VII.—Miracles.
It is customary among orthodox Christians to assert that the godhead of their Christ was fully proven by the many miracles attributed to him in the New Testament. But one must not forget that the performance of miracles is one of the most common attributes of founders of new sects, and one which all religious charlatans claim. Krishna lulled tempests, cured lepers, and restored the dead; Buddha, Zoroaster (who walked on water on his way to Mount Iran to receive the law), Horus, Æsculapius, and innumerable others did likewise. Mohammed, not content with miracles of the omnipotent physician type, juggled the moon through his sleeve. Even to-day faith in miracles is not dead, and miracle-working attributes have been claimed for Mrs. Eddy, founder of Christian Science, Dowie, founder of Zion City, and Sandford, leader of the Holy Ghost and Us.
There can be no doubt in the mind of a student of comparative theology that Moncure D. Conway was correct when he stated in his essay on Christianity that “among all the miracles of the New Testament not one is original. Bacchus changed water into wine.... Moses and Elias also fasted forty days.... Pythagoras had power to still waves and tempests at sea. Elijah made the widow’s meal and oil increase; Elisha fed a hundred men with twenty loaves.... As for opening blind eyes, healing diseases, walking on water, casting out demons, raising the dead, resurrection, ascension, all these have been common myths—logic currency of every race.”
“One of the best attested miracles of all profane history is that which Tacitus reports of Vespasian, who cured a blind man in Alexandria by means of his spittle, and a lame man by the mere touch of his foot, in obedience to a vision of the god Serapis,” says Hume in his “Essay on Miracles,” and we might here mention the numerous attested cures resulting from the laying on of royal hands by divinely appointed sovereigns.
The rulers of France, Aragon, and England touched for scrofula, this practice being continued by the latter from the period of its origin with Edward the Confessor until the accession of William the Third, whose good sense put an end to it. James the Second, the last practitioner of this art, had so great a belief in his curative powers that he set aside certain days on which he touched the afflicted from his throne at Whitehall, while the sufferers came in throngs to kneel at his feet. The princes of the house of Austria likewise held divine power and were supposed to be capable of casting out devils and curing stammering by the touch of their aristocratic fingers.
Numerous cases are narrated in which Jesus, by simply touching the person of the afflicted, effected instantaneous cures. Such were those of the leper ([Matt. viii, 2–3]; [Mark i, 40–42]; [Luke v, 12–13]); the curing of Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever ([Matt. viii, 14–15]; [Mark i, 30–31]; [Luke iv, 38–39]), although in the Luke version he “rebuked” the fever; and the opening of the eyes of two blind men ([Matt. ix, 27–30]). Another method seems to have been by allowing the ill to touch him or his garments ([Matt. ix, 20–22]; [xiv, 36]; [Mark iii, 10]; [v, 25–34]; [Luke vi, 19]; [viii, 43–48]). At other times he simply told the patient, or the agent of the patient, that faith had effected the cure, as with the centurion’s servant ([Matt. viii, 5–13]; [Luke vii, 2–10]) and the daughter of the Canaanite ([Matt. xv, 22–28]; [Mark vii, 25–30]); or told the stricken to hold forth a withered arm or pick up his bed and walk, by which command the cure was completed ([Matt. ix, 2–7]; [xii, 10–13]; [Mark ii, 3–12]; [Luke v, 18–25]).
Among all primitive peoples, the principal cause of disease was supposed to lie in the displeasure of some deity toward the afflicted person, who was punished by this deity for some offense or neglect ([Psalms xxxviii, 3]). One of the favorite methods of the gods in afflicting was sending evil and tormenting spirits into the body of the victim. After more was learned of disease, this theory gradually diminished in strength as regarded some troubles, but for centuries it was the universal theory that mental derangements and nervous afflictions were solely due to demoniacal possession, and all priests and medicine-men resorted to various exorcisms, from the primitive banging of gongs and tooting of trumpets to scare away the spirit, to the prayers and sprinkling of holy water of the mediæval church to rid the patient of the unwelcome inhabitant of his body.
That Jesus believed in this demoniacal possession is undoubted, and he effected his cures by ordering or calling out the devil from the body of the possessed. For example, there is a story of Jesus driving devils into an innocent herd of swine ([Matt. viii, 28–33]; [Mark v, 2–14]; [Luke viii, 26–34]). We also find him casting out and rebuking devils in various instances ([Matt. ix, 32–34]; [xii, 22–24]; [xvii, 14–18]; [Mark i, 23–24], [34]; [iii, 11]; [Luke iv, 33–36], [41]; [ix, 37–42]).
In all probability, these medical miracles of Jesus were copied from older legends by his biographers. But, even if they actually occurred, they were not miracles at all, for a miracle must be, in the very meaning of the word, performed by the suspension of a natural law, and from all gospel accounts the mental therapeutics of the Christ were performed, if at all, in perfect accordance with well-established psychological laws. They had been performed years before his birth, and they have continued to be performed years after his death, even to the present time. Through the force of faith, the patients were placed in passivity (hypnosis) and treated by suggestions being impressed upon their subjective minds, when present; at a distance, they were cured by the telepathic suggestions conveyed from the healer to their subjective mentalities. There is no miracle here; it is merely a demonstration of telepathic and hypnotic phenomena, governed by psychic laws, and does not place the Christ on a higher intellectual plane than modern hypnotists and mental healers, who consciously and knowingly work within the dispensation of these laws. They are anything but proofs of the godhead of Jesus.
It would seem that the Pharisees had some such idea in mind when they demanded an astronomical miracle and requested “a sign from heaven.” But, unable to comply, he evaded this performance by calling them hypocrites and “an evil and adulterous generation,” and saying, “There shall no sign be given unto this generation” ([Matt. xii, 38–39]; [xvi, 1–4]; [Mark viii, 11–13]; [Luke xi, 16], [29]; [John ii, 18], [24]; [vi, 30]).