Modern Skepticism / A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society

by Unknown

I.

I am to speak to you respecting the nature of the miraculous testimony to Christianity. My business is with mighty works, recorded in the New Testament as having been wrought for the purpose of testifying to a Divine mission. No definition of their character in relation to physical law can anywhere be found in this ancient record. They are not spoken of as violations of law, or as suspensions of law, or as interferences with law, or as contradictions to law. They are described, not on the side of their physical nature, but on the side of their moral signification. They are depicted, not in their connection with the obvious order of the material universe, or with any hidden powers and principles of a higher and harmonious description; but in their connection with Him who claimed to be the Redeemer of mankind, who came, according to His own words, to seek and save that which was lost. They are denominated "wonders," startling occurrences, things contrary to common experience; and "signs,"—not mere marvels bursting idly on the public gaze, and exciting in a multitude of spectators a barren curiosity, but signs,—replete with an ulterior meaning, and testifying to the character and work of Him through whom they were accomplished.

There is no necessity, then, for us at the outset to define a miracle on the physical side of it—to call it a violation of law, or a suspension of law—an interference with it, or a contradiction to it. In other words, there is no need imposed by the conditions of our argument, to inquire into the mode in which such a phenomenon can be produced. It is enough to show that it did occur, and to dwell upon the religious significancy of its occurrence first to the witnesses, and next to ourselves. What is the exact position which miracles may be thought to occupy as wonders in the universe, whether, through breaking in upon common experience, they are referable to the operation of occult laws, known and controlled at a fitting moment by the mysterious touch of the wonder-worker; or whether they are to be considered as resulting simply from the immediate fiat of the Supreme will, are questions which may with advantage be relegated for consideration elsewhere.

1. But, at the very threshold of our inquiry we are met by the assertion, that a miracle, however defined, is in itself simply impossible. Impossible! In what sense impossible? Does it mean impossible to man, or impossible to God? Impossible to man, of course, it is. That impossibility enters into the popular idea of a miracle. Man has no such control over nature as to be able to produce one. But if it be said a miracle is impossible to God, such an impossibility involves the extension of human inability to God Himself. It involves either the idea, that nature has ever been independent of God, or the idea, that if produced by Him, He is no longer Lord of His own works—this Lordship having been surrendered by His will, or having escaped from His hands. Summarily disposing of this gross anthropomorphism, we find behind it the dogma of Spinoza, that there is nothing transcendental anywhere, no transcendental beginnings, no transcendental interpositions; for God and nature are one through the eternities. In the wake of Spinoza's philosophy follows the modern axiom—"to recognise the impossibility even of any two material atoms subsisting together without a determinate relation—of any action of the one on the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without reference to a physical cause—of any modification whatsoever in the existing conditions of material agents, unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences, following in some necessary chain of orderly connexion."[34]

Here, in limine, before examining this principle, let me observe, once for all, that miracles do by no means cast any slur upon the settled order of nature, as if it were faulty and imperfect, and required correction or supplement for effectuating its proper ends—as frail constructions in engineering departments of human contrivance need subsequent repairs. Nature is perfect enough for her own ends; miracles are introduced for other and higher purposes. This requires to be borne in mind throughout our entire discussion.

