A STORY is told of Lepaux, a member of the French Directory, that with much thought and study he had invented a new religion, to be called “Theophilanthropy,” a kind of organized Rousseauism, and that, being disappointed in its not being readily approved and adopted, he complained to Talleyrand of the difficulty he found in introducing it.
“I am not surprised,” said Talleyrand, “at the difficulty you find in your effort. It is no easy matter to introduce a new religion. But there is one thing I would advise you to do, and then, perhaps, you might succeed.”
“What is it? what is it?” asked the other with eagerness.
“It is this,” said Talleyrand, “go and be crucified, and then be buried, and then rise again on the third day, and then go on working miracles, raising the dead, and healing all manner of diseases, and casting out devils, and then it is possible that you might accomplish your end!” And the philosopher, crestfallen and confounded, went away silent.
The anecdote shows, in a fresh and striking light, how firm the foundation on which Christianity and the faith of the Christian rest. “Ransack all history,” says an able writer, “and you cannot find a single event more satisfactorily and clearly proved than the resurrection of Christ from the dead.” And says another, a distinguished jurist, “If human evidence ever has proved or ever can prove anything, then the miracles of Christ are proved beyond the shadow of a doubt.” And yet the miracles and resurrection of Christ prove His Divinity; and, as Napoleon said, “His Divinity once admitted, Christianity appears with the precision and clearness of algebra; it has the connection and unity of a science.”
And on this strong foundation it is that Christianity and the Christian faith rest. And how absolutely immovable that foundation is, how absolutely convincing the evidence from this source, we hardly realize until, like Talleyrand, we call on the objector himself to be crucified, himself to rise from the dead, and himself to work miracles, as Christ did throughout Jerusalem and all Judaea, in the presence of thousands and tens of thousands, both enemies and friends.
It is a most assuring as well as comforting thought, that this external evidence from without can never be shaken while human testimony has value or meaning. And when we add to this the internal evidence — the fact that thousands and millions of Christians have felt, in their own experience, that the Gospel is true, just as the hungry man knows when he is fed, or the thirsty when he has drank; just as we know the existence of the sun because we see its light and feel its heat — then the foundation on which as Christians we rest, stands doubly sure to the soul. Heaven and earth may pass away, but God’s word and all that rests upon it shall abide forever.