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SILANUS THE CHRISTIAN


_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

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                                 SILANUS
                              THE CHRISTIAN

                                   BY
                             EDWIN A. ABBOTT
                AUTHOR OF “PHILOCHRISTUS” AND “ONESIMUS”

                 “_The love of Christ constraineth us._”
                              2 COR. V. 14.

                                 LONDON
                         ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
                                  1906

                               Cambridge:
                       PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
                        AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.




TO THE MEMORY OF EPICTETUS

NOT A CHRISTIAN BUT AN AWAKENER OF ASPIRATIONS THAT COULD NOT BE
SATISFIED EXCEPT IN CHRIST




PREFACE


Many years have elapsed since the author was constrained (not by _a
priori_ considerations but by historical and critical evidence) to
disbelieve in the miraculous element of the Bible. Yet he retained the
belief of his childhood and youth—rooted more firmly than before—in
the eternal unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the
supernatural but non-miraculous incarnation of the Son as Jesus Christ,
and in Christ’s supernatural but non-miraculous resurrection after He had
offered Himself up as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.

The belief is commonly supposed to be rendered impossible by the
disbelief. This book is written to shew that there is no such
impossibility.

The vast majority of the worshippers of Christ base their worship to a
very large extent—as the author did in his early youth under the cloud
of Paley’s _Evidences_—on their acceptance of His miracles as historical
facts. In the author’s opinion this basis is already demonstrably unsafe,
and may be at any moment, by some new demonstration, absolutely destroyed.

Nevertheless such worshippers, if their worship is really genuine—that
is to say, if it includes love, trust, and awe, carried to their highest
limits, and not merely that kind of awe which is inspired by “mighty
works”—will do well to avoid this book. If doubt has not attacked them,
why should they go to meet it? In pulling up falsehood by the roots
there is always a danger of uprooting or loosening a truth that grows
beside it. Historical error, if honest, is better (and less misleading)
than spiritual darkness. For example, it is much better (and less
misleading) to remain in the old-fashioned belief that a good and wise
God created the world in six days than to adopt a new belief that a bad
or unwise or careless God—or a chance, or a force, or a power—evolved it
in sixty times six sextillions of centuries.

To such genuine worshippers of Christ, then, as long as they feel safe
and sincere in their convictions, this book is not addressed. They are
(in the author’s view) substantially right, and had better remain as they
are.

But there may be some, calling themselves worshippers of Christ, who
cannot honestly say that they love Him. They trust His power, they bow
before Him as divine; but they have no affection at all for Him, as
man, or as God. What St Paul described as the “constraining” love of
Christ has never touched them. And yet they fancy they worship! To them
this book may be of use in suggesting the divinity and loveableness of
Christ’s human nature; and any harm the book might do them can hardly be
conceived as equal to the harm of remaining in their present