DAVID
DARE :
INFIDELS
TESTIFY FOR CHRIST
AFTER THE EMERSONS were seated the next Sunday evening, Lucile leaned
over to whisper: “Do you
suppose, Dad, that he can really show that sceptics admit Christ to be the
most important figure in all history?”
“I don’t see how he can,” replied her father, brows puckered in
deep perplexity, “for if they do admit that, they will have to be
Christians.”
George, who had been listening, spoke up, “Probably he will quote
only obscure writers.”
Mr. Emerson considered this for a moment.
“Sounds reasonable, George; I think you are right.”
“I have noticed,” observed Mrs. Emerson, “that Mr. Dare has so
far always done what he has promised — yes, even more than you would
expect from his words. I am
confident he will produce leading, well-known sceptics to prove his
point.”
The other three members of her family regarded her in amazement. “Why, Mother,” gasped Lucile, “has he converted you?”
“No, but I cannot help noticing that one by one the supposed
unbreakable props supporting unbelief have been removed until not many
remain. It seems to me that the doubter’s house is tottering.
And now he promises to use unbelievers themselves to finish the work.
I like the way he is doing this.”
They looked in increasing surprise at the usually meek and quiet Mrs.
Emerson. “But Mother
——” began George.
“Hush!” whispered Lucile. “Here
comes Mr. Dare.”
The speaker regarded his frankly impatient audience with a smile of
welcome.
“I am glad to see you all back again.
Last week we called attention to the fact that while we cannot now
cross-examine the writers of the Gospels, they were cross examined as
no other witnesses have ever been examined since the world began.
“They were examined and cross-examined, not only by shrewd enemies
like the Jews, astute reasoners like the Greeks, and nimble-minded lawyers
like the Romans, but also by fire, sword, cross, flogging, and death.
The Gospels are the only historical records in the world tested by
the torture of the historians and of many who believed their accounts.
“Now if we accept the writings of other historians whose veracity
has not been tested by the scorching fire of persecution, how much more
should we rely on the writings of the evangelists, whose accounts have been
thus tested.
“The Man about whom the evangelists wrote would of necessity be
amazingly unusual to inspire such unheard-of fidelity on the part of those
who wrote about Him.
“But he was not only the most amazing, the most lovable, and the
most powerful man in all history to the evangelists, but to modern sceptics
as well —”
“Mr. Dare,” interrupted Mr. Emerson, “you have made similar
statements a number of times, but as yet have offered no evidence.
With all due respect to your sincerity and truthfulness, we must have
more than your say-so.”
A ripple of applause drowned out the lecturer’s first attempt to
reply. The audience was clearly
in a mood that demanded direct action.
“All right. You shall
have it right now. Mr. Emerson,
will you please come forward and read from these sceptical writers as I
shall hand the books to you?”
“With pleasure,” he replied as he made his way down the crowded
aisle to the platform, where he was cordially greeted by both the lecturer
and Dr. Morely, the chairman.
“I hand you this book,” said the lecturer, holding out a large
volume to Mr. Emerson. “Will
you please tell this audience about the author and his writings?”
Mr. Emerson examined the volume in his hand, then spoke so that all
could hear:
“This is volume 2 of ‘History of European Morals,’ by
William E. H. Lecky, who is also the author of ‘History of the Rise and
Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe.’
Mr. Lecky was an Irish historian, statesman, and philosopher who
died in 1903, and a leading unbeliever of his time and country.
He wrote four large volumes to prove that rationalism is the only
guide a reasonable man can follow.”
“Then you would regard Lecky as a leading unbeliever of his day?”
asked Mr. Dare.
“Decidedly,” replied Mr. Emerson.
“Now, please turn to pages 8 and 9, of the book you have, and read
the passages marked,” directed the lecturer.
Mr. Emerson’s clear, strong voice was heard in every corner of the
large auditorium as he read from the place indicated:
“ ‘It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an
ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has
inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself
capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has
not been only the highest pattern of virtue, but also the strongest
incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep an influence that it
may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life
has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions
of philosophers and all the exhortions of moralists.’ “
“Thank you — that will do for the moment.”
