No. 3.
On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity. By Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford.
(Continued.)
The belief in Divine interposition must be essentially dependent on what we previously admit or believe with respect to the Divine attributes. It was formerly argued that every Theist must admit the credibility of miracles ; but this, it is now seen; depends on the nature and degree of his Theism, which may vary through many shades of opinion. It depends, in fact, on the precise view taken of the Divine attributes ; such, of course, as is attainable prior to our admission of revelation, or we fall into an argument in a vicious circle. The older writers on natural theology, indeed, have professed to deduce very exact conclusions as to the Divine perfections, especially Omnipotence; conclusions which, according to tile physical argument already referred to, appear carried beyond those limits to which reason or science are competent to lead us ; while, in fact, all our higher and more precise ideas of the Divine perfections are really derived from that very revelation, whose evidence is the point in question. The Divine Omnipotence is entirely an inference from the language of the Bible, adopted on the assumption of a belief in revelation. That 'with God nothing is impossible,' is the very declaration of Scripture; yet on this the whole belief in miracles is built, and thus, with the many, that belief is wholly the result, not the antecedent of faith.
But were these views of the Divine attributes, on the other hand, ever so well established, it must be considered that the Theistic argument requires to be applied with much caution ; since most of those who have adopted such theories of the Divine perfections on abstract grounds, have made them the basis of a precisely opposite belief, rejecting miracles altogether ; on the plea that our ideas of the Divine perfections must directly discredit the notion of occasional interposition; that it is derogatory to the idea of Infinite power and wisdom to suppose an order of things so imperfectly established that it must be occasionally interrupted and violated when the necessity of the case compelled, as the emergency of a revelation was imagined to do. All such Theistic reasonings, in fact, if pushed to their consequences, must lead to a denial of all active operation of the Deity whatever ; as inconsistent with unchangeable, infinite perfection. Such are the arguments of Theodore Parker, who denies miracles because 'everywhere I find law the constant mode of operation of an infinite God,' or that of Wegsebeider that the belief in miracles is irreconcilable with the idea of an eternal God consistent with himself, &c.
Paley's grand resource is 'once believe in a God, and all is easy.' Now, no men have evinced a more deep-seated and devout belief in the Divine perfections than the writers just named, or others differing from them by various shades of opinion, as the late J. Sterling, Mr. Emerson, and Professor P. W. Newman. Yet these writers have agreed in the inference that the entire view of Theistic principles, in their highest spiritual purity, is utterly at variance with all conception of suspensions of the laws of nature, or with the idea of any kind of external manifestation addressed to the senses, as overruling the higher, and, as they conceive, sole worthy and fitting convictions of moral sense and religious intuition.
We here speak impartially and disinterestedly, since we are far from agreeing in their reasonings, or even in their first principles. But we think it deeply incumbent on all who would fairly reason out the case of miraculous evidence at the present day, to give a full and patient discussion to this entire class of arguments ; which now command so many adherents.
In advancing from the argument for miracles to tho argument from miracles, it should, in the first instance, be considered that the evidential force of miracles (to whatever it may amount) is wholly relative to the apprehensions of the parties addressed.
Thus, in an 'evidential' point of view it by no means follows, supposing we at this day were able to explain what in an ignorant age was regarded as a miracle, that therefore that event was not; equally evidential to those immediately addressed. Columbus's prediction of the eclipse to the native islanders was as true an argument to them as if the event had really been supernatural.
It is a consideration adopted by some eminent divines that in the very language of tho Gospels the distinction is always kept up between mere 'wonders' (τέρατα) and 'miracles,' or 'signs' (οημεiα) ; that is to say, the latter were occurrences not viewed as mere matters of wonder or astonishment, but regarded as indications of other truths, specially adapted to convince those to whom they were addressed in their existing stage of enlightenment.
Archbishop Whately, besides dwelling on this distinction, argues that 'the apostles would not only not have been believed but not even listened to, if they had not first roused men's attention by working, as we are told they did, special (remarkable) miracles.' (Acts xix. II.)
Some have gone further, and have considered tho application of miracles as little more than is expressed in the ancient proverb, 'Θαύματα μώροις'—which is supposed to be nearly equivalent to the rebuke, 'an evil generation seeketh a sign,&c.' (Matt, xii.-38.).
Schleiermacher regards the miracles as only relatively or apparently such, to the apprehensions of the age. By the Jews we know such manifestations especially the power of healing, were held to constitute the distinctive marks of the Messiah, according to the prophecies of their Scriptures. Signs of an improper or irrelevant kind were refused, and even those which were granted were not necessarily nor universally conclusive. With some they were so, but with the many the case was, different. The Pharisees set down the miracles of Christ to the power of evil spirits; and in other cases no conviction was produced, not even on the Apostles. Even Nicodemus, notwithstanding his logical reasoning was but half convinced ; while Jesus himself, especially to His disciples in private, referred to His works as only secondary; and subsidiary to the higher evidence of His character and doctrine, which was so conspicuous and convincing even to His enemies as to draw forth the admission, "Never man spake like this man."
The later Jews adopted the strange legend of the "Sepher Toldeth Yehsu" (Book of the Generation of Jesus), which describes His miracles substantially as in the Gospels, but says that he obtained his power by hiding himself in the Temple, and possessing himself of the secret ineffable name, by virtue of which such wonders could be wrought.
