i .^, 
 
 
 '/ ^^ / 
 
 THE MIRACLES: 
 
 HELPS TO FAITH, NOT HINDRANCES. 
 
PRINTED BT MURRAY AND GIBB 
 
 FOR 
 
 WILLIAM OLIPHANT AND CO., EDINBURGH. 
 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., . . . LONDON. 
 
 M'GLASHAN AND GILL, DUBLIN. 
 
 DAVID ROBERTSON, GLASGOW. 
 
THE MIRACLES: 
 
 HELPS TO FAITH. NOT HINDRANCES. 
 
 WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, M.A.. 
 
 H 
 
 MINISTER OF THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, DERBY ROAD, LIVERPOOL; 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'LIFE TRUTHS,' 'THE SONG OF SALV^ATION,' ETC. 
 
 EDINBUEGH: 
 WILLIAM OLIPHANT AND CO. 
 
 MDCCGLXV. 
 
' 7 f 
 
 1^3 
 
TO 
 
 THE REY. JOHN EADIE, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE TO THE UNITED 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 
 I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK, 
 
 AS A TRIBUTE 
 
 AFFECTION, GRATITUDE, AND ADMIRATION. 
 
 ^V. M. TAYLOR. 
 
 BooTLE, Liverpool, 
 
 Sept. 11, 1865. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION, 
 
 DEFINITION OF A MIRACLE, 
 
 POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES, 
 
 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES, 
 
 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES, 
 
 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS, 
 
 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN, 
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES, 
 
 CONCLUSION, 
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 13 
 
 21 
 
 31 
 
 73 
 
 117 
 
 135 
 
 ICl 
 
 203 
 
 205 
 
' If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I 
 do, though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may 
 know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him.' 
 
 The Lord Jesus, John x. 37, 38. 
 
 ' Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by 
 miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the 
 midst of you, as ye yourselves also know.' 
 
 Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, 
 Acts ii. 22. 
 
 ' How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ; which 
 at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed 
 unto us by them that heard him ; God also bearing them witness, 
 both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts 
 of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will ? ' 
 
 Epistle to the Hebrews ii. 3, 4. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 An investigation of the various questions con- 
 nected with miracles, and the place which they 
 occupy as evidences for the divine origin and 
 authority of the Christian religion, can scarcely 
 ever be unseasonable; for every time the gospel 
 has been assailed, from the days of Julian down- 
 wards, these supernatural facts have been the first 
 to be attacked. But while the substance of the 
 objections has remained the same, the form in 
 which they have been expressed has been altered 
 to suit the circumstances of the hour. This 
 variation in the mode of attack has necessitated 
 a corresponding change in the method of de- 
 fence ; just as the building of iron ships of war 
 by other nations has caused the reconstruction 
 of the British Navy. Each new assailant gives 
 a new phase to some old and long -answered 
 
2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 objection, and so requires to be met and repelled 
 from a new position. Hence the recent appear- 
 ance of certain well-known works containing 
 many specious objections, which are apt to im- 
 pose on those who have not thought round the 
 subject, has seemed to warrant the attempt to 
 give a short and comprehensive treatment of such 
 important subjects, as the nature, possibility, cre- 
 dibility, and evidential value of miracles. 
 
 This is all the more needed, because there is in 
 many minds the idea that the miracles are very 
 unimportant things, and that it makes little 
 matter, so far as our belief in the gospel is con- 
 cerned, whether they be accepted or rejected; 
 while there are others who, though they receive 
 the miracles, do so as a part of their religion, and 
 far from regarding them as evidences for the 
 truth of the gospel, feel that they could have 
 accepted it more readily if it had contained no 
 records of the supernatural at all. Along with 
 this depreciation of the miraculous, it is right 
 to state that there is in many cases a profound 
 acknowledgment of the value of what is called 
 experimental evidence; but still we cannot but 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 think that there is danger to the interests of truth 
 and godliness in such a low estimate of the value 
 of the supernatural. For if we view the mission of 
 Christ as a whole, what is it but one stupendous 
 miracle? What is the incarnation if it be not 
 a miracle ? What is the great redemptive scheme 
 but an interference or intervention of Divine 
 agency to produce an effect otherwise impossible ? 
 and is not that the very essence of miracle ? If, 
 therefore, we let go or fail to appreciate those 
 miracles, which, lying in the sphere of human 
 observation, were given as the external signs of 
 the reality of that great spiritual miracle which 
 cannot be so directly tested, who does not see that 
 by and by we shall be in danger of letting go this 
 last also? If we reject miracle in the material 
 department, are we not on the high way that 
 leads to the rejection of it in the spiritual, and so 
 to the reduction of the gospel to a mere system 
 of naturalism, one among the rest of the religions 
 of the world, — better than most indeed, but still 
 only of men ? 
 
 We do not seek to depreciate experimental 
 evidence, but what we wish to be remembered is, 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 that there must be Christian experience in the 
 soul before the force of that evidence can be felt ; 
 and to have Christian experience there must be 
 faith in Christ ; and to have a rational faith in 
 him there must be evidence of his divine com- 
 mission of some external sort presented to and 
 received by the mind. It is all very well to say 
 with Coleridge, ^Evidences of Christianity! I 
 am weary of the word : make a man feel the want 
 of it, and it may safely be left to its own evi- 
 dences ;' but even when he does feel the want 
 of it, the question faces him, On what ground am 
 I to believe that this religion is from heaven ? 
 And for answer you cannot refer him to his own 
 experience, for he has no Christian experience yet, 
 and can have none until he have received Jesus 
 as the Divine Redeemer ; neither will he be satis- 
 fied with your experience, though even that would 
 be external evidence to him. He wants some 
 direct proof that this gospel is from God ; and so 
 far as we can see, there is no such proof which 
 you can give him but that of miracles. 
 
 No doubt when you refer him to them, he will 
 be for a time beset with the difficulties which a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 sceptical philosophy has raised regarding them ; 
 and perhaps the very fact that some perplexity 
 has been felt in proving the miracles themselves, 
 has disposed many to disregard them as evidences 
 of the gospel. But we must remember, that 
 however hard we have found it to demonstrate a 
 proposition, we do not scruple after it has been 
 demonstrated to use it in the elucidation of an- 
 other ; or as Whately^ has put it, ' The difficulty 
 of proving any fact, does not make that fact when 
 proved a less convincing proof of something else.' 
 Hence if we see good grounds for believing in the 
 miracles as historical facts, then, though in arriv- 
 ing at that conclusion we may have had to wrestle 
 with objections of all sorts, yet, having arrived at 
 it, we should not be deterred from using it in 
 seeking to establish the divinity of the gospel. 
 
 In the following essay we have attempted to 
 unfold in a clear, condensed, comprehensive, and 
 we hope also conclusive manner, the argument in 
 proof of miracles, and then to state the argument 
 from miracles in proof of the gospel. We have 
 not consciously evaded any difficulty or overstated 
 
 > Tntroductoiy Lessons on Christian Evidences, p. 41. 
 
(> INTRODUCTION. 
 
 any proof ; we have tried to reason calmly and 
 solemnly, as befits the momentous character of the 
 subject ; and we cherish the hope that our words 
 may be useful in confirming the faith of those 
 who have already received the gospel, and remov- 
 ing difficulties which others may feel obstructing 
 their belief. 
 
 In dealing with questions which have been so 
 frequently discussed, we claim the merits of clear- 
 ness and condensation rather than that of origin- 
 ality. We have carefully consulted all the works 
 bearing on the subject on which we could lay our 
 hands, and we have not scrupled to quote the 
 words of others when they give clear expression 
 to the thought which we wished to convey. In 
 every such instance, however, we have honestly 
 given to every man his own, and mentioned the 
 author to whom we are indebted. Our aim has 
 been to produce a tractate which may serve as 
 an introduction to the study of this interesting 
 subject for those who wish to prosecute it, while 
 it may suffice as a summary compendium for those 
 who have not the opportunity to go further. 
 
