INTERESTING APPLICATION OF HYPNOTISM BY WHICH A MULTITUDE WERE CONVINCED THAT THEY HAD DINED.
And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves and two fishes. He said, Bring them hither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass and took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled; and they took up the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men beside women and children (Matt. xiv, 15–21).
Lazarus Come Forth.
JESUS APPRISES THE BROTHER OF MARTHA THAT THE JOKE HAS BEEN CARRIED FAR ENOUGH.
When Jesus came, he found that he [Lazarus] had lain in the grave four days already.... Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days.... He [Jesus] cried with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth. And he that was dead came forth (John xi, 17, 38, 39, 43, 44).
These Bible stories, which Christians profess to believe, are unworthy of serious consideration. They are not historical, but fabulous. A miracle is a fable. The miraculous is impossible; the impossible untrue. If miracles were possible and necessary in that age they are possible and necessary now. This is an age of unbelief. Give us one miracle and we will believe. Let Jesus visit earth again and with his divine touch revivify the inanimate dust of Lincoln and give him back to the nation that loved him so well, and we will acknowledge his divinity and believe that the Bible is inspired. Had he restored to life the decaying corpse of Lazarus the Jews would have believed in him. The Jews did not believe in him, therefore the miracle was not performed.
The divine origin of the Bible cannot be established by miracles because the possibility of a miracle itself cannot be established. In the language of Hume, “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”