All moral evidence must essentially have respect to the parties to be convinced. 'Signs' might be adapted peculiarly to tho state of moral or intellectual progress of one age, or one class of persons, and not be suited to that of others. With the contemporaries of Christ and the Apostles, it was not a question of testimony or credibility ; it was not the mere occurrence of what they all regarded as a supernatural event, as such, but the particular character to be assigned to it, which was the point in question. And it is to the entire difference in the ideas, prepossessions, modes and grounds of belief in those times that we may trace the reason why miracles, which would be incredible now, were not so in the age and under the circumstances in which they are stated to have occurred.
The force and function of all moral evidence is nullified and destroyed if we seek to apply that kind of argument which does not find a response in tho previous views or impressions of the individual addressed; all evidential reasoning is essentially an adaptation to the conditions of mind and thought of the parties addressed, or it fails in its object. An evidential appeal which in a long past age was convincing as made to the state of knowledge in that age, might have not only no effect, but even an injurious tendency, if urged in the present, and referring to what is at variance with existing scientific conceptions ; just as the arguments of the present age would have been unintelligible to a former.
In his earlier views of miracles Dr. J. H. Newman maintained (agreeing therein with Paulus and Rosenmuller,) that most of the Christian miracles could only be evidential at the time they were wrought, and are not so at present, a view in which a religious writer of a very different school, Athanase Coquerel, seems to concur, alleging that they can avail only in founding a faith—not in preserving it.
This was also the argument of several of the Reformers, as Luther, Huss, and others, have reasonably contemplated the miracles as a part of the peculiarities of the first outward manifestation and development of Christianity ; like all other portions of the Divine dispensations specially adapted to the age and the condition of those to whom they were immediately addressed ; but restricted apparently to those ages, and, at any rate, not continued in the same form to subsequent times, when the application of them would be inappropriate.
The force of the appeal to miracles must ever be essentially dependent on the preconceptions of the parties addressed. Yet, even in an age, or among a people, entertaining an indiscriminate belief in the supernatural, the allegation of particular miracles as evidential may be altogether vain : the very extent of their belief may render it ineffective in furnishing proofs to authenticate the communications of any teacher as a Divine message. The constant belief in the miraculous may neutralise all evidential distinctions which it may be at- tempted to deduce. Of this we have a striking instance on record, in the labours of the missionary, Henry Martyn, among the Persian Mahometans. They believed readily all that he told them of the Scripture miracles, but directly paralleled them by wonders of their own; they were proof against any argument from the resurrection, because they held that their own Sheiks had the power of raising the dead.
It is also stated that the later Jewish Rabbis, on the same plea that miracles were believed to be wrought by so many teachers, of the most different doctrines, denied their evidential force altogether.
By those who take a more enlarged survey of the subject, it cannot fail to be remarked how different has been the spirit in which miracles were contemplated as they are exhibited to us in the earlier stages of ecclesiastical literature, from that in which they have been regarded in modern times; and this especially in respect to that particular view which has so intimately connected them with precise 'evidential arguments ;' and by a school of writers, of whom Paley may be taken as the type, and who regard them as the sole external proof and certificate of a Divine revelation. But at the present day this 'evidential' view of miracles as the sole or even the principal external attestation to tho claims of a Divine revelation, is a species of reasoning which appears to have lost ground, even among the most earnest advocates of Christianity. It is now generally admitted that Paley took too exclusive a view in asserting that we cannot conceive a revelation substantiated in any other way. And it has been even more directly asserted by some zealous supporters of Christian doctrine, that tho external evidences are altogether inappropriate and worthless.
Thus by a school of writers of the most highly orthodox pretensions, it is elaborately argued, to the effect, that revelation ought to be believed though destitute of strict evidence, either internal or external; and though we neither see it nor know it. And again, 'We must be as sure that the Bishop is Christ's appointed representative,' as if we actually saw him work miracles as St. Peter and St. Paul did.' Another writer of the same school exclaims, 'As if evidence to the Word of God were a thing to be tolerated by a Christian ; except as an additional condemnation for those who reject it, or as a sort of' exercise and indulgence or a Christian understanding.' Thus while the highest section of Anglican orthodoxy does not hesitate openly to disavow the old evidential argument ; referring everything to the authority of the Church, the more moderate virtually discredit it by a general tone of vacillation between the antagonistic claims of reason and faith;—intuition and evidence ;—while the extreme 'evangelical ' school, strongly asserting the literal truth of the Bible, seeks its evidence wholly in spiritual impressions, regarding all exercise of the reason as partaking in the nature of sin. But even among less prejudiced thinkers, we find indications of similar views ; thus a very able critic writing in express defence of the Christian cause, speaks of that accumulation of historical testimonies,' 'which the last age erroneously denominated tho evidences of Christianity.' And the poet Coleridge, than whom no writer has been more earnest in upholding and defending Christianity, even in its most orthodox form, in speaking of its external attestations impatiently exclaims, ' Evidences of Christianity ! I am weary of the word : make a man feel tho want of it . . . and you may safely trust it to its own evidence.'
But still further: Paley's well-known conclusion to the 5th book of his Moral Philosophy, pronounced by Dr. Farr to be the finest prose passage in English literature, more especially his final summing up of the evidential argument in the words, 'He alone discovers who proves: and no man can prove this point (a future retribution), but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God,'—calls forth from Coleridge an emphatic protest against the entire principle, as being at variance with that moral election which he would make the essential basis of religious belief ; to which he adds, in another place, 'The cordial admiration with which I peruse the preceding passage as a masterpiece of composition would, could I convey it, serve as a measure of the vital importance I attach to the convictions which impelled me to animadvert on the same passage as doctrine.'
