AN INQUIRY INTO THE REALITY OF DIVINE REVELATION.
PART I.
CHAPTER I. MIRACLES IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY
At the very outset of inquiry into the origin and true character of Christianity we are brought face to face with the Supernatural. Christianity professes to be a Divine Revelation of truths which the human intellect could not otherwise have discovered. It is not a form of religion developed by the wisdom of man and appealing to his reason, but a system miraculously communicated to the human race, the central doctrines of which are either superhuman or untenable. If the truths said to be revealed were either of an ordinary character or naturally attainable they would at once discredit the claim to a Divine origin. No one could maintain that a system discoverable by Reason would be supernaturally communicated. The whole argument for Christianity turns upon the necessity of such a Revelation and the consequent probability that it would be made.
There is nothing singular, it may be remarked, in the claim of Christianity to be a direct Revelation from God. With the exception of the religions of Greece and Rome, which, however, also had their subsidiary supposition of divine inspiration, there has scarcely been any system of Religion which has not been proclaimed to the world as a direct divine communication. Long before Christianity claimed this character, the religions of India had anticipated the idea. To quote the words of an accomplished scholar:—"According to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or other the work of the Deity; and even those who received it were not supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of common humanity, and less liable, therefore, to error in the reception of revealed truth."(1) The same origin is claimed for the religion of Zoroaster, whose doctrines, beyond doubt, exercised great influence at least upon later Jewish theology, and whose Magian followers are appropriately introduced beside the cradle of Jesus, as the first to do honour to the birth of Christianity. In the same way Mahomet announced his religion as directly communicated from heaven.
Christianity, however, as a religion professing to be divinely revealed, is not only supernatural in origin and doctrine, but its claim to acceptance is necessarily based upon supernatural evidence; for it is obvious that truths which require to be miraculously communicated do not come within the range of our intellect, and cannot, therefore, be intelligently received upon internal testimony. "And, certainly," says a recent able Bampton Lecturer, "if it was the will of God to give a revelation, there are