EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, The title given to apologetics, or the defense of Chris tianity against the objections of its opponents. The occasion for such defense arises from the fact that Christianity, while it is primarily a life in the soul of man, is also a system of ideas, which arc the means by which its distinctive life is produced and maintained. It thus meets the systems of thought already existing in the world, and is found to differ essentially from them. Hence, first, the satisfaction of the rational faculty in the Christian himself calls for an ad justment of Christian doctrines to the principles and results of human thibking, the result of which is systematic theology; and, second. the practical work of the extension of Christianity calls for a defense of its doctrine against the hostile criticism inevitably arising, the result of which is the science of evidences. From the time of Justin 'Martyr, the first Christian philosopher, to the present, Christianity has continually given rise to apologetic treatises.
(I) The defense of Christianity must depend upon the conception of Christianity which the apologist entertains. Evidences thus begin with definition. Christianity is that religion which saves from sin and the consequences of sill by the intervention of Cod in his behalf in send ing I lis Sou to assume hinnan nature, in which Ile perfectly revealed the will of Cod and laid the foundation of salvation by the sacrifice of Himself. ,1s thus defined, Christianity is a su pernatural religion. that is, a religion employing ageneies above nature and man. Its chief event, the Incarnation, is a miracle. It surpasses, and in a sense traverses, nature. It is tile personal contact of the divine principle with humanity, as distinguished from the impersonal contact which the same principle has with man in nature.
(2) Christian evidences begin, therefore, with this fundamental fact of personal contact with the divine. This contact takes place at the cen tral point of personality in man, the will, which it originally and continually moves to new moral choices. It is thus a matter of consciousness, of experience, and the first series of Christian evi dences gather about the experiences of the soul which are produced by Christianity and are char acteristic of the same. The argument is direct
from the revolutionary choice by which the Chris tian life is ushered in, to its cause—something without the Christian, a person, because adapting motives to his condition; holy, because leading to holiness: and immeasurably great, because governing him and doing all that is involved in such a government—who is, therefore, God. The evidence of the great feature of Christianity as a personal contact of Cod with man is. therefore, the fact that the Christian has experience of such a contact in the very act by which he becomes a Christian. This is evidence of the very first degree of certainty to him, and affording the most perfect satisfaction, since it. is a matter of immediate consciousness. To every non-be liever it sustains the character of testimony. It is unassailable by him in respect to its possibility ii he accepts the existence of a personal God. He cannot reasonably deny its actuality, because this would be to deny what generations of men, of the most diverse character and under the most diverse conditions, by which both collusion and delusion are equally excluded, assert. He can only reasonably object that he himself knows nothing of such a contact. Christian experience, however. goes still further. As the Christian has experience of the personal contact of Cod with the world for its salvation in the instance of that contact which is furnished by his own personal participation in the work of Christianity for man, so he experiences the operation in himself of the various forms in which this contact. devel ops in the complete work of Christianity for the world. He comes into contact with Christ, and he thus knows something of the nature of the Saviour by personal experience. Thus the proof of the Incarnation, the chief miracle of Chris tianity. gains an element of personal evidence. And as his experience enlarges, the witness of experience to truth enlarges also. In the final result, he may he said to have personal, and, to Min, irrefutable, evidence upon every one of the main points of Christianity in the experiences of his own soul.