Some of the most strenuous assertors of miracles have been foremost to disclaim the notion of their being the sole certificate of Divine communication, and have maintained that the true force of the Christian evidences lies in the union and combination of the external testimony of miracles, with the internal excellence of the doctrine; thus, in fact, practically making the latter the real test of the admissibility of the former.
The necessity for such a combination of the evidence of miracles with the test of the doctrine inculcated is acknowledged in the Bible, both under the old and the new dispensations. We read of false prophets who might predict signs and wonders, which might come to pass ; but this was to be of no avail if they led their hearers 'after other gods.'
In like manner, 'if an angel from heaven' preached any other gospel to the Galatians, they were to reject it. And even according to Christ's own admonitions, false Christs and false prophets should show signs and wonders such as might 'deceive, if possible, the very elect.'
According to this view; the main ground of the admissibility of external attestations is the worthiness of their object—the doctrine ; its unworthiness will discredit even the most distinctly alleged apparent miracles, and such worthiness or unworthiness appeals solely to our moral judgment.
No man has dwelt more forcibly on miraculous evidence than Archbishop Whately; yet in relation to the character of Christ as conspiring with the external attestations of his mission, he strongly remarks (speaking of some who would ascribe to Christ an unworthy doctrine, on equivocal mode of teaching), 'If I could believe Jesus to have been guilty of such subterfuges. . . . . . I not only could not acknowledge him as sent from God, but should reject him with the deepest moral indignation.'
Dean Lyall enters largely into this important qualification in his defence of the miraculous argument, applying it in the most unreserved manner to the ecclesiastical miracles, which he rejects at once as having no connection with doctrine. We have also on record the remark of Dr. Johnson :—' Why, sir, Hume, taking tho proposition simply, is right ; but the Christian revelation is not proved by miracles alone, but as connected with prophecies and with the doctrines in confirmation of which miracles were wrought.
This has,indeed, been the common argument of the most approved divines : it is that long ago urged by Dr. S. Clarke, and recently supported by Dean Trench. Yet what is it but to acknowledge the right of an appeal, superior to that of all miracles, to our own moral tribunal, to the principle that 'the human mind is competent to sit in moral and spiritual judgment on a professed revelation,' 'in virtue of which Professor F. W. Newman, as well as many other inquirers, have come to so very opposite a conclusion.
Again, it has been strongly urged by the last-named writer, if miracles are made the sole criterion, then amid the various difficulties attending the scrutiny of evidence, and the detection of imposture, an advantage is clearly given to the shrewd sceptic over the simple-minded and well-disposed disciple, utterly fatal to the purity of faith.
The view of miraculous evidence which allows it to be taken only in connection with, and in fact in subserviency to, the moral and internal proof derived from the character of the doctrine, has been pushed to a greater extent by the writer last named ; who asks, What is the value of 'faith at second hand?'—Ought any external testimony to overrule internal conviction? Ought any moral truth to be received in mere obedience to a miracle of sense ? and observes that a miracle can only address itself to our external senses, and that internal and moral impressions must be deemed of a kind paramount to external and sensible.
If it be alleged that this internal sense may be delusive, not less so, it is replied, may the external senses deceive us as to the world of sense and external evidence. The same author, however, expressly allows that the claims of 'the historical' and 'the spiritual,' the proofs addressed to 'reason' and to the 'internal sense,' may each be properly entertained in their respective provinces—the danger lies in confounding them or mistaking the one for the other.
Even in tho estimation of external evidence, everything depends on our preliminary moral convictions, and upon deciding in the first instance whether, on the one hand, we are 'to abandon moral conviction at the bidding of a miracle,' or, on the other, to make conformity with moral principles the sole test both of the evidences and of the doctrines of revelation.
In point of fact, he contends that the main actual appeal of the Apostles, especially of St. Paul, was not to outward testimony or logical argument, but to spiritual assurances:—that even when St. Paul does enter on a sort of evidential discussion, his reasoning is very unlike what a Paley would have exacted; that all real evidence is of the spirit, which alone can judge of spiritual things; that the Apostles did not go about proclaiming an infallible book, but the convert was to be convinced by his own internal judgment, not called on to resign it to a systematized and dogmatic creed. And altogether the reasoning of the Apostles (wherever they enter upon the department of reasoning), was not according to our logic, but only in accordance with the knowledge and philosophy of the age.
Thus in this fundamental assumption of internal evidence, some of the most orthodox writers are in fact in close agreement with those nominally of a very opposite school.
It was the argument of Doderlein, that 'the truth of the doctrine does not depend on the miracles, but we must first be convinced of the doctrine by its internal evidence.'
De Wette and others of the rationalists expressly contend, that the real evidence of the divinity of any doctrine can only be its accordance with the dictations of the moral sense, and this, Wegscheider further insists, was in fact the actual appeal of Christ in his teaching.
In a word, on this view it would follow that all external attestation would seem superfluous if it concur with, or to be rejected if it oppose, these moral convictions. Thus a considerable school have been disposed to look to the intrinsic evidence only, and to accept the declarations of the Gospel solely on the ground of their intrinsic excellence and accordance with our best and highest moral and religious convictions ; a view which would approach very nearly to rejecting its peculiarities altogether.