But to come to the antagonist principle, that there is a development in nature through the agency of physical laws, apart from an original Creator and an everlasting Lord. I do not say—far from it—that the principle denies the existence of such a Creator and Lord, but it supposes at least that the physical order of the universe is fixed in such a sense, as to have ever excluded from it the action, directly or indirectly, of a Divine will, beyond the inflexible maintenance of ordinary operations. It is said, "The enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural world cannot but tend powerfully to evince the inconceivableness of imagined interruptions of natural order, or supposed suspensions of the laws of matter, and of that vast series of dependent causation which constitutes the legitimate field for the investigation of science, whose constancy is the sole warrant for its generalization." In reply to this it may be fairly urged that science, whilst she maintains the invariable sequence of causes and effects, and the uninterrupted order of physical events, is a prophetess of truth and wisdom. She enunciates lessons bound up with the welfare of the race. Thus far there is no antagonism between her and religion. She can, without abandonment of her principles, nay, in the act of carrying them out, officiate as a priestess at the altar of God; nor is there anything in the position for which she stipulates contrary to the claims of Revelation. For Revelation, in appealing to miracles, supposes the ordinary course of physical phenomena to be inviolable, and no book more than the Bible exhibits the normal constancy of natural agencies. But when science pronounces as impossible all such signs and wonders as are recorded in Scripture, she steps out of her province. In her own province she may justly affirm there are no signs of miracles; she may sweep her telescope over the fields of the sky, and ply her microscope amidst the growths of the earth, and say, I can see no traces anywhere but of inflexible law. These realms of existence are full of order. It is the perfection of their beauty, that they are free from violations, suspensions, disturbances, and interferences. But to say this—and I fully concur in it—is not to demonstrate that the Scriptures relate impossibilities. To do so, philosophy must pass beyond the range of physical observation, since there no place can be found for working out the desired demonstration. Philosophers do not always remember how difficult it is to prove a negative. Showing that certain things are, they are apt to slide into a belief that therefore certain other things cannot be, the conclusion proving on logical examination a simple non sequitur. Doubtless it is a fact, that we can detect nowhere in nature a provision made for producing miracles such as come under our review in this lecture, that no prophecy nor hint of them can be discerned throughout her measured realms; but this is a very different thing from saying, that nature teaches the belief of them to be absurd. So far from its being absurd, there may, after all, be found in nature something analogous to a miracle. In nature there are distinct worlds, worlds between which there are gaps and gulfs. I do not dispute that there are striking approximations in the phenomena of some realms to the phenomena of others; but there are also broad deep spaces, here and there, never bridged over by the discoveries of science. Hence, "an animal," as you have been told already, in the words of Hegel, "is a miracle for the vegetable world." It is a new creation in some way, and a new creation in any way is a miracle. After wandering amongst rocks, we find in plants a new world. Organized life is so; so also, compared with animal instinct, is the mind of man, with its spiritual reason, and its moral consciousness.

Not only do Coleridge, Kant, and Plato regard man's highest faculty as essentially different from the mere adaptive understanding of an animal nature; but what is still more remarkable, Aristotle himself, whose turn of mind was so different from theirs, differentiates man from other creatures on the ground of his being endowed with the faculty of reason. In his work on the Generation of Animals, he says that there is no resource except to believe, that the reason has no affinity with the material elements out of which the human embryo is formed, but that it comes from without, and that it alone, of all the component parts of man, is divine.[35] Thus, in the opinion of one of the greatest philosophers the world has ever known, the line of demarcation between man and all lower creatures is broad and clear, a line which in the simple order and development of nature they could never cross. The superior attributes of humanity, according to him, come from without; here, then, amongst the component parts of humanity is something divine. In other words, we have a new world; a new creation. I do not say there is a strict parallel between any new race or species in nature and the occurrence of individual miracles on rare occasions, but I do say that there is enough of resemblance between these two descriptions of change to exempt a believer in both of them from the charge of being absurd.

Furthermore, there are in human minds varieties of power of an astonishing description: although there be faculties common to all men, the vigour of those faculties in some cases is such as perfectly to eclipse the vigour of them in others. The superiority of individual minds, whose works have filled the world with wonder, is such as to leave behind, at an unapproachable distance, the ordinary measure of human endowment. Certain intellects (I need not name them) have long exercised a formative power upon the civilized portions of our race. They have been as crystals inserted in a solution, and other crystals have received shape from them. Whence have come these typical energies in the intellectual world? No law of development will account for a resplendent genius now and then flashing on the world; for the appearance of a master mind, after humanity has kept on a low level through generation after generation; for the ascent again of gifted spirits into the highest heaven of invention, after another lapse into mere mediocrity. No known laws of causality account for such facts in the realms of intellectual existence. If, in the case of man, as compared with other animals, the difference, as Aristotle says, is something which comes from without, the same may be said with respect to the difference between ordinary mortals and William Shakespere or John Milton. There is forced upon us the conviction, that these stars which dwell apart are kindled by fires burning in superhuman spheres. I do not say, in this case, any more than in the others I have cited, that we find an exact parallel to a miracle; but I do maintain, that we discover here a kind of inspiration which, like the miraculous, transcends all known laws, and brings to mind what was said by the first of those just named:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

