BOOKS.
MR. DREW'S REASONS OF FAITH.*
MR. DREW'S interesting and thoughtful little book has, to our minds, one great defect. While we admire his recast of the line of reasoning by which he justifies faith in the history of revela- tion—or in the revelation of God in history, which is nearer Mr. Drew's exact conception of his subject,—and while we agree in his main result, he seems to us to make the great mistake of ignoring the real force of the case he has to meet, and winning his victory over a foe whom he has hardly permitted to put in any actual appearance at all. He seems to us to overstate the real force of a good deal of his preliminary evidence, to miss the keystone of the argument for the historically supernatural in relation to our Lord's history, and to attach more importance than it will bear to the or- ganic unity of the various books which compose the Bible. Hence he diminishes the effect of that which he does say very vigorously and lucidly, and of the general structure of his reasoning—which is ordered with considerable care and judgment,—upon those per- sons whose minds are occupied with considerations of which he never seems to have appreciated the real force. As this is a kind of error to which we think our clergy,—among the most thoughtful and lucid of whom Mr. Drew may be reckoned,—are * Reasons of Faith, or the Order of the Christian Amanita: Developed and Explained.
With an Appendix. By G. S. Drew, hl.A. London: Bell and Daldy. peculiarly liable ; we will explain in detail where we think this little book is really unfair to those whom it is intended and directed to convince.
First, Mr. Drew lays great stress on the trustworthy character of the general historical assumptions, as one may call them, of the New Testament,—the glimpses of Roman history, and Jewish man- ners, the chronological notices, and so forth, which it gives us,— for example, the reference to Cyprus as a " proconsular province," to Philippi as a " colony," to the magistrates of Thessalonica as politarchs," a title not found iu ancient literature, but since verified by a monumental inscription. No doubt this is very im- portant as far as it goes, but how far does it go ? Suppose, for instance,—though the matter is utterly unworthy of comparison with the Gospel history as regards the substance of investiga- tion,—suppose that we were trying to investigate now, the truth or falsehood of the story given in the Cornhill some eight years ago by the late Mr. Robert Bell as to Mr. Home's flight to the ceiling of a London house. Is there any question at all but that all the incidental glimpses and details of London life would be perfectly historical, that the names mentioned would be the true names of really existing persons, that plenty of incidental verifications of truth in the social details of the narrative would present themselves, —that, in a word, the whole misc- en-scene would be historical, whether the marvellous part of the story were true or false ? Nay, more, should we think that any- thing at all was established, if we liad only established as much as this? If Mr. Benjamin Coleman, or Mr. Howitt, or Mrs. S. C. Hall were referred to as believers in these demonstrations, and their professional status were incidentally mentioned, we should doubt- less have independent means of verifying these indications, and of thereby showing that the story, true or false, was painted on a canvas of real life. But should we suppose for an instant that thus much, by rescuing the asserted marvel from all imputation of mythical or legendary origin, had done anything material towards establishing its truth? Mr. Drew unquestionably lays a great deal too much stress on the historical character of the background of the Gospel history. To suggest a comparison more worthy of the sub- ject, it is quite certain that if anyone were now to investigate the alleged miracles of the Cure d'Ars, whose life has been so recently written, all the ordinary details would be perfectly historical, we should find ample verifications of these still existing in the French diocese where he lived and worked so long ; but Mr. Drew would hardly attach much value to this as demonstrating the truth of the supernatural facts alleged. The anti-supernaturalists may fairly say that when Mr. Drew has proved as much as the historical character of the background to the Gospels, he has got but a little way towards the end of his demonstration.
