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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24a

The Bishop's Easter Sermon. — To the Lord Bishop of Melbourne

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The Bishop's Easter Sermon.

To the Lord Bishop of Melbourne.

Mr Lord,—Your lordship's proved readiness to follow the example of your divine master in meeting enquirers—"both hearing them, and asking them questions," has gained you golden opinions among those who love the truth, and feel that it is best attained by the exposure of error in free discussion. The ill-natured rumour that you were unable to reply to Mr. Marcus Clarke's letter to you in the Melbourne Review, I disregard. Tour lordship was doubtless anxious to rejoin to a reply which you had invited by answering Mr. Clarke's article on "Civilisation without Delusion," in the Victorian Review, and it may be presumed that you were only prevented from maintaining your position and credit, by the perverse meanness and narrowmindedness that suppressed a letter, which certainly demanded refutation far more than the article to which you had responded. By the courtesy of the editor of this paper, I am permitted to offer to your lordship an opportunity—perhaps as good as that of which you were so unfortunately and unjustly defrauded, of going about your master's business.

The reprint of your Easter sermon, has just reached me. Your lordship, has I hear put "Sceptic" to silence on the subject. If I venture to offer a few remarks upon it, and to hope for your lordships notice of them, it is because I am no sceptic, but the opposite of a sceptic. A sceptic, as your lordship is aware is a doubter, and so far as he has any definite opinions, he is no sceptic. If I have definite opinions and no doubts on some subjects which I hare considered, I am still quite prepared to modify them as definitely and decidedly upon being furnished with adequate reasons. I am always ready to check and correct the little I do know.

Your lordship's text is "And if Christ be not raised your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins." An anomaly here strikes me my lord. Is not your vocation the saving of sinners ? But if Christ really rose to save sinners, is not your occupation gone ? Sinners are either saved or not saved by Christ. If the sinners have still to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, and if it is your function to help them to do so, they cannot be already saved by Christ. If they are already saved by him, they, and you can have no saving to do. At present I have no doubt about the practical contradiction herein involved, but I await your lordship s solution of the difficulty.

Your lordship says on your first page that Sceptics allege that we cannot be sure that we have apostolic testimony to the resurrection, or that the Saviour was seen after his burial. My clear impression is that we have rational ground for being sure that there is no valid apostolic testimony on the subject. Your lordship must know that the titles of the gospels advisedly state that they are not written by, but according to certain apostles; that they are supposed to be based upon prior documents; and that the prefixing of apostles' names to them, was entirely arbitrary and subsequent. In fact the sole testimony available is that of certain fathers in the next three centuries; and of those fathers we have ample testimony (see Dr. Conyers Middleton's "Free enquiry into the miraculous powers, &c.") as to their folly, credulity, and disregard of truth. Your lordship appears indeed, to recognise the lack of authenticity of the gospels, when in your first page, you desert them, and rely upon St. Paul. Now my lord, did St. Paul ever see the risen Saviour at all ? I admit that he says in general terms in Cor. xv, 8. that "Last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time." But this was after—not only the resurrection, but the ascension also, and therefore was not properly seeing him at all as the others are supposed to have seen him. And if we take St Paul's particular specific account, given repeatedly in the Acts of the Apostles, of what really happened, be saw nothing but a light, and thought he heard a voice which he did not know as that of Jesus, for he had to ask "Who art thou Lord?" By his own account he saw no more, being struck blind on the spot. What guarantee then had he, that the answerer was really Jesus ?—none. There was nothing but a vision, as St. Paul himself calls it, (Acts, xxvi, 19) and a vision implies something subjective, not objective. Then to say that he saw the risen Saviour, is inadmissible. His incidental assertion in Cor. xv, 8, is evidently a mere rhetorical expression, inconsistent with the date, and his own repeated particular statements on different occasions, as preserved in the Acts of the Apostles Then to build anything upon the fact that St Paul "knew Peter, James, and John," seems fallacious in the extreme; St Paul strenuously disclaims having received anything from them, (Gal. i 16-7.,) apparently met them only to quarrel with them, (See "Not Paul but Jesns,") speaks disrespectfully and with animosity of them (Gal i, 7, 8, 9, also ch. ii,) and repudiates all connection with them. Yet your lordship appears to accept St Paul's incidental assertion that they had seen the risen Saviour, as irrefragable proof of the fact, though we have seen that his general assertion that he himself had seen him was contradicted by himself, and was therefore and otherwise inadmissible. St Paul's writings prove him to have been exceedingly rash and unprecise in statement. His round assertion that 500 brethren at once saw the risen Jesus, (see your lordship's repeated mention of it—page 5.) has no support from those who profess to relate the circumstances. Your lordship eagerly accepts his assertion that others believed that they had seen such an extraordinary and inexplicable phenomenon as a person risen from the dead, when his own statement regarding his own conversion are (as given by the inspired recorder of the Acts of the Apostles) so conflicting and so contradictory, (see "Not Paul but Jesus," conversion table.)

