Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/803

* CHRISTIANITY. 705 CHRISTIANITY. never does and never can do a nmUituJe of things which it does without man. And when Jesus Christ comes into the world, the height ot" the supernatural is reaehoJ. He cannot be re- garded as an "ideal man' merely, though lie was that. He did not originate as a man by the merely natural processes by which other men originate. His peculiarity is not found in the degree of intimacy with which lie communed with God. On the contrary, Christianity regards Him as God come in the flesh. He is God in the centre of His personality, and speaks with the authority and knowledge of God. The work of atonement which He ]ierfonns is no mere incident in His earthly career, nothing in which men have any part, nor which they can do after Him ; but is unique as His person is unique, and neither capable of imitation by man nor proposed for liis imitation, although His spirit is, even the spirit in which He wrought this great work (Phil. ii. as.). All the various explanations of the pe- culiarities of Christianity are natural explana- tions, and are foreign from the spirit of the sys- tem. It is in distinction from and contradiction of them all that it is 'supernatural.' It is not «n/i-natural. and is even mitiiral, if in the scope of that word the nature of God and the secrets of eternity are embraced ; but it is above nature, as man knows nature. Thus introduced into the world, Christianity has a corresponding and a peculiar view of the world. By this it is diflereiitiated from other religions as well as by its lofty claims. Chris- tianity does not view the world as miserable, as some Oriental religions do, and recommend self- effacement as the remedy. The world is miser- able: but the chief thing is its sm. Christianity views the world as sinful and as condemned before the bar of God for its guilt. The world is a lost world. Christianity does not necessarily reject evolution (q.v. ), whereby the race is viewed as progressing ipou the whole, and even the Church as developing in grace and knowledge, but it nevertheless regards man as fallen. There was an original sin in the early history of the race, and by heredity this has brought corruption, dis- order, disharmony, into all the succeeding genera- tions. The result is that the world is a king- dom of evil. Man was made to know God. Re- move this knowledge from him by sin, and he tends to evil, because his upward tendencies de- p.^nd upon the presence of his designed environ- ment, (iod. The hopeless ruin of man apart from God springs from the fact that nothing can rise in the scale of moral life, or any other life, when it is deprived of the sole designed agency of its elevation. But with this view of man and the world is combined another. The ap- parent pessimism is changed to an optimism. Man is capable of salvation, and is. in the divine design, something great and noble. Christian- ity comes to bring into his history the saving power which shall rescue him from himself and make him again a son of God. It presents to him in Jesus Clirist an ideal of purity which, under the ministration of the divine Spirit, con- vinces him of his sin. The same Spirit produces a new allegiance in his soul, allegiance to God in Christ, creates a new purpose to do the right, animates him by a new affection, that of an all- embracing love, and produces a new obedience to the will of God. The change in him is not a mere change of purpose. It is accompanied with tlie gift of the Spirit as an abiding, renovating, in- spiring, and enabling presence, so that the man finds a new power in himself to overcome the temptations of the world, Christianity puts him, also, in a new society; and it thus saves him. It brings him out from under the con- dennialion of the law of God, it puts him again in his old position of communion with his Father, and thus it both shows what he was in- tended to be, and helps him increasingly to attain to that ideal. Some external organization is, of course, neces- sary if the work of Christianity is to be done in the world. Accordingly there has always been a Church. The sacerdotal tendency, transplanted from Judaism into early Christianity, strength- ened by Augustine (q.v.), and culminating in the Papacy, identified the visible with the in- visible Church, made membership in it essential to salvation, and viewed the hierarchy as essen- tial to the being of the Church. This view is largely held in the Anglican communion at the present time. Other Protestant bodies have, how- ever, laid the emphasis upon the invisible Cliurch to such a degree that they have acknowledged the validity of any Church organization which seemed to possess the Spirit of Christ. The evidences of Christianity vary from age to age according to the needs of that age; they must, however, always consist in the display of the essential meaning of Christianity and its place in the plan of the world. The chief exter- nal arginnents were formerly derived from the fulfilhnent of prophecy and from the testimony of miracles. The modern stress upon law in the world has caused a change at this point. Proph- ecy and miracle themselves have now become an object of attack, and need defense. Tliis is de- rived from their inseparability from the sub- stance of Christian doctrine and from the truth of that as a whole. The argument for the truth of Christianity as a whole is derived from two principal sources: from history, particularly from Christianity's place in history as a force cooperating with other forces to make history what it is, and that upon its best side; and from the reasonableness of its doctrines and tlieir agreement with the results of every other realni of human knowledge. The internal evidences of Christianity were formerly occupied largely with the character of Christ and the career of the apo.slles as both exhibiting the presence of a supernatural power. While these arguments have not passed away, and never can, there has been a tendency of late to lay a new stress upon Christian experience as a source of evidence. Not only does the Gospel, when accepted and tried, do for the sinner what it ])rofesses itself able to do, and thus prove itself because 'it works,' but the Christian comes to possess an experiential and thus an independent knowledge of the chief truths of Christianity, which is logically inde])endent of the Scriptures and the Church, and is thus able to confirm their claims. Consult Stearns, Evi- dence of Ohrisiian Experience (Xew York, 1891). The extension of Christianity is no mean argument in its favor and no small evidence of its real character. It early extended with al- most incredible rapidity over the Roman Empire. It is .still extending, and in the missions of the Xineteenth Century has renewed the triumphs of its vouth.