Volume I Part 19 (1/2)
CHAPTER VI. MIRACLES IN RELATION TO IGNORANCE AND SUPERSt.i.tION
We have maintained that the miracles which are reported after apostolic days, instead of presenting the enormous distinction which Dr. Mozley a.s.serts, are precisely of the same types in all material points as the earlier miracles. Setting aside miracles of a trivial and unworthy character, there remains a countless number cast in the same mould as those of the Gospels,--miraculous cure of diseases, expulsion of demons, transformation of elements, supernatural nourishment, resurrection of dead--of many of which we have quoted instances. Dr. Mozley antic.i.p.ates an objection and says: ”It will be urged, perhaps, that a large portion even of the Gospel miracles are of the cla.s.s here mentioned as ambiguous; cures, visions, expulsions of evil spirits; but this observation does not affect the character of the Gospel miracles as a body, because we judge of the body or whole from its highest specimen, not from its lowest.” He takes his stand upon, ”e.g. our Lord's Resurrection and Ascension.”(1) Now, without discussing the principle laid down here, it is evident that the great distinction between the Gospel and other miracles is thus narrowed to a very small compa.s.s.
It is admitted that the ma.s.s of the Gospel miracles are of a cla.s.s characterized as ambiguous, because ”the current
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miracles of human history” are also chiefly of the same type, and the distinctive character is derived avowedly only from a few high specimens, such as the Resurrection. We have already referred to the fact that in the synoptic Gospels there is only one case, reported by the third Gospel alone, in which Jesus is said to have raised the dead.
St. Augustine alone, however, chronicles several cases in which life was restored to the dead. Post-apostolic miracles, therefore, are far from lacking this enn.o.bling type. Observe that Dr. Mozley is here not so much discussing the reality of the subsequent miracles of the Church, as contrasting them and other reputed miracles with those of the Gospel, and from this point of view it is impossible to maintain that the Gospels have a monopoly of the highest cla.s.s of miracles. Such miracles are met with long before the dawn of Christianity, and continued to occur long after apostolic times.
Much stress is laid upon the form of the Gospel miracles; but as we have already shown, it is the actual resurrection of the dead, for instance, which is the miracle, and this is not affected by the more or less dramatic manner in which it is said to have been effected, or in which the narrative of the event is composed. Literary skill, and the judicious management of details, may make or mar the form of any miracle. The narrative of the restoration of the dead child to life by Elisha might have been more impressive, had the writer omitted the circ.u.mstance that the child sneezed seven times before opening his eyes, and Dr. Mozley would probably have considered the miracle greater had the prophet merely said to the child, ”Arise!” instead of stretching himself on the body; but setting aside human cravings
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for the picturesque and artistic, the essence of the miracle would have remained the same. There is one point, however, regarding which it may be well to make a few remarks. Whilst a vast number of miracles are ascribed to direct personal action of saints, many more are attributed to their relics. Now this is no exclusive characteristic of later miracles, but Christianity itself shares it with still earlier times.
The case in which a dead body which touched the bones of Elisha was restored to life will occur to every one. ”And it came to pa.s.s, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of Moabites; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.”(1) The mantle of Elijah smiting asunder the waters before Elisha may be cited as another instance.(2) The woman who touches the hem of the garment of Jesus in the crowd is made whole,(3) and all the sick and ”possessed” of the country are represented as being healed by touching Jesus, or even the mere hem of his garment.(4) It was supposed that the shadow of Peter falling on the sick as he pa.s.sed had a curative effect,(5) and it is very positively stated: ”And G.o.d wrought miracles of no common kind by the hands of Paul; so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or ap.r.o.ns, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.” (6)
The argument which a.s.sumes an enormous distinction
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between Gospel and other miracles betrays the prevalent scepticism, even in the Church, of all miracles except those which it is considered an article of faith to maintain. If we inquire how those think who are more logical and thorough in their belief in the supernatural, we find the distinction denied. ”The question,” says Dr. Newman, ”has. .h.i.therto been argued on the admission, that a distinct line can be drawn in point of character and circ.u.mstances, between the miracles of Scripture and those of Church history; but this is by no means the case. It is true, indeed, that the miracles of Scripture, viewed as a whole, recommend themselves to our reason, and claim our veneration beyond all others, by a peculiar dignity and beauty; but still it is only as a whole that they make this impression upon us. Some of them, on the contrary, fall short of the attributes which attach to them in general; nay, are inferior in these respects to certain ecclesiastical miracles, and are received only on the credit of the system of which they form part. Again, specimens are not wanting in the history of the Church, of miracles as awful in their character, and as momentous in their effects, as those which are recorded in Scripture.”(1) Now here is one able and thorough supporter of miracles denying the enormous distinction between those of the Gospel and those of human history, which another admits to be essential to the former as evidence of a revelation.
