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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
April, 1939
FAITH WORTH DYING FOR When sane, intelligent men are so thoroughly assured of the ground of their belief that they are willing to die for their con victions, one may well consider the basis of their indomitable faith. The pages of history are strewn with the life stories of those who, with hope anchored in the W o rd o f God, were “faithful unto death.” ▼ STEPHEN sealed his testi mony in his blood, and it is re ported that about two thousand Christians suffered martyrdom in the persecution of that period. JAMES, son of Zebedee, was beheaded by Herod; and accord ing to tradition, PHILIP was scourged, imprisoned, and cruci fied; MARK was dragged to pieces by the people of Alexan dria; PAUL was beheaded by Nero at Rome. Among l a t e r ma r t yr s was Bishop Ridley, who was burned at the stake in 1553, “So long as the breath is in my body,” he de clared, “I will never deny my Lord Christ, and His known truth; God’s will be done in me!” When he saw the fire leaping toward. him, it is recorded that with Hugh Latimer, his fellow martyr, he “received the flame as it were embracing of it.”
Consider the Evidence! A Lawyer’s Message to His Colleagues
By I. H. L INTON W a shington, D. C.
of facts and creations of fiction are unmis takable,” and, to quote further, "the attri butes of truth are strikingly apparent throughout the Gospel histories, and the absence of all others is equally remarkable.” Truth versus Fabrication Here is an illustration of one of these differences which Greenleaf does not even mention: While romances, legends, and false tes timony are careful to place the events re lated in some distant place and at some indefinite time, thereby violating the first rules of good pleading, that “the declara tion must give time and place,” the Bible narratives give the date and place of the things related with the utmost precision, as for instance, when Luke tells us when Christ’s ministry immediately preceded by John's proclamation began: "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests" (Lk. 3:1, 2 )—then came the beginning of Christ’s ministry and the doing of the many “mighty works" which so convinced the apostolic observers and recorders of them of His deity that they devoted the rest of their lives to spreading the news of them and making known the terms on which any and all men might secure the eternal benefits procured for all believers by Christ's v o lu n ta ry and aton in g death. How significant of a con sciou sn ess of utter truth and certainty this prodigality of detail in lining up seven public officials as holding office contemporaneously in a
PART II
[In the preceding portion o[ this message addressed to members o f the legal profes sion, Mr. Linton, who is a member o f the Bar o f the District o f Columbia and o f the Supreme Court o f the United States, has shown that the Christian religion boldly claims to offer the sole hope o f mankind for eternal life "through the death, merits, and name o f Jesus Christ." Believing that the facts o f this faith can bear the exam ination o f men trained in the laws o f thought and the rules o f evidence, the writer stressed, first, the evidence o f super natural foretelling o f future events—with the actual fulfillment o f the prophecies—as a mark distinguishing the Bible from all other religious literature. In the course o f the preceding discussion, Mr. Linton pre sented not only his own reasons but also some o f the conclusions o f Simon Green- leaf, whose contribution in the field o f legal evidence has been acclaimed by ex perts o f England and o f the United States Supreme Court as second to no similar studies at the time o f their publication. Part II o f the discussion deals with histori cal evidences o f the Christian religion. — E d it o r . 1 N EX T , to revert only for an unsat isfactorily brief moment to the "historical argument” for the di vine truth and origin of the Christian reli gion which, in contrast with false religions which offer little and prove nothing, offers much and proves everything, can we in a short discussion arouse an interest which may lead to the search of the many vol umes which make clear why it is that so learned and careful a man as Simon Green- leaf affirmed his conviction concerning the Christian religion? Greenleaf, after a life time devoted to studying, teaching, and writing upon "Evidence” (the very subject most closely connected with the subject before us), declared that if the members of our profession—a profession which “leads us to explore the mazes of falsehood, to detect its artifices, to pierce its thickest veils, to follow and expose its sophistries, to compare the statements of different wit nesses with severity, to discover truth and separate it from error” by the rules of evi dence—will test the "Testimony of the Evangelists” to the miracles and resurrec tion of Christ, they will find that only by embracing manifest absurdities can they escape the conviction that these witnesses spoke "the truth, and nothing but the truth.” In his Testimony o f the Evangelists, at one place Greenleaf says: “The essential marks of difference between true narratives
“O God! to us may grace be given T o follow in their train!”
' _V'. .. ,-C—_--..... The Christian Martyrs
By Courtesy of The Perry Pictures Co. Malden, Mass.
From Painting by Gerome
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