 We have written specially for the benefit of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 young men, whose minds are awaking to thought 
 on the great theological subjects of the day. To 
 all such we say, ' Come, and let us reason to- 
 gether;' and if by the blessing of God we shall 
 be the means of enabling some to escape the 
 sophistries of modern scepticism, or furnishing 
 others with the material for giving a reason for 
 the hope that is in them, we shall be abundantly 
 rewarded. 
 
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. 
 
 In entering upon our subject, it is necessary to 
 observe the place which an inquiry into the 
 miracles holds in the order of an investigation 
 into the evidences of Christianity. It is often 
 alleged that the defenders of the faith are guilty 
 of reasoning in a circle, inasmuch as they hold 
 that the miracles are proved by the inspiration 
 and authority of Scripture, while they employ the 
 miracles to establish the divinity of the Bible ; 
 but a little reflection will be sufficient to convince 
 any one that this is a mistake. For, taking up 
 these ancient books as we would do common pro- 
 ductions, we first ask concerning them. When 
 were they written ? Were they written by the 
 persons whose names they bear ? Have they come 
 to us just as they were when they proceeded from 
 their authors' hands? Then, having these ques- 
 
10 STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. 
 
 tions answered to our satisfaction, we go on to 
 inquire whether the books are credible records of 
 actual occurrences ; and it is in the settlement of 
 this point that the miracles first present them- 
 selves for consideration. Thereafter, supposing 
 we come to the conclusion that the miracles, so 
 far from destroying the trustworthiness of these 
 writings, were themselves really performed, there 
 comes this other inquiry. What do these super- 
 natural works say regarding the person and mis- 
 sion of him by whom they were performed ? In 
 other words, when we are treating of the credi- 
 hility of the gospel history, we have to answer the 
 question, how far that is affected by the records 
 of supernatural occurrences which it contains ; 
 and then, the credibility established, in dealing 
 with the divine authority of the gospel, we have 
 to ask what the miracles say concerning him who 
 wrought them, and the system in connection with 
 which they were performed. There is thus no 
 vicious circle, but a strictly logical and exact 
 method is pursued, each subject of investigation 
 following naturally on that by which it is pre- 
 ceded. 
 
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. 11 
 
 Of course it will not be expected that we 
 should, in an essay like this, go back upon all the 
 matters which we have mentioned. We must be 
 allowed to assume, as already proved, that the 
 Gospels were written before the close of the first 
 century,^ that they are the productions of the men 
 whose names they bear, and that they are in our 
 hands substantially as they were when written at 
 the first. We stand at the investigation into their 
 credibility, and here we find miracles to be the 
 stumblingblock of many. They are, in a sense, as 
 Bushnell has said, ^ a heavy burden resting on the 
 credibility of the gospel;'^ and Eenan, with the 
 most quiet nonchalance^ lays down authoritatively 
 this dictum, ' That the Gospels are in part legen- 
 dary is evident, since they are full of miracles and 
 of the supernatural.' ^ Here, therefore, we are 
 
 ^ Even Eenan admits this. Speaking of the first period into which 
 he would divide the history of the origin of Christianity, he says, 
 ' I would close this about the year 100, at the time when the last 
 friends of Jesus were dead, and when all the boohs of the New Testament 
 were almost Jixed in the forms in which we now read them.^ How to re- 
 concile this admission with his treatment of these documents bafl9[es 
 our comprehension ; nevertheless the admission, as coming from 
 him, is not without its value, as showing that the theory of Strauss, 
 with its late origin of the Gospels, is by him regarded as untenable. 
 
 2 Nature and the Supernatural^ p. 259. 
 
 ^ Life ofJesus^ People's Edition, p. 8. 
 
12 STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. 
 
 brought face to face with the questioiij Were 
 these miracles actual occurrences, or does the 
 fact that the gospel contains an account of such 
 things vitiate its credibilitjj and give to it a legen- 
 dary character? To the consideration of this 
 most important matter we devote the following 
 pageSj as a contribution, however humble, to the 
 defence of that truth which in these last days 
 has been so wantonly assailed. 
 
11. 
 
 DEFIISriTION OF A MIKACLE. 
 
 And first let us try to obtain a correct idea of 
 what a miracle is. In the New Testament four 
 words are employed to designate these superna- 
 tural occurrences, — namely, miracles, wonders, 
 signs, and works. The first (pwdfiet^;) signifies 
 powers, and refers to the agency by which they 
 were produced ; the second {repara) denotes 
 marvels, and alludes to their effect on the mind 
 of the beholder ; the third (aTjfiela), signs, has 
 special reference to their significance in connec- 
 tion with the system by whose inauguration they 
 were wrought ; while the last (epja), works, is 
 only used regarding them by Jesus himself, and 
 this mode of speech in his lips is most suggestive, 
 as implying that the things which to others were 
 so marvellous, were in his case perfectly natural, 
 being in fact only the outcome and development 
 
14 DEFINITION OF A MIEACLE. 
 
 of his true divinity. Various definitions of a 
 miracle have been proposed by theologians ; ^ it 
 will be sufficient for our purpose, however, if we 
 arrange them into two classes. We take Timothy 
 Dwight as representing the one, and Dr Robert 
 Vaughan as illustrating the other. According to 
 the former/ ' A miracle is a suspension or counter- 
 action of what are called the laws of nature. By 
 the laws of nature I intend those regular courses 
 of divine agency we discern in the world around 
 us.' Vaughan says/ ' By a miracle we do not 
 understand even a suspension, much less a viola- 
 tion, of natural laws, but simply such a control of 
 natural causes as bespeaks an intervention of the 
 cause to which they are all subordinate.' Be- 
 tween the advocates of those two definitions great 
 discussions have been maintained, and it has been 
 supposed that the latter takes away the ground 
 of some of the most acute objections which 
 infidels have brought against the miracles them- 
 
 * A most full and comprehensive classification of the definitions 
 which have been given of a miracle will be found in the Appendix 
 to Christ and Christianity^ by Dr Lindsay Alexander, pp, 303-312. 
 
 2 Dwight's Theology^ Sermon 60. 
 
 3 Vaughan's Age and Christianity^ p. 82, Second Edition. 
 
DEFINITION OF A MIRACLE. 13 
 
 selves ; but to our view, the whole dispute seems 
 little better than one about words, both parties 
 meaning substantially the same thing, and only 
 appearing to be opposed because the one look 
 mainly at the effect produced, and the other con- 
 fine their attention to the cause producing it. 
 D wight, and those who agree with him, would at 
 once admit — nay, they would strenuously contend 
 — that the suspension or counteraction of natural 
 law was produced by the power of God; while 
 Vaughan, and those of whom we have used him 
 as the representative, would also willingly concede 
 that the intervention of the Great First Cause does 
 hold in check or counteract, or, to use Vaughan' s 
 own word, ' control ' the operation of natural 
 causes. Hence, without at all entering into the 
 debate which has been held over the definition 
 of a miracle, we may in general terms describe it, 
 with Dr W. L. Alexander, as being ^ ' sl sensible 
 effect produced by the immediate power of God ; ' 
 and if it be asked how we know when such events 
 occur, we may supplement the description with 
 the words of Dr Wardlaw, and answer, because 
 
 ' Christ and Christianity^ pp. 213-214. 
 
16 DEFINITION or A MIRACLE. 
 
 ' tliey involve a temporary suspension of the known 
 laws of nature, or a deviation from the established 
 constitution and fixed order of the universe.'^ 
 Observe that word ' hioivn,^ for it is important, 
 inasmuch as a miracle does not appeal to our 
 ignorance, but to our knowledge. It is not simply 
 an event which we cannot explain, but it is some- 
 thinij which we see and know to be inconsistent 
 with certain laws of nature. When Columbus 
 threatened to bring darkness upon the Indians if 
 they would not comply with his demands, and the 
 darkness came, there was no miracle, save to the 
 ignorance of the savages, for he simply predicted 
 an eclipse ; but when a dead man, in whose body 
 decomposition is begun, is recalled to life, we know 
 there must be miracle, for the natural law in that 
 case is that corruption should increase. It has 
 been well said by an acute author on this subject : ^ 
 
 ^ On Miracles, by Ralph Wardlaw, D.D., p. 24. Perhaps, for 
 precision and brevity, there is no definition better than that of Mr 
 Bayne in his most admirable little book, The Testimony of Christ 
 to Christianity, p. 26: 'A miracle is an occasional display of divine 
 power, independently of those sequences of natural laws through 
 which God commonly acts.' 
 
