The Wave of Scepticism and the Rock of Truth

by M. H. Habershon

But it is not only Mr. Mill and Mr. Arnold who have recently shown that Hume's celebrated argument, which our author reproduces and defends, is not sound. It is satisfactory to know that from Germany, where so much sceptical criticism has been promulgated, comes now the most complete and conclusive exposure of the whole anti-Christian argument. For the proof of this assertion I refer to a work which has just been translated into English, and issued by Messrs. T. and T. Clark of Edinburgh, entitled "Modern Doubt and Christian Belief,"[18] by Theodore Christlieb, D.D., University Preacher and Professor of Theology at Bonn; a most able, learned, and exhaustive argument on the whole question, equal to the demands of those who desire to know all about it, and to whom I earnestly commend the book. He mentions that the great majority of the representatives of the present scientific German theology are considered to have essentially decided in favour of the faith, not only on dogmatical, but also on exegetical and speculative grounds (p. 289).

This is in strong contrast to the assertion of our author (vol. i. p. 27), that "it may broadly be said that English divines alone, at the present day, maintain the reality and supernatural character of such phenomena;" and that "the great majority of modern German critics reject the miraculous altogether, and consider the question as no longer worthy of discussion."

For the benefit of those who may not have time to read Dr. Christlieb's work, I will transcribe a few passages bearing on the abstract argument we are discussing.

"Things moral and spiritual cannot be mathematically demonstrated. He who said, 'My thoughts are not as your thoughts,' has introduced in His words and actions a far higher logic than that whose principles Aristotle laid down." (Preface, p. xi.)

"However much, in other respects, our opponents may differ, they all agree in the denial of miracles, and unitedly storm this bulwark of the Christian faith; and in its defence we have to combat them all at once. But whence this unanimity? Because, with the truth of miracles, the entire citadel of Christianity stands or falls. For its beginning is a miracle, its Author is a miracle, its progress depends upon miracles, and miracles will hereafter be its consummation" (p. 285).

"If the principle of miracles be set aside, then all the heights of Christianity will be levelled with one stroke, and nought will remain but a heap of ruins. If we banish the supernatural from the Bible, there is nothing left us but the covers" (p. 286).

"The negation of miracles leads to the annihilation of all religion" (p. 286).

"Many are averse to the miraculous through fear of superstition, and they overlook the sharp discrimination of Scripture between belief and superstition, between miraculous power and witchcraft. Whereas the sorcerer pretends to make supernatural powers subservient to his person, the prophet or apostle accounts himself only the instrument of God. It is God who alone works. The Son Himself seeks through His works not His own honour, but that of His Father.[19] Notice the unobtrusiveness of miracles in the holy Scriptures, how Christ sharply repels the vain curiosity and vulgar thirst of His age for wonders, and His prohibition of their publication. Compare with these features the sensational miracles of the Roman and Oriental Churches—images of saints who sweat blood, nod the head, roll the eyes—or the Whitsuntide marvels among the Greeks and Armenians at Jerusalem, when the Holy Ghost lights up candles (but not hearts), and you will confess that such feats of legerdemain jugglery betray, in their external pomp and straining after effect, anything but a Divine origin. A glance at the internal evidences of the truth in miracles, at their moral and religious character, which reflects and serves not only the power of God, but also His truth and holiness, and must prove pre-eminently their Divine origin, will show that it is not a very difficult task for any one to defend his belief in the biblical miracles against the charge of superstition" (p. 297).

"Those foundation-stones for the denial of all miracles which were laid by Spinoza and Hume, and on which the critics of the present day still take a defiant stand, have crumbled away piecemeal before our eyes. Spinoza's axiom, that the 'laws of nature are the only realisation of the Divine will,' stands or falls with the pantheistic conception of the Deity—a conception which is not only unworthy of God and of man, but also contrary to reason. The Source of all freedom is supposed to have no freedom, but to be immured in His own laws! And to this Spinoza adds the conclusion: 'If anything could take place in nature contrary to its laws, God would thereby contradict Himself.' We have seen that just the converse is true, namely, that if God performed no miracles, and left the world to itself, He would contradict Himself; that He must perform miracles in order to maintain the end for which the world was created, and to bring it to the destiny which was originally intended. His miraculous action contradicts not nature and its laws, but the unnatural, which has entered the world through sin, and counteracts its destructive consequences in order to restore the life of the world to holy order. Only those who, like Spinoza, deny the reality of sin and its destructive power, can question the necessity of the miraculous. The present condition, not only of the human world, but also of nature, gives such opinions the lie at every step" (p. 327).

"Hume, in like manner, bases his attack against the miraculous on a series of false assumptions. First: 'Miracles are violations of the laws of nature.' This is false, since miracles, far from violating, serve to re-establish the already violated order of the world, and do not injure the laws of nature. Second: 'But we learn from experience that the laws of nature are never violated.' This is false, because we ourselves immediately interfere with our higher will in the laws of nature, and interrupt them without their being violated. Third: 'For miracles we have the questionable testimony of a few persons.' This is false, because the entire Scriptures are full of miracles, and the historical testimony for them is unquestionable, since the appearance of Israel and of the Christian Church is perfectly incomprehensible without miracles. 'But,' he goes on, 'against them we have universal experience; therefore this stronger testimony nullifies the weaker and more questionable.' The pith of Hume's argument, then, is simply this: Because, according to universal experience, no miracles now take place, therefore none can ever have occurred. This proposition, in the first place, involves a begging of the question, since it is not at all certain that no miracles are performed now-a-days; and, second, it ignores the fact that different periods are subject to different laws, and with their varied wants may demand varied kinds of revelatory action on the part of God. Certainly, the negro who should affirm that there is no snow, because in his country, according to 'universal experience,' it never snows, would be committing an absurdity. And no less illegitimate is it to measure all time by the universal (?) experience or non-experience of some particular period. Finally, Hume goes on to demand, as a condition for the credibility of miracles, that they must be attested by an adequate number of sufficiently educated and honest persons, who could not be suspected of intentional deception, and that they should be done in so frequented a spot that the detection of the illusion would be inevitable. We shall see further (in Lectures vi. and vii.) that these conditions were all essentially fulfilled in the case of the New Testament miracles. And yet, in spite of the evident weakness of Hume's argument, Strauss would have us believe that Hume's 'Essay on Miracles' is so universally convincing, that it may be said to have settled the question ('Leben Jesu,' page 148). The author of the 'Life of Christ' forgets to mention that Hume has long since been refuted in detail by the earlier and later English apologists (e. g., by Campbell, Adams, Hay, Price, Douglass, Paley, Whateley, Dwight, Alexander, Wardlaw, and Pearson), to say nothing of the Germans; but then he knows that only a very small proportion of his readers is aware of this fact" (p. 328).