wrong attitude toward life's riches or life's cares: or (as recorded in Luke 8:14) by the cares, riches, and pleasures of this life. It may seem strange that such different things can result in the same consequences. "But the Lord, in fact, here presents to us this earthly life on its two sides, under its two aspects. There is, first, its crushing oppressive side, the poor man's toil how to live at all, to keep hunger and nakedness from the door, and struggle for a daily subsistence, 'the cares of this life,' which, if not met in faith, hinder the thriving of the spiritual word in the heart. But life has its flattering as well as its threatening side, its pleasures not less than its cares; and as those who have heard and received the word of the kingdom with gladness are still in danger of being crushed by the cares of life, so, no less, of being deceived by its flatteries and its allurements." "Both from our own experience in the world and the specific terms employed by the Lord in the interpretation of the parable, we learn that all classes and all ranks are on this side exposed to danger. This is not a rich man's business, or a poor man's; it is every man's business. The words point to the two extremes of worldly condition, and include all that lies between them. 'The care of the world' becomes the snare of those who have little, and 'the deceitfulness of riches,' the snare of those who have much. Thus the world wars against the soul, alike when it smiles and when it frowns. Rich and poor have in this matter no room and no right to cast stones at each other. Pinching want and luxurious profusion are, indeed, two widely diverse species of thorns; but when favoured by circumstances they are equally rank in their growth and equally effective in destroying the precious seed."
Our time and attention are limited. When we allow corroding cares to paralyze the mind and to hide from us the spiritual; or the deceitfulness of riches to render the spiritual tasteless and undesirable; we are of the thorny ground which chokes to death the word of God so that it does not bring forth fruit in our life.
This does not mean that an individual deliberately decides to repudiate Christianity; no, far from it. He does not carefully examine the evidences of Christianity; consider clearly the consequences of such a rejection; and then renounce the faith. He simply lets other things crowd and choke it. An analogy drawn from physical life may enable this to be seen more clearly. There are many physical wrecks in this world who never set out to be physical wrecks. No one convinced them, by a series of arguments, that health is highly undesirable and that sickness is the state of life which is highly to be desired. All that they had to do, to become physical wrecks, was to neglect those things which are necessary to health and to drift into those habits which undermine health. Just so, those represented as the thorny ground do not necessarily listen to, or become convinced by, arguments against the Christian faith. They simply neglect the cultivation of the spiritual life; they permit the word--and meditation on it and practice of it--to be crowded out of their lives; and they end up spiritual wrecks. This, we are persuaded, is the case with a large percentage of the individuals who lose faith. In fact, they and those represented by the stony ground constitute the overwhelming majority of those who have lost faith.
IV. THE GOOD AND HONEST HEART
The person with the good and honest heart is not already a Christian. He is the person, however, who wants to do good and is honest and thus willing to admit; to accept; and act on the truth when he sees it. His "aim is noble" and he "is generously devoted to his aim." His mind is "raised above moral vulgarity, and is bent, not on money-making and such low pursuits, but on the attainment of wisdom, holiness, righteousness.' He wants to do the good and is willing to listen to the truth although it may try his soul and call on him for effort and sacrifice. Taylor well characterized this type of heart as possessing the following qualities which enable it to profit by the word. "The qualities which such hearts bring to the hearing of the gospel are these: Attention: they hear. Meditation: they keep. Obedience they bring forth fruit with patience."
In addition to the things which we have already mentioned, there are certain other psychological factors which are favor able to the growth of unbelief. The first one of these which we shall mention deals with the way in which vague rumors can contribute to unbelief.
V. RUMORS RUIN WHEN BIAS IS BUILT UP
Vague rumors may instill doubts into some minds and upset them because of their threatening nature. "Vague hints that learned men have objected to such and such things, and have questioned this or that, often act like an inward slow-corroding canker in the minds of some who have never read or heard anything distinct on the subject; and who, for that very reason, are apt to imagine these objections, etc., to be much more formidable than they really are. For there are people of perverse mind, who, really possessing both learning and ingenuity, will employ these to dress up in a plausible form something which is, in truth, perfectly silly: and the degree to which this is sometimes done, is what no one can easily conceive without actual experience and examination I know that many persons are a good deal influenced by reports and obscure rumors of the opinions of some supposed learned and able men, without knowing distinctly what they are; and are likely to be made uneasy and distrustful by being assured that this or that has been disputed, and so and so maintained by some person of superior knowledge and talents, who has proceeded on 'rational' grounds; when perhaps they themselves are qualified, by their own plain sense, to perceive how irrational these fanciful notions are, and to form a right judgement on the matter in question.