 2 The Miracles of Scripture defended from the Assaults of Modern 
 Scepticism, The Introductory Lecture at the opening of the United 
 
DEFINITION OF A MIRACLE. 17 
 
 ' Miracles presuppose a knowledge, accurate so far 
 as it goes, of the laws of the material world, and 
 their essence lies in being a manifest departure 
 from them. Even a real miracle would be no 
 miracle to us, it would not even seem a prodigy, 
 if we were quite ignorant of the ordinary laws to 
 which it stood in opposition.' But in order to pre- 
 vent all misapprehension, let us distinctly note here 
 what we mean by ' nature ' and ' laws of nature.' 
 ' Nature ' is the system of things which God has 
 established in the material world ; and ' laws of 
 nature' are the observed modes in which, according 
 to his arrangement, material substances operate 
 on and in relation to each other. These laws are 
 the generalizations of the mind itself, and have 
 been inferred by us by a process of induction.^ 
 
 Presbyterian Theological Hall, August 1850. By William Lindsay, 
 D.D. P. 7. 
 
 ^ 'The laws of nature are nothing else than the common opera- 
 tions of divine power in the government of the world, which depend 
 entirely for their existence and continuance on the divine will, and 
 a miracle is nothing else than the exertion of the same power in a 
 way different from that which is common ; or it may be a mere 
 suspension of that power which is commonly observed to operate 
 in the world.' — The Evidences of Christianity^ by Dr Archibald 
 Alexander, pp. 38, 39. ' This use of the word law^ our readers 
 will of course perceive, has relation to us as understanding, rather 
 than to the universe as obeying certain rules.' — Sir John Herschell, 
 B 
 
18 DEFINITION OF A MIRACLE. 
 
 Now in this view, whatever happens in the mate- 
 rial world which is not in the usual sequence 
 of cause and effect, or which, in the words of 
 Bushneiy ^acts upon the chain of cause and 
 effect from without,' that is, in the strictest sense 
 of the word, supernatural. In this sense, man 
 himself has power over and above nature. Thus, so 
 far a^ natural law is concerned, this book must 
 continue to lie on the table ; but when I will to 
 lift it, and carry out my volition, I suspend or 
 counteract for the time being the natural law 
 which men call gravitation, — that is to say, I act 
 upon nature from without, and above it, and, in 
 the strict sense in which we have used the word, 
 I do a supernatural thing. And so we might 
 illustrate by many other instances. To borrow 
 
 Preliminary Discourse to the study of Natural Philosophy. ' What 
 are called laws of nature, we are prone to think of as some kind of 
 powers ; and of powers, too, operating according to an uncontrolled 
 and uncontrollable necessity. We require to be aware of this 
 deceptive influence of terms, and to school our minds carefully 
 into freedom from it. For what is nature ? . . . the material and 
 animal world, with the order and constitution settled for it by the 
 power and the wisdom which gave it being. And what are laws 
 of nature ? Powers ? Not at all ; they are simply the rules accord- 
 ing to which power operates ; the rules prescribed by the (wisdom 
 of the) All-wise to the might of the All-powerful.' — Wardlaiu on 
 Miracles^ p. 62. ^ Nature and the Supernatural^ p.' 21. 
 
DEFINITION OF A MIRACLE. 19 
 
 again from Bushnell, ' Nature never built a house, 
 or modelled a ship, or fitted a coat, or invented a 
 steam-engine, or wrote a book, or framed a consti- 
 tution.' ^ Hence the human soul has power over 
 nature, and can up to a certain extent control, 
 suspend, or counteract its laws. Up to a certain 
 extent, for man is finite ; but where he ceases to 
 have power, God is as omnipotent as ever ; and if 
 you only carry up your thoughts from man's power 
 over nature to God's, — if you only think of God by 
 his will counteracting or suspending, in a given 
 case beyond the reach of human causality, the 
 usual course of things which men call nature, you 
 will have the idea of a miracle. There is, however, 
 one great difference between the two. Man con- 
 trols nature in one case by obeying some other 
 natural law, and bringing into operation some 
 secondary cause. Thus, in the instances given 
 above, the lifting of the book, the building of the 
 house, etc., are all illustrations of man's intelli- 
 gence availing itself of its knowledge of one set 
 of natm*al laws to produce effects which, apart 
 from his intervention, nature itself would never 
 
 * Nature and the Sujiernatural^ p. 26. 
 
20 DEFINITION OF A MIRACLE. 
 
 have caused. But when God performs a super- 
 natural workj his power is direct and immediate in 
 its operation, and is put forth as his creating energy 
 w^as at first by a simple act of will. He does not, 
 like men, bring one set of secondary causes to act 
 upon another; but, himself the Great First Cause, 
 he, in the given case, produces the effect by his 
 omnipotent volition. This radical difference be- 
 tween the supernatural in the only sense in which 
 man can be said to perform it, and the supernatural 
 as it is wrought by God, must never be lost sight 
 of. Nevertheless, the process by which we have 
 ascended from the intelligent creature to the Crea- 
 tor will be sufficient to give every one a clear idea 
 of what we mean by miracle. 
 
III. 
 
 POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 The view which we have just advanced is im- 
 portant from its bearing on the question of the 
 possibility of miracles ; for if, as has been asserted 
 by many, they are impossible, then equally so must 
 creation be, and we are thus driven by logical 
 necessity to Atheism, or, what is much the same 
 thing under another name. Pantheism. Accord- 
 ingly, we find that this is the position deliberately 
 assumed by many who deny that miracles can ever 
 occur. The opinions of Strauss are inseparably 
 interwoven with the philosophy of Hegel, which 
 is pantheistic in its essence ; and a writer of great 
 power has said regarding Baden Powell, with as 
 much truth as force, ^The completeness with which 
 he banishes spirit-power from the universe is ter- 
 rible. You must not even admit the possibility 
 that any present fact should have a supernatural. 
 
22 POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 spiritual cause ; and the "idea of creation" in the 
 past is " rejected ; " out of the far eternity, guided 
 by no handj rattles the chariot of the universe ; 
 into the far eternity, bearing no rider, rolls that 
 chariot away ; no God in the past, no God in the 
 present, no God in the future ; and for the Father 
 of the generations of men, for the Spirit of light, 
 of life, of love, the infernal mockery of " a grand 
 foundation-conception of universal law," and some 
 unimaginable " spirituality," which is but a term 
 for nonentity.' ^ To refute these views, therefore, 
 we would need to refute Atheism and Pantheism 
 themselves, and gather up the evidences which are 
 everywhere to be found for the existence of a per- 
 sonal God. Into this subject, however, we shall 
 not enter here, inasmuch as it has been already 
 fully and satisfactorily disposed of by many emi- 
 nent writers. We shall confine ourselves simply 
 to the consideration of the most plausible argu- 
 ment which has been recently set forth against 
 the possibility of miracles. 
 
 ^ Bayne's Testimony of Christ to Christianity^ p. 15. 
 
POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 23 
 
 I. OBJECTION BY BADEN POWELL. 
 
 It is that of Baden Powell, who has said, that 
 ^the entire range of the inductive philosophy is 
 at once based upon, and in every instance tends 
 to confirm by immense accumulations of evidence, 
 the grand truth of the universal order and con- 
 stancy of natural causes as a primary law of be- 
 lief, so strongly entertained and fixed in the mind 
 of every truly inductive inquirer, that he can 
 hardly even conceive of the possibility of its 
 failure.' ^ Now, there are here two very grave 
 errors. The inductive philosophy is not based 
 upon a belief in the universal order and constancy 
 of natural causes ; rather it tends to establish that 
 as an inference from the observations which it 
 makes upon material substances ; and the founda- 
 tion on which it is built, as every one familiar 
 with the writings of its great originator must at 
 once admit, is this, that nothing which claims to 
 rest on a basis of fact is to be rejected without 
 investigation, or on purely a priori grounds, and 
 that all things are to be regarded as possible 
 
 ^ Essays and Reviews, Eleventh Edition, pp. 129, 130. 
 
