And how did He meet their doubts?  The Church, as I have said, says, “Brand him!” Christ said, “Teach him.”  He destroyed by fulfilling.  When Thomas came to Him and denied His very resurrection, and stood before Him waiting for the scathing words and lashing for his unbelief, they never came.  They never came!  Christ gave him facts—­facts!  No man can go around facts.  Christ said, “Behold My hands and My feet.”  The great god of science at the present time is a fact.  It works with facts.  Its cry is, “Give me facts.  Found anything you like upon facts and we will believe it.”  The spirit of Christ was the scientific spirit.  He founded His religion upon facts; and He asked all men to found their religion upon facts.

Now, get up the facts of Christianity, and take men to the facts.  Theologies—­and I am not speaking disrespectfully of theology; theology is as scientific a thing as any other science of facts—­but theologies are

          HUMAN VERSIONS

of Divine truths, and hence the varieties of the versions and the inconsistencies of them.  I would allow a man to select whichever version of this truth he liked afterwards; but I would ask him to begin with no version, but go back to the facts and base his Christian life upon these.

That is the great lesson of the New Testament way of looking at doubt—­of Christ’s treatment of doubt.  It is not “Brand him!”—­but lovingly, wisely and tenderly to teach him.  Faith is never opposed to reason in the New Testament; it is opposed to sight.  You will find that a principle worth thinking over. Faith is never opposed to reason in the New Testament, but to sight.

With these principles in mind as to the origin of doubt, and as to Christ’s treatment of it, how are we ourselves to deal with those who are in intellectual difficulty?

In the first place, I think we must make all the concessions to them that we conscientiously can.

When a doubter first encounters you, he pours out a deluge of abuse of churches, and ministers, and creeds, and Christians.  Nine-tenths of what he says is probably true.  Make concessions.  Agree with him.  It does him good to unburden himself of these things.  He has been cherishing them for years—­laying them up against Christians, against the Church, and against Christianity; and now he is startled to find the first Christian with whom he has talked over the thing almost entirely agrees with him.  We are, of course, not responsible for everything that is said in the name of Christianity; but a man does not give up medicine because there are quack doctors, and no man has a right to give up his Christianity because there are spurious or inconsistent Christians.  Then, as I already said, creeds are human versions of Divine truths; and we do not ask a man to accept all the creeds, any more than we ask him to accept all the Christians.  We ask him to accept Christ, and the facts about Christ and the words of Christ.  You will find the battle is half won when you have endorsed the man’s objections, and possibly added a great many more to the charges which he has against ourselves.  These men are