What is called physical science must change her name, and renounce her office, and assume functions of another order, before she can pronounce a peremptory negative upon the point in controversy.[36] Physical science needs to become metaphysical, and to pass into fields of abstract reasoning in order to the utterance of a universal dictum. To this kind of mental employment in itself I make no objection; for the science of merely physical nature, without any outlook into higher regions, keeps the soul in humiliating imprisonment. The excursions of thought, however, now before us are regarded in some quarters under the singular delusion of being strictly scientific, whilst employed in devising a theory of the universe which excludes the constant control of a personal God, an Almighty will. The assaults on what is miraculous can be carried on only with metaphysical weapons. The facts of physical nature do not supply them; only from theories of physical nature, taking a metaphysical form, can they be gathered. Even Positivism, with all its doubtfulness and denial—strange contradiction that—must, in order to deny the possibility of miracles, build up a wall to shut them out, by trenching first on ground beyond its own domain. Pure Positivism, consistently with itself, is not competent to contradict the existence of the supernatural; it can but leave it an open question. The common method of distinctly denying miracles is one involving either some atheistic or pantheistic principle. Assume—and it is but an assumption—that matter is eternal and self-sufficient; that natural laws have not originated in, or are not administered by, a personal will; and thus assuming what prepares for, if it does not necessitate, some atheistic or pantheistic hypothesis, you can plausibly maintain that the wonders of which we speak are utterly inconceivable. But, as you see, it is not physical science simply considered which brings out this result; the result comes through adding to physical science what is really a metaphysical element.

At what a tremendous cost, it may be observed by the way, is such a result achieved. The philosophy of universal necessity places man in the same predicament as it does simple matter. If all nature excludes voluntary control, and is subject only to an iron rule of invariable succession, then man also must himself be incapable of voluntary control, whether it comes from a supreme will or from his own. Thus the warfare which assails miracles, threatens to destroy all ideas of freedom and moral responsibility. And this dark foreshadowing is not concealed. "Step by step," we are confidently and calmly told, "the notion of evolution by law is transforming the whole field of our knowledge and opinion. Not the physical world alone is now the domain of inductive (?) science, but the moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual are being added to the empire. It is the crown of philosophy to see the immutable even in the complex action of human life."[37] But when all assumptions are denied, the whole question presents another aspect. Given the fundamental distinction between things physical and things moral; given the higher nature of man, the personal existence of God, a moral element in the Divine rule, the immortality of the human soul, and the present vicinity of invisible spiritual realms; and, immediately, miracles wrought by the Divine will for men's moral welfare are completely removed out of the sphere of the impossible.

Positivism, Atheism, and Pantheism are considered in other lectures of this course, and therefore it is not my office to examine them. To what has been said by the Archbishop of York and the Rev. Mr. Jackson, and to what may be said by the Rev. Dr. Rigg, I must refer my hearers.

I would only observe in passing, what, indeed, I have hinted at already, that it puzzles me beyond description to conceive how, by any course of natural evolution, independent of the introduction of a new force by an overruling power, the phenomena of the human will with its morally creative energy for good and evil could have been produced. To solve, on the principle of pure development, the problem of the genesis of that mysterious faculty, is an insuperable task. If we may speak of what is inconceivable—and scientific men set us the example—we should say the existence of volition in man, with its moral accompaniments, is utterly inconceivable, apart from belief in a Divine will, of which ours is the offspring.

