The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868

by Various

There is but one way to deny absolutely the possibility of miracles, which has been in all times by instinct and by nature affirmed by the human race, and that is to suppress God and profess atheism, either atheism simply in its gross crudity, or that more delicate and better disguised form which finds favor in our times, and which honors God by pronouncing his name, but gives him no other care than the servile protection and the dull supervision of the worlds he has created, but which he does not govern. If this is the way in which God must be considered, if fatalism is the law of the world, let us speak no more of miracles or of the supernatural; for this is already decided, and there can be no discussion about it. If, on the contrary, entering into yourselves, you feel that you are intelligent and free, ask yourself, Where did I get these wonderful gifts, liberty and intelligence? Do you get them from yourself? Are they born in you and only for you? Do you possess them completely? Do they not emanate from a higher, more perfect, and more abundant source, in a word, from God himself? Then, if God, if the Omnipotent, is also the sovereign intelligence and the sovereign freedom, how do you dare to forbid him to mingle with affairs here below, to follow with attention the beings he has created, to watch over their destiny, and to declare his wishes to them by striking manifestations of his power? He can most certainly do this, for he is free and all-powerful. With the idea of God thus presented to the mind, a complete and living God, the question is completely transformed. And it must be acknowledged that we have no longer to demonstrate the possibility of miracles: it is for our opponents to prove their impossibility.

But the great critics of to-day, at least those who have the most ability, have carefully refrained from attempting this task. They attack supernatural facts in a different way, not as being impossible in themselves, but as lacking proof: in the place of openly denying them, they try to weaken the authority of those who attest them. What testimony would then be destroyed by them? Let it be noted that in the historical statement of natural facts, even those which are extraordinary and more or less uncertain, the testimony of men, sustained and strengthened by constant tradition, is allowed to be sufficient; and, indeed, to what, in most cases, would our historical knowledge amount, if this sort of proof were not admissible? But for supernatural facts they are far less accommodating. Many other guarantees are demanded. They require ocular proof, which must be made in a proper way and duly announced by them to be certain. This is the condition upon which they offer to yield; without it, there is to be no belief. Whence it would follow, that, whenever the Divinity proposed to do anything beyond the ordinary laws of nature, it would be bound to give these opponents notice, so that they could produce their witnesses. The work would then proceed in their presence, and, when the miracle was accomplished, they would immediately begin their statement. Perhaps our readers may think that we are trying to excite a laugh at their expense, or, at least, that we are exaggerating. Such is not the case; we are only echoing their own words, and we could quote from the very page where this system is set forth as the sole method of establishing the truth of miracles. However, it is useless to dwell upon this way of asking for impossible proofs and proclaiming a readiness to believe, but placing one's belief upon unheard-of conditions. This is only a subterfuge, an attempt to evade what they dare not solve, and an effort to destroy in practice that which they seem theoretically to concede.

There are others more frank, less diplomatic, and perhaps also less learned, who call things by their right name, and who loudly declare a new dogma as the great principle of reformed criticism, and this is the complete denial of supernatural facts. The manner, the air, and the lofty disdain with which they look down upon those simple souls, who are credulous enough to believe that the Almighty is also intelligent and free, should be seen. They announce that all intercourse between them and us is broken, that we have nothing to do with their books; they do not care for our praise or for our censure, since they do not write for us. One is almost tempted to repay their disdain with interest; but there is something better to be done. We have just shown that man, with his limited power and liberty, can modify the laws of nature. Let us see, now, if God in his infinite sphere has not the same power, and if there is not some well-known and striking example of it.

There is one instance which both in time and by its evidence is the most convincing of all. It is not one of those facts which we have learned by narration or by testimony, whether written or traditional. All narratives can be contested and every witness can be suspected; but here the fact is its own witness, it is clear and irrefutable. It is the history of our first parents, of the commencement of the human race; for our race has had a commencement, of this there can be no question. No sophist would dare to say of man, as they have said of the universe, that he has existed from all eternity. On this point science confirms tradition, and determines by certain signs the époque when this earth became habitable. Upon a certain day, then, man was born; and he was born, as it is hardly necessary for us to say, in an entirely different manner from that in which one is born to-day. He was the first of his kind: he was without father or mother. The laws of nature, on this occasion at least, did not have their effect. A superior power, working in his own way, has accomplished something beyond these laws, and in a more simple and prompt manner, and the world has seen an event take place which is evidently supernatural.

