God and My Neighbour

by Robert Blatchford

The magistrate who listens with devout attention to the precept,
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," on Sunday, on Monday
dismisses, as intrinsically absurd, a charge of bewitching a
cow brought against some old woman; the superintendent of a
lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for rational modes of
treatment, would have but a short tenure of office; even parish
clerks doubt the utility of prayers for rain, so long as the
wind is in the east; and an outbreak of pestilence sends men,
not to the churches, but to the drains. In spite of prayers for
the success of our arms, and Te Deums for victory, our real
faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in
knowledge of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and
discipline. In these, as in all other practical affairs, we
act on the aphorism, Laborare est orare; we admit that
intelligent work is the only acceptable worship, and that,
whether there be a Supernature or not, our business is with Nature.

We have ceased to believe in miracles. When we come upon a miracle in any historical document we feel not only that the miracle is untrue, but also that its presence reduces the value of the document in which it is contained. Thus Matthew Arnold, in Literature and Dogma, after saying that we shall "find ourselves inevitably led, sooner or later," to extend one rule to all miraculous stories, and that "the considerations which apply in other cases apply, we shall most surely discover, with even greater force in the case of Bible miracles," goes on to declare that "this being so, there is nothing one would more desire for a person or document one greatly values than to make them independent of miracles."

Very well. The Gospels teem with miracles. If we make the accounts of the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ "independent of miracles," we destroy those accounts completely. To make the Resurrection "independent of miracles" is to disprove the Resurrection, which is a miracle or nothing.

We must believe in miracles, or disbelieve in the Resurrection; and "miracles never happen."

We must believe miracles, or disbelieve them. If we disbelieve them, we shall lose confidence in the verity of any document in proportion to the element of the miraculous which that document contains. The fact that the Gospels teem with miracles destroys the claim of the Gospels to serious consideration as historic evidence.

Take, for example, the account of the Crucifixion in the Gospel according to Matthew. While Christ is on the cross "from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour," and when He dies, "behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent; and the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised; and coming forth out of the tombs after His Resurrection, they entered into the holy city, and appeared unto many."

Mark mentions the rending of the veil of the temple, but omits the darkness, the earthquake, and the rising of the dead saints from the tombs. Luke tells of the same phenomena as Mark; John says nothing about any of these things.

What conclusion can we come to, then, as to the story in the first Gospel? Here is an earthquake and the rising of dead saints, who quit their graves and enter the city, and three out of the four Gospel writers do not mention it. Neither do we hear another word from Matthew on the subject. The dead get up and walk into the city, and "are seen of many," and we are left to wonder what happened to the risen saints, and what effect their astounding apparition had upon the citizens who saw them. Did these dead saints go back to their tombs? Did the citizens receive them into their midst without fear, or horror, or doubt? Had this stupendous miracle no effect upon the Jewish priests who had crucified Christ as an impostor? The Gospels are silent.

History is as silent as the Gospels. From the fifteenth chapter of the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I take the following passage:

But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan
and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented
by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their
senses? During the age of Christ, of His Apostles, and of
their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was
confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the
blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons
were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended
for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and
Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and pursuing the
ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious
of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the
world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least
a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a
preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous
event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity,
and the devotion of all mankind, passed without notice in an
age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime
of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the
immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of
the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work,
has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes,
meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable
curiosity could collect. But the one and the other have
omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which mortal
eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A
distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an
extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents
himself with describing the singular defect of light which
followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest
part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without
splendour. This season of obscurity, which surely cannot be
compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had
been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians
of that memorable age.