In the next place, Mr. Drew does not face the further difficulty on which sceptics, sincerely anxious to believe, insist so much,—that although the historical background of the New Testament is proved and must be admitted, the moment you come to cross- examining the witnesses to the supernatural facts alleged, their testi- mony really does differ in particulars which all would admit to be of great importance, were they brought before us to-day in relation to new supernatural facts alleged to have happened now. Has any critic ever reconciled to a sincere intellect's perfect satisfaction the accounts of our Lord's birth' and infancy in Matthew and Luke? Mr. Drew would hardly assert it. Has any critic ever reconciled so as to supply an intrinsically self-confirmatory and complete narrative, the accounts in the four evange- lists and St. Paul's epistles of our Lord's resurrection and of the appearances to his Apostles after that event? We need not say that St. Paul's statement does not agree in detail
with any of them, and that those of us who believe,—
as the present writer does most profoundly,—in the reality of the resurrection and the subsequent intercourse of Christ with the Apostles, base their faith on the historical certainty that the Apostles did despair on the death of Christ, that they did suddenly recover from their despair, that they stated to all the world that they had repeatedly and in groups conversed with their risen Master, and, finally, that the ground of their restored faith was so deeply laid in their hearts that it altered the whole complexion of their sub- sequent lives, and turned them into missionaries and evangelists of a new faith. We hold this to be really substantial and satisfactory evidence of the great miracle of the resurrection to any one who believes fully in a living God. But it would, we think, be quite
absurd to deny that it is a mysterious thing that matters so pro- foundly affecting human hope and faith, and the very spiritual
foundations of our life here, have been left by the provi- dence of God with so much of difficulty and historical un- certainty about them. Surely the sceptic may plausibly say that
by way of evidence of facts so stupendous and so tasking to the faith of ordinary intellects,—especially intellects educated, as ours have been, by centuries of discovery in the constancy of natural laws,—he might have expected that God would have accu- mulated all kinds of indirect testimony and confirmatory proofs ; —whereas, He has actually left us to the impression produced by the harmony between a character of ineffable majesty (but the biographical details of whose history, though in perfect keeping with the character, are left in very great vagueness and doubt), and the universal affirmation of an infant Church, thrown into despair by the death of Him whose character had thus impressed itself on them, that He repeatedly returned to them after death, and con- firmed in various meetings with the assembled disciples the truths and promises He had poured into their hearts during His life. That there may be a divine purpose in leaving so large a room for honest intellectual doubt,—in giving enough, but barely enough, intellectual proof to justify the fair claims of the reason, at least the reason of any man on whom the impression of our Lord's character has produced an overpowering effect, yet hardly enough to convince any reason less open to the contagion of spiritual impres- sions,—we are willing to concede. Indeed, we are compelled by the mere necessity of our intellectual constitution to find some explanation for a condition of things so mysterious, in which the deepest convictions of our own hearts are not only not shared by a vast number of men of equal or higher moral and intellectual gifts, but are not shared for reasons which, though they strike us as insufficient, it would be the merest bigotry to call wilful or perverse. It seems to us that the constraint to believe which the study of Christ's life produces is hardly an intellectual constraint, even where it is most strongly felt, —that, judging by the intellectual state of the argument solely, if that were possible, men may be strictly reasonable who pronounce the evidence insuffi- cient as well as those who pronounce it adequate, and that the real force of the belief depends upon an undefinable personal impression produced by Christ on the spirit which can never be adequately translated into an intellectual form. If this be so, it is surely only fair, and cannot but be the duty of Christians, to admit that it is so. Mr. Drew, while he insists on the considerations which have convinced him, altogether fails to do justice to the difficulties which have staggered so many open and candid minds. Indeed, one of his arguments—the perfect harmony between the majesty of Christ's character and the majesty of His actions—is capable of either the Christian or the sceptical interpretation. We believe, with Mr. Drew, that the acts are inseparable from the character because both have been, on the whole, truly described. But it is perfectly competent for those who feel compelled to demand a more minute historical confirmation of acts so stupendous, to say, that granting the majesty of the character exactly as it has been portrayed, it was not unnatural that the marvel of such a character should have spread a halo of grandeur and mystery about its actions which would naturally magnify them into forms not strictly historical. We should answer such a suggestion by insisting on the objective certainty of the fact of the resurrection, which we find it impos- sible not to admit, and which, once admitted, would take away all a priori improbability from the great and far less adequately certified miracles of our Lord's life. But on this point Mr. Drew does not insist at all, evidently thinking it sufficient to show that supernatural events are inextricably intertwined with a character divine beyond all human imagination. Doubtless, that is true ; but it is also true that the divine character might have more or less generated the atmosphere of wonder attaching to biographies so difficult to harmonize in detail as those which remain to us ; and this hypothesis would seem to us only too plausible, had we not much higher external evidence for the resurrection. All we want to convey is that Mr. Drew seems to us to injure his case by not adequately admitting the case he has to meet. The sceptics know perfectly well what has really cut them off from faith. If you try to convince them they are wrong and never touch their difficulties, they will naturally take little note of your argument.