Mr. Emerson seated himself next to Dr. Morely, while the lecturer
turned to the audience, from whom subdued ejaculations of amazement were
heard.
“Well, that was a centre shot,” gasped Lucile.
Mrs. Emerson showed pleasure, and George looked puzzled.
“These words do affirm that Christ is the heart of all
history: and not only that, but that three years of His life were more
powerful for good than all the lives and productions of all the moralists
and philosophers in the world. These
are the words of a confirmed, avowed, world-renowned sceptic, written after
years spent in carefully weighing all the evidence as an impartial
historian.
“Such enthusiasm you might well expect to come from a warm
believer, but I, equally with you, am amazed that such abounding
extravagance of praise should come from a famous sceptic.
But such is the fact, and it is not my business to explain it.
“If he were the only one to say such laudatory things, we might
well regard it as a puzzling exception among the bold attackers of the
Bible. But now I hand you another volume, Mr. Emerson.
Will you please examine it and tell the audience about this
writer?”
After a minute examining the book, Mr. Emerson said:
“This is ‘Three Essays on Religion:
Nature, the Utility of Religion, Theism,’ by John Stuart Mill,
an English economist and philosopher who died a few years before Lecky.
He was likewise noted as a pronounced unbeliever.”
“Very well,” said David Dare.
“Please read from pages 253 to 255, as indicted.”
“ ‘Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all His
precursors than all His followers, even those who had the direct benefit of
His personal teaching. It is of
no use to say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not historical, and
that we know not how much of what is admirable has been super-added by the
tradition of His followers. . . . Who among His disciples, or among their
proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of
imagining the life and character in the Gospels?
Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul,
whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still
less the early Christian writers. . . .
“ ‘When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of
probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to that mission, who ever
existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in
pitching on this Man as the ideal representative and guide to humanity; nor,
even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better
translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than
to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life.’ “
“Observe,” said the lecturer, “that Mr. Mill, the sceptic,
specifically says that an unbeliever cannot do better than to live so that
Christ would approve his life. That
is perilously near to saying that sceptics should be Christians!
I agree with him.”
“But,” interrupted Mr. Emerson, “Mill never did make the
slightest profession of Christianity. I
am puzzled by his words.”
“I am puzzled, too; but there are his words, and when his sceptical
friends remonstrated with him for writing them, he refused to have them
omitted from successive editions of his book or to take them back.
It is not for me to explain the inconsistency of unbelievers who say
the most enthusiastic things about Christ and yet remain avowed unbelievers.
“All I am endeavouring to show is that the world’s leading
sceptics take occasion, after they have spent years fighting Christianity,
to praise Christ and Christianity with the same verve and vigour one would
expect of ardent Christians. And
while these two are noted sceptics, they are not all who have sounded the
praises of Christ and Christianity. I
shall now call to the witness stand even more famous unbelievers than
these.”
David Dare handed a book to Mr. Emerson.
“Please tell the audience who wrote this,” he said.
Mr. Emerson examined the volume in question, turned to the crowd, and
spoke so that all could hear: “This
is titled ‘Journal of Researches,’ and is written by Charles
Darwin the famous evolutionary naturalist.”
“Would you class him as a Christian?” asked Mr. Dare.
“On the contrary, he cared nothing whatever for the Bible,”
responded Emerson. “He was
noted as an unbeliever.”
“During the years 1831 to 1836 Darwin circled the globe in the Beagle,”
said the lecturer. “He
reported that in New Zealand were the darkest spots found on all his
journey.
“After he returned to England, he found vigorous attacks being made
against missionaries and missionary activity.
Writing of those making these attacks, he made the statements Mr.
Emerson will now read from pages 414, 425, and 505.”
Mr. Emerson turned to the pages indicated and read:
“ ‘They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices and
the power of an idolatrous priesthood — a system of profligacy
unparalleled in another part of the world — infanticide, a consequent of
that system — bloody wars, where conquerors spared neither women nor
children — that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty,
intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by Christianity.