These vague suspicions may gradually build up a bias against the Bible and so weaken faith that it may easily be upset by some great sorrow, or fall victim to the desires and inclinations of the individual to sin. It is necessary therefore for an individual, who has been disturbed by these things, to settle the doubts which have been raised by examining the rumors and the foundation on which they are based. He will find, as has been the experience of the writer, that the "reasons" on which the "learned" men have based their objections to the Bible are not nearly so reasonable or convincing as they try to make them appear. Often no more is necessary to dispel the doubt than a clear statement of the reasons on which the person based his objections. The author well remembers reading a book by a famous scholar, Dr. Goodspeed, in which objections were offered to Paul's authorship of a certain epistle. A mere reading of his arguments was enough to see their absurdity if a person read without his eyes being blinded by certain irrational assumptions. The only word the writer could find to express his verdict was: "Bosh."
One should not, however, meet the doubts which are in the minds of others with such an expression. He must show, not merely say, that it is bosh. Or he must show, in some cases, that the difficulties which are involved are not such as to undermine faith. To fail to do so is to add another burden to a faith which is already weak. This is sometimes done when one answers the question of a believer, who is having difficulty with some things in the Bible, by saying that he must believe it because the Bible says it. This answer is sufficient when the individual has been fully assured on other grounds that the Bible is the word of God. When he has a number of reasons for the hope which is within him, when he has strong faith in the Bible, it will not harm his faith to give such an answer. If, on the other hand, the person is weak in the faith and has never examined carefully the field of Christian evidence, the difficulty in the Bible is a strain on his weak faith. And to say that he must believe it just because the Bible says so is not enough since the thing itself is weakening his faith in the Bible. Do not overload a weak faith. One should deal with the difficulty and show that it is not an obstacle to faith in the Bible. In many cases it will be possible to show the objection is based on a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of the Bible. When the explanation is given that particular difficulty to the person's faith is removed and his faith becomes stronger.
The following quotation from Dr. Green, concerning Bishop Colenso, seems to indicate that a failure to deal with doubts as they arose; the crowding of them into the back of the mind; and then trying to face them without being aware of the bias that this process had built up against the faith; was one of the reasons that he lost faith.
"Now, we have no idea that anything which we, or anyone else, can say in reply to the like objections which Bishop Colenso has brought against the Pentateuch will alter the state of his mind, or that of others like-minded with him. The difficulty is in the whole attitude which he occupies. He has picked out a few superficial difficulties in the sacred record, not now adduced for the first time, not first discovered by himself. They seem, however, to have recently dawned upon his view. He was aware, long before, of certain difficulties in the scriptural account of the creation and deluge; and instead of satisfactorily and thoroughly investigating these, he was content, he tells us, to push them off, or thrust them aside, satisfying himself with the moral lessons, and trusting vaguely, and, as he owns, not very honestly (p. 47), that there was some way of explaining them (pp. 4-5). The other difficulties, which have since oppressed him, he then had no notion of; in fact, so late as the time when he published or prepared his Commentary on the Romans (p. 215) he had no idea of ever holding his present view. As there is nothing brought out in his book which unbelievers have not flaunted and believing expositors set themselves to explain long since, we are left to suppose that his theological training as a minister and a bishop, and his preparation as a commentator, could not have been very exact or thorough. If the Pentateuch is the book of absurdities he asserts, and these are so palpable as he asserts, and yet he never saw it or imagined it until now, his wits must have been recently sharpened, or his acquaintance with the book of which he was a professed teacher and expounder must have been limited indeed."
The bias built by a failure to deal honestly with his first difficulties left him in no frame of mind which would enable him to be victorious over additional difficulties; especially if he began to look for them and gathered a whole lot of them at once. A faith already weakened by difficulties which he had concluded could not be solved, was certainly in no position to bear a large number of other difficulties.
VI. A BIAS CREATED BY FAULTY READING IN CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE
The first glance that the unbeliever takes at a work on Christian evidence will not dissolve his doubt. In fact, a hasty scanning of a book on the subject may tend to increase his infidelity since it in the author will state, and answer, a good many objections which have never occurred to the unbelieving scanner. These may strike him by their novelty; because they are right in line with his present state of mind; and because it is easier to see the objection, when briefly stated, than the answer which may take some time. It may take, in fact it generally will, some time and effort to attend closely to the answers and to weigh them fairly.