24 POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 wliicli are not self-contradictory. Hence the true 
 Baconian philosopher will refuse to examine no- 
 thing, however antecedently improbable it may 
 appear, if it be brought before him as having actu- 
 ally occurred. To put the miracles out of court, 
 therefore, and decline to receive their evidence on 
 the alleged ground that all such things are impos- 
 sible, is a proceeding most unphilosophical and 
 absurd. But more than this, in the quotation 
 which we have made, Powell attempts to add to 
 the number of our intuitive beliefs a truth, at the 
 certainty of which we arrive only by a long pro- 
 cess of induction. The uniformity of nature, as 
 any one may at once convince himself by throw- 
 ing himself back on his own consciousness, is not 
 a first truth, or primary law of belief; it is an 
 inference from our own observation and experi- 
 ence, taken in connection with the testimony of 
 others.^ So far from its being a primary law of 
 
 * Long before Baden Powell wrote, the late Dr Dick had said : 
 ' It is not intuitively evident, that because an event has regularly 
 taken place in a long period, it will take place in a period equally 
 long. ... If the universe is governed by omnipotence, for aught 
 that we could tell its movements might stop to-morrow, or some 
 alteration might be made which would give it a new constitution ; 
 and the utmost which we are warranted to presume is, that if it is 
 
POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 25 
 
 belief, that there must be a universal order and 
 constancy of natural causes, a great philosopher, 
 who will not be suspected of any partiality to 
 miracles, has declared that he finds no difficulty 
 ' in conceiving that in some one, for instance, of 
 the many firmaments into which sidereal astro- 
 nomy now divides the universe, events may suc- 
 ceed one another at random, without any fixed 
 law ; nor can anything in our experience, or in 
 our mental nature, constitute a sufficient, or in- 
 deed any reason for believing that this is nowhere 
 the case.' ^ Hence there is nothing in our mental 
 constitution — call it intuitive principle of belief, 
 or whatever else — to prevent us from admitting 
 the possibility of miracles. 
 
 II. PROOF OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES FROM 
 GEOLOGY. 
 
 But now, let us also make an appeal to the 
 
 the will of the Most High that the present race should still people 
 the earth, the present order, which is so admirably adapted to their 
 nature and necessities, will be upheld.' — Lectures on Theology^ vol. 
 i. pp. 120, 121. Even this presumption, however, it will be seen, 
 is a deduction, not an intuition. 
 
 ^ John Stuart Mill : Logic Inductive and Deductive, vol. ii. 
 p. 96. 
 
26 POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 inductive philosophy, and show not only that 
 miracles may be, but that they have been. For 
 this purpose we go to the great ^stone-book' of the 
 earth, and call upon geology to give testimony in 
 our behalf. If any of the deductions of that 
 most interesting science may be accepted as well 
 founded, it is that which declares that there are 
 certain distinct and well-defined formations, — 
 each belonging to a separate period in the history 
 of the earth's crust, having its own kind of re- 
 mains, and revealing the existence of new species, 
 which could only have been called into being by 
 the miracle of creation. Lest, however, we should 
 mar the force of this argument by an imperfect 
 statement of it, let us hear one who was well 
 qualified to speak with authority on the subject. 
 ' What say you,' says Hugh Miller,^ ' to the relics 
 that stand out in such bold relief from the rocks 
 beside us, in their character as the results of 
 miracle? The perished tribes and races which 
 they represent all began to exist. There is no 
 truth which science can more conclusively de- 
 monstrate than that they all had a beginning. 
 
 1 Footprints of the Creator, 1861, pp. 266, 267. 
 
POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 27 
 
 The infidel who, in this late age of the world, 
 would attempt to fall back upon the fiction of " an 
 infinite series," would be laughed to scorn. They 
 all began to be. But how? No true geologist 
 holds by the development hypothesis. It has been 
 resigned to sciolists and smatterers, and there is 
 but one alternative. They began to be through 
 the miracle of creation. From the evidence fur- 
 nished by these rocks we are shut down either 
 to the belief in miracle, or to the belief in some- 
 thing else, infinitely harder of reception, and as 
 thoroughly unsupported by evidence as it is con- 
 trary to experience. Hume is at length answered 
 by the severe truths of the stony science. He 
 was not, according to Job, "in league with the 
 stones of the field, and they have risen in irre- 
 sistible warfare against him in the Creator's 
 behalf.'" 
 
 It may be said, however, that since Miller's 
 lamented death the development hypothesis has 
 been immensely forwarded by Mr Darwin, but 
 we greatly fear that even he must be classed with 
 those whom Miller in the above-quoted passage 
 has called ^ sciolists and smatterers ; ' for where 
 
28 POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 are the facts on which he proceeds ? His view 
 has been dignified with the name of a theory ; 
 but to call it by that appellation is more than it 
 deserves. A theory is a general principle which 
 is tentatively put forth as the explanation of cer- 
 tain well-accredited facts ; but where are the facts 
 here? Has the vaunted 'naturalist produced a 
 single instance in which a change of species has 
 occurred, requiring some such hypothesis as that 
 of natural selection for its explanation ? Has he 
 found any remains which may verify his view 
 by showing us the different steps by which in 
 any given case the transition was accomplished ? 
 Or is it not rather the case that, in utter defiance 
 of the Newtonian maxim, ' Hypotheses non fingo,' 
 he has been feigning hypotheses, and that the 
 whole thing is an ' ingenious fancy ' ? Does he not 
 require to help out his view with a whole host of 
 suppositions, such as that some geologic strata are 
 entirely lost ? and is it not true that he bases his 
 argument on simple possibilities, and not on actual 
 facts? If all this were done by a theologian, 
 men would cry out against its unphilosophical 
 character, and talk about the first principles of 
 
POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 29 
 
 the inductive system; but what must be said of it 
 as the logic of a naturalist ? We are not surprised 
 that a reviewer has declared that Mr Darwin's 
 book ^ exhibits philosophical abilities of the lowest 
 order/ ^ and we shall need something stronger 
 than hypothesis before we give up the already 
 well-ascertained deductions of geology as an- 
 nounced by Hugh Miller in the paragraph which 
 we have quoted. 
 
 We hold, then, science itself being witness, that 
 miracles have been ; and this is the best answer 
 that can be given to those who proclaim them to 
 be impossible. If on the leaves of the book of 
 nature we see that there have been repeated 
 breakings in upon its uniformity by new creating 
 acts, on what principle shall we refuse to believe 
 that similar occurrences can take place when we 
 read of them in the book of revelation ? That 
 
 ' British Quarterly Review for January 1865, p. 143, note. For 
 a masterly note on the logic of Mr Darwin from the recent work 
 of Dr W. L. Alexander, St Paul at Athens^ see Appendix A. 
 After reading that exposure of fallacious reasoning, there will be 
 few who will allow themselves to be carried away with the de- 
 velopment novelty, and every one will feel the force of the warn- 
 ing, 'Let us distinguish between what science can prove, and 
 what men of science can ingeniously fancy and ably expound.' 
 
30 POSSIBILITY OF MIKACLES. 
 
 which hath been may be ; it cannot therefore be 
 said that those who would bar our very investiga- 
 tion of miracles by alleging that no such things 
 can be, have made good their case : rather, we 
 have shown that the position they have assumed is 
 both unphilosophical and unscientific. 
 
IV. 
 
 CKEDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 I. ARGUMENT OF HUME. 
 
 And now, having disposed of this class of objec- 
 tors, we are immediately encountered by another, 
 who declare that no proof can establish the occur- 
 rence of a miracle ; and at their head is David 
 Hume, with the argument of his famous Essay. 
 The words of that well-known sceptic are the 
 following : ' Experience is our only guide in 
 reasoning concerning matters of fact.'^ Expe- 
 rience is in some things variable, in some things 
 uniform. A variable experience gives rise only 
 to a probability; a uniform experience amounts 
 to a proof. ' Probability always supposes an 
 opposition of experiments and observations, where 
 the one side is found to overbalance the other, 
 and to produce a degree of evidence proportioned 
 
 * Hume's Essays^ 1809, vol. ii. p. 116. 
 
