Our author misrepresents Christianity, and uses the misrepresentation as an argument against it, as, alas! is only too common. John Stuart Mill actually says in his essay on Theism (p. 240) that "Christ is never said to have declared any evidence of His mission (unless His own interpretations of the prophecies be so considered) except internal conviction." If Mr. Mill ever read the New Testament through, he would have found where it is written, "Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever is not offended in me." And also the words, "But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me."[14] "The Jews came round about him and said, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Messiah, tell us plainly. Jesus answered, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me."[15] "Believe me for the very works' sake."[16]
How, in the face of such an authoritative statement why miracles were wrought by Jesus, can our author assume that they were not intended to be an appeal to reason, and to be tested by the intelligence and common sense they appealed to? The miracles were wrought to convince men that Jesus was the Messiah, and were adapted to that end. Our author's picture of Divine revelation is very much a conception of his own, fashioned from isolated portions of Scripture, pseudo-Judaism, and ecclesiastical representations of Christianity.
He quotes Archbishop Trench, who, in defining the function of a miracle, says,—"A miracle does not prove the truth of a doctrine or the divine mission of him that brings it to pass;" and Dr. Arnold, who says,—"It has always seemed to me that its substance is a most essential part of its evidence, and that miracles wrought in favour of what was foolish or wicked would only prove Manicheism:" which passages of fallible commentators fail to express the distinction between real miracles and spurious ones. But I ask, Why does he appeal to what Dr. Trench and Dr. Arnold, or any other commentator says, when he has before him our Saviour's own words? In arguing against miracles, it is not competent for him to put his own construction upon them in violation of the highest authority as to their purpose and design. I understand his conclusions to be against Christianity—not against what he is pleased to put in its place. It is in the Fourth Gospel we find Christ's words, but that book is too important a part of Divine revelation for any apologist to remain in the field of discussion and continue the argument if his opponent,—whether he be Mr. Mill or our author,—insists on assuming that on the Christian side the question is an open one whether the Fourth Gospel is to be accepted. The whole of the four Gospels as we have them were read in all the Christian Churches on the three continents in the middle of the second century, as our author well knows. He acknowledges that Irenæus, who wrote about A.D. 180, compared the four Gospels to the "four columns of the Church over the whole world;" and that in writings of his which we have, and the genuineness of which no one questions, there are hundreds of references to the Gospels, the fourth included. There is no question as to this being the fact at that date. It is the earlier date that the argument bears upon. The four Gospels are held together by an inseparable bond in the archives of the Church, and believers in them assert they will all four stand or fall together. I can only suppose that it was because Mr. Mill ignored the Fourth Gospel that he ignored the verses I have quoted.
If an advocate has a weak case in hand, to damage the character of the witnesses is a well-known mode of proceeding; so our author asks who are the men who, it is asserted, saw these amazing performances? What were the intellectual conditions of the age when they occurred? "Did the Jews at the time of Jesus possess such calmness of judgment and sobriety of imagination as to inspire us with any confidence in accounts of marvellous occurrences unwitnessed except by them, and limited to their time, which contradict all knowledge and all experience? Were their minds sufficiently enlightened and free from superstition to warrant our attaching weight to their report of events of such an astounding nature?" (Vol. i. p. 98.)
The reading of this sentence suggests a comparison between the age he refers to and the century succeeding Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, during which our Royal College of Physicians repudiated the discovery, some of the most eminent of the faculty writing against it, and creating a prejudice against Harvey by which his practice suffered considerably; and the scientific period when the French Academy for a long time rejected the use of quinine, vaccination, lightning-conductors, the steam-engine, &c.
