The Fair Haven

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activity of our enemies. Otherwise why should there be no sign of yielding on the part of so many sincere and eminent men who have heard all that has been said upon the Christian side and are yet not convinced by it? We cannot think t

fit subject for evidence but is to be accepted upon authority. This last position will be rejected at once by nine-tenths of Englishmen. But upon rejecting it we look in vain for a work which shall appear to have any such success in arresting infidelity as attended the works of Butler and Paley in the last century. In their own day these two great men stemmed the current of infidelity: but no modern writers have succeeded in doing so, and it will scarcely be said that either Butler or Paley set at rest the many serious and inevitable questions in connection with Christianity which have arisen during the last fifty years. We could hardly expect one of the more intelligent students at Oxford or

ve resolved to keep my treatment of the subject, I trust that I may be able to produce such an effect upon the minds of those who are in doubt concerning the evidences for the hope that is in them, that henceforward they shall never doubt again. I am not sanguine enough to suppose that I shall be able to induce certain eminent naturalists and philosophers to reopen a question

eness as to arrest the attention of any unbeliever into whose hands it may fall, and induce him to look further into what else may be urged upon the Christian side. We are bound to adapt our means to our ends, and shall have a better chance of gaining the ear of our adversaries if we can offer them a short and pregnant book than if we come to them with a long one from which whole chapters might be pruned. We have to bring the Christian religion to men who will look at no book which cannot be read in a railway train or in an arm-chair; it is most deplorable that this should be the case, nevertheless it is indisputably a fa

hould doubt it. This I have therefore attempted, and I humbly trust that the reader will feel that I have not only attempted it, but done it, once and for all so clearly and satisfactorily and with such an unflinching examination

single miracle is as good as twenty, provided that it be well established, and can be shewn to be so: it is here that even the ablest of our apologists have too often failed; they have professed to substantiate the historical accuracy of all the recorded miracles and sayings of our Lord, with a result which is in some instances feeble and conventional, and occasionally even unfair (oh! what suicidal folly is there in even the remotest semblance of unfairness), instead of devoting themselves to throwing a flood of brilliancy upon the most important features and leaving the others to shine out in

how sound and able the defence of one part of the Christian scheme may have been, its effect is often marred by contiguity with argument which the writer himself must have suspected, or even known, to be ingenious rather than sound: the moment that this is felt in any book its value with an opponent is at an end, for h

one in whom I confided had been ready to go to the root of the matter, and even to yield up the convictions of a life-time could it be shewn that they were unsafely founded, my doubts would have been resolved in an hour or two's quiet conversation, and would at once have had the effect, which they have only had after long suffering and unrest, of confirming me in my allegiance to Christ. But I was met with anger and impatience. There was an instinct which told me that my opponent had never heard a syllable against his own convictions, and was determined not to hear one: on this I assumed rashly that he must have go

d dispute, and this, happily, is what most men feel concerning Christianity. Again, indolence or impotence of mind indisposes many to intellectual effort; others are pained by coming into contact with anything which derogates from the glory due to the great sacrifice of Christ, or to his Divine nature, and lastly not a few are withheld by moral cowardice from daring to bestow the pains upon the unbeliever which his condition requires. But from whichever of these sources the disinclination to understand him comes, its effect is equally disastrous to the unbeliever. People do not m

n faith have been sadly inclined to avoid a difficulty rather than to face it, unless it is so easy as to be no real difficulty at all. I do not say that this is unnatural, for the Christian writer must be deeply impressed with the sinfulness of unbelief, and will therefore be anxious to avoid raising doubts which will probably never yet have occurred to his reader, and might po

actory. Who can be surprised that the earlier apologists should have felt thus in the presence of an enemy whose novelty made him appear more portentous than he can ever seem to ourselves? They were bound to venture nothing rashly; what they did they did, for their own age, thoroughly; we owe it to their cautious pioneering that we so know the weakness of our opponents and our own strength as to be able to do fearlessly what may well have seemed perilous to our forefathe

out for objections, in finding the very best that can be found and stating them in their most intelligible form, in shewing what are the logical consequences of unbelief, and thus carrying the war into the enemy's country; in fighting with the most chivalrous generosity and a determination to take no adva

is fear in turning away from it in the first instance. How many die hardened unbelievers through the treatment which they have received from those to whom their Christianity has been a matter of circumstances and habit only? Hell

riously listen to those whom they believe to know one side of a question only. It is this which makes the educated infidel so hard to deal with; he knows very well that an intelligent apprehension of the position held by an opponent is indispensable for profitable dis