Dr. Nelson, who was once an infidel, made a similar observation and then pointed out the cure. "An infidel, when he begins to read on the evidences of Christianity, becomes more doubting and sceptical than ever, or more confirmed in his unbelief. This continues to increase during the former part of the research; but let him persevere in a thorough investigation, and he begins to have a view of the truth, and is at last delivered altogether from the thraldom of the delusion. The facts are accurately pictured by the words of the much worn expression concerning the Pierian spring: the same waters that at first intoxicate, will sober again if drank plentifully. Many who begin to read, after glancing through one or two volumes hastily, lay them aside more entangled in error than they were and thinking within themselves that they have read the strongest arguments that can be brought forward in favor of divine inspiration. Their condition is of course more deplorable than it was. Others do hastily examine a few volumes and are not well enough informed to be able to understand clearly, and fairly weigh the arguments of the author; these may desist before they have mastered the subject. Others may need a second or third perusal of the same pages before they can clearly view and appropriate the contents. Such may fancy that they have examined the subject, when they really have not. But of those who have read six or eight authors on that subject, clearly, attentively, impartially, industriously, and renewedly if necessary, I have never known one who did not cast away his infidelity. If anyone should ask why we request the unbeliever to read many authors on the same subject, the evidences of Christianity, we answer, that no two minds take the same course in writing on this subject. The arguments and evidences could not be condensed or abridged into a score of large volumes. Of course each writer is expected merely to select such ideas as strike him most forcible (or which are in line with the particular phase of the subject on which he is writing and the specific objection which he is answering, J. D. B.). True, I have never read the author on the evidences of Christianity who did not seem to me in some one way or another to establish the position, This is God's book: but the further we push our researches, meditations, and inquiries, the more readily can we proceed, and the more capable are we of comprehending additional research. The case is by no means an uncommon one, where a reader lays down an author on this subject with disappointment and dissatisfaction, finding it, as seems to him, very little excellence of any kind. Twelve months after, upon taking up casually the same volume, he is astonished at a thought there which he had not noticed before. He proceeds, and many of the arguments there appear as clear and distinct as a stream of electricity over a dark cloud. The reason of this is, that his mind is in a condition better to perceive, weight and prize the argument. His mind becomes thus better capable while reading other things on the same subject in other writers."
VII. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTION OF A FAULTY EXPECTATION
There are individuals who made a profession of faith, but who have given it up after maintaining that it did not work for them. This is due to a misunderstanding of the nature of the faith. Through false teaching, teaching which is not sustained by the Bible but which some have taught because they were ignorant of the Bible, some individuals have been led to expect that when they believe and are saved that God will send them some sort of feeling. When they do everything that they are told to do, by those who are teaching them this type of error, and they do not feel any different they give up and maintain that Christianity does not work for them.
The Bible does not teach that a person gets a certain feeling as the evidence that he has been accepted by God. It is true that a Christian ought to have a peace of heart and mind but this is produced by his confidence in the word of God. Feelings flow from the faith; feeling does not produce the faith. The apostles of Christ presented the credentials of Christ and on the basis of these credentials told the people that they could know assuredly that God had made Jesus both Lord and Christ and that by Him the world was to be judged (Acts 2:38; Acts 17:31). The faith which is based on these credentials is a full assurance that what God has promised He is able to perform, and thus the Christian feels good because of his confidence in God's word. But he does not regard the feeling as a sign that Christianity is really working for him.
When one has obeyed the gospel, and has the full assurance of faith (based on God's word) that God has pardoned him, Christianity also works for him in the sense that he continues his obedience and instills its principles into life. He does not lie down and expect the principles of the Christian life to work for him without any effort of his own, but he finds that its principles work when put to work in one's life. The proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof, and through walking by Christian principles the individual increasingly realizes that they go in the right direction; that they meet the deep spiritual needs of man; and that they develop men as does nothing else. In this way he finds that Christianity works.
VIII. A PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTION TO A FEELING OF UNREALITY
In speaking of Jesus as the Word, John said that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). In a different sense this must become true of each believer if he is to remain a believer. The words of Jesus Christ must become the guide of our life. Unless we let the word become flesh in us, that is, make it the way of life, we are apt to lose faith in it because it becomes unreal to us. The man who recites one thing with his lips on the Lord's day in the church service; but whose life speaks not only a foreign language but one which is also antagonistic to the Christian life, cannot long cling, with any measure of feeling of reality, to the shell of his faith. The person who does not speak some word for Christ both in defense and propagation of his faith, at some time or other; the person who does not test the principles of holiness by walking in them; the person who does not visit the sick and otherwise exercise Christian compassion; the person who does not study his Bible; pray to God; and thus do those things which are part and parcel of the Christian life; will finally give up in despair because Christianity does not have the ring of reality to him. It becomes vague to him, unreal, intangible, and thus more and more difficult to profess even lip-service to it. That which is denied by our everyday life cannot always remain the object of real faith. Thus one must remember in thought and deed that " 'nothing is so inimical to Christian belief, as unchristian conduct.' (G. J. Romanes). If faith is to be retained, it must bring life into harmony with itself."