Once more, in relation to that chain of Hebrew tradition, which culminates in our Lord's life and resurrection, Mr. Drew, as it seems to us, overstates his case. Doubtless, it is a chain of histories all founded on faith in supernatural guidance, all point- ing forwards to a greater and more perfect divine revelation in the future, all finding their true explanation and fulfilment in the Incarnation. Mr. Drew insists ably and eloquently on this, and he cannot insist on it too much. It is a strange phenomenon which ought to strike any impartial intellect—this chain of histories run- ning through thousands of years, all inspired by one coherent conception of the divine goverilment, and all anticipating a great blaze of light upon the inner spirit of that government which actually came. But Mr. Drew speaks as if this general coherence of design extended so completely to all the individual details of every part of it, that the Bible may be fairly regarded as a perfect organic whole, showing us in every book, and every part of every book, the govern- ment of God over the nation whose history is there chronicled. No one would guess from Mr. Drew's account that there is, mixed up with the literature of that wonderful people of God, a great deal of very inaccurate history (in the Pentateuch), some very mistaken morality (in the Book of Judges, for instance,—take the prophetess Deborah's panegyric on the treachery of the wife of Heber the Kenite, which would certainly be understood as an exposition of divine approval), some dull and lifeless history (for instance, Ezra and Nehemiah, who give surely no more help towards the revela- tion of God than Rapin or Keightley), and some very obscure and difficult poetical symbolism (like parts of Ezekiel's, of much of which it is very hard for us now to get at the meaning). The truth about the Bible seems to us to be, that while it contains a great history and marvellous literature, in which the development of a divine purpose is legibly written, while it con- tains the most wonderful story of providential guidance and love and displeasure, and discipline, and the most wonderful record of the emotions with which this display of God's care was looked up to by the greatest and most open minds of the people to whom His purposes were revealed, it contains also the usual proportion of human error and frailty in recording these things,—some confused chronology, some inconsistent tra- ditions, some distorted morality, some dry and unspiritual chro- nicles. No doubt all this makes it much more difficult for us to draw out clearly the thread of divine purpose from the marvellous literature which is so full of passion as well as patience, of pride as well as humility. But it is precisely this disentangling of a divine purpose from the heart and history of man which has been the whole problem of faith from all time, and which Christ, by insulating all that was divinely-human from all that was weak and evil in humanity, has rendered so much easier for his disciples than it ever was for the Jews of earlier ages. Mr. Drew in claim- ing for the Bible an organic perfection of which nothing pro- duced by man is even capable, seems to accept (so, at least, we judge from a passage on p. 150), not, indeed, the verbal infalli- bility of the Bible, but its plenary inspiration from beginning to end,—a tenet which we should have thought impossible for him to hold, and quite impossible to us. The peculiarity of the Bible seems to us to be that it is the literature of a people in closer conscious relations with God than any other people ever held. But that literature itself is hardly freer from error, misconception, and national prepossessions, than any other literature, though it reflects the development of a sublimer purpose. We have limited our review to criticizing the great defect of Mr. Drew's book. Let us add that if he had included what we deem as fair a view of the difficulties of belief as he has in general of the reasons for belief, his book would have been admirable. His scheme of reasoning is finely and truly conceived. What we find fault with is that an earnest sceptic would not recognize any representation here of his own genuine difficulties, and therefore could not be convinced by answers which are not answers to his thought.
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