Preface. In the name of the living God, who is from everlasting. Praise be to God, the self-existent, the exalted above all his creatures. He, the essence of whose great majesty no powers of imagination can comprehend, and whose absolute nature no one knows save himself, the wise and to be praised for his excellent greatness. After this ascription of praise, the feeble, failing servant, Michael son of Joorjis Meshakah of Lebanon proceeds to say: Not long since I met with the volume called "The correct guide to the verity of the Book," 1 from the perusal of which the excellence of the author, Dr. Alexander of America, is very manifest. May God give him a large reward; and, as it is the best work on the truth of prophecy and its fulfilment that has been translated into Arabic, setting forth also solid proofs of the soundness of the Christian religion, and I knew that some of my brothers and friends were very much in doubt on this last point, and questioned whether it was really revealed from God, I wrote to one of them, who is very dear to me, requesting him to read the book with patient attention and note the cogency of its arguments, hoping that thus his doubts might be removed. His reply to me was as follows: "I understood what you wrote about the book, and so read it for myself, and have found that all you said in commendation of the author is true. Indeed before perusing it, I had no doubt that religion was better for man than infidelity; but now I see also that Voltaire and those who, like him, wrote against religion, were not true philosophers, as I cannot doubt that religion is necessary to man, inasmuch as 1 Evidences of the Christian Religion," by A. Alexander, D. D. This, like most Arabic titles, is in rhyme, and reads thus: "Deleel essowab, Illa sooduk el ketab." The Essay here translated is called in the original: "Erresalet el mousoomet bilboorhan, it gives him peace of mind, sets his heart at rest, frees him from vice, makes him companionable, a lover of what is good, and beloved of others, and adorns him with every amiable quality. But with all this I beseech the most high God to grant me grace and make me to know certainly which is the true religion; for each one praises itself and condemns all the rest; and I see the leading religions of the world resemble each other in substance and differ only in points which I cannot think God will take any notice of." After considering the drift of this reply, though this dear brother was clearly not yet satisfied, yet I could not despair of his coming to the truth since he sought the gracious guidance of the Lord. It was on the strength of that hope that I began to write this little book as a friendly advice to him and to others in danger of being led away as he was; and I pray God that he would guide me, so that everything I advance may be correct, and then make it influential on the minds of those who read; for no plant which our heavenly Father has not planted, shall either stand or bring forth fruit. I have named it "An argument on the weakness of man," and I pray the Most High to guide me in an even way by his grace and favor. Amen. CHAPTER I. It becomes a man to examine a statement contrary to his previous opinions with attentive consideration. Many men, when they meet with a proposition opposed to their own settled belief, treat it with contempt before they have mastered its meaning. Perhaps they toss the book aside which contains it, or even tear it in pieces, trusting to the correctness of the views already deeply rooted in their minds. And yet for all that, it is possible that the statement treated with such scorn may turn out to be the truth, and therefore they do not judge a righteous judgment in not giving it a most careful perusal, and diligently considering its nature and design. It cannot be denied that a wise man is bound to admit his own fallibility as well as that of others; and for that reason he should be at great pains to understand what he reads, and weigh well the arguments advanced, to see whether they are conclusive or the reverse, besides laying aside all selfish leanings, hereditary, and blind adherence to tradition; for these things perpetuate ignorance between different parties, and prevent their pleasant intercourse together. The reader should also be candidly disposed to receive whatever appears to be true, although contrary to his own ideas; and whenever the least thread of evidence shows itself, he should lay hold of it and examine minutely whatever is connected with it, dependent on it, or resulting from it. When he does this, in most cases it will not be long before he sees the truth loom up before him like a strong and lofty rampart unshaken by the onsets of the foe. But if he turns away his eye from the strength of the argument, confident in the correctness of his own ideas or the traditions of his ancestors, he will remain bound in the chains of stupidity and fetters of tradition, in the dungeon of the blackness of igno rance. We read in the history of astronomy that, when the celebrated Galileo advanced the doctrine of the earth's motion, based on satisfactory evidence, the learned ecclesiastics of that day did not receive his theory with that careful investigation and thorough examination which it deserved, but gave themselves up to what was fixed in their own opinions, confident in the correctness of what they held to be so beyond dispute, and in the truth of the belief they had received by tradition from their fathers, and also seemed manifest to their own senses, of the apparent motion of the stars and immobility of the earth. So they punished him for his wisdom by casting him into prison, vainly imagining that his doctrine would lead to infidelity, as something that went beyond all faith even in the greatness of the power of the Most High. But as truth is a light ever radiating, they could not hide it long, before the evidence of the truth he taught shone out on the darkness of their error, and they were compelled to believe him and acknowledge his excellence and the injustice of their sentence. Now had they thrown off the garment of pride and candidly received his doctrine as such things ought to be received, and given it its due of patient and minute examination, they had not been stained with the blood of that man so unjustly persecuted, and they had escaped the infamy perpetuated in the history that records how they were compelled to confess their own ignorance and go over to the opinion they had united to condemn. I would remind that brother also of what I said to him in 1840 about the daguerreotype, which enables us to take likenesses by means of light and certain chemical agents. He then denied the possibility of such a thing, and blamed me for giving credence to it, till I proved the truth of my assertions by sending him my own photograph, when he believed in the actual occurrence of what he had pronounced an impossibility. So if a Sadducee should be told of the resurrection from the dead, he would refuse to believe it, confiding in the traditionary faith of his sect and his own observation; he could not comprehend it, inasmuch as he had never witnessed a resurrection. So, in accordance with these slender arguments, he pronounces it an impossibility. Yet if he had calmly considered his own inability to comprehend matters above the reach of the human mind, and looked closely into the mode of his own coming out of non-existence into being, or the mode of the germination of the seed after its death in the ground; and how, after that, it grows and yields its fruit; if he had studied the changes of the egg of the silkworm, how it becomes first a caterpillar, and then a cocoon, and last of all a moth, then he would have seen that the resurrection is among the possibilities. Indeed, it is wonderful, but only when viewed in reference to human power, not to the power of the Creator, who brought into existence all things that are, and gave them wondrous ordinances which manifest themselves in their results before our eyes every day and every moment,, and not one of them all is under our power or control. This is sufficient to convince us of the need of minute and diligent examination of whatever is presented before us, ere we decide upon it this way or that; for very likely the truth is quite different from what at first appears. CHAPTER II. In man, the faculty of judgment is not perfect, and therefore errs sometimes in its decisions. Error in judging things to be good or bad arises not only from want of accurate investigation, but also from weakness in the faculty of judgment itself, which evidently exists in man in a manner far more excellent and more perfect than in all the rest of the animal creation; but notwithstanding its acknowledged superiority in the human race, it never attains to perfection in any man, however diligently he improves it by the accumulation of knowledge and in other ways. It is absolutely certain that on trial its imperfection will be most clearly manifest, and so man errs very often in his judgments. If we look at the injuries which happen to man, many of them proceed from defect of judgment in his pronouncing that to be good which in itself is evil; as, for example, he who thinks the use of intoxicating drinks beneficial because of their tendency to exhilarate, and overlooks the results that follow, loses his health and good name, and gains both poverty and deepest disgrace. So also he who pronounces any religion good, because it enjoins the worship of the Creator, confesses his unity, demands uprightness, and forbids wickedness, while he overlooks the things which it calls righteous, such as making war on those of a different religion, plundering them or shedding their blood; or does not notice what it reckons as crimes, such for instance as showing mercy or giving good counsel or manifesting love or respect to those of an opposite persuasion. Such an one falls into worse than infidelity in believing that the compassionate Creator asks from man such service as this. So also he |