IX. THE RESULT OF CONTINUOUS VERBALIZATION
Those, however, who do not renounce religion may continue verbalizing--saying the words of religion without giving their hearts to God. Their inward failure to submit to God is never theless revealed sooner or later. When an obligation from God is placed on them, which is contrary to their desires and ambitions their accompanying rebellion brings to the surface the fact that they have been rendering a lip-service instead of a lifeservice. Of this type of individual, with whom He was confronted in His ministry, Jesus said: "But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?" (John 5:42-44)
On these verses Meyer paraphrased and commented as follows: "I do not utter these reproaches against you from (disappointed) ambition, but because I have perceived what a want of all right feeling towards God lies at the root of your unbelief." "If they had love to God in their hearts (this being the summary of their law), they would have felt sympathy towards the Son, whom the Father (Ver. 43) sent, and would and received and recognized Him . . . love to God . . . was an excellence foreign to them, of which they themselves were destitute--a mere theory, existing outside the range of their inner life (Ver. 43)." A false prophet, Jesus said, you will receive. "He will be received, because he satisfies the opposite of the love of God, viz. self-love (by promising earthly glory, indulgence towards sin, etc.)."
In verse 44 "the reproach of unbelief now rises to its highest point, for Jesus in a wrathful question denies to the Jews even the ability to believe . . . the ground of this impossibility is: because ye receive honour one of another . . . because ye reciprocally give and take honour of yourselves. This ungodly desire of honour (comp. 12:43; Matt, 23:5 sqq.), and its necessarily accompanying indifference towards the true honour, which comes from God, must so utterly blight and estrange the heart from the divine element of life, that it is not even capable of faith." For this incapacity they were responsible, and for its continuation they were responsible for had they been willing to humble themselves, and to seek God's will above all, rather than their own way, they would have prepared their hearts for the reception of the seed of the kingdom which Jesus was proclaiming.
X. EXAMPLES OF THE BIAS OF SOME UNBELIEVERS
Lest the reader conclude many unbelievers are thoughtful men who would not allow pre-conceptions to blind them to the weight of the evidences for Christianity it is well to show that such bias does operate. Three considerations show this. First, the discussions of various causes of unbelief, in this book, show that such pre-conceptions do operate. Second, even very intelligent men, who are able to think straight on many subjects, have blind spots, rationalized patches so to speak, in their minds which as long as they tolerate them will prevent them from clear thinking on certain subects. One does not have to associate very long with scientists or read very far in what some scientists write on subjects outside, and often inside, their fields to see that they, too, have some of the common failings of humanity, such as prejudice. Third, we shall present two examples of well known figures of the past who admitted certain violent, blind prejudices, T. H. Huxley wrote as follows of the writings of a fellow agnostic, Mr. Laing: " 'Polarity', in Article VIII, for example, is a word about which I heard a good deal in my youth, when Naturphilesphie' was in fashion, and greatly did I suffer from it. For many years past, whenever I have met with 'polarity' anywhere but in a discussion of some purely physical topic, such as magnetism, I have shut the book. Mr. Laing must excuse me if the force of habit was too much for me when I read his eighth article."19In other words, no argument which was advanced after such a word was used would have any affect on Huxley, because he would not read far enough to get it.
Herbert Spencer, one of the popularizers of evolution, spoke of one of his prejudices when he said: "My knowledge of Kant's writing is extremely limited. In 1844 a translation of his 'Critique of Pure Reason' (then I think lately published) fell into my hands, and I read the first few pages enunciating his doctrine of Time and Space: my peremptory rejection of which caused me to lay the book down. Twice since then the same thing has happened: for, being an impatient reader, when I disagree with the cardinal propositions of a work I can go no further."20Instead of so hastily rejecting a work, he should have examined more closely the cardinal propositions to see whether or not they were sustained in the main body of the work. And yet, a man who regarded himself as a scientist admitted that he was such an impatient reader that, in effect, he would not follow an argument through in a book if the cardinal propositions were not at once acceptable to him. And yet some people are so prejudiced that they assume that Christians are the people who are unwilling to think and to read material which is opposed to their principles.