It appears, then, that science really presents no antecedent grounds for rejecting miracles, and that if we believe in a personal God, the presumed impossibility melts away. This point has been conceded by one of the masters of modern reasoning. "A miracle," as was justly remarked by Brown, "is no contradiction to the law of cause and effect; it is a new effect, supposed to be produced by the introduction of a new cause. Of the adequacy of that cause, if present, there can be no doubt, and the only antecedent improbability which can be ascribed to the miracle, is the improbability that any such cause existed."[38] 2. When we have disposed of the preliminary objection which, in some way or other, says miracles are impossible, we are met by another objection, namely, that they are immensely improbable. Hume's ingenious position,[39]—that miracles are contrary to human experience, that no amount of human testimony is sufficient to establish them, and that it is far more likely men should be deceived or mistaken, than that such events as miracles must be, could ever take place,—has been made to do abundant service in this controversy; very little, if anything, has been added by those who have persistently used the argument, to improve its form or to increase its plausibility. One of its latest modifications is, that incidents out of the common course of things, said to happen in the present day, are by all of us sceptically regarded, that supernatural pretensions are felt by us to be inadmissible, and that where we are compelled to allow the honesty of witnesses, if they affirm anything involving a miraculous nature, we at once dispose of the whole matter by saying 'there must be a mistake somewhere.' Undoubtedly it is true that miracles are contrary to common experience. They must be so, or they would not be what they are. If they were of frequent occurrence, if they had happened in the history of the world so often as to become familiar to mankind, they would change their character completely. Their nature and purpose, in the view of those who receive them, is such as to render it necessary that we should bear this in mind. But to allege that they are contrary to human experience, taken in the widest point of view, is to beg the question at issue, a fact remarked a thousand times. That they are not contrary to the experience of certain persons who lived eighteen hundred years ago, is what Christians affirm; to say that they are, is illogically to cut the controversy short, and, by a general denial of everything of the kind, to put out of court the very case about to be tried, in support of which there are credible witnesses waiting to give evidence. The question of probability must be looked at all round. The circumstances under which any alleged wonders may have happened must be taken into account, before we pronounce upon their probability or improbability. When extraordinary things, coloured with a supernatural tinge, are related to us as having occurred without any assignable purpose, or only for some sectarian or party end, in connection with beliefs long cherished and avowed, of course we look on them suspiciously; giving to the authorities relating the narratives, credit for integrity and truthfulness, we naturally say 'there must be a mistake somewhere.' And, no doubt, the general culture of the present age, however superficial that culture may be, makes us far less ready than our fathers were, to endorse popular tales of wonder. There is a salutary scepticism which grows out of extensive knowledge. Truth is of such immense value, that we should not be indifferent to it in the smallest communications and concernments of life. Most assuredly any wayward, eccentric, unmeaning, and useless departure from the common course of things, tending only to shake our faith in nature,—as if men might gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles, as if barley being sown, wheat should spring up, or an apple tree by a sudden freak should bear oranges,—would deserve to be stigmatized as unworthy of belief. But the wonders in question come under another category. They are represented in the history which has recorded them, not only as being exceptional incidents in themselves, but as having been accomplished under exceptional circumstances. They are not waifs and strays on the stream of time, floating no one knows why and whither; but growths rooted in what appears as a unique system of moral instruction and improvement, designed by the loving Father of spirits for His lost children. They do not produce what may be called a disturbance of nature—that is, a throwing things in the physical world out of gear, so that men are thereby puzzled to make out what nature is, and how far it may be trusted. The documents which contain our miraculous chronicles attest the immutability of Him who is the King of nature, and the unchangeable foundation of His government and law, with a pre-eminent luminousness and with an unparalleled force.

The wonders chronicled were avowedly wrought for purposes of the highest order; and here, again, we fall back upon the distinction between what is physical and what is moral. Those purposes of the highest order to which we refer are moral. They bear on the noblest destinies of humanity, and they link themselves with the principles of natural religion, with the being and sway of a mighty, wise, and gracious God, with our conscience and responsibility, and with the future existence of the soul. Natural religion, though it speaks not a word of miracles, though it gives no prophecies of their advent, yet prepares for their appearance so far, that its teachings, fairly considered, cut off all antecedent unlikelihood of their occurrence. For natural religion suggests the desirableness of revealed religion, and revealed religion is only another name for supernatural interposition.