Dr. Mozley, however, meets such a difficulty by a.s.serting that there would be no disadvantage to the Gospel miracles, and no doubt regarding them involved, if for some later miracles there was evidence as strong as for those of the Gospel. ”All the result would be,” he says,
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”that we should admit these miracles over and above the Gospel ones.”(1) He denies the equality of the evidence, however, in any case. ”Between the evidence, then, upon which the Gospel miracles stand, and that for later miracles we see a broad distinction arising, not to mention again the nature and type of the Gospel miracles themselves--from the contemporaneous date of the testimony to them, the character of the witnesses, the probation of the testimony; especially when we contrast with these points the false doctrine and audacious fraud which rose up in later ages, and in connection with which so large a portion of the later miracles of Christianity made their appearance.”(2) We consider the point touching the type of the Gospel miracles disposed of, and we may, therefore, confine ourselves to the rest of this argument. If we look for any external evidence of the miracles of Jesus in any marked effect produced by them at the time they are said to have occurred, we find anything but confirmation of the statements of the Gospels. It is a notorious fact that, in spite of these miracles, very few of the Jews amongst whom they were performed believed in Jesus, and that Christianity made its chief converts not where the supposed miracles took place, but where an account of them was alone given by enthusiastic missionaries. Such astounding exhibitions of power as raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, walking on the sea, changing water into wine, and indefinitely multiplying a few loaves and fishes, not only did not make any impression on the Jews themselves, but were never heard of out of Palestine until long after the events are said to have occurred, when the narrative of them was slowly disseminated by Christian teachers and writers.
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Dr. Mozley refers to the contemporary testimony ”for certain great and cardinal Gospel miracles which, if granted, clear away all antecedent objection to the reception of the rest,” and he says: ”That the first promulgators of Christianity a.s.serted, as a fact which had come under the cognizance of their senses, the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead, is as certain as anything in history.”(1) What they really did a.s.sert, so far from being so certain as Dr. Mozley states, must, as we shall hereafter see, be considered matter of the greatest doubt. But if the general statement be taken that the Resurrection, for instance, was promulgated as a fact which the early preachers of Christianity themselves believed to have taken place, the evidence does not in that case present the broad distinction he a.s.serts. The miracles recounted by St Athanasius and St. Augustine, for example, were likewise proclaimed with equal clearness, and even greater prompt.i.tude and publicity at the very spot where many of them were said to have been performed, and the details were much more immediately reduced to writing. The mere a.s.sertion in neither case goes for much as evidence, but the fact is that we have absolutely no contemporaneous testimony at all as to what the first promulgators of Christianity actually a.s.serted, or as to the real grounds upon which they made such a.s.sertions. We shall presently enter upon a thorough examination of the testimony for the Gospel narratives, their authors.h.i.+p and authenticity, but we may here be permitted, so far to antic.i.p.ate, as to remark that, applied to doc.u.mentary evidence, Dr. Mozley's reasoning from the contemporaneous date of the testimony, and the character of
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the witnesses, is contradicted by the whole history of New Testament literature. Whilst the most uncritically zealous a.s.sertors of the antiquity of the Gospels never venture to date the earliest of them within a quarter of a century from the death of Jesus, every tyro is aware that there is not a particle of evidence of the existence of our Gospels until very long after that interval,--hereafter we shall show how long;--that two of our synoptic Gospels at least were not, in any case, composed in their present form by the writers to whom they are attributed; that there is, indeed, nothing worthy of the name of evidence that any one of these Gospels was written at all by the person whose name it bears; that the second Gospel is attributed to one who was not an eye-witness, and of whose ident.i.ty there is the greatest doubt even amongst those who a.s.sert the authors.h.i.+p of Mark; that the third Gospel is an avowed later compilation,(1) and likewise ascribed to one who was not a follower of Jesus himself; and that the authors.h.i.+p of the fourth Gospel and its historical character are amongst the most unsettled questions of criticism, not to use here any more definite terms. This being the state of the case it is absurd to lay such emphasis on the contemporaneous date of the testimony, and on the character of the witnesses, since it has not even been determined who those witnesses are, and two even of the supposed evangelists were not personal eye-witnesses at all.(2) Surely the testimony of Athanasius regarding the miracles of St. Anthony, and that of Augustine regarding
