ART. V.-THE INVINCIBILITY OF TRUTH "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; Th' eternal years of God are hers; And dies among his worshipers." THAN the above Bryant never wrote a more seerlike sentence. The Roman asked of Christ: "What is truth?" "What is truth?" Whatever was the spirit of Pilate, his question is one of profoundest significance; one which pierces to the core of all present and eternal values. Any verbal definition of truth is liable to be incomplete, but, for our present purposes, it may in general be said, Truth is reality. In the material world truth is the essential nature of things; in the moral world, the soul of law. Truth in thought is right thinking, the forming of a conception, a picture, in the soul which rightly represents the outward reality about which we think. Truth in speech is so to employ words as accurately to represent facts; in sincerity, to utter without disguise the real thought and feeling of one's mind and heart. Truth in life is conformity of character to highest moral pattern. Truth exists independently of our thought, and there may be the widest difference between the truth and what men think about it. But whatever may be our misconceptions of the truth, the truth itself stands, and we are forever powerless to displace it or to impair the validity of its claims. I. Truth has its domain in both the physical and moral worlds. In the material realm it is the function of physical science to search out and to declare the truth. Ingenious theories may for a time pass current under the label of science, but any scientific theory, so called, which does not conform to facts is either defective or false. The circulation of the blood through the arterial and venous systems of the animal body is one of nature's facts. But from the days of Galen to comparatively recent times the doctors of medicine practiced their art without any proper knowledge of or belief in this fact. William Harvey, in the seventeenth century, after demonstrating this truth by a series of experiments upon living animals, announced his conclusions to the world. This announcement was met by most obstinate resistance from many sources. Learned professors in leading universities wrote whole volumes in refutation of the theory. But error, however hoary or however intrenched in the homage of belief, must always give way when its opposing truth is once known. Harvey had discovered a truth as old as creation, a truth of which every heart-beat in every human bosom from the days of Adam till now has been an unerring proclamation. It remains that no false science, however formidable may seem its support, can have final standing room as against any single truth which inheres in nature. False theories, like clouds, may serve to obscure from view whole mountain ranges of truth. The clouds are sure to be swept away, while the mountains, granite-based, remain forever. The wealth of mechanical invention in our age is something marvelous. Its adequate description would make a veritable bible of wondrous creations. The practical value to material life of invented appliances is so vast as to be immeasurable. Yet it is certain that not one useful invention was ever installed which did not depend for its value upon conformity to fundamental natural truth. It is doubtless a function of the inventor to effect new combinations of natural principles, but in the last analysis it will appear that every invention, however marvelous its mechanism, is conditioned for its working values upon conformity to natural laws. Gravitation is one of nature's universal facts, but is a fact which no art can ignore. The engineer may span yawning chasms with girders of steel, and speed his trains over mountain pathways, but before he can do these things he must reckon to the hundredth part of an ounce, with every demand which gravitation makes upon his enterprise. The useful arts are simply the tributes of human genius to the truths of nature. All true art is nothing more or less than a utilized understanding of those truths which God in the beginning entered in nature's statute book. When a human genius translates a truth of nature into some working appliance of civilization there has come into art a truth against which neither prejudice nor opposition shall have power to work final harm. What single fact more signally than the modern steamship demonstrates man's sovereignty over nature? Harnessed to a forty thousand horse power energy, housing and feeding sumptuously regiments of people between its decks, defying alike fogs and tempests, and resting not night or day, this leviathan, on foot more fleet than the greyhound, speeds its way from one world's shore to another. Yet as late as the early years of the nineteenth century Napoleon submitted to the French Academy of Sciences a query as to the possibility of steam navigation. The reply of this learned body was: "The whole thing is a mad notion, a gross delusion, an absurdity." When, a little later, Fulton's steamboat actually began its trip on the Hudson it is said there were religious teachers who prayed that the maledictions of Heaven might fall upon the machine; and, as the start was made on the seventeenth of August, there were those who declared that this "seventeen" was none other than the total of the ten horns and the seven heads of the beast of the Apocalypse. But, the judgment of the French Academy and the prejudice of these pious teachers notwithstanding, the steamboat had come to stay; it was a translation into art of an invincible truth. II. The highest truth with which we have to deal is moral truth. This truth