In a lecture upon Science and Revelation, by the Dean of Canterbury, it has been shown that man's moral nature, man's religious susceptibilities, render religion a necessity for the supply of his deepest wants; but that what is called natural religion is not clear enough, nor certain enough, to affect the generality of our race. Revelation, then, it may be fairly argued, looking at man, is a desideratum, looking at God, is a probability; and Revelation, being obviously a supernatural bestowment, seems to imply some authentication of itself, in part at least, by means of evidence corresponding with its own supernatural origin and character.

The conditions under which Scripture miracles are said to have been performed must be kept in view when we are told they are improbable. They were not performed in one continued series by a succession of Thaumaturgists; but they are found grouped together in certain clusters. As science indicates particular epochs of the energizing power of nature, so the Bible records particular epochs of an energizing power above nature.

The first great cluster of Bible wonders we find gathered round the Lawgiver of Israel; the second round the great Reformer of God's ancient Church; the third round Him who is spoken of as The Word made flesh, who dwelt among us, and who imparted to His apostles miraculous powers akin to His own. Miracles, for the most part, are halos of divine light encircling three grand names—Moses, Elijah, Jesus,—the last the greatest of the three.

Physical wonders we meet with in company with spiritual ones—wonders in outward nature in company with wonders in the great soul-world, of which sensible things are the types and shadows. In other words, miracles occur in connection with inspiration, and, whilst marvels startle the eye, new truths or new applications of truth are addressed to the mind. In harmony with facts in the intellectual universe already noticed, resembling the exceptional illuminations of genius which at intervals have flashed on the rest of mankind,—like the lightning that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, and shineth unto the other part under heaven,—souls inspired with a grand moral message have come forth from the secret place of the Most High; and it has been in the pathway of these inspired souls that physical miracles have started up; rather, it has been by their hands that physical miracles have been wrought.

There have been surprising coincidences in modern times between the wonderful in nature and the wonderful in history; for example, between the sailing of the invincible Spanish Armada, and the storm which strewed the shores of Great Britain with its ponderous wrecks—between the march of Napoleon's army and the winter's snow which blinded, benumbed, and destroyed so many thousands. The connection is unexplained except on the principle of a Divine providence.[40] And so in ancient times there were coincidences between the lightning and thunder of Sinai, and the legislative wisdom of Moses—between the fire that fell on Carmel, and the reforming zeal of Elijah. The connection is explicable only on the principle of these men having been the internunciators of the Divine will. This explication is strengthened by what they did with their own fingers or their own lips.

It may be considered as entrenching too much on the domain of doctrine to speak in this lecture of the Incarnation; but I would venture to say thus much, that Jesus appears on the face of the evangelical narratives, as the Son of God, in a sense in which no other being can be rightly called so; that in the opinions of early Christendom, the lowest as well as the highest, He was esteemed as a supernatural Person;[41] and that, by common consent, amidst diversities of theological sentiment, it is acknowledged, never man spake like this man, or lived like this man, or died like this man, or was like this man. And being, by the perfection of His moral character, and by the purpose of His benevolent mission, a truly exceptional person, it is only in keeping with the first blush, and with the deeper study of His wondrous life, to believe in signs and wonders attending His earthly career, showing whence He came, and illustrating what He came to do. Christ Himself is the greatest of wonders in the history of the world. No other approaches Him in wisdom, love, beautifulness, and glory. In more senses than one His name is "above every name." Taking the four Gospels together, the Incarnation of the Word is associated with a supernatural birth. The miracle in the spiritual world of the manifestation of God in Jesus Christ, is coupled with the miracle in the physical world of the Virgin's conception. If Christianity be more than the republication of natural religion, if it be the revelation of God's redeeming love, it involves a miracle as the very starting-point of the process; and the unfolding of the idea in the New Testament includes a divine manifestation, which is a miracle in history, and a divine birth, which is a miracle in nature.[42] His advent in the world comes out in the four Gospels as a central sunlike marvel, and therefore it seems no improbability, but rather the clearest of all probabilities, that around Him there should revolve a planetary circle of miracles.

