Moreover, the miracles—which are as thick on the pages of the bible as blackberries on a bush—what good did they do to the people for whose benefit they were performed? If the Egyptians perished in their homes, the Jews perished in the wilderness; if the Egyptians lost their slaves, the Jews lost their sons and daughters—lost themselves. What good did all the miracles performed in their behalf do for them? Their city, Jerusalem, was set on fire, their homes pillaged, their children put to the edge of the sword, over and over again. What benefit did they derive from the ten thousand miracles lavished upon them? And look at the Greeks! Not one miracle did Jehovah perform for them. Yet they rose to be the masters of the world, and are still by their worth and genius, the teachers of mankind.
The most unexpected and impossible things are said and done in the bible. When Abraham was bom, his father, Terah, was seventy years old. In every other book, as the father grows older, the son, too, would advance in years. But in the bible, while Terah grows older, Abraham grows younger, or stops growing altogether, so that when his father is two hundred and five years old, he himself is only seventy-five years old, making him sixty years younger than he should be by all the laws of arithmetic. But what is arithmetic to a magician? When the theologian says three times one is one, he is not thinking of so little a thing as mathematics—there are no impossibilities for the magician. He can make the three one, and the one three. Listen to one of the great Christian Fathers, Tertullian:
What have the philosopher and the Christian in common? The disciple of Greece, and the disciple of heaven? What have Athens and Jerusalem, the church and the academy, heretics and Christians in common? There is no more inquiry for us, now that Christ has come, nor any occasion for further investigation, since we have the gospel.... The Son of God is dead; it is right credible because it is absurd; being buried he has arisen; it is certain, because it is impossible.
There are no difficulties for theologians. If
"Isaiah, the prophet, cried unto the Lord, and he brought the shadow (of the sun) ten degrees backward... in the dial," * why could not Abraham grow backward? If Joshua could arrest the sun, what is a little miracle like that of Abraham standing still while the whole world moved on? If Jesus could be bom without a father, why could not Melchisedec be bom without either a father or a mother? This personage was, perhaps, one of the most wonderful in bible history. He had neither beginning nor ending, neither a father nor a mother.
For this Melchisedec... to whom also Abraham gave a tenth (of the spoils)... without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God. **
* II Kings xix, ii.
** Hebrews vii, 1-3.
Wonderful as he was, he believed in getting his share of the spoils. The theologians, in the bible, or outside of it, do not seem to be in the least surprised at the incredible things in the Word of God. If Eve were not startled when she heard the serpent talk, neither is the American theologian who takes that for his text. If Balaam was not at all perplexed when his ass opened its mouth and asked him a question, neither are the divinity professors in our universities who explain the incident to their pupils. This, if anything, is the more wonderful miracle.
If I were riding a horse, and all of a sudden the animal should turn around and ask me what the subject of my lecture would be for next Sunday, I would certainly be dumfounded. Yet neither Balaam, nor his fellow theologians of to-day, show the least perturbation over an ass interrogating his rider. They can not afford to. Is not God almighty? And, besides, upon what grounds would they be justified in rejecting this or that miracle while accepting others? Was it more difficult for Balaam's ass to have talked than for Christ to have been bom without a father, or Melchisedec without any parents at all? Magic and miracle know no laws.
"If God had not opened the mouth of the ass," said Father Ignatius, a modern evangelist of the Anglican communion, "remember that there would have been no Christ." The Christian who says he believes in the virgin birth, but not in the talking serpent or ass, is a sceptic already. The reasoning by which he rejects the one miracle is equally effective against all the others. To accept the Christ miracle by faith, and to reject the Balaam miracle by reason, is a procedure which leads to anarchism in thought and faith. Oh, no; if you believe in the supernatural at all you will have to believe in Melchisedec and Balaam, as you do in the virgin-born Christ. You can not choose your miracles. All or none! And the man who believes in one miracle is not a bit different from the man who believes in a million.