RELIGIONS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 453, 27 April 1909, Page 3

RELIGIONS.

THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Sermon by the Rev. G. K. Aitken. At the local Presbyterian Church, on Sunday morning, the Rev. G. K. Aitken had something to say to the higher critics in his sermon on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Speaking from the text John xii, 24: “ Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die it abideth by itself alone ; but if it die it beareth much fruit,” he said inter alia: That never in the history of Christianity has there been a more stubborn and determined attack on this vital subject than is being made, in what we are pleased to term modern times. The term “ modern ” is used with such an air and suggestion of superiority, as to relegate to the limbo of forgetfulness, what it may regard as weak and ineffective in the attacks of the past. The fact of the Resurrection having been attacked from the first and the criticism of to day is no more effective in its destructive force, than when the chief rulers attempted to account for the empty tomb by saying “ His disciples came by night and stole Him away.” I think I can safely assert that among modern critics there are none to be found more remorseless and trenchant than Strauss in his “ Sebeu Jesu.” It is true, no doubt, that there is considerable change in the ground and position taken up in recent years, but as a matter of fact the results have been identical and remarkable only in their failure. Still, even the casual observer cannot fail to perceive that, in important respects, the state of the controversy is very different to-day, from what it was say fifteen or twenty years ago. Forces which were only then gathering strength, or beginning to make themselves felt, have now come to ahead, and the old grounds for belief and the old answers to objections are no longer allowed to pass unchallenged. The evidence for the Resurrection may be much what it has been for the last nineteen centuries, but the temper of the age in dealing with that evidence has undeniably altered. The subject is approached from new sides, with new presuppositions, with new critical methods and apparatus, with a wider outlook on the religious history of mankind, and a better understanding, derived from comparative study, of the growth of religious myths; and in the light of this new knowledge, it is confidently affirmed that the old defences are obsolete, and that it is no longer open to the instructed Intelligence —“ the modern mind ” as it is named—to entertain even the possibility of the bodily Resurrectidn of Christ from the grave. The believer in this divine fact accordingly, is anew put on his defence, and must speak to purpose if he does not wish to see the ground taken from beneath his feet.

»* To the believer the Resurrection of Jesus is only one of the incidents in the life of his Redeemer. The birth, the life, the teaching, the works, the death, the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ are only several steps in the divine plan for man’s redemption. Without the Resurrection —that is, if Christ’s body had undergone the usual process of decomposition, which we know to be the inevitable result of organic dissolution —then the whole of His previous work and declarations would have gone for nought, and His name would have gone down to oblivion unknown and unheard of. The Resurrection is the crowning act of the divine plan and purpose, and as such must stand identified with the terms and conditions under which he assumed human likeness and ministered to human needs. The opposition which to-day is concentrating its force against the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is doing so because of its antagonism to the supernatural and miraculous, associated with the inception of the Christian religion. The miracle of the Virgin Birth at the beginning and the bodily Resurrection at the close of the Christ life are so clearly opposed to the character of purely material speculation, that it is no cause for wonder that they provoke its active antagonism. “We are not to imagine either, that the opponents of are in any sense agreed upon the subjects on which they make their assertions. The diversity among the higher critics on this question of the Resurrection for instance, is at once puzzling if not distracting. Among quite a number, the frequent appearances of Christ to His disciples are popularly accounted for as being merely visionary. This idea is not by any means a new one, but it is remarkable in this, that its modern exponents have revived the theory, by the new turn given to speculation on appearances of the dead by the v investigations and reports of the ■Society of Psychical Research. The conclusion of such an authority as Professor Bake is summed up when he holds that the belief in the Resurrection of Christ, even in the spiritual sense, depends on the success of these same experiments of the Psychical Research . Society, “This theory,” says Professor Orr” it will naturally occur is not a theory of the “ Resurrection ” in the New Testament sense of that word at all; but we have to do with the fact that some people believe that it is, or, at least it represents the reality which lies behind' the narratives of the Resurrection in the Gospels. The late Mr F. W. H. Myers, of that school, identifies the two things, and as llustrating this phase of speculation, which has assumed in an age of unbelief in the supernatural, a semi-scientific aspect it may be useful to quote Ms own

words; — ‘ I venture now ’ he says *on a bold saying ; for I predict that, in consequence of the newevidence, all reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the Resurrection of Christ. ‘As to that central claim (of Christianity) of the soul’s life manifested after the body’s death, it is plain that this can less and less be supported by remote tradition alone; and it must more and more be tested by modern experience and inquiry. Had the results of psychical research been purely negative, would not Christian evidence have received an overwhelming blow ? ‘ As a matter of fact, one research has led us to results of a quite different type. They have not been negative only, but largely positive. We have shown that veritable manifestations do reach us from beyond the grave. The central claim of Christianity is thus confirmed as never before . • There is nothing to hinder the conviction that, though we be all the children of the Highest, He (Christ) came nearer than we, by some space by us immeasurable, to that which is infinitely far. There is nothing to hinder the devout conviction that He of His own act, ‘ took upon Him the form ol a servant,’ and was made flesh for our salvation foreseeing the earthly travail and the eternal crown.’ “These are the words of a man who has been strongly opposed to Christian doctrine, and I quote them not in any sense as supporting the New Testament doctrine of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but as showing the immense disparity of opinion in the “ modern mind ” between those who treat that great central truth as purely mythical, and those who have reached the ground I have quoted in psychical speculation.”