Thus considerations of a very different nature are now introduced from those formerly entertained ; and of a kind which affect the entire primary conception of 'a revelation ' and its authority, and not merely any alleged external attestations of its truth. Thus any discussion of the 'evidences' at the present day, must have a reference equally to tho influence of the various systems whether of ancient precedent or of modern illumination, which so widely and powerfully affect the state of opinion or belief.
In whatever light we regard the 'evidences ' of religion, to be of any effect, whether external or internal, they must always have a special reference to the peculiar capacity and apprehension of the party addressed. Points which may be seen to involve the greatest difficulty to more profound inquirers, are often such as do not occasion the least perplexity to ordinary minds, but are allowed to pass without hesitation. To them all difficulties are smoothed down, all objections (if for a moment raised) are at once answered by a few plausible commonplace generalities, which to their minds are invested with the force of axiomatic truths, and to question which they would regard as at once idle and impious.
On the other hand, exceptions held forth as fatal by the shallow caviller are seen by the more deeply reflecting in all their actual littleness and fallacy. But for the sake of all parties at the present day, especially those who at least profess a disposition for pursuing the serious discussion of such momentous subjects, it becomes imperatively necessary that such views of it should be suggested as may be really suitable to better informed minds, and may meet the increasing demands of an age pretending at least to greater enlightenment.
Those who have reflected most deeply on the nature of the argument from external evidence will admit that it would naturally possess very different degrees of force as addressed to different ages ; and in a period of advanced physical knowledge the reference to what was believed in past times, if at variance with principles now acknowledged, could afford little ground of appeal; in fact, would damage the argument rather than assist it.
Even some of the older writers assign a much lower place to the evidence of miracles, contrasting it with the conviction of real faith, as being merely a preparatory step to it. Thus, an old divine observes :—
" Adducuntur primum ratione exteri ad fidem, et quasi præparantur ; . . . . . . signis ergo et miraculis via fidei per sensus et rationem sternitur."
And here it should be especially noticed, as characteristic of the ideas of his age, that this writer classes the sensible evidence of miracles along with the convictions of reason, the very opposite to the view which would now be adopted, indicative of the difference in physical conceptions, which now connects miracles rather with faith, as they are seen to be inconceivable to reason.
These prevalent tendencies in the opinions of the age cannot but be regarded as connected with the increasing admission of those broader views of physical truth and universal order in nature, which have been followed out to higher contemplations, and point to the acknowledgment of an overruling and all-pervading supreme intelligence.
In advancing beyond these conclusions to the doctrines of revelation, we must recognise both the due claims of science to decide on points properly belonging to the world of matter, and the independence of such considerations which characterises the disclosure of spiritual truth as such.
All reason and science conspire to the confession that beyond the domain of physical causation and the possible conceptions of intellect or knowledge, there lies open the boundless region of spiritual things, which is the sole dominion of faith. And while intellect and philosophy are compelled to disown the recognition of anything in the world of matter at variance with the first principle of the laws of matter—the universal order and indissoluble unity of physical causes—they are the more ready to admit the higher claims of divine mysteries in the invisible and spiritual world. Advancing knowledge, while it asserts the dominion of science in physical things, con- firms that of faith in spiritual ; we thus neither impugn the generalisations of philosophy, nor allow them to invade the dominion of faith, and admit that,what is not a subject for a problem may hold its place in a creed.
In an evidential point of view it has been admitted by some of the most candid divines, that the appeal to miracles, however important in the early stages of the Gospel, has become less material in later times, and others have even expressly pointed to this as the reason why they have been withdrawn ; whilst at the present day the most earnest advocates of evangelical faith admit that outward marvels are needless to spiritual conviction, and triumph in the greater moral miracle of a converted and regenerate soul.
They echo the declaration of St. Chrysostom. —'If you are a believer as you ought to be, and love Christ as you ought to love him, you have no need of miracles, for these are given to unbelievers.
After all, the evidential argument has but little actual weight with tho generality of believers. The high moral convictions often referred to for internal evidence are, to say the least, probably really felt by very few, and the appeal made to miracles as proofs of revelation by still fewer; a totally different feeling actuates the many, and the spirit of faith is acknowledged where there is little disposition to reason at all, or where moral and philosophical considerations are absolutely rejected on the highest religious grounds, and everything referred to the sovereign power of divine grace.
Matters of clear and positive fact, investigated on critical grounds and supported by exact evidence, are properly matters of knowledge, not of faith. It is rather in points of less definite character that any exercise of faith can take place ; it is rather with matters of religious belief belonging to a higher and less conceivable class of truths, with the mysterious things of the unseen world, that faith owns a connection, and more readily associates itself with spiritual ideas, than with external evidence, or physical events ; and it is generally admitted that many points of important religious instruction, even conveyed under the form of fictions (as in the instances of doctrines inculcated through parables) are more congenial to the spirit of faith than any relations of historical events could be.
The more knowledge advances, the more it has been, and will be, acknowledged, that Christianity, as a real religion, must be viewed apart from connection with physical things.
The first dissociation of the spiritual from the physical was rendered necessary, by the palpable contradictions disclosed by astronomical discovery with the letter of Scripture. Another still wider and more material step has been effected by the discoveries of geology. More recently the antiquity of the human race, and the development of species, and the rejection of the idea of 'creation,' have caused new advances in the same direction.
In all these cases there is, indeed, a direct discrepancy between what had been taken for revealed truth and certain undeniable existing monuments to the contrary.
