who rose from the dead, around whom there shines, as I shall show hereafter, such an effulgence of external evidence, whose life and death have been followed by such amazing effects. If we were to estimate by the doctrine of chances the probability that so many extraordinary circumstances, each of which could be confirmed by so much evidence, should meet upon a single person, the fraction expressing that probability would be infinitely small. Had any one of these characteristics belonged to any other individual, it would have placed him among the most distinguished personages of history; but when we see them all clustering upon the lowly Jesus, the crucified One, we must say, with one of old, "We have found the Messias." 33 LECTURE IX. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. GENERAL GROUNDS ON WHICH THIS IS TO BE PUT. - AUTHENTICITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE WRITINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. WHEN We came into life, we found Christianity existing. It was our business, as independent thinkers, to examine it in its relations to the human constitution and to human well-being. This we have done in the preceding lectures; and if the system be such as it has been represented to be, then we may well feel a deep interest in every thing relating to its origin and history -in what have been called its external evidences. To those evidences, then, we now turn. In this department of the evidences, the object of our inquiry is, not adaptations, or doctrines, or opinions, or inferences, but simply historical facts. Was there such a person as Jesus Christ? Was he crucified? Did he rise from the dead? These are questions which we are to settle precisely as we would settle the questions whether there was such a man as Augustus Cæsar, and whether he became the sole ruler of the Roman empire. These are no abstract questions, and we are not to let any of the uncertainty which must often belong to the discussion of such questions connect itself with these. There is a science of evidence; there are laws of evidence; and all we ask is that those laws may be applied to the facts of Christianity precisely as they are to any other facts. We insist We insist upon it that the evidence ought to be judged of by itself, simply as evidence; that no man has a right first to examine the facts, and make up an antecedent judgment that they are improbable, and then transfer this feeling of improbability over to the evidence. We hold to the principle of Butler, that, to a being like man, objections against Christianity, as distinguished from objections against its evidence, unless, indeed, it can be shown to contain something either immoral or absurd, really amount to nothing. It is, indeed, a striking peculiarity of the Christian religion, that the truth of its doctrines, and the power of its motives, are inseparably connected with the reality of certain facts which might originally be judged of by the senses, and which are now to be determined by the same historical evidence as we employ in judging of any other facts. As fully as I have entered upon the internal evidence, as satisfactory as I regard the proof it furnishes, as heartily as I should deprecate a merely historical religion, necessarily destitute of any life-giving power, I would yet say, distinctly, that I believe in no religion that is not supported by historical proof. Unless Jesus Christ lived, and wrought miracles, and was crucified, and rose from the dead, Christianity is an imposture beautiful, indeed, and utterly unaccountable, but still an imposture. Perhaps it is not enough considered how much Christianity is contradistinguished, in this respect, not only from other systems of religion, but from all systems LECTURE IX. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. — GENERAL GROUNDS ON WHICH THIS IS TO BE PUT.-AUTHENTICITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE WRITINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. WHEN We came into life, we found Christianity existing. It was our business, as independent thinkers, to examine it in its relations to the human constitution and to human well-being. This we have done in the preceding lectures; and if the system be such as it has been represented to be, then we may well feel a deep interest in every thing relating to its origin and history in what have been called its external evidences. To those evidences, then, we now turn. In this department of the evidences, the object of our inquiry is, not adaptations, or doctrines, or opinions, or inferences, but simply historical facts. Was there such a person as Jesus Christ? Was he crucified? Did he rise from the dead? These are questions which we are to settle precisely as we would settle the questions whether there was such a man as Augustus Cæsar, and whether he became the sole ruler of the Roman empire. These are no abstract questions, and we are not to let any of the uncertainty which must often belong to the discussion of such questions connect itself with these. There is a science of evidence; there are laws of evidence; and all we ask is that those laws may be applied to the facts of Christianity precisely as they are to any other facts. We insist upon it that the evidence ought to be judged of by itself, simply as evidence; that no man has a right first to examine the facts, and make up an antecedent judgment that they are improbable, and then transfer this feeling of improbability over to the evidence. We hold to the principle of Butler, that, to a being like man, objections against Christianity, as distinguished from objections against its evidence, unless, indeed, it can be shown to contain something either immoral or absurd, really amount to nothing. It is, indeed, a striking peculiarity of the Christian religion, that the truth of its doctrines, and the power of its motives, are inseparably connected with the reality of certain facts which might originally be judged of by the senses, and which are now to be determined by the same historical evidence as we employ in judging of any other facts. As fully as I have entered upon the internal evidence, as satisfactory as I regard the proof it furnishes, as heartily as I should deprecate a merely historical religion, necessarily destitute of any life-giving power, I would yet say, distinctly, that I believe in no religion that is not supported by historical proof. Unless Jesus Christ lived, and wrought miracles, and was crucified, and rose from the dead, Christianity is an imposture beautiful, indeed, and utterly unaccountable, but still an imposture. Perhaps it is not enough considered how much Christianity is contradistinguished, in this respect, not only from other systems of religion, but from all systems |