Although the author is far from endorsing everything done or taught by many preachers, yet bias against any of them, because of evil which some of them have done, or the evil which some of them have condemned, should not lead one to ignore the truth. Strauss clearly stated the relationship of his bias against preachers and his antagonism toward miracles. "If we wish," he wrote, "to make progress in religious matters, then these theologians who stand above the prejudices and interests of the profession must go hand in hand with the thinking laymen in the Church. As soon as even the best among the people have made progress enough to refuse what the clergy still for the most part offer them, these latter will think better of it. When Christianity has ceased to be miraculous, they will no longer be able to pronounce blessings, but only to impart instruction (if Strauss or these preachers had known the New Testament they would have recognized that imparting instruction is the function of the teacher of the gospel; and that they are today in no way miracle-men able to give or withhold the blessings of God, J. D. B.); but it is well known that the latter of these occupations is as difficult and thankless as the former is easy and profitable.' (p.XII). Therefore, 'a pressure must be brought to bear on them by public opinion. But (and this is the only italicised sentence in the whole book) whoever wishes to do away with the parsons in the Church, must first do away with the miracles in religion (p. XIX)." Christlieb comments as follows: "So this work, also, is but the means to a demagogue's ends, though not quite in the same manner as that of Schenkel. 'Our ultimate aim is not to ascertain the history of the past, but rather to help the human spirit in future to liberate itself from an oppressive yoke of belief (p.XIV) . Strauss' aim is 'not in the past, but in the future' (p.XV). He lays the axe at the root of the miraculous New Testament history, in order that, when this is done away with, the parsons may be abolished too. It is his wish to establish a free Church commonwealth, and to dissolve the different confessions into one great religion of humanity. We scarcely need to point out that this is only the effect of his old grudge against the theologians, who formerly, by their unanimous verdict against him, spoilt his career, and reduced him to the occupation of a literary man (cf. p.XIII) . We see that this grudge has rather increased than decreased from the select names, such as 'field-mice,' 'rabble,' 'vermin,' which he bestows upon us biblical theologians (p. 6). Moreover, he declares that it is not worth his while `to fight against such a rabble' as the recent apologists, because 'the conservation theology of the present day is wearying itself with the strangest contortions and the most venturesome caprioles,' and 'its paper battlements do not deserves a real siege' but yet he promises, 'for the sake of the joke, not entirely to give up doing so.' In all this, however, he forgets that haughty contempt for the opponents is everywhere the worst way to victory."
From time to time one contacts unbelievers who are so biased that they assume that they are the only ones who can give the question of faith in God an unbiased study. But Wyckoff shows that such a one as Professor Leuba was not only biased but that this bias influenced his selection and treatment of data. Of course, if it be true that one cannot examine with any degree of fairness his own position, the position in which he believes, then the unbeliever is automatically disqualified from pronouncing a fair judgement on the grounds of his own belief. If he denies the ability of the believer to evaluate his own position he has accepted a principle which denies to the unbeliever himself the ability to evaluate his own position. But let us turn to the illustration presented by Wyckoff. "
In 1912, Professor Leuba published his book, entitled A Psychological Study of Religion. In this he frankly states that he does not believe in the existence of an objective God, and argues that this fact places him in a better position to study the whole subject, because, not being a believer, he is able to approach the subject from an entirely unprejudiced point of view." After the appearance of this book, Wyckoff was "so amazed at the arbitrary manner in which Professor Leuba rejected psychological data of great importance, that we wrote a series of articles entitled, The Psychologist Among The Theologians, and The Theologians Among The Psychologists. In these, we called attention to this unwarranted rejection of so much important data upon the subject of religion. Soon after the appearance of these articles, a letter was received from the previously mentioned friend of Mr. Cutter, telling the story of the questionnaire and asking if we would consent to understand the long delayed task of reexamining this material." The material here referred to was the material on which Leuba's doctor's dissertation had been based; the dissertation, however did not deal with the data in a manner which was satisfactory to the person who had helped gather the material. "The upshot of the whole matter is that we now have in our possession the original letters upon which Mr. Leuba based the conclusions found in his thesis on Religious Conversion. At some other time we hope to make a study of them. But our examination of this data reveals the fact that Professor Leuba adopted in this instance the same method which characterized his book. All of the data used are well analyzed, but the facts left out of his calculation are most significant. Some inhibitions clearly biased his selection of material. And these inhibitions were operating in the early years while he was still a student at Clarke University. No doubt Professor Leuba honestly believes that the conclusions which he states in his two recent books A Psychological Study of Religion and The Belief in God and Immortality are the inevitable resultants from the knowledge of psychology which he has gained during twenty-five years of thorough research. But as we shall see in a later chapter, every item of his anti-theistic and anti-Christian positions is contained in his maiden thesis writted at Clarke University in 1895. In other words, he was already an unbeliever before he began to investigate the psychological data of religious experience. And this attitude of unbelief was the dominant factor which controlled his selection and rejection of data." And Leuba thought that being an unbeliever he was in a better position to deal with these matters!
XI. OVERLOADING A WEAK FAITH
Unbelief is sometimes the result of the overloading of a weak faith. A person may be perplexed by something in the Bible, and instead of making an effort to get him to see the difficulty does not undermine faith in the Bible a teacher or friend may tell the individual that he must believe it because it is in the Bible. That is all right if the individual has studied enough to have a goodly number of reasons for his faith. If, however, he has never studied Christian Evidence very much, this difficulty may be shaking his faith in the Bible and thus it is not enough to tell him to believe it because it is in the Bible. The Bible itself is being called in question. And because he does not receive any reasonable help with his difficulty it may become one more stumbling block to a faith which is already weak. To be really helpful to someone with such a weak faith one must help him to see why he should believe the Bible and why the difficulty does not destroy the Bibie.