But these monuments were interpreted by science and reason, and there are other deductions of science and reason referring to alleged events, which, though they have left no monuments or permanent effects behind them, are not the less legitimately subject to the conclusions of positive science, and require a similar concession and recognition of the same principle of the independence of spiritual and of physical truth.
Thus far our observations are general; but at the present moment some recent publications on the subject seem to call for a few more detailed remarks. We have before observed that the style and character of works on 'the evidences,' has of necessity varied in different ages. Those of Leslie and Grotius have, by common consent, been long since superseded by that of Paley. Paley was long the text-book at Cambridge ; his work was never so extensively popular at Oxford—it has, of late, been entirely disused there. By the public at large, however once accepted, we do not hesitate to express our belief, that before another quarter of a century has elapsed it will be laid on the shelf with its predecessors ; not that it is a work destitute of high merit—as is pre-eminently true also of those it superseded, and of others again anterior to them ; but they have all followed the irreversible destiny that a work, suited to convince the public mind at any one particular period, must be accommodated to the actual condition of knowledge, of opinion, and mode of thought of that period. It is not a question of abstract excellence, but of relative adaptation.
Paley caught the prevalent tone of thought in his day. Public opinion has now taken a different turn ; and, what is more important, the style and class of difficulties and objections generally felt has become wholly different. New modes of speculation—new forms of scepticism—have invaded the domain of that settled belief which a past age had been accustomed to rest on the Paleyan syllogism. Yet, among several works which have of late appeared on the subject, we recognise few which at all meet these requirements of existing opinion. Of some of the chief of these works, even appearing under tho sanction of eminent names, we are constrained to remark that they are altogether behind the age ; that amid much learned and acute remark on matters of detail, those material points on which the modern difficulties chiefly turn, as well as the theories advanced to meet them, are, for the most part, not only ignored and passed over without examination or notice, but the entire school of those writers who, with infinitely varied shades of view, have dwelt upon these topics and put forth their attempts, feeble or powerful as the case may be—to solve the difficulties—to improve the tone of discussion, to reconcile the difficulties of reason with the high aspirations and demands of faith—are all indiscriminately confounded in one common category of censure ; their views dismissed with ridicule as sophistical and fallacious, abused as infinitely dangerous, themselves denounced as heretics and infidels, and libelled as scoffers and atheists.
In truth, the majority of these champions of the evidential logic betray an almost entire unconsciousness of the advance of opinion around them. Having their own ideas long since cast in the stereotyped mould of the past, they seem to expect that a progressing age ought still to adhere to the same type, and bow implicitly to a solemn and pompous, but childish parade and reiteration, of the one-sided dogmas of an obsolete school, coupled with awful denunciations of heterodoxy on all who refuse to listen to them.
Paley clearly, as some of his modern commentators do avowedly, occupied the position of an advocate, not of a judge. They professedly stand up on one side, and challenge the counsel on the other to reply. Their object is not truth, but their client's case. The whole argument is one of special pleading; we may admire the ingenuity, and confess tho adroitness with which favourable points are seized, unfavourable ones dropped, evaded, or disguised; but we do not find ourselves the more impressed with those high and sacred convictions of truth, which ought to result rather from the wary, careful, dispassionate summing-up on both sides, which is the function of tho impartial and inflexible judge.
The one topic constantly insisted on as essential to the grounds of belief, considered as based on outward historical evidence, is that of the credibility of external facts as supported by testimony. This has always formed the most material point in the reasonings of the evidential writers of former times, however imperfectly and unsatisfactorily the existing modes of thought they treated it. And to this point, their more recent followers have still almost as exclusively directed their attention.
In the representations which they constantly make, we cannot but notice a strong apparent tendency and desire to uphold the mere assertion of witnesses as the supreme evidence of fact, to the utter disparagement of all general grounds of reasoning, analogy, and antecedent credibility, by which that testimony may be modified or discredited. Yet we remark, that all the instances they adduce, when carefully examined, really tend to the very conclusion they are so anxious to set aside. Arguments of this kind are sometimes deduced from such cases as, e. g., the belief accorded on very slight ground of probability, in all commercial transactions dependent on the assumed credit and character of the negotiating parties ; from the conclusions acted upon in life assurances, notwithstanding the proverbial instability of life;—and the like: in all which we can see no other real drift or tendency than to substantiate instead of disparage the necessity for some deeply seated conviction of permanent order as the basis of all probability.
A great source of misapprehension in this class of arguments has been the undue confusion between the force of testimony in regard to human affairs and events in history, and in regard to physical facts. It may be true that some of the most surprising occurrences in ordinary history are currently and perhaps correctly accepted, on but slight grounds of real testimony; but then they relate to events of a kind which, however singular in their particular concomitant circumstances are not pretended to be beyond natural causes or to involve higher questions of intervention.
The most seemingly improbable events in human history may be perfectly credible, on sufficient testimony, however contradicting ordinary experience of human motives and con duct—simply because we cannot assign any limits to the varieties of human dispositions passions, or tendencies, or the extent to which they may be influenced by circumstances of which, perhaps, we have little or no knowledge to guide us. But no such cases would have the remotest applicability to alleged violations of the laws of matter, or interruptions of the course of physical causes.