1 Luke i. 1--4.
2 We need scarcely point out that Paul, to whom so many of the writings of the New Testament are ascribed, and who practically is the author of ecclesiastical Christianity, not only was not an eye-witness of the Gospel miracles but never even saw Jesus.
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his list of miracles occurring in or close to his own diocese, within two years of the time at which he writes, or, to refer to more recent times, the evidence of Pascal for the Port-Royal miracles, must be admitted, not only not to present the broad distinction of evidence of which Dr. Mozley speaks, but on the contrary to be even more una.s.sailable than that of the Gospel miracles. The Church, which is the authority for those miracles, is also the authority for the long succession of such works wrought by the saints. The ident.i.ty of the writers we have instanced has never been doubted; their trustworthiness, in so far as stating what they believe to be true is concerned, has never been impugned; the same could be affirmed of writers in every age who record such miracles. The broad distinction of evidence for which Dr. Mozley contends, does not exist; it does not lie within the scope of his lectures either to define or prove it, and he does not of course commit the error of a.s.suming the inspiration of the records. The fact is that theologians demand evidence for later miracles, which they have not for those of the Gospels, and which transmitted reverence forbids their requiring. They strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.
Dr. Mozley points to the life of sacrifice and suffering of the Apostles as a remarkable and peculiar testimony to the truth of the Gospel miracles, and notably of the Resurrection and Ascension.(1) Without examining, here, how much we really know of those lives and sufferings, one thing is perfectly evident: that sacrifice, suffering, and martyrdom itself are evidence of nothing except of the personal belief of the person enduring them; they do not prove the truth of the doctrines believed. No
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one doubts the high religious enthusiasm of the early Christians, or the earnest and fanatical zeal with which they courted martyrdom, but this is no exclusive characteristic of Christianity. Every religion has had its martyrs, every error its devoted victims. Does the marvellous endurance of the Hindoo, whose limbs wither after years of painful persistence in vows to his Deity, prove the truth of Brahmanism? or do the fanatical believers who cast themselves under the wheels of the car of Jagganath establish the soundness of their creed? Do the Jews, who for centuries bore the fiercest contumelies of the world, and were persecuted, hunted, and done to death by every conceivable torture for persisting in their denial of the truth of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension, and in their rejection of Jesus Christ, do they thus furnish a convincing argument for the truth of their belief and the falsity of Christianity? Or have the thousands who have been consigned to the stake by the Christian Church herself for persisting in a.s.serting what she has denounced as d.a.m.nable heresy, proved the correctness of their views by their sufferings and death? History is full of the records of men who have honestly believed every kind of error and heresy, and have been stedfast to the death, through persecution and torture, in their mistaken belief. There is nothing so inflexible as superst.i.tious fanaticism, and persecution, instead of extinguis.h.i.+ng it, has invariably been the most certain means of its propagation. The sufferings of the Apostles, therefore, cannot prove anything beyond their own belief, and the question what it was they really did believe and suffered for is by no means so simple as it appears.