Your lordship conceives (page 6) that there was "no possibility of mistake when a supernatural being takes a long walk with two men, converses with them copiously by the way upon the prophecies of the Jewish scriptures, goes in with them to their dwelling, and then vanishes away." Is your lordship warranted in entirely ignoring the plain statement in the record that they did not recognise their familiar teacher and master in all that time: and only imagined that it was he when he suddenly left them, and when verification was impossible? What sort of evidence is this to us ?

Yet even all this is beside the point. What is required is evidence of the resurrection itself, not of what happened afterwards. Your lordship's whole sermon is an implicit recognition of the importance of the facts, and of the connection of those facts with us by means of the evidence of them. What evidence then have we ? Authentic statements of independent unbiassed witnesses ? The very opposite. The only alleged spectators—the disinterested guard—who must have believed what they saw, are said (by interested persons who were not present) to have made, for money, a false statement respecting it. There were no other spectators. A few persons whose statements, with perhaps one doubtful exception, have not come to us, arrived at the sepulchre after all was over; but had they been present, they were too interested and partial to be eligible witnesses. The statements about them and what they saw are contradictory, and they are said to have thought that the person whom they saw was someone else.

But your lordship ignores some important facts to which I invite your attention. It was quite possible to have convincing proof (to persons on the spot at the time, if not to us.) of the resurrection; the initial steps of it are said to have been actually taken; but the failure to complete it, seems fatal to the credibility of the story. Independent, unbiassed, disinterested witnesses were available and ready. A large stone had been rolled over the mouth of the sepulchre, the seal of the chief priests was upon it, and a Roman guard kept watch. So says the inspired record. If then, at the expiration of the appointed three days and three nights, Pontius Pilate, his officers and soldiers, independent and disinterested,—and the chief priests—biassed rather against than in favor of the resurrection, had been summoned to be eyewitnesses of the event;—if the seal had been broken by the chief priests, the report of the guard duly made to Pilate, the stone rolled away, the stiff and decomposing body, minutely examined and indentified, and if then the resurrection had unmistakably taken place before the astonished gaze of such unexceptionable witnesses,—what room for doubt, dispute, cavil, or suspicion would there have been? And would not the honesty and veracity of the divine record have been triumphantly vindicated, at least to those living at the time and place ? And what difficulty was there in the way of such desirable verification ?

But what was admittedly the result ? After all the preliminary precautions had been duly taken, what happened ? Long before the time appointed by Jesus himself, the seal was broken in the night, the stone rolled away, and the corpse removed!!! Was not the failure implicity yielded ? the fiasco complete ? The "lame and impotent conclusion," is only aggravated by the attempted explanation. If the Roman guards had really beheld what it is stated that they saw, would they not have reported the truth at once to their own officers and governor? But having as stated gone to the chief priests instead, is it probable or credible that they would have taken from them money to report a lie to criminate themselves, and secure their own severe punishment ? What but the truth could exonerate and save them ? Would any guards have been so stupid as to falsely state that they slept, and state also what happened while they were asleep ?