This is the reason why some savants have taken so much pains to find a plausible way to explain scientifically, as a natural fact, this birth of the first man. Some would persuade us that this enigma is explained by the transformation of species— a singular way of avoiding a miracle, only to fall into a chimera. Indeed, if anything is proved at all and becomes more certain as the world grows older, it is that the preservation of species is an essential principle of all living beings. You may try, but you cannot succeed in infringing upon this law. The crossings between closely allied species, and the varieties produced by them, are smitten after a certain time with sterility. Are not these impotent attempts, these phantoms of quickly disappearing creations, the manifest sign that the creation of a really new species is forbidden to man? Yet would they try to convince us that in the earliest ages, in times of ignorance, these kinds of transformations were accomplished without any effort; while to-day, notwithstanding the perfection of instruments and of methods, notwithstanding the aid of every sort that we draw from science, they are radically impossible! Try, then, to make a man. But, we are answered, this is a matter of time. It may be so. But only begin, let us see you at work, and you can have as much time as you please. Take thousands of centuries, and yet you can never transform the most intelligent baboon into a man, even of the most ignorant and degraded type.

This dream having disappeared, another is invented. The absurdity of the transformation of species is admitted, and another theory is adopted, that of spontaneous generation. The intention is to establish that man can be born either with or without parents; that nature is induced by various circumstances to choose one of these two ways, and that one is not miraculous more than the other. It is well known what vigorous demonstrations and what irrefutable evidence science brings against this theory; yet, in spite of its absurdity, it has been often reproduced and considered worthy of refutation. But supposing that doubt was yet possible, and that we could believe in the birth of little beings, without a germ, without a Creator; now could this mode of production aid us in solving the question of the birth of the first man? What is the highest pretension of the defenders of spontaneous generation? In what state would they put man in the world? As an embryo, a foetus, or as one newly born? For no one is permitted to believe in the sudden birth of an adult, in possession of a body, of physical power, and of mental faculties. Yet this is exactly the way in which the new inhabitant of the earth must have been created. He must have been born a man, or else he could not have protected himself, he could not have found food to prolong his life, and he could not have perpetuated his race as the father of the human family. If he had been born in the state of infancy, without a mother to protect and nourish him, he would have perished in a single day of cold or hunger. If this theory, then, had been able to answer the tests to which it has succumbed, it would yet be of no service in clearing up the question we are discussing. The only way to solve it satisfactorily is to admit frankly that it must have been something superior and unknown to the laws of nature. In order to explain the appearance of the first man upon this earth, the man of Genesis is necessary, made by the hand of the Creator.

This is not a jeu d'esprit, an artifice, or a paradox. It is the undeniable truth. It must be admitted by every one who will reflect. Every sound mind, which is in good faith and which carefully considers this question, is invincibly compelled to solve it in the way that it is solved in the book of Genesis. There may be doubts about the complete exactness of certain words and details; but the principal fact, the supernatural fact, the intervention of a Creator, reason must accept as the best and most sensible explanation, or rather as the only possible explanation of that other necessary fact, the birth of an adolescent or an adult man.

Here, then, we have a miracle well and duly proved. If this were the only one, it would be sufficient to justify belief in the supernatural, to destroy every system of absolute fatalism, to demonstrate the freedom of the Divinity, and to assert his true position. But it may be well for us to say, if since the existence of the human race it had received no proof of the care of its Creator other than this miraculous act in which it was created, if no intelligence, no help, or no light had come from above, what would it know now of the mysteries of its destiny, of all these great problems which beset it and occupy its attention? The creation of man does not give us the reason why he was created. This is not one of those miracles from which the light bursts forth to flood the world. It is a manifestation of divine power: it does not teach us the divine will. We shall see another fact, on the contrary, which, though not less mysterious, will speak far more clearly. This did not happen amid the fleeting shadows of chaos upon the scarcely hardened earth; but in a completely civilized world, and at a historical period which can be fully investigated, this new miracle took place. The clouds will disappear, and the broad day will gladden all hearts. Blessed Light! Long promised and awaited, the complement of man's creation, or, rather, a true and new creation, bringing to humanity, with love and heavenly pardon, the solution of every question, the answer to every doubt!

During the long series of centuries which separates these two great mysteries, these two great supernatural facts, the creation and the redemption of man, the human race, guided by its own light, has not for a moment ceased to search after divine truths and the secret of its destiny. But it has sought ignorantly, it has groped in the dark, and it has wandered astray. In every part of the world the people solved the enigma in their own fashion, each making its own idol. It is a sad, an incoherent spectacle; and of all these curious and imperfect forms of worship, which sometimes become impure and disgusting, there is not one which gives a complete and satisfactory answer to the moral problems with which one is harassed. Their pretended answers really answer nothing, and are but a collection of errors and contradictions.