32 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 to the superiority.' ^ In such eases ^ we must 
 balance the opposite experiments, and deduct the 
 lesser nmuber from the greater, in order to know 
 the exact force of the superior evidence.' ^ ' Our 
 belief or assurance of any fact from the report of 
 eye-witnesses, is derived from no other principle 
 than our observation of the veracity of human 
 testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts 
 to the report of witnesses.'^ Now, if ^the fact 
 attested partakes of tlie marvellous, if it is such 
 as has seldom fallen under our observation, here 
 is a contest of two opposite experiences, of which 
 the one destroys the other, as far as its force goes, 
 and the superior can only operate on the mind by 
 the force which remains. The very same prin- 
 ciple of experience, which gives us a certain 
 degree of assurance in the testimony of witnesses, 
 gives us also in this case another degree of 
 assurance against the fact which they endeavour 
 to establish, from which contradiction there neces- 
 sarily arises a counterpoise, and mutual destruc- 
 tion of belief and authority.'* Further, ^if the 
 
 ^ Hume's Essai/s, 1809, vol. ii. p. 117. ^ /j^-^^ p, nj^ 
 
 3 Jbicl pp. 117, 118. * Ibid. p. 120. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 33 
 
 fact affirmed bj the witnesses, instead of being 
 only marvellous, is really miraculous ; if, besides, 
 the testimony considered apart and in itself 
 amounts to an entire proof, — in that case there is 
 proof against proof, of which the strongest must 
 prevail, but still with a diminution of its force, in 
 proportion to that of its antagonist. A miracle is 
 a violation of the laws of nature ; and as a firm 
 and unalterable experience has established these 
 laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very 
 nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument 
 from experience can possibly be imagined.' ^ 
 And if so, it is an undeniable consequence that 
 ^ no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle 
 unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its 
 falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact 
 which it w ould endeavour to establish ; and even 
 in that case there is a mutual destruction of argu- 
 ments, and the superior only gives us an assurance 
 suitable to that degree of force which remains 
 after deducting the inferior.' ^ Such, in sub- 
 stance, is the objection of David Hume ; and the 
 more we look at it the more shall we be struck 
 
 * Hume's Essays, 1809, vol. ii. p. 120. 2 /^,^-^^ p. 12I. 
 
 C 
 
34 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 by its specious and plausible character. Its 
 clanger lies principally in tlie fact, that there is a 
 sense in which his premises are correct, while yet 
 they do not warrant the conclusion which he draws. 
 His argument is one half true, and therefore it is 
 more insidious than if it were wholly false — ■ 
 
 ' For a lie wliicli is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies ; 
 A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, 
 But a lie which is jmrt a truth is a harder matter to fight.' * 
 
 We do not care to deny that experience has 
 established the general uniformity of nature's 
 laws; for if this were not the case, a miracle would 
 not be in any way striking or impressive, as a 
 variation from them. Neither do we feel called 
 upon to dispute that our belief in the testimony 
 of eye-witnesses rests upon our observation of the 
 veracity of human testimony ; and that, in the 
 case of a miracle, the proof furnished by eye-wit- 
 nesses must be set against the proof for the unifor- 
 mity of nature's laws, as far as regards that par- 
 ticular occurrence^ and the conclusion pronounced 
 in favour of that which preponderates. That is 
 precisely the principle on which we go in our 
 
 1 Tennyson. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 35 
 
 investigation of miracles ; and the position we take 
 up is thisj that the testimony of those who give 
 evidence for the miracles of the New Testament 
 is such as not only to counterpoise, but in this 
 instance to outweigh, that which is given by ex- 
 perience in behalf of the uniformity of nature's 
 laws. Thus, on Hume's own principle as laid 
 down in the earlier portion of our extracts, he 
 ought at once to have gone on to investigate the 
 nature of the testimony borne to miracles, and to 
 see if that did not warrant the belief in their 
 reality, in spite of the experience we have of 
 nature's uniformity. Indeed, he has himself said 
 in another passage : — ' When any one tells me 
 that he saw a dead man restored to life, I imme- 
 diately consider with myself whether it be more 
 probable that this person should either deceive or 
 be deceived, or that the fact which he relates 
 should really have happened. I weigh the one 
 miracle against the other, and according to the 
 superiority which I discover, I pronounce the de- 
 cision, and always reject the greater miracle. If 
 the falsehood of his testimony would be more 
 miraculous than the event which he relates, then. 
 
36 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 and not till then, can he pretend to demand my 
 belief or opinion.' ^ But this, as every one must 
 observe, is precisely what the Christian apologist 
 requires ; only, in estimating the value of evidence, 
 he does not look simply to the number of proofs, 
 but has regard to the cliaracter and quality as well. 
 Not the quantity only, but the weight of that 
 which we put into the scale, determines how much 
 will be required to turn the beam ; and looking to 
 the worth of the witnesses, the Christian asserts 
 that the falsehood of such testimony as is given to 
 the miracles of Christ would be a greater miracle 
 than any which the Scriptures ask us to believe. 
 We would have expected, after such an assertion 
 as that given above, that Hume would have 
 proceeded, as he phrases it, to weigh the one 
 miracle against the other, and see which really 
 preponderates ; but this is precisely what he has 
 nowhere attempted. He has indeed introduced 
 some of the so-called miracles of the Roman 
 Catholic records, such as that a man was said to 
 have recovered the power of walking by having 
 his leg rubbed with holy oil, and that many indi- 
 
 ^ Essays^ as before, pp. 121, 122. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 37 
 
 victuals alleged that they were healed by touching 
 the tomb of Abbe Paris, and of course he con- 
 cludes against them ; but simply because he finds 
 these false, he rejects those of Christ without 
 deeming them worthy of a moment's examination. 
 Yet it is not the alleged miracles of the Middle 
 Ages which are on their trial ; it was not to under- 
 mine them that the famous Essay was written. 
 The whole drift and purpose of the author was to 
 destroy the credibility of the miracles of Christ. 
 Why, then, has he not examined them? Is 
 there any ground for doubting the reality of 
 Christ's supernatural works, in the fact that 
 false pretensions have been put forth for Abbe 
 Paris ? Am I to be held dishonest, because 
 others have been proved to be so? We do 
 not want to see his principle tested on the won- 
 ders wrought at the grave of the Abbe Paris ; we 
 want to see it applied to the miracles of Christ. 
 Instead of this, however, he forecloses the whole 
 matter by a very adroit, and one is almost con- 
 strained to add most perverse and dishonest, beg- 
 ging of the question. This is accomplished by a 
 skilful manoeu\Ting with the terms ' experience.' 
 
38 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 and ^ testimony/ and by the quiet insertion of one 
 unchallenged word in his argument. Let us 
 expose the fallacy. What does he mean by 
 experience^ when he says ' it has established the 
 uniformity of nature's laws ' ? If he mean by it 
 his own individual experience, then no objection 
 can be taken to his assertion ; but if he mean by 
 it the experience of men in all ages of the world, 
 then that is taking for granted the thing to be 
 proved, for the very point in dispute is whether 
 the ' experience ' of the men in the Saviour's 
 days, who declared that they saw his miracles, 
 be not in favour of such supernatural occur- 
 rences. This sophism becomes more conspicuous 
 when w^e look at the word ' unalterable,' which he 
 has prefixed to experience, when he alleges that it 
 establishes the laws of nature ; for if that expe- 
 rience is unalterable there is an end of the matter, 
 the subject is foreclosed, and we are sent back to 
 the denial of the possibility of miracles which we 
 liave akeady exposed. Observe, therefore, ^low 
 he palters with the double sense.' His own expe- 
 rience has nothing to do with the case, as no one 
 alleges that he saw the miracles of the Lord 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 39 
 
 Jesus ; but using that term in that meaning in 
 the premises, he dexterously injects the wider 
 sense into it in the conclusion, and his argument 
 is thus fallacious and confusing. It amounts to 
 this, that because a great mass of mankind have 
 not experienced miracles, therefore we are to dis- 
 believe the testimony of that portion of the race 
 who declare in the most credible manner that 
 they have seen them ; an argument this as ridi- 
 culous as the defence of the Irishman, who, on 
 being confronted with a man who said he saw 
 him steal, answered, ' Well, what of that ? I could 
 get a hundred men to say they didn't ! ' There 
 is not a jury in the land, we may be sure, who 
 in a judicial case would allow themselves to be 
 imposed upon with such a transparent sophism. 
 