relates us to God. Our relations to it decide our character-our destiny. Moral truth is as invincible as its Author. Its message declares God's changeless hatred of injustice and predicts the final triumph of right over wrong. It was the clear perception of this fact that inspired the poet-seer, when our civilization seemed dominated by the Heaven-defying crime of slavery, to write: "Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong... It is the solemn reiteration of history that the corroding doom of destruction works surely, however slowly, against the forces of unrighteousness. As the truths of nature are the substance and wealth of art, so moral truth embodied in character gives to character its loftiest strength, nobility and beauty. The noblest nations of history are those into whose convictions have most deeply entered the truths of moral law. The noblest men of the race have been those whose discernment of moral law has been most clear and whose loyalty to the demands of that law has been most heroic. Why does history put its perpetual coronation upon the brows of the old Hebrew prophets? Why do men today glorify John the Baptist, a martyr in the dungeon, while they execrate Herod upon his throne? Why is it that the single scene, at the Diet of Worms, of Luther standing alone with his Bible against the assembled opposition of empires, remains today the most splendid historic picture of Europe in the sixteenth century? To such questions there is one, and but one, answer. The irreversible moral judgment of mankind ranks these men among the world's uncrowned kings because it recognizes in them the clear-visioned and fearless champions of God's eternal truth. No opposition can disturb the security of moral truth. We have no power to disarm its authority. We can never dislodge its sanctions from the human breast. Our moral constitution is such that in the light of knowledge it must always pronounce for right as against wrong, for truth as against error. The human mind has as yet very little explored the universe of moral truth. The wealth of its stellar spaces and the glory of its outlying constellations transcend mortal vision. The most daring imagination falters and gropes in the attempt to map its infinite domain. But, whatever the limitations of our apprehension, however speculative and erroneous may be many of our theories and beliefs, it must remain that there is a definite moral order of the universe, an order that is harmonious and complete in itself, and which will be abiding as eternity. III. There is the truth of revelation given for man's guidance in the momentous matters of character and of destiny. Our Christian faith is that the Bible gives historic setting and expression to this truth. A high test of truth is seen in its ability to survive opposition-in the fact that its essential claims stand forth more clear and incontrovertible after the attacks of hostile criticism have done their worst. We may without fear most rigidly apply this test to the Bible. The Bible is a very old book. It has made for itself a pathway of increasing conquest across hostile centuries. It has found its widest acceptance among the most cultured civilizations. Indeed, it has large credit for having itself created those very civilizations. Ours is an age characterized by fearless critical investigation. No theory that appeals for credence can hope to escape relentless analysis. In the final court of belief nothing will be accepted as truth which has not passed through crucible fires. It would be irrational to assume that the Bible must be exempt from this critical process. The very importance of its claims, to say nothing of the literary integrity of its records, renders it not only inevitable but highly fitting that it should be examined with the ablest critical search of which the human mind is capable. The Bible as God's book has nothing to lose by such process. Nor is there the slightest occasion for its friends to fear the result. Much misapprehension, confusion, and disturbance are in the popular mind over that indefinite term, "higher criticism." To many this term seems a shibboleth of most evil omen. It is not to be denied that the application of the critical process will affect some phases of traditional belief about the Bible. Around this ancient book there have gathered many purely adventitious traditions, interpretations, and views which have absolutely no place in the structure of the Bible itself. An important function of criticism is to purge away these parasitical elements. Criticism makes untenable certain views of inspiration which some have tenaciously held. The excellency of the glory of revelation has come to us in earthen vessels. It requires only intelligent attention, not critical scholarship, to convince any candid thinker that the books of the Bible bear evidence of a fallible human authorship. Criticism, for instance, does point out minor discrepancies of statement in the Gospels. The discovery of such facts should not breed panic among the saints. Such results are rationally and judicially to be anticipated, inasmuch as men, and not God, were the writers of the books. The discrepancies referred to in the Gospels, while they mark the human limitations of the writers, when properly judged do not show a general lack of competent knowledge on the part of these writers, much less the spirit of invention on the one hand or of inveracity on the other. Much that passes under the name of criticism is doubtless ill-motived and vicious; but such criticism, in its very nature, can have no final standing room in the world of scholar |