I am an atheist. Why should I consider becoming a Christian?

But before attempting to contemplate some of the positive characteristics of Christianity, I would call your attention to the immense difficulties involved in its rejection, and to the contradictions, so to speak, in which we find ourselves landed. We are loth, in our pride, to own ourselves fallen beings; yet we are tried and agitated by ten thousand cares. We will not own the divine authority and sanction of revelation; yet we are tormented with misgivings, lest after all the Bible may be true. And, by the way, no such misgivings seem to vex the soul of the Buddhist or Mohammedan sceptic. We are alarmed at the approach of death, not so much because of the wrenching of familiar amenities, but because it is "a leap in the dark." If unfallen beings, why do we not calmly and unquestioningly, when death is near, drop our weary hands, and sleep? Or, again, we try compromise, and set up as Unitarians, proving but half-hearted pleaders, uninspired to risk life or limb in the promotion of our passionless creed. If sure of our ground, why this lack of fervour? Why do nothing at any cost to ourselves? This is not the Christian preacher or confessor.

The reasons of all this are not far to seek. We have all these cares, and fears, and misgivings, because we are fallen beings, whom academic surmises must fail to console. We yearn for something positive; and this Christianity supplies, and like the sun proves itself by lighting our darkness. It is positive; and hence it is the very creed to be preached with ready tongue and gladdened eye to every creature. It throws light upon, and holds out an ultimate solution of, the mystery of pain, which makes up human life. And, looking at it subjectively, in its renewing, transforming power, it carries with it its own credentials, for "He that believeth hath the witness in himself," and again, "He that doeth His will, shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." Christianity in short sheds a divine light across my path, which judges me so effectually that I do not think of judging it. It reveals a Divine Person dying to put away sin, and no mere vain ideas and shadowy images, like false religions and philosophies.

It is just these considerations, that prove to the enquiring mind, the reality of Christianity. There are many things we cannot explain; such as the fall of Satan, and the origin of evil. We are surrounded with mysteries on every hand, both in the physical world and the spiritual. Why should I be a man? Why should I be on this earth? Why should Christ have died for me, and God want to set His love upon me? There is only one answer: Because God chose that it should be so. We are in the hands of an Almighty Being, and He has seen fit to reveal His love to us in the Scriptures, and how that love can express itself righteously in the forgiveness of sins, and the blessings of the Gospel, even through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In such circumstances one's heart turns in all its helplessness to the One against whom all our sins have been committed. In Him is mercy, compassion, and love. And there is more. In Him is the matchless wisdom that has found a way whereby He can fully and frankly forgive the sinner, and yet retain the righteous consistency of His throne. That way is Christ, "whom God has set forth to be a propitiation (or mercy seat) through faith in His blood" (Rom. 3:25). If this is the character of Him with whom we have to do, let us away with both the pride that refuses to acknowledge its guilt, and the despair that feels its sins are too grievous to be forgiven. For some are afflicted with the one disease, and some with the other. Nearly nineteen hundred years ago Paul made proclamation in the Pisidian Antioch — "Be it known to you that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins" (Acts 13:38); and the proclamation has not yet been withdrawn by the God who authorised it. Such a welcome as the scapegrace of Luke 15 received on his return to his father is awaiting all who will return in true contrition to our God. The kiss of forgiveness and the ring of endless love are favours He delights to bestow.

It is here that eternal love and wisdom testify free pardon upon the ground of sacrifice, to any and every rebel that truly owns the sin of his rebellion. It is the place where God testifies such an accomplished righteousness, that He can be just and yet justify the guilty; where sinners shall find that an infinite satisfaction has been rendered to His throne which they had infinitely dishonoured. It is where eternal love, acting out of its own nature and desire, offers to its enemies blessings so rich that they shall reverse all their thoughts of God the Giver, and be won over to His side for ever. It is where God offers "joy in God," instead of His justly dreaded wrath; peace instead of "troubled sea;" life instead of death; a conscience purged, instead of a "conscience of sins;" and an assured hope of eternal blessedness and glory, instead of "judgment to come," and "everlasting punishment." In short, He offers the fulness of Christ, God's all; Him in whom all grace and gift are treasured up, making all secure because "in Him," yet none the less the believer's own, now, to-day, to-morrow, through life, and for eternity.

Thank God, Christianity is infinitely beyond Agnosticism. The Christian knows God, the God who has revealed Himself in Christ, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). The Christian is given by the Holy Spirit an inward conscious knowledge of, and joy in, the God whom he has first come to know by reception of the testimony of Holy Scripture. It is easy to assume that persons who possess this blessed knowledge are only self-deceived. I can only point to the fact. The epistles of Paul, of Peter, and of John are full of that quiet confidence that knows no uncertainty, confidence that I am assured comes of nothing but belief of the truth. What right has anyone to say that these men were either deceivers or else poor foolish persons who deluded themselves into this state? The whole tenor of their writings gives the lie to such statements. Once establish that what they speak of is true, and everything is beautifully consistent. There is no effort, no exaggeration, no needless colouring, but all is majestic in its simplicity and straightforwardness, worthy of the God who inspired them to write.