 But this is not all. There is in this skilful 
 piece of sophistry a comparison of experience 
 with testimony, and an exaltation of the former 
 over the latter, as if they were radically distinct. 
 Here again, however, let us ask of whose expe- 
 rience he speaks? If it be our own individual 
 experience, then very clearly that which comes 
 under a person's own observation makes a more 
 
40 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 forcible impression on him than that which he 
 hears from the testimony of another ; but the 
 question recurs. What has my personal experience 
 to do here ? If I had been present and observed 
 something different from those who were specta- 
 tors at the time, then my experience might be put 
 against theirs. But if it be the general expe- 
 rience of mankind of which he speaks, then how- 
 do we get to know what that is but by the very 
 testimony which it is Hume's object to depreciate? 
 Hence, to put the general experience of mankind 
 against testimony, is only after all to compare 
 testimony with testimony ; and tlierefore this 
 famous argument, w-here it is not a begging of 
 the question, simply throws us back upon the 
 study of the evidence which has been given in 
 support of miracles, and asks us to determine 
 w^hether it be of such a kind as not only to war- 
 rant our belief in their reality, but also to render 
 culpable our unbelief.^ 
 
 But besides this, to exalt experience against 
 
 1 Admirably has Mr Bayne said, ' I believe that the word of one 
 true man is surer evidence than the experience of nature's uni- 
 formity for a thousand years, and that the spiritual philosophy 
 which accords this supremacy to the deliberate accents of reason 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 41 
 
 testimony, so as to make the fact that an event 
 has never before occurred, a reason for beHev- 
 ing that it can never happen, would be in the 
 highest degree absurd, and would put an end at 
 once to history and science ; for w^hat says Bishop 
 Butler : ^ ' There is a very strong presumption 
 against common speculative truths, and against 
 the most ordinary facts, before the proof of them, 
 which yet is overcome by almost any proof. 
 There is a presumption of millions to one against 
 the story of Caesar or of any other man.' Yet 
 surely we do not feel called upon to refuse to 
 investigate the particulars of Caesar's life on that 
 account ; nor does the man of science decline to 
 look at a new fact which may be brought under 
 his notice, simply because he has never before 
 heard of such an occurrence. The contrary rather 
 is the case, more than usual interest being felt by 
 the historian in the life of a great man, and by 
 the philosopher in a strange and hitherto unheard- 
 of incident ; and in precisely the same way, the 
 
 and conscience, which owns the majesty of man as transcending 
 the authority of nature, is infinitely more profound than the philo- 
 sophy of Hume.' — Testimony of Christy etc., p. 8. 
 1 Analogy, Part ii. chap. 2. 
 
42 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 very unusual character of a so-called miraculous 
 occurrence ought only to attract more attention 
 to it, and is no adequate reason for objecting to 
 examine it, or holding it incapable of proof/ In- 
 deed, in reading Hume's Essay, one can scarcely 
 repress the feeling that its author was conscious, 
 even while writing it, of the weakness and in- 
 conclusiveness of his reasoning ; for, after all, he 
 virtually abandons his ground. ' I own,' he says, 
 ^ there may possibly be miracles or violations of 
 the usual course of nature of such a kind as to 
 admit of a proof from human testimony, though 
 perhaps it will be impossible to find any such in 
 the records of history. Suppose all authors in all 
 languages agree that from the 1st of January 
 
 ^ On tills point I cannot forbear quoting the clear and cogent 
 language of Dr Lindsay : ' The course of nature furnishes in every 
 case an anterior probability that the event will be such as it hath 
 been before, and all human calculations are grounded on this 
 principle ; but the moment an event actually happens, the time for 
 probable calculation is past, and we may know it with the same 
 certainty, whether it never occurred before or occurred a thou- 
 sand times. If it be quite unusual, that is a reason for scrutinizing 
 every circumstance and deciding slowly ; but it is no reason for 
 rejecting the evidence of our senses. The argument before us 
 confounds two Yery different things,— namely, the anterior proba- 
 bility of what may be to-morrow, and the actual experience of it 
 when it comes ; and because the uniformity of nature's laws 
 suggests one result as most likely, you are not allowed to believe 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 43 
 
 1600 there was a total darkness over the whole 
 earth for eight days. Suppose that the tradition 
 of this extraordinary event is still strong and 
 lively among the people ; that all travellers who 
 return from foreign countries bring us accounts 
 of the same tradition, without the least variation 
 or contradiction ; it is evident that our present 
 philosophers, instead of doubting of that fact, 
 ought to receive it for certain, and ought to search 
 for the causes w^hence it might be derived.' ^ 
 Here, then, on our philosopher's own showing, is 
 a case in which the proof in favour of a miracle, 
 so far from being overborne by the experience 
 of nature's uniformity, is reckoned sufficient to 
 establish the credibility of the occurrence; but 
 
 another when it actually happens. You cannot believe it until it 
 has happened so frequently as to claim to rank among natural 
 events. But who can doubt that Adam, the first day he saw the 
 sun rise, would be just as certain of the fact as after he had seen 
 it rise every day for a century ? The only difference would be, 
 that in the latter case he would have learned to calculate with 
 greater certainty on its return to-morrow ; but the evidence of its 
 actual appearance on any day would not be greater than the evi- 
 dence of its actual appearance the first day it rose. So of a miracle 
 or any wonderful event. You could not calculate on it beforehand ; 
 you would expect the reverse ; but when it actually did occur, you 
 might be as certain of it as of the most common event.' — Lecture^ as 
 before, pp. 23, 24. 
 
 1 Essays^ as before, p. 134. 
 
44 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 the effect of this admission is neutralized, and the 
 animus of the whole argument revealed, by the 
 words with which he introduces the passage we 
 have just cited. ^I beg,' says he, ^that these limi- 
 tations may be remarked, when I say that a miracle 
 can never be proved so as to be the foundation of 
 a system of religion,^ ^ And why not ? Because 
 ' men in all ages have been so much imposed on 
 by ridiculous stories of that kind, that this very 
 circumstance would be a full proof of cheat, and 
 sufficient with all men of sense, not only to make 
 them reject the fact, but even reject it without 
 examination.' ^ Was there ever such an absurdity 
 attempted to be palmed off under colour of good 
 sense? Because men have been so frequently 
 imposed upon by error, therefore there is no such 
 thing as truth ; and anything that claims to be 
 true, they may safely reject without examination ! 
 Because there are so many spurious coins in cir- 
 culation, we must reject all money that offers, and 
 that, too, without the slightest investigation ! The 
 thing is preposterous. The natural inference from 
 the attempts which have been made to deceive 
 
 1 Essays^ as before, p. 13.4. ^ ij^i^^ p, 135^ 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 45 
 
 men by spurious miracles should be, that there is 
 in the human mind some instinctive or intuitive 
 expectation that a revelation from God should be 
 accompanied and accredited by miracle. The 
 supply of false miracles by impostors has been 
 called forth by that principle in the human mind 
 to which true miracles appeal ; and just as the 
 existence of bad money gives testimony to the value 
 of that which is genuine, so even the attempts to 
 ' cheat ' men by the pseudo-supernatural, furnish 
 an a priori argument for the probability of miracles 
 in connection with a religious system ; for the im- 
 postors never could have succeeded if there had 
 not been in man what we must call an intuitive 
 belief in the supernatural. Hence, to borrow the 
 phrase of a distinguished author,^ in regard to the 
 religious systems of the heathen nations, the false 
 miracles by which men have been deluded were 
 ^unconscious prophecies' of the true, wherewith 
 the divine revelation has been attended and con- 
 firmed ; and so far from absolving us from the 
 duty of examining the evidence of the New Tes- 
 
 1 See Archbishop Trench's Hulsean Lectures on The Unconscious 
 Prophecies of Heathendom. 
 
46 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 tament miracles^ the fact that so many ' lying 
 wonders ' have imposed on men ought only to 
 urge us to a more thorough investigation of their 
 claims. 
 