To weaken the apostolic testimony, there is presented an elaborate exhibition of the wide-spread belief among the Jews in sorcery, dreams, portents, and numerous forms of superstition. In what age have not these been prevalent? Are we free from them in this? If the Divine communication had been postponed until now, and civilisation could have attained to its present stage without its influence, would its reception have been any different? Would the vested interests in established usages and beliefs have raised no opposition? If there are in this country, and in this day, thousands who believe, or pretend to believe, that the priests who are ordained to forgive sins can really do so, are we in a position to assume any great superiority over the Jews, Greeks, and Romans of eighteen centuries ago? If the most manifest and stupendous miracle were wrought to show men the folly of drunkenness, lying, and other sins, would not the results be just the same? Some would believe and testify, and others say that the sign, not being of the precise sort to suit them, was not conclusive. There must be a coming down from the cross, or something else, to satisfy them. "If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe though one rose from the dead." The testimony of the first disciples, it is said, is not satisfactory, because they were uneducated, unscientific, uncritical. Mr. Mill says Paul was the only exception in the first generation of Christians. I remark that Matthew, in the position of a receiver of taxes for the Roman government, though not learned, might be shrewd to detect imposture; that Thomas was not too credulous; and that as for Paul, if he could not judge of the value of the testimony of the hundreds of men and women who told him, or could have told him, what they were eye-witnesses of, what was his education worth, and what about the miracle in his own case? Why should it be doubted that the vision to which he refers in his unquestioned letter to the Galatians really occurred? He therein tells them (with an asseveration that, in the presence of God, he was not lying)[17] that he was taught the gospel he preached by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Whatever may be said about the authority of the Acts of the Apostles, which relates the particulars of Paul's miraculous conversion so minutely, we have the evidence of it in Paul's own letter. Of course he would compare what was revealed to him with what the eye-witnesses could tell him; and if he could mistake a sunstroke, a trance, or a state of ecstatic dreaming for a Divine revelation, his character, judged of by his own writings, is verily incomprehensible. There is no such other enigma in all history. In his equally unquestioned letter to the Corinthians he tells them that he received from the Lord the particulars of the institution of the Lord's Supper. Of this memorable event Paul had ample opportunities of comparing what was revealed to him with what the disciples who were present could tell him; and he was in such intercourse with them, that the circumstances were highly favourable for an educated man, such as he was, arriving at the exact and absolute truth of the matter.
Our author's view of the question is narrowed by his refusing to acknowledge that mankind is morally depraved by sin.
How a man, with the wickedness of such a city as London daily forced on his notice, and a knowledge of the history of the race in his memory, could have penned such a sentence as the following, it is difficult to conceive. "The whole theory of this abortive design of creation, with such important efforts to amend it, is emphatically contradicted by the glorious perfection and invariability of the order of nature." Can he not see that the degradation and wickedness of humanity are in striking contrast to the "glorious perfection and invariability of the order of nature"? He is bound to give some reason for this anomaly if he will not accept what revelation makes known to us as the cause.
The abstract question as to the credibility of miracles Paul discussed in the year 58 at Cæsarea, in the presence of Festus and Agrippa, when he said, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" and it has been dealt with so exhaustively by Newton, Locke, Butler, Paley, Whateley, Olinthus Gregory, Wardlaw, Alexander, and a host of other writers, that there is really little more to be said. The "Fortnightly Review" remarks that the arguments on both sides are so familiar, that it is not necessary to reproduce the present author's mode of dealing with this part of the subject. Matthew Arnold describes it as an attempt to refute Dr. Mozley's Bampton Lecture on Miracles—"a solid reply to a solid treatise;" but that to engage in an à priori argument to prove that miracles are impossible, against an adversary who argues, à priori, that they are possible, is the vainest labour in the world. Now, as Mr. Arnold is as much a disbeliever in miracles as our author, the worth of his abstract argument may be taken at Mr. Arnold's estimate, and he says: "The author of 'Supernatural Religion' asserts again and again that miracles are contrary to complete induction, but no such law of nature has been, or can be, established against the Christian miracles, therefore a complete induction there is not."
If the miracle-disbelieving Matthew Arnold does not accept our author's abstract argument, and since we find Mr. Mill designating "two points" in Hume's celebrated attack as "weak" and "vulnerable," I need not linger over this part of the work. I may assume that it is sufficiently neutralised by men on his own side of the question as able and learned as himself.