If, on the other hand, we dismiss the miracles of later ages as false, and as merely the creations of superstition or pious imagination, how can the miracles of the Gospel, which are precisely the same in type, and not better established as facts, remain unshaken? The Apostles and Evangelists were men of like passions, and also of like superstitions with others of their time, and must be measured by the same standard. Dr. Mozley will not admit that, even in such a case, the difficulty of distinguishing the true miracles amongst the mass of
spurious justifies the rejection of all, and he demands a judicial process in each case, and settlement according to the evidence in that case.(1) We might reply that if the great mass of asserted miracles be determined to be spurious, there is no reason shown for entering upon a more minute consideration of pretensions, which knowledge and experience force us à priori to regard as incredible, and which examination, in so many cases, has proved to be delusion. Even if the plea, that "the evidence of the Gospel miracles is a special case which must be decided on its own grounds," be admitted, it must be apparent that the rejection of the mass of other miracles is serious presumptive evidence also against them.
2.
The argument for the reality of miracles receives very little strength from the character of either the early or the later ages of Christianity. "It is but too plain," says Dr. Mozley, "in discussing ecclesiastical miracles, that in later ages, as the Church advanced in worldly power and position, besides the mistakes of imagination and impression, a temper of deliberate and audacious fraud set itself in action for the spread of certain doctrines, as well as for the great object of the concentration of Church power in one absolute monarchy."(2) We have already quoted words of Dean Milman regarding the frame of mind of the early Church, and it may not be out of place to add a few lines from the same writer. Speaking of the writings of the first ages of Christianity, he says: "That some of the Christian legends were deliberate forgeries can scarcely be questioned; the principle of pious fraud
appeared to justify this mode of working on the popular mind; it was admitted and avowed. To deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself. But the largest portion was probably the natural birth of that imaginative excitement which quickens its day-dreams and nightly visions into reality. The Christian lived in a supernatural world; the notion of the divine power, the perpetual interference of the Deity, the agency of the countless invisible beings which hovered over mankind, was so strongly impressed upon the belief, that every extraordinary, and almost every ordinary incident became a miracle, every inward emotion a suggestion either of a good or an evil spirit. A mythic period was thus gradually formed, in which reality melted into fable, and invention unconsciously trespassed on the province of history."(1) Whether we look upon this picture or on that, the result is equally unfavourable to miracles, and a ready explanation both of the earlier and later instances is suggested. We must, however, again recall the fact that, setting aside for the present the effect of pious fraud, this vivid and superstitious imagination, which so freely created for itself the miraculous, was not merely developed by Christianity, but was equally rampant before it, and was a marked characteristic of the Jews. The same writer, in a passage already quoted, says: "During the whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the religion, it must be borne in mind that they took place in an age, and among a people which superstition had made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily superseded by some new demand on the ever
ready belief. The Jews of that period not only believed that the Supreme Being had the power of controlling the course of nature, but that the same influence was possessed by multitudes of subordinate spirits, both good and evil."(1) Between the "superstition," "imaginative excitement," and "pious fraud" of the early Church, and the "deliberate and audacious fraud" of the later, we have abundant material for the natural explanation of all supposed miracles, without going to such an extreme hypothesis as exceptions to the order of nature, or supposing that a few miracles can be accepted as supernatural facts, whilst all the rest must be discarded as human fables.
It is certain that throughout the whole period during which miracles are said to have been performed, gross ignorance and superstition prevailed, and nowhere more so than amongst the Jews where those miracles occurred. Almost every operation of nature was inexplicable, and everything which was inexplicable was considered supernatural. Miracles seemed as credible to the mind of that age as deviations from the order of nature seem incredible in ours. It is a suggestive fact that miracles are limited to periods when almost every common incident was readily ascribed to supernatural agency. There is, however, one remarkable circumstance which casts some light upon the origin of narratives of miracles. Throughout the New Testament, patristic literature, and the records of ecclesiastical miracles, although we have narratives of countless wonderful works performed by others than the writers, and abundant assertion of the possession of miraculous power by the Church, there is no instance whatever, that we can remember, in which