APOLOGETICS
301
APOLOGY
the divine agencies it claims. Thus we reason from the character of Christ, from the superhuman excel- lence of Christian doctrine, from the supernatural ef- fects of this religion in the individual and in the world ; giving the external evidences their due subordinate position as mere proofs that what are claimed to be and to have been phenomena of Christianity are le- gitimately claimed to be such. Discriminating re- marks on the two methods, and the advantages of the new one, may be found in Dr. Bushnell's Nature and the Supernatural, p. 33-35; also Meth. Quar. Rev. July 1862, p. 373-376. The true name for our new treatises on 'The Evidences' is Philosophy of Christianity" (Warren, in Meth. Quar. Rev. Oct. 1863, p. 589). The German writers have followed generally the philo- sophical method, and of late years the English have also entered more into this field. But there are An- glo-Saxon apologists who do not commence with the historical evidences, and German ones who do not lay the whole stress upon the internal evidences. Indeed, the latest writers in both languages seem to have mu- tually exchanged the traditional methods of their fa- thers. Auberlen's Gottliche Offenbarung (1864) would have delighted the heart of even so thoroughly Eng- lish an apologist as Paley [see Apology]. On the other hand, Coleridge, who disparaged the compara- tive value of the evidence from miracles and prophe- cy, dictated to a friend a scheme of evidences of which the outline is as follows: I. Miracles, as precluding the contrary evidence of no miracles; II. the Mate- rial of Christianity, its existence and history ; III. the Doctrines of Christianity, and the correspondence of human nature with those doctrines ; illustrated, first, historically, with reference to the progress of the race; second, individually, with reference to the wants of each human soul, and the capacity of the Christian doctrines to satisfy those wants (Coleridge, Works, N. Y. ed. v, 555). A complete scientific method must unite the two methods (the historical and the philo- sophical), in order to show that Christianity is not only a religion (among others), but also the religion of hu- manitv. (See Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 8vo ed. p. 348 ; and Aids to Reflection, p. 207 sq. ; Turretini, Opera, i, 225 sq. ; Chalmers, Lectures on Paly, Works, vol. ix ; North Brit. Rev, Aug. 1851, art. ii.) The Eng- lish writers, doubtless, formerly laid too little stress upon the internal and spiritual evidence of Christianity (see Wesley, Works, v, 758, for a passage of remarkable sagacity on this point) ; while, on the other hand, the Germans have undervalued the external evidence, and thus opened the way for rationalism and infidelity. Farrar states the historical uses of the two methods as follows: "In all ages the purpose of evidences has been conviction ; to offer the means of proof either by philosophy or by fact. In arguing with the heathen in the first age, the former plan was adopted — the school of Alexandria trying to lead men to Christian- ity as the highest philosophy ; in the Middle Ages the same method was adopted under the garb of philoso- phy, but with the alteration that the philosophy was one of form, not matter. In the later Middle Ages the appeal was to the Church : in the early contests with the Deists, to the authority of reason, and to the Bible reached by means of this process ; in the later, to the Bible reached through history and fact : in op- posing the French infidelity the appeal was chiefly to authority ; in the early German the appeal was the same as in England ; in the later German it has been a return in spirit to that of the early fathers, or of the English apologists of the eighteenth century, but based on a deeper philosophy; an appeal to feeling or in- tuition, and not to reflective reason ; and through these ultimately to the Bible" (Free Thought, p. 473). Cole- ridge remarks as follows upon the state of the Evi- dences for Christianity in the present age: "The re- sult of my own meditations is, that the evidence of the Gospel, taken as a total, is as great for the Christians
of the nineteenth century as for those of the apostolic age. I should not be startled if I were told it was greater. But it does not follow that this equally holds good of each component part. An evidence of the most cogent clearness, unknown to the primitive Christians, may compensate for the evanescence of some evidence which they enjoyed. Evidences com- paratively dim have waxed into noonday splendor; and the comparative wane of others, once effulgent, is more than indemnified by the synopsis tov ttclvtoc, which we enjoy, and by the standing miracle of a Christendom commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized world. I make this remark for the purpose of warning the divinity student against the disposition to overstrain particular proofs, or rest the credibility of the Gospel too exclusively on some one favorite point" (Works, N. Y. ed. v, 428). Fisher, in his Supernatural Orig'n of Christianity (N. Y. 1866), has some excellent remarks on the method of Apolo- getics (Essays I and XI). See Bishop Butler's ad- mirable discussion of the "particular" evidence for Christianity in his Analogy of Religion, pt. ii, ch. vii; and compare New York Review, ii, 141 sq. ; Mansell, in Aids to Faith (Lond. 1861, 8vo), Essay I ; Fitzger- ald, On the Study of the Evidences (Aids to Faith, Essay II) ; Princeton Review, xviii, 359 ; and the whole sub- ject further treated, with special reference to English methods, in this Cyclopaedia under Evidences.