Difficulties are needlessly created by forgetfulness of the character ascribed to this extraordinary Person. To argue as to what He did, or as to what He did not do, without a recognition of the actual One painted in the Gospels, is really to argue about another Christ, not the one whom Christians follow.

In accordance with the view I have taken, is the manner in which the New Testament miracles are narrated. It seems assumed that such things might be expected in the wake of such a personage as the Son of God. They are not introduced as a procession of facts challenging supreme admiration. No flourish of trumpets heralds their march; but they follow as the fitting and humble retinue of Him who walked the earth its undisputed Master. The Evangelists write as men who were not astounded at what their Master did, because they were so filled with reverence and admiration, at the thought of what their Master was.

Having considered the antecedent objections made to miracles, we are now prepared to look at what is really the nature of the miraculous testimony afforded to Christianity. And here, for the sake of simplifying the argument, I shall confine myself to the miracles ascribed to Christ. Faith in His miracles will lead to faith in the miracles of His apostles. If it be granted, as we contend from what has been said it ought to be, that this is a case in which historical proof is admissible, then it is impossible to find stronger historical proof than comes to hand in support of the truth of the evangelical narratives. The historical proof, as such, has of late been comparatively little impugned; the assaults made on the prior credibility of supernatural facts being the main opposition with which believers in Christianity have to contend. That opposition overcome, and the validity of competent witnesses, as to the question at issue, established, the course is free for an accumulation of evidence, such as Dr. Lardner, with rare erudition, has piled up in his volumes on the Credibility of the Gospel History: such as Archdeacon Paley, with unique ingenuity, and with singular felicity of arrangement and illustration, has condensed in his view of the Evidences of Christianity.[43] The works now mentioned do not, it must be confessed, supply all that is wanted for the settlement of the question, according to the phase it assumes at present. But when scientific and metaphysical difficulties of modern creation have been grappled with and removed, the array of pagan and Christian testimonies in support of the original credibility of the Evangelists, as collected by these and other writers, comes to render service of immense value. It is more than any one has yet attempted, to overturn, by citation against citation, criticism against criticism, argument against argument, the bulwarks of historical defence built up by the researches of learned advocates. Indeed, the early historical evidence all goes one way. It is evidence without counter-evidence.

And to pass for a moment to foreign literature. After the endeavours of Strauss and others to resolve much of the Gospel story into myths of a later age, and of Rénan, to construct out of the original documents a French philosophical romance, we are provided with the works of Ebrard and Pressensé, who have vindicated the truth of the New Testament story.

It would be idle to attempt, within the compass of this lecture, any outline of the mass of matter brought together in this service. But I may be allowed to indicate that it may be arranged in three divisions. First, the concessions of the Jews. Talmudical writings imply that Jesus of Nazareth did many mighty works. The Toldoth Jeschu relates a number of things, such as raising the dead, healing lepers, and restoring the lame. It represents people as falling down before Him, exclaiming, "Truly Thou art the Son of God."[44] The Christian miracles are allowed, but they are attributed to magic. "There can be no doubt," says Whately, "that this must have been (as our sacred writers tell us it was) what the adversaries of Jesus maintained from the first. For if those who lived on the spot in His time had denied or doubted the facts of the miracles, and had declared that the accounts of them were false tales, and that no miracles had ever really been wrought, we may be sure that the same would have been said ever after by their descendants."[45] Secondly, the admissions of heathens. The extracts from Celsus in Origen afford an abridged history of Jesus Christ, and acknowledge that He did many marvellous things. Celsus explains the fact by saying, Jesus went into Egypt, and having made trial of powers practised there, returned highly elated, and pronounced Himself a God.[46] Porphry speaks of Christian miracles as wrought by poor rustics through magical arts.[47] Julian does not contradict them when he contemptuously affirms, that Jesus did nothing in His lifetime worthy of remembrance, unless any one thinks it a mighty matter to heal lame and blind people, and exorcise demons in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany.[48] To these heathen admissions, which are of considerable value, are to be added, thirdly, the affirmations of Christians. Miracles are asserted by them in manifold forms and in manifold writings. The Fathers follow in the wake of Apostles and Evangelists; and, be it remembered, each New Testament author who testifies to these superhuman achievements is an independent witness, so that their statements bear the value of as many concurrent proofs: and if it should be said that, because they were Christians, they are partial witnesses, on the other hand it can be said that some of the Fathers, and all the New Testament writers, had become so, contrary to former habits and prejudices, in part, at least, through the very force of miracles, and that too at the cost of extraordinary self-sacrifice and suffering.