In a voyager to forget these things is base ingratitude; for should
he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will
most devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have reached thus
far.’
“ ‘The lesson of the missionary is the enchanter’s wand.
the house has been built, the widows framed, the fields ploughed, and
even the trees grafted by the New Zealander.’
“ ‘The march of improvement, consequent on the introduction of
Christianity throughout the south Seas, probably stands by itself in the
records of history.’ “
“Why did an avowed unbeliever write in defence of Christian
missions after having expressed his belief that they would utterly fail?”
asked the lecturer after Mr. Emerson had handed the book back and
seated himself. “Because he
saw in person the indisputable evidence that his theory was wrong, and he
had the honesty and manhood to confess his mistake.
The results of the mission in New Zealand, which excited the surprise
and elicited the eulogy of Darwin, are no different from the effects of
Christian missions in every other part of the earth.
“Since sceptics generally will not concede the Bible to be more
than a man-made book, why have they not given us a book to take its place?
Since the majority of unbelievers think that the human race is
constantly progressing — growing better — why don’t they prove it by
producing a better book? But
they have not even attempted to do this!
“From the time of Celsus to the present not a single rival has been
put out by any sceptic or by any body of sceptics.
There is no one book in all the world of which even one unbeliever,
much less a thousand, will say: ‘This is the wisest of books in all the
earth; this is the Book of books. Here
all mankind may come for nurture of mind and elevation of heart and soul. Let’s translate it into every language of earth, and go
with it to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, and, with sacrifice of
life itself, show them a better way.’
But sceptics do come very near to saying this of the Bible, as we
have seen, and as we shall see further.
“Sceptics now have numberless printing presses and great schools,
and they claim the greatest scholars. They
have immense wealth, boundless leisure, all the advantages of science. The world has been ransacked from pole to pole, its highest
mountains scaled, its deepest oceans sounded; its telegraph and radio have
made immediately available the knowledge of all nations, and books have made
the past accumulations of the whole world the servant of us all.
“The rocks beneath, the stars above, by use of the microscope,
crucible, and telescope have had many of their secrets wrested from them.
Yet, with the advantage of all this two thousand years’ additional
history and experience possessed by modern sceptics over the writers of the
Bible, the sceptics have never even attempted to give us a book they claim
to be better than the Bible. They
usually spend the first twenty or more years after their maturity attacking
the Bible, and before ending their lives, devote a few thoughtful pages in
refutation of their previous attacks and in enthusiastic praise of the very
Book they had so long vigorously opposed.
“Thus it came about that Thomas Huxley, after writing many articles
against the Bible, faced the issue, and realizing how important it was that
something better be found, if possible, searched ancient and modern
literature with eager eye for such a book.
Not finding it, he pleaded for the use of the Bible in public schools
as the source of highest education.
“Mr. Emerson,” suggested Mr. Dare, “I am sure you can tell this
audience what famous word was coined by Huxley.”
“Yes,” answered Mr. Emerson, he coined the word ‘agnostic,’
meaning, ‘one who does not know; an unbeliever.’
He called himself an agnostic.”
“I am handing you, Mr. Emerson, the Contemporary Review for
December, 1870, which contains an article by Huxley.
Please read the passages marked.”
All present listened carefully to these words:
“ ‘I have always been strongly in favour of secular education, in
the sense of education without theology; but I must confess that I have been
no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious
feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be kept up, in the
present utterly chaotic state of opinion on these matters, without the use
of the Bible. The pagan
moralists lack life and colour. . . .Take the bible as a whole; make the
severest deductions which fair criticism can dictate; . . .and there still
remains . . . a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur.
“ ‘And then consider. . . that, for three centuries, this Book
has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English
history; . . . that it is written in the noblest and purest English, and
abounds in exquisite beauties of a mere literary form; and finally, that it
forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the
existence of other countries and other civilizations, and of a great past,
stretching to the farthest limits of the oldest nations in the world.’ “
“And now,” said David Dare, “here is another word by Huxley,
from a book entitled ‘Science and Education,’ page 398.”