 But the qualification or limitation which Hume 
 has thus laid down, prejudging as it does the whole 
 question, on the simple ground of its connection 
 with religion, is much more sad when we look at 
 it from its ethical or spiritual side, than when we 
 contemplate it from a logical point of view. Dia- 
 lectically considered, indeed, it does no great credit 
 either to the candour or the accuracy of his argu- 
 mentation ; but spiritually, it is a most melancholy 
 illustration of the prophet's words, ' The heart is 
 deceitful above all things.' The infidelity of this 
 most acute sceptic seems to have been of the 
 heart rather than the head, and it was most pro- 
 bably to defend the prepossessions of the heart 
 that the artful sophistry of the head was called 
 into requisition. One can hardly believe that a 
 man of his ability could be blind to the logical 
 jugglery and syllogistic sleight of hand by which 
 he sought to outwit his readers ; and it is with a 
 sickening feeling that we read his cant words of 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 47 
 
 mock solemnity, when regarding the Pentateuch, 
 to the miracles of which he has made just the 
 slightest reference, he says, ' I desire any one to 
 lay his hand upon his heart, and after serious 
 consideration declare whether he thinks that the 
 falsehood of such a book, supported by such a 
 testimony, would be more extraordinary than all 
 the miracles it relates ! ' If he honestly believed 
 in the soundness of his argument, we cannot place 
 him high as a logician ; if he was conscious of 
 the sophism he was constructing on such a 
 sacred subject, what shall we say of the moral 
 principle of the man ? ^ 
 
 In regard to the whole question of the possibility 
 of proving a miracle, this general principle may be 
 laid down, viz. that whatever can actually take 
 place, and be cognizable by the senses of an eye- 
 witness, can be attested by his testimony to others. 
 Whatever I can observe, I can describe and bear 
 witness to. Does not the entire theory of evidence 
 as acted on by men, both legally and socially, 
 depend on that universally admitted maxim ? But 
 
 1 See on tliis point, Wardlaw, p. 112, where that usually gentle 
 controversialist breaks out into a stern and solemn invective ; and 
 Bayne's Testimony, p. 10. 
 
48 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 if this be so, then the inference is clear, that if 
 miracles could occur, they can be proved to have 
 occurred. Hence, to assert that a miracle cannot 
 be proved by testimony, is virtually to deny that 
 there can be a miracle at all. Hume did not openly 
 take that ground, but his argument implies it, and 
 so we might have considered it fully and fairly 
 disposed of when we had proved that miracles are 
 possible. But the inherent weakness and sophistry 
 of his reasoning need anew to be made manifest; 
 and we have dwelt thus long upon it, that we might 
 the better prepare the way for an investigation of 
 the reproduction of it which we find in the pages 
 of Renan.^ For though it has been frequently 
 exposed, yet ever and anon some new sceptic 
 appears and brings it out again as if it were irre- 
 fragable ; and the flourish and parade he makes 
 are apt to produce a great impression upon those 
 who have not made themselves acquainted with 
 the apologists of former days. Cowper was right 
 when he said: 
 
 J For the opinions of two eminent men, not theologians, on 
 the argument of Hume, see Appendix, note B, where extracts 
 from the writings of Lord Brougham and Sir E. B. Lytton will be 
 found. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIIIACLES. 49 
 
 * The infidel has shot his bolts away, 
 Till, his exhausted quiver yielding none. 
 He gleans the blunted shafts that have recoiled, 
 And aims them at the shield of faith again.' 
 
 And that Renan is no exception to this rule will 
 
 be evident, as we give in full what he has said on 
 
 the subject of miracles in his introduction to the 
 
 work which he has called the Life of Christ. 
 
 n. ARGUMENT OF RENAN. 
 
 Here are his words : ' None of the miracles 
 with which the old histories are filled took place 
 under scientific conditions. Observation, which has 
 never once been falsified, teaches us that miracles 
 never happen but in times and countries in which 
 they are believed, and before persons disposed to 
 believe them. No miracle ever occurred in the 
 ])resence of men capable of testing its miraculous 
 character. Neither common people nor men of 
 the world are able to do this. It requires great 
 precautions, and long habits of scientific research. 
 In our days have we not seen almost all respectable 
 people dupes of the grossest frauds, or of puerile 
 illusions ? Marvellous facts, attested by the whole 
 
50 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 population of small towns, have, thanks to a severe 
 scrutiny, been exploded. If it is proved that no 
 contemporary miracle will bear inquiry, is it not 
 probable that the miracles of the past, which have 
 all been performed in popular gatherings, would 
 equally present their share of illusion if it were 
 possible to criticise them in detail? It is not, 
 then, in the name of this or that philosophy, but 
 in the name of universal experience, that we banish 
 miracle from history. We do not say, " Miracles 
 are impossible." ^ We say, " Up to this time a 
 miracle has never been proved." If to-morrow a 
 thaumaturgus present himself with credentials suf- 
 ficiently important to be discussed, and announce 
 himself as able, say, to raise the dead, what would 
 be done? A commission, composed of physio- 
 logists, physicists, chemists, persons accustomed 
 to historical criticism, would be named. This 
 commission would choose a corpse ; would assure 
 itself that death was real; would select the room 
 in which the experiment should be made ; would 
 arrange the whole system of precautions, so as to 
 
 * Yet in another place he speaks of ' the notion of the supernatural 
 with its impossibilities.' — See Life qfJesus^ as before, p. 59. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 51 
 
 leave no chance of doubt. If, under such condi- 
 tions, the resurrection were effected, a probability 
 almost equal to certainty would be established. 
 As, however, it ought to be possible always to 
 repeat an experiment — to do over again [that] 
 which has been done once ; and as in the order 
 of miracle there can be no question of ease or 
 difficulty, the thaumaturgus would be invited to 
 reproduce his marvellous act under other circum- 
 stances, upon other corpses, in another place. If 
 the miracle succeeded each time, two things would 
 be proved : first, that supernatural events happen 
 in the world ; second, that the power of pro- 
 ducing them belongs, or is delegated to, certain 
 persons. But who does not see that no miracle 
 ever took place under these conditions ? but that 
 always hitherto the thaumaturgus has chosen the 
 subject of the experiment, chosen the spot, 
 chosen the public ; that, besides, the people them- 
 selves — most commonly in consequence of the 
 invincible want to see something divine in great 
 events and great men — create the marvellous 
 legends afterwards ? Until a new order of things 
 prevails, we shall maintain, then, this principle of 
 
52 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 historical criticism^ that a supernatural account 
 cannot be admitted as such ; that it always implies 
 credulity or imposture ; that the duty of the his- 
 torian is to explain it, and seek to ascertain what 
 share of truth or of error it may conceal. ' ^ 
 
 There is here, in all the leading features of the 
 argument, an entire identity with that which we 
 have already disposed of ; there is the same ap- 
 peal to ' experience/ which is quietly assumed to 
 be ' universal ; ' there is the same insinuation that 
 the miracles of the gospel stand on a level with 
 modern pretensions to the supernatural, and 
 founded on that, the same refusal even to inves- 
 tigate their claims ; while, after all, in the imagi- 
 nary case that is pat before the reader, there is 
 the same virtual abandonment of the principle on 
 which the objection is based ; without, however, 
 let us do Eenan the justice of adding, the same 
 qualifying limitation which Hume imposed. Still, 
 as there are some specific differences, designed, as 
 it would seem, to adapt the argument to our own 
 days, we may profitably spend a little time in its 
 dissection. 
 