I have not sufficient space to exhibit adequately the argument for the credibility of the New Testament witnesses. I must, however, observe that the force has not departed from the old-fashioned method of stating the case, namely, that you must accept them as competent and satisfactory; or you must believe either that they were dishonest men, intending to deceive, or that they were dupes of their own or of other people's fancies. I am disposed to extend the dilemma, and to say, that there is a third supposition, growing out of the junction of these two, the supposition (according to a not uncommon occurrence in the mysteries of human nature) that the witnesses might be partly the victims of delusion, and partly the inventors of fiction, that credulity and imagination might be both at work, the result being a fabrication of miracles, having no basis, or but an exceedingly slender one, in facts occurring before men's eyes. With these alternatives under our view, the inquiry is, Which shall we apply to the witnesses of the miracles of Christ? Rénan has applied the composite supposition to the witnesses of the resurrection. "On the Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene first came very early to the tomb. The stone was displaced from the opening, and the body was no longer in the place where they had laid it. At the same time the strangest rumours were spread in the Christian community. The cry, 'He is risen,' quickly spread amongst the disciples. Love caused it to find ready credence everywhere." "Such was the impression He had left in the hearts of His disciples, and of a few devoted women, that during some weeks more, it was as if He were living and consoling them. Had His body been taken away, or did enthusiasm, always credulous, create afterwards the group of narratives by which it was sought to establish faith in the resurrection? In the absence of opposing documents this can never be ascertained. Let us say, however, that the strong imagination of Mary Magdalene played an important part in this circumstance. Divine power of love! Sacred moments in which the passion of one possessed gave to the world a resuscitated God!" No one is more ready than I am to do justice to the extraordinary literary merits of the "Vie de Jésus," its lucid style, its descriptive power, its manifold charms; but I cannot conceal my amazement that the author, with his exquisite genius, should adopt such a travestied rendering of the noblest of Bible stories. There are no documents, as he confesses, to work upon but the four Gospels; and from these Gospels it distinctly appears that, so far from the witnesses produced being of the character he indicates, so far from their love snatching at anything within reach, however airy, out of which to weave a web of wonders, there were men amongst them slow of heart to believe what the prophets had written, and what Jesus had said about the resurrection; men who counted the report of that resurrection, when they first heard of it, as an idle tale,—one of whom even would not yield to sight itself, but demanded to touch the nail-prints in the holy palms, and to thrust his hand into the sacred side. And as to the women, when they came to the sepulchre on the third day, it was not to hail a risen Jesus, but to anoint a buried one. That persons represented by the historians as burdened with doubts, and fears, and unbelief, and demanding demonstrative evidence, should have been finally convinced, and should have staked their all upon that conviction, removes them for ever utterly beyond all reasonable suspicion of dreaming strangely coloured dreams of their Lord's risen life,—to say nothing of collusion and fraud,—and places them at once amongst witnesses, who well knew what they said, and whereof they affirmed.