Mr. Emerson took the book and read clearly:
“ ‘By the study of what other book could children be so much
humanized and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical
procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval
between two eternities; and earns the blessings or the curses of all time,
according to its effort to do good and hate evil?’ “
He closed the book with a very sober expression on his face.
“Yes, this is the same man who spent several years in a heated
debate with Gladstone over the Bible,” said Mr. Dare.
“Huxley later entered his protest against the ‘heterodox
Philistine’ who found in the Bible ‘nothing but a subject for scoffing
and an occasion for the display of his conceited ignorance.’
Then in another book, ‘Essays Upon Controverted Questions,’ pages
39 and 40, he makes it clear that his opinions as just exhibited to you were
not momentary, but were a settled conviction.”
This book the lecturer also handed to Mr. Emerson.
He read:
“ ‘The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and of the
oppressed; down to modern times, no state has had a constitution in which
the interests of the people are so largely taken into account, in which the
duties, so much more than the privileges, of rulers are insisted upon, as
that drawn up for Israel; . . . nowhere is the fundamental truth that the
welfare of the state, in the long run, depends on the uprightness of the
citizen, so strongly laid down. . . . I do believe that the human race is
not yet, possibly may never be, in a position to dispense with it [the
Bible].’ “
“Now, according to the great unbeliever, Thomas Huxley, the best
way to educate children, to inculcate morals, to aid the poor and oppressed,
to instruct rulers and train citizens, is by means of the bible,” said the
lecturer.
“We have found that leading unbelievers, one after another, have
frankly turned to the bible as the only source of moral and religious and
practical education. In closing
today’s lecture I shall refer to another great scientist, a contemporary
of Darwin and Huxley, and nearly as well know — George Romanes.
He was a pronounced sceptic. Shortly
before his death he wrote some reflections on religion, born of his
dissatisfaction with scepticism. He
reviewed the whole field of moral and religious literature, hunting for the
best, and at the close of his book, posthumously published, he sums up his
convictions. I desire Mr.
Emerson to read from ‘Thoughts on Religion,’ page 170 and 171.”
Mr. Emerson took the book, fingered it thoughtfully for a minute, and
then read:
“ ‘Not only is Christianity thus so immeasurably in advance of
all other religions, it is no less so of every other system of thought that
has ever been promulgated, in regard to all that is moral and spiritual.
Whether it be true or false, it is certain that neither philosophy,
science, nor poetry has ever produced results in thought, conduct, or beauty
in any degree to be compared with it.’
It is ‘the greatest exhibition of the beautiful, the sublime, and
of all else that appeals to our spiritual nature, which has ever been known
upon our earth.’ ‘What has
all the science or all the philosophy of the world done for the thought of
mankind to be compared with the one doctrine, “God is love”?’ “
Mr. Emerson stood as in a daze, looking at the words he had just
read. A voice in the audience shouted, “Read that again.”
Others made the same request. So
he repeated the passage, slowly, thoughtfully, almost reverently.
As he finished and sat down, the whole audience was meditatively
silent. Finally, David Dare
spoke:
“Had these glowing eulogies been written by some famous preacher,
you might even then have expressed surprise at their warmth.
But I must confess that I share your amazement that they are the
expressions of world-famous infidels. Now,
if the world leaders in unbelief issue such panegyrics on the bible,
Christianity, and Christ, why should any of you continue in unbelief?
When the world’s leading sceptics see in the Bible the most
beneficent power on earth, it is high time we all gave it more careful
study.”
Mr. Emerson arose to speak. “I
have read these extracts with mingled emotions,” he said.
“I admit that I never imagined these men had said such things.
However, influential as these men are known to have been, they are
now dead, and have been dead from sixty to eighty years.
Much has been discovered in the past thirty years to affect the
beliefs of thinkers. I should like to know what leading modern sceptics
have said by way of admissions.”
The applause that followed Mr. Emerson’s words indicated a similar
desire on the part of the audience. The
lecturer stepped forward and said:
“Very well. Next week
we will consider confessions of leading modern infidels.”
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