Christian fiction; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600 -- Fiction
The vast majority of the worshippers of Christ base their worship to a
very large extent—as the author did in his early youth under the cloud
of Paley’s _Evidences_—on their acceptance of His miracles as historical
facts. In the author’s opinion this basis is already demonstrably unsafe,
and may be at any moment, by some new demonstration, absolutely destroyed.
Nevertheless such worshippers, if their worship is really genuine—that
is to say, if it includes love, trust, and awe, carried to their highest
limits, and not merely that kind of awe which is inspired by “mighty
works”—will do well to avoid this book. If doubt has not attacked them,
why should they go to meet it? In pulling up falsehood by the roots
there is always a danger of uprooting or loosening a truth that grows
beside it. Historical error, if honest, is better (and less misleading)
than spiritual darkness. For example, it is much better (and less
misleading) to remain in the old-fashioned belief that a good and wise
God created the world in six days than to adopt a new belief that a bad
or unwise or careless God—or a chance, or a force, or a power—evolved it
in sixty times six sextillions of centuries.
To such genuine worshippers of Christ, then, as long as they feel safe
and sincere in their convictions, this book is not addressed. They are
(in the author’s view) substantially right, and had better remain as they
are.
But there may be some, calling themselves worshippers of Christ, who
cannot honestly say that they love Him. They trust His power, they bow
before Him as divine; but they have no affection at all for Him, as
man, or as God. What St Paul described as the “constraining” love of
Christ has never touched them. And yet they fancy they worship! To them
this book may be of use in suggesting the divinity and loveableness of
Christ’s human nature; and any harm the book might do them can hardly be
conceived as equal to the harm of remaining in their present position.
One may learn Christ by rote, as one may learn Euclid by rote, so as to
be almost ruined for really knowing either. For such learners the best
course may be to go back and begin again.
It is, however, to a third class of readers that the author mainly
addresses himself. Having in view the experiences of his own early
manhood, he regards with a strong fellow feeling those who desire to
worship Christ and to be loyal and faithful to Him, if only they can
at the same time be loyal and faithful to truth, and who doubt the
compatibility of the double allegiance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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