The credibility of the witness borne to another resurrection is also well established. For evidence of the authenticity of the Gospel of St. John, I refer to Professor Lightfoot's lecture, and would only remark upon the narrative in this Gospel—a narrative so full of pathetic beauty—that it is impossible to explain away its details by possibilities of misapprehension, and pardonable exaggerations of extraordinary incidents. Thus much is indisputable, Lazarus was sick unto death. To all human appearance he died. He died, and was buried, and remained so long in the grave that it was believed the corruption of his corpse had commenced. Coincident with the utterance by Jesus, at the door of the tomb, of the words, "Lazarus, come forth!" the body moved, arose, came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; in consequence of which, "many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him." Here were presented to the senses of witnesses phenomena involving the performance of a miracle. A distinction has been justly drawn between testimony to phenomena cognizable by the senses, and miracles completely considered on their invisible and divine side, as well as their visible and human one. "Testimony," it is said, "can apply only to apparent sensible facts; testimony can only prove an extraordinary and perhaps inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon; that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the previous belief and assumption of the parties."[49] With the omission of the words "previous belief and assumption," and the substitution of the words "reflection and conviction,"—whether exercised and experienced at the time or afterwards,—I accept the statement. Phenomena are immediately apprehensible; the cause is not so. A persuasion that the cause is miraculous arises in the mind as an inference from what is directly witnessed. But what is directly witnessed may be of such a nature as to compel the witness, as a reasonable person, to believe that what has taken place results from a supernatural interposition. This conviction implies, indeed, that the person believes in the existence of supernatural power—in other words, believes in the existence and agency of God—which belief may be described as a "previous belief:" but a conviction that particular phenomena are the result of a supernatural cause, depends on the exercise of reason in regard to the phenomena themselves. "No testimony," I admit, "can reach to the supernatural," directly, but it may reach it by implication.

Keeping in view the distinction laid down, we say of the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus, that no natural solution of the event recorded is within reach. Fraud, collusion, trickery,[50] are excluded by the character of Christ and of Lazarus: no reference to accidental coincidences, or to mesmerism, or to electric influences, or to any known physical agencies, meets the case. Nor is there room for the anticipation that the advancement of science will ever solve this problem. If a solution be attainable, we are shut up to the one solution accepted by Christians. To leave it unsolved, to refer it to the class of unaccountable phenomena, through a persistent determination not to believe in anything supernatural, in the face of all which can be said in reply to antecedent objections, is most unphilosophical.

Let me here add, in reference to narratives of the miraculous, that it is easy to marshal a number of general reflections together, casting a slur upon evidence, and to invest with some plausibility its denial or non-acceptance. But, when we think how fallaciously, yet plausibly, general reflections may be employed for the contradiction of evidence,—how, by reference to the proverbial exaggerations of travellers' stories, accounts of other countries, of their customs and productions, may be discredited; how, by insisting upon men's liability to illusion, the observations of scientific inquirers may be set aside; how, by dwelling on credulity and passion, party spirit, and the like, historic doubts may be conjectured respecting the existence of Napoleon I., and how, in the same way, historic doubts may be hereafter raised respecting a large part of the career of Napoleon III.; we see how little such general reflections are to be trusted, how much more they may do to hinder the interests of truth than to help them.[51] The absurdity of the conclusions in such cases discredits the process by which they are reached.

Let us not pass from this part of the subject without saying one word as to the presumption in favour of the New Testament narratives of miracles, when compared with narratives of miracles found elsewhere. Place side by side with the Scripture narratives the miraculous stories in the Apocryphal Gospels, in the writings of the Fathers, in mediæval chronicles, in modern legends of Saints, and one sees the force of a remark by an eminent German theologian: "The critical acumen of Niebuhr was, as is admitted, inferior to that of no man, and he has done away with only too much of the ancient history of Rome. Yet he acknowledged, 'with respect to a miracle, in the strictest sense of the word, it needs but an unprejudiced and searching investigation of nature to perceive, that the miracles related are anything but absurd, and a comparison of them with the legends or so-called miracles of other religions, to recognize what a different spirit dwells in them.'"[52] To take only one step farther in this direction, when it is asked, "What, if so many apparently competent witnesses were to assure you, that they had seen such and such a miracle—mentioning the most monstrous absurd, fantastic, and ludicrous confusion of nature—would you believe them?" We answer in the words of a modern Writer: "We are only concerned with the miraculous under that form and those conditions under which it has actually by trustworthy report taken place, as subordinated to what has been called 'a general law of wisdom,' i.e. to a wise plan and design in the Divine mind under which check the course of miracles has, so to speak, kept near to nature, just diverging enough for the purpose, and no more."[53]