The Trial of Jesus. Walter M. Chandler
the royal exile with open arms, showered him with his eagles, and almost smothered him with kisses. A hundred days passed. On the frightful field of Waterloo, "Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king." Again the fickle French multitude heaped execrations upon their fallen monarch, declared the Napoleonic dynasty at an end and welcomed with acclamations of joy the return of the exiled Bourbon Louis XVIII.
And when the Evangelist wrote these words: "All the disciples forsook him and fled," he simply gave expression to a form of truth which all history reflects and corroborates.
Again, the parallels and resemblances of sacred and profane history do not seem to stop with mere narratives of facts. Secular history seems to have produced at times characters in the exact likeness of those in sacred history. The resemblance is often so striking as to create astonishment. For instance, who was St. Peter but Marshal Ney by anticipation? Peter was the leader of the Apostolic Twelve; Ney was the chief of the Twelve Marshals of Napoleon. Peter was impulsive and impetuous; so was Ney. Peter was the first to speak and act in all the emergencies of the Apostolic ministry; Ney, so Dumas tells us, was always impatient to open the battle and lead the first charge. Peter was probably the last to leave the garden in which the great tragedy of his Master had begun; Ney was the last to leave the horrors of a Russian winter in which the beginning of the end of the career of his monarch was plainly seen. Peter denied Jesus; Ney repudiated Napoleon, and even offered to bring him, at the time of his escape from Elba, in a cage to Louis XVIII. Peter was afterwards crucified for his devotion to Jesus whom he had denied; Ney was afterwards shot for loyalty to Napoleon whom he had once repudiated.
The examples heretofore given involve the idea of comparison and are based upon resemblance. These illustrations could be greatly extended, but it is believed that enough has been said in this connection. However, in closing this brief discussion of the human element in the sacred writings as evidenced by the coincidences and resemblances of their narratives to those of profane history, slight mention may be made of another test of truth which may be applied to the histories of the Evangelists. This test is not derived from a comparison which is focused upon any particular group of historic facts. It springs from an instantaneously recognized and inseparable connection between the statements made by the Gospel writers and the experience of the human race. A single illustration will suffice to elucidate this point. When Jesus was nailed upon the cross, the sad and pathetic spectacle was presented of the absence of the Apostolic band, with the exception of St. John, who was the only Apostle present at the crucifixion. The male members of the following of the Nazarene did not sustain and soothe their Master in the supreme moment of His anguish. But the women of His company were with Him to the end. Mary, his mother, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, Salome, the mother of St. John the Evangelist, and others, doubtless among "the women that followed him from Galilee," ministered to His sufferings and consoled Him with their presence. They were the last to cling to His cross and the first to greet Him on the morning of the third day; for when the resurrection morn dawned upon the world, these same women were seen hastening toward the sepulcher bearing spices—fragrant offerings of deathless love. What a contrast between the loyalty and devotion of the women and the fickle, faltering adherence of the men who attended the footsteps of the Man of Sorrows in His last days! One of His Apostles denied Him, another betrayed Him, and all, excepting one, deserted Him in His death struggle. His countrymen crucified Him ignominiously. But "not one woman mentioned in the New Testament ever lifted her voice against the Son of God."
This revelation from the sacred pages of the devotion of woman is reflected in universal history and experience. It is needless to give examples. Suffice it to say that when Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell us of this devotion, we simply answer: yes, this has been ever true in all countries and in every age. We have learned it not only from history but from our own experience in all the affairs of life, extending from the cradle to the grave. The night of sorrow never grows so dark that a mother's love will not irradiate the gloom. The criminal guilt of a wayward son can never become so black that her arms will not be found about him. If we pass from loving loyalty to the individual, to patriotic devotion to the causes of the nations, woman's fidelity is still undying. The women of France are said to have paid the German war debt. The message of the Spartan mother to her soldier son is too well known to be repeated. When the legions of Scipio engirdled the walls of Carthage and desperation seized the inhabitants of the Punic city, Carthaginian women cut their long black hair to furnish bowstrings to the Carthaginian archers. Illustrations might be multiplied; but these will suffice to show that Mary and Martha and Salome, the women of the Gospels, are simply types of the consecrated women of the world.
When we come to summarize, we are led to declare that if the Gospel historians be not worthy of belief we are without foundation for rational faith in the secular annals of the human race. No other literature bears historic scrutiny so well as the New Testament biographies. Not by a single chain, but by three great chains can we link our Bible of to-day with the Apostolic Bible. The great manuscripts: the Vatican, the Alexandrian, and the Sinaitic, dating from the middle of the fourth and fifth centuries, must have been copies of originals, or at least of first copies. The Bible is complete in these manuscripts to-day.
The Versions, translations of the original Scriptures from the language in which they were first written into other languages, form a perfect connection between the days of the Apostles and our own. The Vulgate, the celebrated Latin version of St. Jerome, was completed A.D. 385. In making this translation the great scholar has himself said that he used "ancient (Greek) copies." Manuscripts that were ancient, A.D. 385, must have been the original writings, or, at least, first copies. The Vulgate, then, is alone a perfect historic connection between the Bible that we read to-day and that studied by the first Christians.
Again, the Writings of the Church Fathers furnish a chain, without a single missing link, between the Bible of this generation and that of the first generation of the followers of the Christ. It has been truthfully said that if all the Bibles in the world were destroyed an almost perfect Bible could be reconstructed from quotations from these writings, so numerous and so exact are they. Beginning with Barnabas and Clement, companions of St. Paul, and coming down through the ages, there is not a single generation in which some prince or potentate of the Church has not left convincing evidence in writing that the Books of the Old and New Testament which we read to-day are identical with those read by the first propagators of our faith. The chain of proof forged from the Writings of the early Fathers is made up of a hundred links, each perfect within itself and yet relinked and welded with a hundred others that make each and all doubly strong. If these various testimonies, the Manuscripts, the Versions, and the Writings of the Church Fathers, be taken, not singly, but collectively, in support and corroboration of each other, we have, then, not merely a chain but rather a huge spiritual cable of many wires, stretching across the great sea of time and linking our Bible of to-day inseparably with that of the Apostolic Age.
If it be objected that these various writings might have been and probably were corrupted in coming down to us through the centuries, reply may be made that the facts of history repel such suggestions. As Mr. Greenleaf has suggested, the jealousy of opposing sects preserved them from forgery and mutilation. Besides these sects, it may be added, there were, even in the earliest times, open and avowed infidels who assaulted the cardinal tenets of the Christian faith and made the Gospel histories the targets for their attacks. They, too, would have detected and denounced any attempt from any source to corrupt these writings.
Another and final, and probably the most cogent reason for the remarkable preservation of the books of the Bible, is the reverential care bestowed upon them by their custodians in every age. It is difficult for the modern world to fully appreciate the meaning and extent of this reverence and care. Before the age of printing, it must be remembered, the masses of the people could not and did not possess Bibles. In the Middle Ages it required a small fortune to own a single copy. The extreme scarcity enhanced not only the commercial value but added to the awful sanctity that attached to the precious volume; on the principle that the person of a king becomes more sacred and mysterious when least seen in public. Synagogues and monasteries were, for many centuries, the sole repositories of the Holy Books, and the deliberate mutilation of any portion of the Bible would have been regarded like the blaspheming of the Deity or the desecration of a shrine. These considerations alone are sufficient reason why the Holy