Further the chief priests are stated to have believed the report of the guards !!! but to have acted as if they disbelieved it ! If they believed, in what respect were they not converted christians? But if they believed the guard, would they not have done the very reverse of what they are reported to have done ? Would they not have been baptised at once ? And if they believed not, would they not at once have reported the guard to the governor as lying conspirators ? Is not every item and circumstance of the story irreconcilably inconsistent with others ? Wholly improbable and incredible ? Let me remind you my lord that these considerations affect the value of the evidence to persons living at the time and place, not to those separated from the events by thousands of miles, and years; to whom in comparison it would be valueless, even if it had been perfectly satisfactory to those on the spot at the time.

From the difficulties of materialism, as you call them my lord, you will not find me shrink. You ray lord, as a believer in the bible, can scarcely refuse belief in hereditary transmission of moral qualities (see John viii 41, & 44.) I demur to the term automatic, which involves a solecism. "No body can originate motion in itself"—is a fundamental law of motion. The cause of all motion is external. To hold and make men responsible for their acts, I hold to be right and proper, though I concur with you at page 8, that that being so, to blame or punish them, is unjust and irrational. But to prevent their injuring society is a moral duty and is dictated by wisdom. That we can do, and yet repudiate the idea of punishment. Let us inflict no pain on wrong-doers, but seclude or narcotise them. You say "We must blame and punish." That I hold to be adding evil to evil, and experience proves that no anticipated good results. You say "we feel and know that we are free; that we can chose to do right, and ought to be punished when we do wrong." St Paul differs from you (Rom. vii, 15, 20.) All men desire good, to be good, and to do good; and if they do not and are not, it is from error or in-capacity. Surely it is the reverse of charity to insinuate the contrary. But, in common with many of the greatest and best of men, I feel and know that I am not free, and that all our choosing is determined by heredity education, and circumstance, and the bible, particularly, your favourite, St Paul, is on my side again. "For it it God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Phil, ii, 13) But I decline to (with St Paul) lay the responsibility upon God, who, he says predestinated us to good or evil before our birth. (Rom. viii & ix) I could of course multiply quotations to the same effect but I think the above from St Paul should answer purpose with your lordship.

I venture to deprecate the style of your lordship's adjuration to your congregation (pages 8 & 9). You do not attempt to lead your hearers to judge coolly, resonably, and conscientiously, according to the evidence before them; you do not appear to recognise that faith is not demanded or required, except for incredible or doubtful statements, and that our supreme responsibility is for the earnest and conscientious use rather than suppression of the discrimination and judgment with which we find ourselves endowed. On the contrary, you appeal to your auditors' æsthetic imagination, urge them to ignore every principle of evidence and science, and demanding blind admiration of an impossible hyper moral character, you conclude your sublime exhortation by asking.—" Say if you can keep yourselves back from the centurion's confession, verily this was the Son of God!"

My lord, allow me to remind you of another passage which you appear to have overlooked, though equally authenticated in the same record, and which, to unbiassed minds has a clearer aspect of probability, while it suggests the very antithesis of such enthusiastic exaltation. "About the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ?" That is to say, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" I ask you my lord, what should a man of unsophisticated common sense and human feeling gather from that despairing cry of mortal agony ? What but a forced confession that the sufferer's eyes were at last opened; that he felt that his life was an error, his mission a delusion, and his death the dissipation of his faith, his aspirations, and worse than all—of his fortitude? My lord, My lord, how many thousands of pious christians suffer practically the like foretaste of your promised hell, when on their death beds, they in similar agony vent their parting breath in such despairing exclamations as "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me ?

These agonies are the natural effects of such irreconcilable contradictions, anomalies, and mysteries upon anxious, sensitive, and candid minds, which are driven by them to bewilderment and despair, sometimes to insanity or suicide.

Think my lord, how much you may contribute to such agonies by such sermons!

I am my lord with great respect your lordship's fellow-labourer in the cause of truth.

Anti S(c)eptic. Melbourne, April, 22nd. 1880.