it were so infectious that the very nurses and doctors should run away from those afflicted with it; but such conduct is no less absurd than cruel and disgraceful. Infidelity is only infectious when it is not understood. The smallest reflection should suffice to remind us that a faith which has satisfied the most brilliant and profound of human intellects for nearly two thousand years must have had very sure

ties until we know what they are? Infidelity is as a reeking fever den, which none can enter safely without due precautions, but the taking these precautions is within our own power; we can all rely upon the blessed promises of the Saviour that he will not desert us in our hour of need if we will only truly seek him; there is more infidelity in this shrinking and fear of investigation than in almost any open de

light, hold it up before the world and make its hideousness manifest to all-then, and not till then, will the hours of unbelief be numbered. We have been the mainstay of unbelief through our timidity. Far be it from me, therefore, that I should help any unbeliever by concealing his case for him. This were the most cruel kindness. On the contra

strength of our own can be made apparent. Those who wish to cry peace, peace, when there is no peace, those who would take their faith by fashion as the take their clothes, those who doubt the strength of their own cause and do not in their heart of heart believe that Christianity will stand investigation, those, again, who care not who may go to Hell provided they are comfortably sure of going to Heaven themselv

was to be saved it must be done by the assumption of man's nature on the part of the Deity. God must make himself man, or man could never learn the nature and attributes of God. Let us then follow the sublime example of the incarnation, and make ourselves as unbelievers that we may teach unbelievers to believe. If Paley and Butler had only been real infidels for a single year, instead of taking the thoughts

ascended into Heaven: but I cannot prove that none of the accounts of these events which have come down to us have suffered from the hand of time: on the contrary, I must own that the reasons which led me to conclude that there must be confusion in some of the accounts of the Resurrection continue in full force with me even now. I s

give them a great advantage over men; men will listen to them when they would turn away from one of their own sex; and though I am well aware that courtesy is no argument, yet the natural politeness shewn by a man to a woman will compel attention to what falls from her lips, and will thus perhaps be the means of bringing him int

icious? You fear not infection here, for you know that you are on sure ground, and that there is no form of vice of which the viciousness is not clearly provable; but can you doubt that the foundation of your faith is sure also, and can you not see that your cowardice in not daring to examine the foul and soul-destroying den of infidelity is a stumbling-block to those who have not yet known their Saviour

allegiance, partly from the pain of even seeing the wounds of your Redeemer laid open-of even hearing the words of those enemies who have traduced him and crucified him afresh-

the part of the Christian which gives it all its power; when Christians are strong in the strength of their own cause infidels will know their impotence, but as long as there are cowards there will be those who prey upon cowardice, and as long as those who should defend the cross of Christ hide themselves behind battlements, so long will the enemy come up to the very walls of the

that work without prayer is bad, but prayer without work worse. Let them do their own utmost in the way of sowing, planting, and watering, and then let them pray to God that he will vouchsafe them the increase; but they can no more expect the increase to be of God's free gift without the toil of sowing than did the blessed Apostle St. Paul. If God did not convert the heathen for Paul and Apollos in answer to their prayers alone, how can we expect that he will convert the infidel for ourselves, unless we have first followed in the footsteps of the Apostles? The sin of infidelity will rest upon us and our children until we have done our best to shake it off; and this not timidly and disingenuously as those who fear for the result, but with the certainty that it is the infidel and not the Chr

make another see, if the other persists in shutting his eyes and bandaging them: if it is a victory to be able to say that they cannot see the truth under these circumstances, the victory is with our opponents; but for those who can lay their hands upon their he

an souls as written by the great Creator and Redeemer of the soul itself, but the Enemy of Mankind is never idle, and no sooner does God vouchsafe to us any clearer illumination of his purposes and manner of working, than the Evil One sets himself to consider how he can turn the blessing into a curse; and by the all-wise dispensation of Providence he is allowed so much triumph as that he shall sift the wise from the foolish, the faithful from the traitors. God knoweth his own. Still there is no surer mark that

. As yet the proof has never been made sufficiently clear. If displayed sufficiently for one age it has been necessary to do the work again for the next. As soon as the errors of one set of people have been made apparent, another set has arisen with fresh objections, or the old fallacies have reappeared in a

ght of God are but as yesterday) that infidelity has made real progress. Then God raised his hand in wrath; revolution taught men to see the nature of unbelief and the world shrank back in horror; the time of fear passed by; unbelief has again raised itself; whereon we can see that other and even more fearful revolutions [82] are daily threatening. What country is safe? In what part of the world do not men feel an uneasy foreboding of the wrath which will surely come if they do not repent and turn unto the Lord their God? Go where we will we are conscious of that heaviness and oppression which is the precursor of the hurricane and the earthqu