Christ, Christians And Christianity
9781465579089
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Christianity, its rise, progress and influence on the human race, must necessarily ever cause the deepest interest among thinking men. In the present day, in particular, reflecting persons in various parts of Christendom appear to be moved by one common spirit to examine the foundations of the faith in which they have been brought up. In doing this they are only accepting in a cordial and sincere spirit the invitation so often held out to them by the orthodox teachers of Christianity, who seem never tired of affirming that the more this religion is investigated the more it will shine, the more divine it will appear. But, notwithstanding the apparent confidence of these zealous advocates, it is a remarkable fact that really able and earnest religious inquiries have ever, as a rule, been looked upon with great suspicion and distrust by the accredited custodians of the faith, and in those instances in which investigation has been followed by a departure from the common creed itself, motives of the most unworthy character have been freely and unscrupulously imputed to the seceders. It appears to be a foregone conclusion, with many persons, that no fair inquiry into religion is possible except by those who, at the commencement, in the progress, and at the termination of it, have been the professed friends of Christianity, as they themselves understand this religion. But truth is usually ignored by warm partisans, circumstances suggestive of doubt are sedulously avoided by them, facts admitting of an interpretation unfavourable to their own cherished views are silently suppressed, and a conclusion determined upon from the beginning is often triumphantly paraded as the necessary but expected result of a searching investigation, which, perhaps, is afterwards presented to the world in some work on the evidences of Christianity, declared, most probably, by its admirers to be unanswerable and incapable of refutation. Nothing can be a more legitimate and worthy pursuit for any man to undertake than a conscientious inquiry into the truth of the religion in which he has been reared, especially if he possesses the means and the ability to prosecute such an investigation, and a sufficient balance of mind to enable him to conduct it with fairness.