Weak faith is also overloaded when doubt is met with the dogmatic assertion that one must believe all or nothing. This does not give the individual any reason for believing the thing which is causing him difficulty and it tends to cast doubt on what he has aready accepted. "Mr. Froude once assured his readers in 'Good Words' (the articles are included in his Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. iv.) that the Tractarian Movement, whilst headed by leaders of most devout spirit, made many sceptics among Oxford men, himself amongst the number. Mr. Lecky has been confirming this statement (Forum, June 1890) . Newman and others virtually demanded 'Believe this or--nothing! In 'this' they included such points as seemed to baffle their comprehension. Many courageous minds took them at their word. They strove to believe this, but having failed, 'Nothing be it then,' they exclaimed--and went away sorrowful." A weak faith is overloaded when all doubt is treated as if it is wicked. "Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, 'silver-tongue Coleridge,' once confessed to Keble that his mind was sorely perplexed on the question of Inspiration. Imagine the shock when he was told that 'most of the men who had difficulties on that subject were too wicked to be reasoned with.' "Such a wicked retort may be taken as a short and easy way of making sceptics. To brand men's intelligent doubts as sins that incur perdition, must, if it do not frighten them out of all thinking, go far to force them into an attitude of definance and provide them with new reasons for doubt. Bradlaugh was driven from mere mental perplexity far towards stern disbelief by the snubbing meted out to him when he carried his questions to his clergyman. Men of conscious rectitude are embittered and alienated by the insinuation that they are doubters because they are not good men, as surely as high-spirited horses are made frantic by the harsh use of bit and whip."25There are, as has been pointed out, those who are doubters because of their condition of heart; but there are also those whose doubt does not have that as its primary source. Jesus, as we shall show, did not condemn all doubt as sinful.
XII. PROCRASTINATION MAY HARDEN THE HEART
The person who continually hears a truth and is exhorted to obey it, but for various reasons postpones until a convenient season his obedience to that truth, gradually becomes hardened to it until finally it may lose its appeal to him. His constant refusal to obey the truth, his continual crushing of his better impulses which call on him to obey it, harden his heart. It may finally become so hardened that it doubts and denies the truth, perhaps in an effort to justify its disobedience. He who refuses to walk in the light has invited the darkness and the longer he continues in the darkness the farther he gets from the light and the more difficult it will be for him to find the light. Much precedes this individual's final rejection of Christ. As Dr. Lamont wrote "Many steps have preceded the final rejection. Every step in the fatal descent has meant the man's expenditure of the potential freedom which is his birthright. It has therefore meant increasing bondage. This is the inevitable corollary to the rejection of the overtures of the Divine Spirit who has kept knocking at his door. Now, it is God who is the author and substainer of the moral order. It is he who has ordained that the man who perserves along the right road will become a better man, while he who persists in keeping to the wrong road will become a worse man. If a person commits a sin without repenting he is thereby changed for the worse. Were this not so, there would be no moral order at all. And if the person continues in his downward career a climax is bound to be reached. To defy the light is to court darkness, and the time may come in the dismal process when the last beam of God's light has departed from the soul.
XIII. UNWILLINGNESS TO SUBMIT TO ITS HIGH MORAL STANDARD
Wordsworth spoke of a "revolt from the severe claims of religion and a secret inclination to sin which dwells in many hearts. Such an explanation of unbelief is one from which charity and courtesy alike would shrink, and it often seems obviously inapplicable; but a serious testing of what religion is and of the very heavy strain which it puts upon the believer, must convince us that the difficulty is no imaginary one. For experience shows us that no amount of intellect, or high culture, of noble ambition, can save a man from grave moral faults; and that even apparently sincere conviction sometimes breaks down, in cases of men who seem entirely raised above temptation. No one, I believe, can really know his own heart, without knowing also that he is by nature capable of almost any sin, and that there is within him a constant pressure, sometimes gentle, sometimes vehement, tending to make light of the responsibility for sin, and to weaken belief in the justice and love of God." All of us know how easy it is for an individual to rationalize and to excuse himself from any heavy responsibility for his own conduct. It is easy for an individual, as he thinks about the sinful things that he would like to do; as he meditates on the pleasures of sin; as he does things that are wrong; to feel more and more that these things are not so bad after all; and that therefore the book, the Bible, which sets them forth in such a terrible light cannot be right. "This pressure," continued Wordsworth, "if once we yield to it, tends directly to unbelief in revelation; for the moral conscience longs above all things to slumber, and in the full brightness, all hope of peaceful repose in sin is lost; and therefore he whose heart inclines to sin, instinctively veils himself from the knowledge of revelation, just as the sick man tosses uneasily until the stream of sunlight is curtained from his pillow."