The case of the alleged external attestations of Revelation, is one essentially involving considerations of physical evidence. It is not one in which such reflexions and habits of thought as arise out of a familiarity with human history and moral argument, will suffice. Those no doubt and other kindred topics, with which the scholar and the moralist are familiar, are of great and fundamental importance to our general views of the whole subject of Christian evidence ; but the particular case of miracles, as such, is one specially bearing on purely physical contemplations, and on which no general moral principles, no common rules of evidence or logical technicalities, can enable us to form a correct judgment. It is not a question which can be decided by a few trite and commonplace generalities as to the moral government of the world and the belief in the Divine Omnipotence—or as to the validity of human testimony, or tho limits of human experience. It involves, and is essentially built upon, those grander conceptions of the order of future, those comprehensive primary elements of all physical knowledge, those ultimate ideas of universal causation, which can only be familiar to those thoroughly versed in cosmical philosophy in its widest sense.
In an age of physical research like the present, all highly cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects have imbibed, more or less, the lessons of the inductive philosophy, and have at least in some measure learned to appreciate the grand foundation conception of universal law—to recognise the impossibility even of any two material atoms subsisting together without a determinate relation—of any action of the one on the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without reference to a physical cause—of any modification whatsoever in the existing conditions of material agents, unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences, following in some necessary chain of orderly connection—however imperfectly known to us. So clear and indisputable indeed has this great truth become—so deeply seated has it been now admitted to be, in the essential nature of sensible things and of the external world, that not only do all philosophical inquirers adopt it, as a primary principle and guiding maxim of all their researches—but, what is most worthy of remark, minds of a less comprehensive capacity, accustomed to reason on topics of another character, and on more contracted views, have at the present day been constrained to evince some concession to this grand principle, even when seeming to oppose it.
Among writers on these questions, Dean Trench has evinced a higher view of physical philosophy than we might have expected from the mere promptings of philology and literature, when he affirms that 'we continually behold lower laws held in restraint by higher; mechanic by dynamic—chemical by vital, physical by moral ;' remarks which, if only followed out, entirely accord with the conclusion of universal subordination of causation ; though we must remark in passing that the meaning of 'moral laws controlling physical,' is not very clear.
It is, for the most part, hazardous ground for any general moral reasoner to take, to discuss subjects of evidence which essentially involve that higher appreciation of physical truth which can be obtained only from an accurate and comprehensive acquaintance with the connected series of the physical and mathematical sciences. Thus, for example, the simple but grand truth of the law of conservation, and the stability of the heavenly motions, now well understood by all sound cosmical philosophers, is but the type of the universal self sustaining and self-evolving powers which pervade all nature. Yet the difficulty of conceiving this truth in its simplest exemplification was formerly the chief hindrance to the acceptance of the solar system—from the prepossession of the peripatetic dogma that there must be a constantly acting moving force to keep it going. This very exploded chimera, however, by a singular infatuation, is now actually revived as the ground of argument for miraculous interposition by redoubtable champions, who, to evince their profound knowledge of mechanical philosophy, inform us that 'the whole of nature is like a mill, which cannot go on without the continual application of a moving power ! '
Of these would-be philosophers, we find many anxiously dwelling on the topic, so undeniably just in itself, of the danger of incautious conclusions—of the gross errors into which men fall by over-hasty generalisations. They recount with triumph the absurd mistakes into which some even eminent philosophers have fallen in prematurely denying what experience has since fully shown to be true, because in the then state of knowledge it seemed incredible. They feel an elevating sense of superiority in putting down the arrogance of scientific pretensions by alleging the shortsighted dogmatism with which men of high repute in science have evinced a scepticism in points of vulgar belief, in which all the vulgar belief has proved right. They even make a considerable display of reasoning on such cases ; but we cannot say that those reasonings are particularly distinguished for consistency, force, or originality. The philosopher (for example) denies tho credibility of alleged events professedly in their nature at variance with all physical analogy. These writers, in reply, affect to make a solemn appeal to the bar of analogy and support it by instances which precisely defeat their own conclusion. Thus they advance the novel and profoundly instructive story of an Indian who denies the existence of ice as at variance with experience ; and still more from the contradiction that being solid, it could not float in water. In like manner, they dwell upon other equally interesting stories of a butterfly, who from the experience of his ephemeral life in summer, denied that the leaves were ever brown or the ground covered with snow ; of a child who watched a clock made to strike only at noon, through many hours, and therefore concluded it could never strike; of a person who had observed that fish are organised to swim, and therefore concluded there could be no such animals as flying fish.
These, with a host of other equally recondite, novel, startling, and conclusive instances are urged in a tone of solemn wisdom, to prove what? That water is converted into ice by a regular known law ; that it has a specific gravity less than water by some law at present but imperfectly understood; that without violation of analogy, fins may be modified into wings ; that it is part of the great law of climate that in winter leaves are brown and the ground sometimes white— that machinery may be made with action intermitting by laws as regular as those of its more ordinary operation. In a word, that the philosopher who looks to an endless subordinating series of laws of successively higher generality, is inconsistent in denying events at variance with that subordination !
