July 6

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness. - 1 Corinthians 1:22-23.

IN the beginning of the gospel we find two classes of persons, Jews and Gentiles, neither of which forsooth could find evidence enough to believe it. The Jews-O they could not believe that Jesus was Messiah, though they stood by and saw him open the eyes of the blind, and raise the dead by a single word, and in a moment; but they could believe the traditions of their elders and the stories of their rabbis-the greatest impositions on human credulity that ever were invented. Then the Greeks-O, said they, how absurd it is for persons to believe in and adore as a God one who suffered and died on the cross; at the very same time they acknowledged and adored as gods, beings whose infamous lusts and passions they allowed, as if sinning was less incompatible with divinity than suffering. It is the same now; the evidence ventured upon by men as to their everlasting all is such as they would be ashamed to act upon in the lowest concerns of life. The faith of a Christian! What does a Christian believe compared with the man who believes that the Scriptures are a cunningly-devised fable? It is to the sceptic we may plainly apply the exclamation, “O man, great is thy faith.” We indeed believe difficulties, but he believes absurdities. We believe mysteries, but he swallows absolute impossibilities.

O Christian, your faith does not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the word of God. Yet the wisdom of man has always been on our side. Down to this very hour, infidelity has not produced one first-rate scholar or genius. What are the names to be found in the lists of our adversaries to weigh against our Newtons, our Boyles, our Bacons, our Lockes, our Miltons, our Joneses, and numbers more. Christians can appeal to miracles numerous, performed in public, and in the presence of those who would have detected the imposture if there had been any. We can appeal to the character of the sacred penmen, and here we say to the deist, “Were these penmen good men or bad men?”

You can take your choice of the alternatives, for either one will equally support our argument. If you say they were good men, how came good men to tell falsehoods, and profess that they received a communication which they never had received, and to declare, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ when the Lord had not spoken? If you assert them to be bad men, how came bad men to enforce all holy tempers and conversation, and to censure and condemn themselves for ever in every line they wrote?” And if we take up the Bible and examine it internally, we shall see that it is worthy of God.

When we read the Scriptures we feel the impress of the Divine agency. We are perfectly sure that whoever was the author of the book, he was a holy, a wise, and a benevolent being, who knew us perfectly, and was concerned for our welfare. And be it observed that the gospel can only impress us according to our impressions of the nature of its claims, if we receive it as human we shall naturally regard it humanly; if we receive it as Divine we shall regard it Divinely. It was thus the Thessalonians received it; and the Apostle acknowledges the consequence, “Ye received,” says he, “the word of us, not as the word of man, but as it is in truth the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”