H. G. Wells, one of the most publicized unbelievers of our day has borne striking testimony to this cause of unbelief. It shows that he himself recognized that one of the reasons that people have not accepted Christianity is that it brings their deeds to the light and shows them how sinful and small they are in much of their conduct. And remember that he was an avowed unbeliever. In fact, the writer heard him say, outside the Opera House in San Francisco, California just before America entered the war, that he was an atheist. Here is his statement concerning Jesus. "He was too great for his disciples. And in view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of their world at his teaching. Perhaps the priests and the rulers and the rich men understood him better than his followers. He was dragging out all the little private reservations they had made from social service into the light of a universal religous life. He was like some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which they had lived hitherto. In the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to be no property. (Wells is wrong about this; although Christ did teach that man was a steward and not, in one sense, the actual owner, and then it is required of stewards that they be found faithful, J. D. B.), no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed and no reward by love. Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried out against him. Even his disciples cried out when he would not spare them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests realized that between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or priestcraft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their comprehension and threatening all their discipline, should take refuge in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple and make a mock Caesar of him? For to take him seriously was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness. . . .
"Is it any wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much for our small hearts." (H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, 4th Edition, Vol. 11:598-599 (New York: The Review of Reviews Company, 1924.)
H. G. Wells recognized that men would turn against Jesus, and that they would in various ways deny and oppose his message, because it made such tremendous demands on life. And thus some unbelief is simply a rationalization for what is really a desire to escape from the tremendous ethical demands made by Christ on believers. In order to escape from the demands of that Teacher and message individuals sometimes flee from faith: for if they believed they would feel under an obligation to live in harmony with the message. To live with an easy conscience, and at the same time to live on a much lower level than that established by Jesus, men have denied His authority and claims. And certainly this must be a potent cause of unbelief when even such an eminent unbeliever as Wells recognized it.
If an individual replies that this cannot be a cause of unbelief because there are unbelievers who do not go into immorality when they depart from the faith, our answer is severalfold. First, men are sometimes glad to get away from the moral authority of the Christian faith not because they want to do some things that it forbids, but because some of the things which it sanctions and commands they do not want to do. Second, the sinful attitude of heart may not be of the type that we generally associate with immorality, but such as the pride of individuals who do not want to admit that they are a long way from what they ought to be. Such an individual may welcome unbelief because it removes from his sight the accusing high standard of the Christian faith which passes judgement on his life which is willing to remain on a lower level of both positive and negative morality. Third, the collapse in moral conduct may not come immediately because, as we have elsewhere pointed out, the habits of the individual, and his attitudes, have been constructed by Christian morality and he finds it difficult to break away from them and to get over the idea of the shamefulness of certain types of conduct. As Wordsworth pointed out, these sinful inclinations may be deep in the heart of an individual and may not immediately manifest themselves in sinful conduct. "This is the interior state; outside, for a time there is perhaps no apparent change. The force of sinful inclinations appears to have spent itself in producing unbelief. The force of habit still remains to balance it. An equilibrium seems to be produced in the man, and no striking and glaring evil marks the moment of lapse into infidelity. It seems almost as if the state of unbelief were not such a bad one after all, and death may intervene before the strife of powers has been decided within the soul. But often even to our eyes, there comes a sudden collapse, and the apparent peace which preceded it is found to have been merely a quiet rottenness." (The One Religion, pp. 13-14). Fourth, it has not been suggested that this is the only cause of unbelief.
XV. THE RIGHT MIND-SET Is NECESSARY
It was this truth, this challenge, and this warning, that Jesus placed before mankind when he said: "If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself." (John 7:17). Much of the teaching of Jesus deals with the life that now is and the way it is to be lived. Since Christianity is the way of life, it is evident that its full claim; its full power; and its full credentials cannot be tested apart from life itself. Christianity deals with the whole man, not with merely his intellect, but also his heart, his will, and his conduct. Thus it cannot be completely tested apart from the supreme test of life; the test of conduct and what it does to, in, and for, life. The Bible Commentary commented as follows on this verse: "If it be any man's will to do His will. The force of the argument lies in the moral harmony of the man's purpose with the divine law so far as this law is known or felt. If there be no sympathy there can be no understanding. Religion is a matter of life and not of thought only."
