CHAPTER VI. THE APOLOGETIC WORTH OF THE MIRACLES. A MOST interesting question remains: namely this, What is the place which those who are occupied with marshalling and presenting the evidences of Revelation should give to the miracles? what is the service which they may render here? The circumstances have been already noticed which were sufficient to hinder them from taking a very prominent place in the early Apologies for Christianity.* The Christian miracles had not sufficiently extricated themselves from the multitude of false miracles, nor was Christ sufficiently discerned and distinguished from the various wonder-workers of his own and of past ages; so that, even if men had admitted his miracles to be true and godlike, they would have been hardly nearer to the acknowledging of Christianity as the one faith, or of him as "the way, the truth, and the life." But a different and far more important position has been assigned them in later times, especially during the last two hundred years; and the tone and temper of modern theology abundantly explains the greater prominence, sometimes, I believe, the undue, because the exclusive, prominence, which in this period they have assumed. The apologetic literature of this time, partook, as was inevitable, in the general depression of all its theology. There is no one, I think, who would now be satisfied with the general tone and spirit in which the defences of the faith, written during the two last centuries, and beginning with the me * Thus, in the Apologies of Justin Martyr, they are scarcely made use of at all. It is otherwise indeed with Arnobius, who (Adv. Gen., l. 1, c. 42,) lays much stress on them. Speaking of the truth of Christianity and of Christ's mission, he says, Nulla major est comprobatio quàm gestarum ab eo fides rerum, quàm virtutum,—and then appeals through ten eloquent chapters to his miracles. morable work of Grotius,* are composed. Much as this and many others contain of admirable, yet in well nigh all that great truth of the Italian poet seems to have been forgotten, These apologists, on the contrary, would seem very often to have thought that Deism was best to be resisted by reducing Christianity to a sort of revealed Deism. Like men that had renounced the hope of defending all, their whole endeavor was to save something, and when their pursuers pressed them hard, they were willing to delay the pursuit by casting to them as a prey much that ought to have been the dearest to themselves. It has been well observed, that they were like men who should cry "Thieves and robbers!" who were yet themselves all the while throwing out of the windows the most precious things of the house; and thus it sometimes happened that the good cause suffered quite as much from its defenders as its assailants: for that enemies should be fierce and bitter, this was only to be looked for; but that friends, those in whose keeping was the citadel, should be timid and half-hearted, and ready for a compromise, this was indeed an augury of ill. Now this, which caused so much to be thrown greatly out of sight, as generally the mysteries of our faith, which brought about a slight of the inner arguments for revelation, caused that from the miracles to assume a disproportionate magnitude. A value too exclusive was set on them; they were rent away from the truths for which they witnessed, and which witnessed for them-only too much like seals torn off from the document which at once they rendered valid, and which gave importance to them. And thus, in this unnatural isolation, separated from Christ's person and doctrine, the whole burden of proof was laid on them. They were the apology for Christianity, the reason which men were taught they should give for the faith which was in them.† It is not hard to see the motives which led to this; they were chiefly the desire to get an absolute demonstration of the Christian faith-one which objectively should be equally good for every man: it was the wish * De Veritate Religionis Christianæ. + I include, in the proofs drawn from the miracles, those drawn from the Old Testament prophecies-for it was only as miracles, (miracula præscientiæ, as the others are miracula potentia,) that these prophecies were made to do service and arrayed in the forefront of this battle; as by the learned and acute Huet, in his Demonstratio Evangelica, in which the fulfilment of prophecy in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is altogether the point round which the whole argument turns, as he himself in the Preface, § 2, declares. to bring the matter to the same sort of proof as exists for a proposition in mathematics or in logic. And consistently with this we see the whole argument cast exactly into the same forms of definitions, postulates, axioms, and propositions.* But at the same time the state of mind which made men to desire either to find for themselves, or to furnish others with, proofs of this nature, was not altogether healthy. It was plain that their faith had become very much an external historic one, when they thus eagerly looked round for outward evidences, and found a value only in such; instead of turning in upon themselves as well, for evidence that they had "not followed cunningly devised fables," and saying, "We know the things which we believe-they are to us truer than aught else can be, for we have the witness of the Spirit for their truth. We have found these things to be true, for they have come to us in demonstration of the Spirit and in power." Instead of an appeal to those mighty influences which Christ's words and doctrine exercise on every heart that receives them, to their transforming, transfiguring power, to the miracles of grace which are the heritage of every one who has believed to salvation, instead of an addressing of the gainsayers in the very language of the Lord, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God," (John vii. 17,) this all as mystical and uncertain, (instead of being seen to be, as it truly was, the most certain thing of all,) was thrown into the background. Men were afraid to trust themselves and their cause to arguments like these, and would know of no other statement of the case than this barren and hungry one:-Christianity is a divine revelation, and this the miracles which accompanied its promulgation prove. What must first be found fault with in this is the wilful abandonment of such large regions of proof, which the Christian apologist ought triumphantly