Page 4 Advertisements Column 1

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3790, 19 February 1881, Page 4

famous figure of the wager is used the better to recbncile us to this belief. The chances are such, he says, that we shall do well! at all events to lay our stake ia favor of the story's truth. If we cannot ■i believe ifc let us set to work to attain omr belief as others have attained it; and how was this ? *' By acting just as if they did believe it; by taking holy water, having masses said,'' &c.; quite naturally that ■ • will viaJteyou believe, and render you stupid ! ; "Did; ever great "reasoner reason so madly ? .^nd this is the man who saw that the 'Tworld no longer believed things unless it ; lias evidence of them! In the first. place ■ there is ho evidence that man is only comprehensible, „on the assumption that ,-* the story of A dam's fall is true. But even if it were so, man must still ask himself: Js the story true r\ Now sooner or later,iaS; our experience widens, we must i-; see that the story is not true ; we must come to say to ourselves: "It ■.■{IB-all a legend! it never really happened, ;;r.anv of it!" It is no more real history • ,-. than the account of Manco ■<-^Gapac and Mama Ocollo,; the children of the Sun, " who appeared on the bank of the Lake Titiaca, sent by their beneficent '.p&rent,who beheld with pity the miseries of the human race, to instruct and to reclaim, them.'' For a little while, even, for fa generation or two perhaps, man may, „, after he' has began to doubt a story's truth, still keep himself in the belief of it i „ by '.' taking holy water, rendering himself stupid;" but the time comes when he > cannot. That a story will account for certain facts, that we wish to think it true, nay, that many have formerly thought it true and have grown faithful, humble, charitable, and so on, by thus ..doing, does not make the story true if it ';< is-nOt, and cannot prevent men after a cer- . tain time from seeing that it is not. (":.;■". .And on such a time we are now entering. The more we ha»e been helped to be faithful, humble, and charitable by taking the truth of this story, and others equally legendary, for granted, the greater is our embarrassment, no doubt, at having to do without them. But we have to do without them none the less on that account. We 1 may feel our hearts still vibrate in answer to the Old Testament telling us that " the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and to the new telling us Jesus Christ saves His people from their sins. But this fear of the Lord, and this safety through Jesus Christ, can have Adam's fall for. their fundamental basis and . explanation no longer. .! : ' Cardinal Manning narrates the miracu- -• lons ; resuscitation of the Virgin Mary, and/his argument for believing it is that the story is a beautiful one, and that it is a comfort and help to pious souls to think it is true. Both may be freely conceded to them. Eeally as much may be said for the miraculous apparition of Cinderella's fairy godmother. The story is pathetic and beautiful, and it is a pleasure to kind souls to see the tables turned by enchantment in favour of poor, little, good Cinderella. But this does not make the story true; and if a story is unsub--B'.antial in its foundation and character, no connecting of it with oar affections or with what does one good can, in the end, ; prevent people from saying, "But it is not true ! It never really happened, any of it."

I heard Mr Moody preach to one of his vast audiences on a topic eternally attractive —salvation by Jesus Christ. Mr Moody's account of that salvation was exactly the old story of the contract in the . Council of the Trinity. Justice puts in her claim, said Mr Moody, for the" punishment of guilty mankind. G-od admits it. Jesus intercedes, undertakes to bear their punishment, and signs an undertaking to that effect. Thousands of years pass : Jesus is on the cross, Calvary. Justice appears, and presents to him his signed undertaking. Jesus accepts it, bows his head, and expires. Christian salvation consists in the undoubting belief in the transaction here described, and in the hearty acceptance of the release offered by it.

Never letus deny to this story power and pathos, or treat with hostility ideas which hare entered so deep into the life of Christendom. But the story is not true, it never really happened; These personages never did meet together, and speak and act in the manner described. The personages of the Christian Heaven and their conversations are no more matters of fact than the personages of the Greek Olympus, and their .conversations. Sir Koberfc Phillimore seeks to tie up the Church of England to a belief in the personality df Satan; he might as well seek io tie it up to a belief in the personality of Tisiphone. They are alike not real persons, but shadows thrown by man's" guilt and terrors. Mr Moody's audences are the last people who will come to perceive all this ; they are chiefly made up from the main body of lovers of our popular religion, the serious and steady middle class, with. its bounded horizons. To the • more educated class above this, and to the more free class below it, the grave beliefs of the religious middle class in such, stories as Mr Moody's story of the, Covenant of Bedemption are impossible now; to the religious middle class itself they will be impossible soon. Salvation by Jesus Christ, therefore, if it has any reality, must be placed somewhere else than in a hearty consent to Mr Moody's story. Something Mr Moody and his hearers have experienced for Jesus, let us own which does them good ; but of this something they have not yet succeeded in getting the right history. Now if one feels impatient with people who lightly run a-muck at an august thing, so a man who is in earnest must feel impatient with those who lightly allege this or that as the true foundation of it. People who gravely offer us about Christianity their stories of the contract in the Council of the Trinity, or of the miraculous resuscitation of the Virgin are just like Mr Buskin telling us in his assured way: "There is not a moment in any day of our lives, when nature is not producing picture after picture and working still upon such exqnisite and.constant principles of such perfect beauty, that it is quite certain that it is all dene for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasurS." It is not quite certain we have not a particle of certainty about it, and to say that it is certain is wholly fantastic. However, Mr Buskin is talking only about the beauties of nature ; and here, perhaps, it is an excuse for inventing certainties that what one mveats is so beautiful. But religion is to govern our life. Whoever certainties to, on the, subject of religion is bound to take care that they are serious ones ; and yet on no subject is this so little regarded.—Matthew Abnold.—•■ God and Me. Bible."

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