It is indeed curious to notice the elaborate multiplication of instances adduced by some of the writers referred to, all really tending to prove the subordination of facts to laws, clearly evinced as soon as the cases were well understood, though, till then, often regarded in a sceptical spirit; while of that scepticism they furnish the real and true refutation in the principle of law ultimately established, under whatever primary appearance and semblance of marvellous discordance from all law. It would be beyond our limits to notice in detail such instances as are thus dwelt upon, and apparently regarded as of sovereign value and importance, to discredit philosophical generalisation—such as the disbelief in the marvels recounted by Marco Polo; of the miracle of the martyrs who spoke articulately after their tongues were cut out; the angel seen in the air by 2000 persons at Milan ; the miraculous balls of fire on the spires at Plausac ; Herodotus's, story of the bird in the mouth of the crocodile ; narratives of the sea-serpent, marvels of mesmerism and electro-biology ; all discredited formerly as fables; vaccination observed and attested by peasants, but denied and ridiculed by medical men :—
These and the like cases are all urged as triumphant proofs, of what?—that some men have always been found of unduly sceptical tendencies; and sometimes of a rationally cautious turn ; who have heard strange, and, perhaps, exaggerated narratives, and have maintained sometimes a wise, sometimes an unwise, degree of reserve and caution in admitting them ; though they have since proved in accordance with natural causes.
Hallam and Rogers are cited as veritable witnesses to the truth of certain effects of mesmerism in their day generally disbelieved ; and for asserting which they were met with all but an imputation of 'the lie direct.' They admitted, however, that their assertion was founded on 'experience so rare as to be had only once in a century ;' but that experience has been since universally borne out by all who have candidly examined the question, and the apparently isolated and marvellous cases have settled down into examples of broad and general laws, now fully justified by experience and analogy.
Physiological evidence is adduced (which we will suppose well substantiated (to show that the excision of the whole tongue does not take away the power of speech, though that of the extremity does so : hence the denial of the story from imperfect experience. So of other cases : the angel at Milan was the aerial reflexion of an image on a church : the balls of fire, at Plausac, were electrical ; the sea-serpent was a basking shark, or a stem of sea-weed. A committee of the French Academy of Sciences, with Lavoisier at its head, after a grave investigation, pronounced the alleged fall of aerolites to be a superstitious fable. It is, however, now substantiated, not as a miracle, but as a well-known natural phenomenon. Instances of undue philosophical scepticism are unfortunately common ; but they are the errors, not the correct processes, of inductive inquiry.
Granting all these instances, we merely ask— what do they prove?—except the real and paramount dominion of the rule of law and order, of universal subordination of physical causes, as the sole principle and criterion of proof and evidence in the region of physical and sensible truth ; and nowhere more emphatically than in tho history of marvels and prodigies, do we find a verification of the truth, ' 'opinionum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat.'
This in fact is the sole real result of all the profound parallelisms and illustrative anecdotes so confidently but unconsciously adduced by these writers with an opposite design.
What is the real conclusion from the far famed Historic Doubts and the Chronicles of Ecnarf ? but simply this—there is a rational solution, a real conformity to analogy and experience, to whatever extent a partially informed inquirer might be led to reject the recounted apparent wonders on imperfect knowledge, and from too hasty inference : these delightful parodies on Scripture (if they prove anything), would simply prove that the Bible narrative is no more properly miraculous than the marvellous exploits of Napoleon I., or the paradoxical events of recent history.
Just a similar scepticism has been evinced by nearly all the first physiologists of the day, who have joined in rejecting the development theories of Lamarck and the Vestiges ; and while they have strenuously maintained successive creations, have denied and denounced the asserted production of organic life by Messrs. Crosse and Weekes, and stoutly maintained the impossibility of spontaneous generation, on the alleged ground of contradiction to experience. Yet it is now acknowledged under the high sanction of the name of Owen, that 'creation' is only another name for our ignorance of the mode of production ; and it has been the unanswered and unanswerable argument of another reasoner that new species must have originated either out of their inorganic elements, or out of previously organised forms ; either development or spontaneous generation must be true ; while a work has now appeared by a naturalist of the most acknowledged authority, Mr, Darwin's masterly volume on The Origin of Species by the law of 'natural selection,'— which now substantiates on undeniable grounds the very principle so long denounced by the first naturalists,—the origination new species by natural causes ; a work which must soon bring about an entire revolution of 0pinion in favour of the grand principle of the self evolving powers of nature.
By parity of reason it might just as well be objected to Archbishop Whately's theory of civilisation, we have only for a few centuries known anything of savages ; how, then, can we pretend to infer that they have never civilised themselves ? never, in all that enormous length of time which modern discovery has now indisputably assigned to the existence of the human race! This theory, however, is now introduced as a comment on Paley in support of the credibility of revelation ; and an admirable argument no doubt it is, though perhaps many would apply it in a sense somewhat different from that of the author. If the use of fire, the cultivation of the soil, and the like, were Divine revelations, the most obvious inference would be that so likewise are printing and steam. If the boomerang was divinely communicated to savages ignorant of its principle then surely the disclosure of that principle in our time by the gyroscope, was equally so. But no one denies revelation in this sense ; the philosophy of the age does not discredit the inspiration of Prophets and Apostles, though it may sometimes believe it in poets, legislators, philosophers, and others gifted with high genius. At all events, the revelation of civilisation does not involve tho question of external miracles, which is here the sole point in dispute. The main assertion of Paley is that it is impossible to conceive a revelation given except by means of miracles. This is his primary axiom ; but this is precisely the point which the modern turn of reasoning most calls in question, and rather adopts the belief that a revelation is then most credible, when it appeals least to violations of natural causes. Thus, if miracles, were in the estimation of a former age among the chief supports of Christianity, they are at present among the main difficulties, and hindrances to its acceptance.