to have occupied as his proper domain-the whole region, mainly and chiefly, of the inner spiritual life; his foregoing an appeal to the mysterious powers of regeneration and renewal, which are ever found to follow on a true adherence to him who is the Giver of this faith, and who has pledged himself to these very results. On such he might at least have ventured, when he was seeking not to convince an unbeliever, but, as would be often his aim, to carry one that already believed round the whole circle of the defences of his position to make him aware of the relative strength of each-to give him For example, by Huet in his work referred to above. He claims for the way of proof upon which he is entering that it is the safest: Præfatio, § 2: Utpote quæ constet hoc genere demonstrationis, quod non minus certum sit quàm demonstratio quævis geometrica. a scientific insight into the grounds on which his faith rested. Here, at any rate, the appeal to what he had himself known and tasted of the powers of the world to come, might well have found room. For, to use the words of Coleridge,* " Is not a true, efficient conviction of a moral truth, is not the creating of a new heart, which collects the energies of a man's whole being in the focus of the conscience, the one essential miracle, the same and of the same evidence to the ignorant and to the learned, which no superior skill can counterfeit, human or demoniacal; is it not emphatically that leading of the Father, without which no man can come to Christ; is it not that implication of doctrine in the miracle, and of miracle in the doctrine, which is the bridge of communication between the senses and the soul;—that predisposing warmth which renders the understanding susceptible of the specific impressions from the historic, and from all other outward, seals of testimony?" And even if arguing with one who had never submitted himself to these blessed powers, and to whose experience therefore no like appeal could be made, yet even for him there is the outward utterance of this inward truth, in that which he could not deny, save as he denied or was ignorant of every thing, which would make him one to be argued with at all-the fact, I mean, of a Christendom-the standing miracle of a Christendom "commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized world"—the mighty changes which this religion has wrought in the earth-the divine fruits which it every where has borne-the new creation which it has been-the way in which it has taken its place in the world, not as a forcible intruder, but finding all that world's pre-established harmonies ready to greet and welcome it, ready to give it play and room-philosophy, and art, and science, practically confessing that only under it could they attain their highest perfection, that in something they had all been dwarfed and stunted and insufficient before. Little as it wears of the glory which it ought to have, yet it wears enough to proclaim that its origin was more than mundane; surely from a Christendom, even such as it shows itself now, it is fair to argue back to a Christ such as the Church receives as the only adequate cause. It is an oak which from no other acorn could have unfolded itself into so goodly a tree. It is true that in this there is an abandoning of the attempt to put the proof of Christianity into the same form as a proposition in an exact science. There is no more the claim made of giving it their kind of certainty. But this, which may seem at first sight a loss, is indeed a gain; for the argument for all which as Christians we believe is in very truth not logical and single, but moral and cumulative; and the attempt * The Friend, Vol. 3, Essay II. to substitute a formal proof, where the deepest necessities of the soul de. mand a moral, is one of the most grievous shocks which the moral sense can receive, as it is one, too, of the most fruitful sources of unbelief. Few who have had books of evidences put into their hands, constructed upon this principle, but must remember the shock which they suffered from them-how it took them, it may be, some time to recover the tone of their minds, and how only by falling back upon what they themselves had felt and known of the living power of Christ's words and doctrine in their own hearts, could they deliver themselves from the injurious influences, the seeds of doubt and of misgiving, which these books had now for the first time perhaps sown in their minds. They must remember how they asked themselves, in deep inner trouble of soul: “Are these indeed the grounds, and the only grounds, upon which the deep foundations of my spiritual life repose? is this all that I have to answer? are these, and no more, the reasons of the faith that is in me?" And then, if at any moment there arose a suspicion that some link in this chain of outward proof was wanting, or that any would not bear all the weight which was laid upon it-and men will be continually tempted to try the strength of that on which they have trusted all-there was nothing to fall back upon, with which to scatter and put to flight a suspicion such as this. And that such should arise, at least in many minds, were inevitable; for how many points, as we have seen, are there at which suspicion may intrude. Is a miracle possible? Is a miracle provable? Were the witnesses of these miracles competent? Did they not too lightly admit a supernatural cause, when there were adequate natural ones which they failed to note? These works may have been good for the eye-witnesses, but what are they for me? And these doubts and questionings might be multiplied without number. Happy is the man, and he only is happy, who, if the outworks of his faith are at any time thus assailed, can betake himself to an impregnable inner citadel, from whence in due time to issue forth and repossess even those exterior defences, who can fall back on those inner grounds of belief, in which there can be no mistake, that testimony of the Spirit, which is above and better than all.* And as it is thus with him, who entirely desiring to believe, is only unwillingly disturbed with doubts and suggestions, which he would. give worlds to be rid of for ever, so on the other hand the expectation that by arguments thrown apparently into forms of strict reasoning there is any compelling to the faith one who does not wish to believe, * See the admirable words of Calvin, Instit., l. 1, c. 7, § 4, 5, on the Holy Scripture as ultimately αὐτόπιστος. |