2. Testimony

The Romans, from whom we have borrowed much of our language, called the witness the testis. The declaration of this testis is still called testimony. In reference to the material world around us, to all objects and matters of sense, the eye, the ear, the smell, the taste, and the touch are the five witnesses. What we call the evidence of sense is, therefore, the testimony of these witnesses, which constitute the five pathways to the human mind from the kingdom of nature. They are figuratively called witnesses, and their evidence, testimony. But the report or declaration of intelligent beings, such as God, angels, and humans, constitutes what is properly and literally called testimony.

Just as light reflected from any material object onto the eye brings that object into contact with the eye, or enables the object to form its image on the eye, so testimony concerning any fact brings that fact into contact with the mind and enables it to impress itself, or to form its image upon the intellect or mind of a person. Now, note that just as by our five external senses we acquire all information about the objects of sense around us, so by testimony, human or divine, we receive all our information about all facts which are not the objects of immediate exercise of our five senses upon the things around us.

To appreciate the full value of testimony in the divine work of regeneration, we only need to reflect that all the moral facts which can form moral character, after the divine model, or which can effect a moral or religious change in a person, are found in the testimony of God: and that no fact can operate at all where it is not present or where it is not known. The love of God in the death of the Messiah never drew a tear of gratitude or joy from any eye, or excited a grateful emotion in any heart among the nations of our race to whom the testimony never came. No fact in the history of six thousand years, no work of God in creation, providence, or redemption, has ever influenced the heart of any person to whom it has not been testified. Testimony is, then, in regeneration, as necessary as the facts of which it speaks.

The real value of anything is the labor it cost and its usefulness when acquired. If reason and justice arbitrated all questions about the value of property, the decision would be that every article is worth the amount of human labor necessary to obtain it; and when obtained, it is again to be judged by its usefulness. Now, as all the facts and all the truth which can renew human nature are in the testimony of God; and as that testimony cost the labor and the lives of the wisest and best who ever lived, that testimony, to us, is just as valuable as the facts it records, the labors and lives it cost, and just as indispensable in the process of regeneration as were the labors and lives of Prophets, Apostles, and the Son of God.

History, or narrative, whether oral or written, is only another name for testimony. When, then, we reflect on how large a portion of both Testaments is occupied by history, we may judge how important it is in the judgment of God. Prophecy, also, being the history of future facts, or a record of things to be done, belongs to the same category of facts and record. Now if all past facts, and all future facts, or all the history or testimony concerning them, were erased from the volumes of God's inspiration, how small would the remainder be! These considerations, taken together, only partly show the value and usefulness of testimony in the regeneration of humanity. But its value will be even more evident when the proper meaning of the term faith is fully presented to us.