On the other hand, it is indisputable that no mere intellectual accrediting of God's word will save the soul or bring to God, however legitimate it be to urge the cogency of the evidence as leaving no excuse for unbelief. No doubt conscience must be reached by the action of the Holy Spirit in order to saving acceptance of the truth. The soul, thus illuminated, humbly and gratefully bows to God's word, and grows into an appreciation of its marvellous adaptation to human necessities, of its infinite loving-kindness and its illimitable grandeur. "He that believeth hath the witness in himself" (1 John 5:10). Of this indeed the unbeliever knows nothing, though to the renewed heart, as one has said, "Christ may be as near and real as the man who touches your elbow" — and, I would add, infinitely more so. But the point here pressed is (1) the facts, and (2) the evidence for the facts, which is, as has been said, so exceeding. To sum up the contention of this little paper, without taking the high ground of spiritual evidence to which we are entitled, it is manifest that Christianity is not only a "religion of facts," but of facts irrefragably authenticated.

159 But the circumstances in which the writers of the New Testament were shew the gross absurdity of the infidel on human grounds, so as to leave him without excuse. The truth of Christianity, as a general fact, is established as no other history in the world is; so also are its true character and the details which establish the divine power connected with it. God has granted an external and internal evidence which confounds the infidel — convicts him of being utterly unreasonable; and, of course, graciously strengthens as an outwork, the heart of the true disciple. The infidel pretends to know God so much better before-hand than anybody else, that he can shew that Christianity cannot be true. But the man that would attempt to shew it was not true would prove himself a fool in his wisdom. On no other subject would he be considered of sane mind, if he disputed on such evidence. It is the consciousness, as I have already said, that it is divine, and that it has a claim on the conscience, which is the reason of its being disputed. Were it not, no one would attempt to do it; but man cannot bear God Himself, though he may pride himself on his own thoughts about Him, if he can judge Him.

A remarkable letter was recently published in The Times from the pen of Lord Daryngton, known formerly as Mr. Pike Pease, at one time Postmaster General. It runs as follows: “Sir—Having been very much impressed by the two remarkable articles published in The Times relating to the evidence of the Resurrection of our Lord, I should like to mention the reply given by the late Lord Salisbury to someone who wrote to him asking him for his reason for his faith in Christianity. It should be remembered that he was not only a statesman, but a scientist of no mean capacity. He said that the central point of his faith was the Resurrection of Christ, in which he believed: First, because it was testified to by men who had every opportunity of seeing and knowing, and whose veracity was tested by the most tremendous trials both of energy and endurance during long lives. Secondly, because of the marvellous effects it had upon the world. He said that as a moral phenomenon the spread and mastery of Christianity were without a parallel, and added that he could no more believe that colossal moral effects lasting for 2,000 years could be without a cause than he could believe that various motions of the magnet were without a cause though he could not wholly explain them. He thought that anyone who believed in the Resurrection of Christ found little difficulty in believing in the rest of the story in the Gospels, and that no one who believed that would doubt that St. Matthew, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Mark and St. John carried a Divine message. If you can find space for this letter I shall be grateful, believing that testimony such as this is of special value at the present time. Your obedient servant, DARYNGTON.”

No doubt it was not ordinary experience, any more than the resurrection of our Lord. It is a question of extraordinary facts proved by adequate testimony and even overwhelming evidence. To set induction from experience against such facts, or indeed any facts, is essentially illogical. "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater" (1 John 5:9). A miracle has nothing to do with ordinary experience, less even than those primeval and permanent causes of which logic avows it can give no account; yet there they have been from the origin of all things as certainly as the actual sensible course of things which we call experience. They were miraculous, just like the deluge on the one hand, or our Lord's resurrection (as indeed His entire appearing here below) on the other. They are wholly beyond that experience, and above the ken of science; but they are the surest and most momentous of facts; and God has taken care to give His irrefragable witness to them all. The infidel argument begs the question and refutes itself to an honest mind. For it assumes that there is nothing beyond the general laws in ordinary experience; while it is compelled to own that, even for initiating that course of nature, there must have been primordial causes of which it knows nothing and can give no account. How much more was it for God, holy, righteous, and good, to judge iniquity and to reveal grace and truth, yea life eternal in His Son. For "this is the witness, that God gave us life eternal; and this life is in His Son" (1 John 5:11).

The real reason why these illogical reasoners dislike miracles, whether judicial or in grace, is because they dread God, as they must with a bad conscience; and they are too proud to own their sins and he saved through the faith of Christ, Who died for them and rose from the dead. If they refuse to believe now, God will enforce the honour of His Son by their resurrection to judgment executed by Him Whom they refuse now as Saviour.

I am certain if there is no revelation from God, there is no God. But the whole universe around me bears witness to the reality of a Creator, and although the visible things do not contain the secret of the nature of Him who brought them into existence, there is enough of evidence borne by them, to convince every intelligent being that He, without whom a sparrow cannot fall to the ground, could not leave His poor creature without some ray of light as to how he stands with respect to His holy and righteous will.