CHAP. I]

THE BIBLE

15

Mind which is the very source of all happiness, seeing that thus we crucify the Lord afresh.' For He Who has designed the happiness of all creatures cannot but be pained in Himself when any of them cause suffering to others. He must suffer where any suffer.

Let it now be observed that in all that has been said the argument rests solely on the physical phenomena of nature, and on the obvious operations of life and of the human mind. Nothing has been adduced of the suggestions made by Revelation. The proof of God's existence and nature has been based on evidence wholly outside the Bible, and is valid, therefore, even though that Book be set aside as of no account.

But it is proper now to consider the Bible as in itself an historical fact. It is a record of the relation of man to God, and of God's dealings with man from thousands of years back. We may legitimately criticise its details, we may properly subject them to the same tests as other historical documents, and we may reasonably concede that human errors of understanding, inaccuracy of memory, and imperfection of transmission require to be allowed for in accepting its statements, but

after every deduction is made we must in candour admit that it contains a history of God's dealings entirely consistent with the attributes that we have found He must embody. For in that Book we read of the Creation stage by stage of our world, of the infusion of life, of the final birth of man as the crown of all the work; then of the series of wondrous procedures by which the Creator sought to preserve the creation within the bounds of holiness and consequent happiness; and, last of all, of His actual coming on earth Himself in human form to redeem man from the depth of sin and misery into which he had strayed, and to recall him to the purity and blessedness for which he was originally designed. This is a narrative of work such as human invention has nowhere imagined, it is consistent with the character of the God Whom His other works declare, its essential truth is thus manifest, and it confirms the conclusions to which the evidence of these works, the more fully they are examined, the more convincingly lead.

From these considerations two conclusions follow. Firstly, that the existence of a God, Almighty, All-wise, and All-loving, must be held as proved, on the strictest lines of scientific demon

CHAP. I]

PROOF COMPLETE

17

stration, by the argument that such a Being explains the facts of the universe alike in their physical and metaphysical aspects. Secondly, that we must accept as equally proved the broad general outlines of the story of His relation to mankind which is conveyed to us in the Bible, subject always to the exercise of our reason in distinguishing the Divine from the human. Further illustrations of both these propositions will be found in the following chapters.

CHAPTER II

REVELATION

FROM that first day when man appeared on this globe, till now, countless millions have been born and have passed away. As foam on the waves, as the summer leaves of the forest they had their hour of life and of sunshine, and then they vanished as if they had never been. Yet in every one the brief span of existence beat with the strong pulse of life, it was vivid with hope and action, with effort and achievement, with suffering and joy, with love and anger, as if the present were all in all, and death might come to others but never to them. Have these unnumbered souls then, one after another, have we who are now passing through the like stage of strenuous and evanescent vigour, all children of one mighty Father, have all been left by Him with no knowledge of Himself, no teaching of our duties to each other, no promise of another life to follow when this is past,

CHAP. II]

REVELATION GRADUAL

19

no guidance to lead us to a further shore beyond the sea of forgetfulness into which we sink? It would be impossible to suppose such neglect, it would be impossible to believe in a God Who should thus hide Himself away. It is not so. He Who made us is not distant but close to us. He Who breathed into our nostrils the breath of life has declared that life to be eternal, and has taught us how it may be one of eternal bliss.

He has given this information or instruction to all mankind, but in a manner and measure proportioned to their capacity, and therefore very variable. No tribe of savages has yet been discovered, and we may safely say none has ever lived, that has not an instinctive belief in the existence of some Being more powerful than man, and of some country beyond the grave. That their ideas are rudimentary, or even in certain instances grotesque, means only that they arise in minds that are incapable of yet receiving higher intellectual conceptions. But every step towards civilisation leads to a stronger and often a nobler vision, though it must be admitted that the depravity of the human mind has in many a mythology introduced its own types of degraded passions into its imaginations of the Divine. One nation, the Jews, was singled out

why?