Professor Meyer shows how that this verse not only relates one's conduct with the test of Christianity, but shows how that one's desire to do what is true, to follow the will of God, is also involved. This verse offers therefore not merely a test of the truth of Christianity, but also the test of what is in man's heart. It does not mean, of course, that one may know at first all that God has required, but that one must have honesty of heart and love of truth so that he wants above all else to do the will of God when he can find that will. "The condition of knowing this is that one be willing--have it as the moral aim of his self-determination--to do the will of God. He who is wanting in this, who lacks fundamentally the moral determination of his mind towards God, and to whom, therefore, Christ's teaching is something strange, for the recognition of which as divine there is in the ungodly bias of his will no point of contact or of sympathy; this knowledge is to him a moral impossibility. On the contrary, the bias towards the fulfilling of God's will is the subjective factor necessary to the recognition of divine doctrine as such; for this doctrine produces the immediate conviction that it is certainly divine by virtue of the moral likeness and sympathy of its nature with the man's own nature. (Compare Aristotle, Ethics ix. 3, iii.1) . Accordingly, we certainly have in this passage the testimonium internum, but not in the ordinary theological sense, as a thing for those who already believe, but for those who do not yet believe, and to whom the divine teaching of the Lord presents itself for the first time. . . . (it) however, must not be limited either to a definite form of the revelation of it (the will of God), to any one particular requirement (that of faith in Christ) , which would contradict the fact that the axiom is stated without any limitation; it must be taken in its full breadth and com-prehensiveness--'that which God wills,' whatever, how, and wherever this will may require. Also the natural moral law within (Romans 1:20-32, Romans 2:14-15) is not excluded, though those who heard the words spoken must have referred the general statement to the revelation given to them in the law and the prophets." This as has been observed, does not mean that one must believe without any evidence, but that one must have a disposition which is willing to do God's will. And even the rank unbeliever, if he will stop and think a moment, will acknowledge that if God is and if He has revealed His will to mankind that mankind ought to obey that will. The willingness to do this is the disposition, the condition of heart, which is necessary. This disposition will find that the Word itself is one of its own witnesses. To such a condition of heart it commends itself. And, as pointed out in the appendix in the extended quotations from Dr. Butler, this disposition of heart will not rest as long as there is any indication of evidence which can be examined and which seems to promise to lead one to the will of God. On the other hand, we can readily see how the individual who has his heart set against God, who would be unwilling to do God's will even if he saw it, is not likely to see the evidence that Christianity is from God. In rebellion to God, he is not apt to seek out the evidence which emphasizes his condemned condition and will tend to make him uncomfortable and unsettled in his rebellion.
SOME BOOKS WHICH ARE RECOMMENDED
While on the subject of reading in Christian evidence, it will be well to mention some books on the subject. There are literally thousands of books on the subject of Christian evidence. The author in his own personal library, has over a thousand volumes on the subject. Out of such a large number of volumes it is difficult to select a few which will appeal in the same degree to all different types of mind. The following are not the only books, nor necessarily the best, but they are good books. Dr. Leander S. Keyser, A System of Christian Evidences (Burlington, Iowa: The Lutheran Literary Board, 1942) has a list of some books on different phases of Christian Evidence (pp. 259.283)
Nelson, Byron C. After Its Own Kind, The Augsburg Publishing Co., Minneapolis, Minn.
Evolution, (I. C. C. 366 Bay St., Toronto 1, Ontario, Canada.) Christlieb T., Modern Doubt and Christian Belief (Out of print. Sometimes found in second-hand book stores.) McGarvery, J. W., Evidences of Christianity. Also Biblical Criticism (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing Company).
Nelson, David, The Cause and Cure of In (New York: George H. Doran Company).
Machen, J. G., The Origin of Paul's Religion. Also The Virgin Birth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdman's Publishing Co.) This Company has recently republished several of his books on evidence.
Price, G. M., Q. E. D.: New Light on the Doctrine of Creation. Other books also which can be secured from the Pacific Publishing Association, Mountain View, Calif.
Hamilton, Floyd E., The Basis of Christian Faith (New York Harper and Brothers). Very good.
Smith, Wilbur M., Therefore Stand, (Boston, Mass,: W. A. Wilde Co.) Paley, William, Evidences of Christianity. Found in second-hand book stores.
Fawthrop, T. W., The Stones Cry Out (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, Ltd).
W. H. Turton, The Truth of Christianity.
Hammond, T. C., Reasoning Faith (London: The Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 39 Bedford Square, London W. C. 1.) The Victoria Institute (12, Queen Anne's Gate, London, England). Their various pamphlets and volumes of transactions. Material published by the Evolution Protest Movement may also be secured from them.
Short, A. Rendle, Modern Discovery and the Bible (London: The Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 39 Bedford Square, London, W. C. 1).
Bales, James D., Editor, The Thinking Christian (Quarterly journal devoted to the Bible and modern thought. $1.50 per year.)
Clark, Robert E. D.., Editor, Science and Religion (Quarterly journal. $1.50 per year. Paternoster Press, Ludgate House, Fleet St., London, E. C. 4, England.)
Some of the above mentioned foreign publications are handled by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, 64 E. Lake St., Chicago, Ill. and 30 St. Mary St., Toronto 5, Ontario. Send for their catalog.