One of the first inductive philosophers of the age, Professor Faraday, has incurred the unlimited displeasure of these profound intellectualists, because he has urged that the mere contracted experience of the senses is liable to deception, and that we ought to be guided in our conclusions—and, in fact, can only correct the errors of the senses—by a careful recurrence to the consideration of natural laws and extended analogies. In opposition to this heretical proposition, they set in array the dictum of two great authorities of the Scottish school, Drs. Abercrombie and Chalmers, that 'on a certain amount of testimony we might believe any statement, however improbable ;' so that of a number of respectable witnesses were to concur in asseverating that on a certain occasion they had seen two and two make five, we should be bound to believe them !
This, perhaps it will be said, is an extreme case. Let us suppose another:—if a number of veracious witnesses were to allege a real instance of witchcraft at the present day, there might no doubt be found some infatuated per sons who would believe it; but the strongest of such assertions to any educated man would but prove either that the witnesses were cunningly imposed upon, or tho wizard himself deluded. If the most numerous ship's company were all to asseverate that they had seen a mermaid, would any rational persons at tho present day believe them ? That they saw some thing which they believed to be a mermaid, would be easily conceded. No amount of attestation of innumerable and honest witnesses, would ever convince any one versed in mathematical and mechanical science, that a person had squared the circle or discovered perpetual motion. Antecedent credibility depends on antecedent knowledge, and enlarged views of tho connection and dependence of truths ; and the value of any testimony will be modified or destroyed in different degrees to minds differently enlightened.
Testimony, after all, is but a second-hand assurance ;—it is but a blind guide; testimony can avail nothing against reason. The essential question of miracles stands quit apart from any consideration of testimony: the question would remain the same, if we had the evidence of our own senses to an alleged miracle, that is, to an extraordinary or inexplicable fact. It is not the mere fact, but the cause or explanation of it, which is the point at issue.
The case, indeed, of the antecedent argument of miracles is very clear, however little some are inclined to perceive it. In nature and from nature, by science and by reason, we neither have nor can possibly have any evidence of a Deity working miracles ; —for that, we must go out of nature and beyond science. If we could have any such evidence from nature, it could only prove extraordinary natural effects, which would not be miracles in the old theological sense, as isolated, unrelated, and uncaused ; whereas no physical fact can be conceived as unique, or without analogy and relation to others, and to the whole system of natural causes.
To conclude; an alleged miracle can only be regarded in one of two ways : —either abstractedly as a physical event, and therefore to be investigated by reason and physical evidence, and referred to physical causes, possibly to known causes, but at all events to some higher cause or law, if at present unknown ; it then ceases to be supernatural, yet still might be appealed to in support of religious truth, especially as referring to the state of knowledge and apprehensions of the parties addressed in past ages; or as connected with religious doctrine, regarded in a sacred light, asserted on the authority of inspiration. In this case it ceases to be capable of investigation by reason, or to own its dominion ; it is accepted on religious grounds, and can appeal only to the principle and influence of faith. Thus miraculous narratives become invested with the character of articles of faith, if they be accepted in a less positive and certain light, as requiring some suspension of judgment as to their nature and circumstances, or perhaps as involving more or less of tho parabolic or mythic character; or at any rate as received in connection with, and for tho sake of the doctrine inculcated.
Some of the most strenuous advocates of the Christian 'evidences' readily avow, indeed expressly contend, that the attestation of miracles is, after all, not irresistible ; and that in the very uncertainty which confessedly remains lies the 'trial of faith,' which it is thus implied must really rest on some other independent moral conviction.
In the popular acceptation, it is clear the Gospel miracles are always objects, not evidences of faith ; and when they are connected specially with doctrines, as in several of the higher mysteries of the Christian faith the sanctity which invests the point of faith itself is extended to the external narrative in which it is embodied ; the reverence due to the mystery renders the external events sacred from examination, and shields them also within the pale of the sanctuary ; the miracles are merged in the doctrines with which they are connected, and associated with the declarations of spiritual things which are, as such, exempt from those criticisms to which physical statements would be necessarily amenable.
But even in a reasoning point of view, those who insist most on the positive external proofs, allow that moral evidence is distinguished from demonstrative, not only in that it admits of degrees, but more especially in that the same moral argument is of different force to different minds. And the advocate of Christian evidence triumphs in the acknowledgment that the strength of Christianity lies in the variety of its evidences, suited to all varieties of apprehension; and, that, amid all the diversities of conception, those who cannot appreciate some one class of proofs, will always find some other satisfactory, is itself the crowning evidence.
With a firm belief in constant supernatural interposition, the contemporaries of the Apostles were as much blinded to the reception of the Gospel, as, with an opposite persuasion, others have been at a later period. Those who had access to living Divine instruction were not superior to the prepossessions and ignorance of their times. There never existed an 'infallible age' of exemption from doubt or prejudice. And if to later times records written in the characters of a long past epoch are left to be deciphered by the advancing light of learning and science,—the spirit of faith discovers continually increasing attestation of the Divine authority of the truths they include.
The 'reason of the hope that is in us' is not restricted to external signs, or to any one kind of evidence, but consists of such assurance as may be most satisfactory to each earnest individual inquirer's own mind. And the true acceptance of the entire revealed manifestation of Christianity will be most worthily and satisfactorily based on that assurance of ' faith,' by which the Apostle affirms ' we stand,' (2 Cor. ii. 21), and which, in accordance with his emphatic declaration, must rest, ' not in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.' (1 Cor. ii. 5.)
(End of Essay No. 3, to be followed by " Sèances Historiques de Geneve." by Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D.)
Empire 4 June 1861.
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