 * Life of Jesus, as before, pp. 29, 30. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 53 
 
 Firstj let us look at the assertion, that ^ ob- 
 servation, which has never once been falsified, 
 teaches us that miracles never happen but in 
 times and countries in which they are believed, 
 and before persons disposed to believe them.' We 
 do not think that it would be difficult to find 
 instances from among the miracles of the New 
 Testament to which these words would not applj, 
 and perhaps before we finish this investigation 
 we may direct attention to one of the kind ; but, 
 meanwhile, we ask our readers to take notice of 
 the general principle which he designs to insinuate 
 under this apparently harmless statement. He 
 means to convey the idea that a miracle would be 
 more credible to him, and should be more credible 
 to others, if at the time when it was wrought it 
 was disbelieved by those who witnessed it. But 
 is this true? Would not M. Kenan himself be 
 the first to reject a miracle which was not attested 
 by the experience of those to whom at first it was 
 submitted ? Would he not at once allege, that if 
 those who were present at the time did not believe 
 it, it is preposterous to ask that we should admit 
 its reality ? Besides, does not this render it im- 
 
54 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 possible to establish any miracle? For it must 
 either have been believed or rejected by those 
 who were present with the miracle-worker. If it 
 were believed by them, then our author is ready 
 with his assertion, that ^miracles are ordinarily 
 the work of the public much more than of him to 
 whom they are attributed;'^ if it were not believed 
 by them, then, of course, it would be said that 
 the testimony even of those who were present 
 conclusively settled that they were spurious. 
 Thus on both sides is he armed. Offer him proof, 
 and he replies, ^The witnesses were credulous, 
 and more than half the miracle was in their desire 
 to see it.' Tell him that those before whom it 
 was wrought did not receive it, and he will im- 
 mediately retort, ' On what principle am I asked 
 to do what they, with their ampler opportunities 
 for examination, refused to do ? ' What, then, 
 would he have? and how can he be satisfied? 
 Truly such a spirit as this recalls the Master's 
 words, ' Whereunto shall I liken the men of this 
 generation? and to what are they like? They 
 are like children sitting in the market-place, and 
 
 ^ Life ofJesus^ as before, p. 196. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 55 
 
 calling one to another, and saying. We have piped 
 unto you, and ye have not danced; we have 
 mourned unto you, and ye have not wept. But 
 Wisdom is justified of her children.' ^ There must 
 therefore be some other course than this if we 
 would follow wisdom. 
 
 But it may be said that he has qualified his 
 assertion, inasmuch as in the latter part of the 
 sentence he speaks of the persons not only as 
 having actually believed, but also as having been 
 disposed to believe them; and there is no doubt 
 a wide difference between the two, but the dis- 
 tinction will not help him. For the New Tes- 
 tament contains numerous instances of miracles 
 performed before those who, so far from being dis- 
 posed to believe them, actually sought out gTounds 
 on which to reject them. Of this sort were the 
 opening of the eyes of the man born bhnd, John 
 ix. ; the healing of the lame man at the Beauti- 
 ful gate. Acts v. 16, 17 ; the raising of Lazarus, 
 John xi. 46 ; and, as we shall presently make 
 evident, the resurrection of the Lord himself. 
 Now, in the face of these and other similar cases, 
 
 ^ Liike vii. 31, 32, 35. 
 
 i 
 
56 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 — ^not to speak of that of Paul, who was certainly 
 very far from being disposed to believe in the 
 miracles of Jesus when the light from heaven 
 smote him to the ground, — it is neither just nor 
 reasonable to allege that supernatural works have 
 never been performed, except before persons pre- 
 disposed in their favour. It is quite possible, 
 indeed, that M. Eenan may endeavour to escape 
 the force of this reply by denying the authen- 
 ticity of these portions of the sacred books ; but 
 admitting that, as he does, when it suits his pur- 
 pose, we cannot permit him to avail himself of 
 the subterfuge of denying it when the exigencies 
 of argument make it expedient for him to do so. 
 If the Gospels are historic in those portions on 
 which he raises his batterinc[-ram of attack, we 
 should like to see on what distinct principles they 
 are denied to be so in those places where we erect 
 our engines of defence. Such an answer to our 
 reply, therefore, would be to cut the knot, not to 
 loose it. 
 
 Further, what does the writer mean when he 
 declares that ' none of the miracles with which 
 old histories are filled took place imder scientific 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 57 
 
 conditions ' ? Is it indeed the case, that ' neither 
 common people nor men of the world are capable 
 of testing a miracle ' ? If the miracles of the Gos- 
 pels (and it is only those with which these ' old 
 histories ' are filled that we care to defend) had 
 been wrought alone on substances with which 
 only men of science are familiar, then there might 
 be some show of reason in the assertion ; but if 
 they were performed, as they were, in the region 
 of common life, in which the common sense of the 
 multitude is just as sure a guide as the precision 
 of the man of science, then his allegation is most 
 false and fallacious. Take the case, for example, 
 of a dead man raised to life. Rightly here Renan 
 would make the most strict investigation turn on 
 the question, whether or not he had been really 
 dead ; but is it true that only a commission com- 
 posed of ' physicists, physiologists, chemists, and 
 persons accustomed to historical criticism,' can 
 decide such a question as that ? When our 
 friends depart, we do not think it needful to hold 
 an inquest before such a body of learned men, 
 before we can determine whether they are dead or 
 not ; nay, even though a case or two of premature 
 
58 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 interment may happen in an age, that does not 
 prevent us from relying on our own judgment in 
 the matter. We can tell, without the aid of. any 
 scientific commission, w^hen death appears. Its 
 concomitants and consequences are not so recon- 
 dite as to require a 'post-mortem^ to make it clear 
 that death has really happened. Now, if that be 
 true in ordinary life, why, in the case of a dead 
 man that has been raised again, should we de- 
 mand evidence of another sort than that on which 
 we act when we take it upon us ' to bury our dead 
 out of our sight ' ? By and by we shall produce a 
 case which ought to satisfy even M. Renan ; but 
 we cannot but declare that his demand for a 
 commission of scientific men is altogether un- 
 necessary, and in the circumstances perfectly 
 unwarranted. No doubt the very fact that the 
 person has been raised to life again should, from 
 its unusual occurrence, dispose us to examine 
 minutely into the evidence that he had been 
 really dead; but that is a different thing from 
 sajdng that we should have a special sort of evi- 
 dence, differing in kind and not simply in degree, 
 from that which is generally acted on in such cases. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 59 
 
 A learned judge, not long ago, in a trial which 
 excited universal interest, laid down the principle, 
 that an amount of evidence which would satisfy 
 the jury in acting one way or other in their most 
 important business concerns, would be enough to 
 warrant them in determining the guilt or inno- 
 cence of the prisoner, even though his life were 
 trembling in the balance ; and similarly, an 
 amount of evidence such as w^ould justify us in 
 proceeding to the interment of any member of our 
 family, ought to be sufficient to establish the 
 reality of death in the case of one who has been 
 raised again from the dead. 
 
 But perhaps Renan, in demanding this scien- 
 tific commission, may only wish to determine 
 whether or not the so-called miraculous work was 
 done by the introduction of some natural causes 
 of which the multitude were ignorant, but with 
 which the members of the commission might 
 be familiar. If this be his idea, then we may 
 at once admit that marvellous things do some- 
 times take place, which careful investigation by 
 competent parties afterwards makes clear ; but 
 where is the scientific explanation of the miracles 
 
60 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES, 
 
 of Christ ? The facts are before the world, and 
 have been tested bj the science of eighteen hun- 
 dred years ; yet they have never been accounted 
 for on natural principles, or reproduced by the most 
 eminently scientific men. If, therefore, science 
 has detected other impositions, how have these, 
 supposing them to be impositions, eluded her 
 vigilance ? Is it not because they lie in a region 
 beyond her ken? The line which divides the 
 natural from the supernatural is not always very 
 easily defined. Yet in this instance we do not 
 need science to make it clear ; for, in the words 
 of a Avriter to whom we have occasionally already 
 referred : ^ ' The great bulk of the miracles of 
 Scripture are distinguished from common events 
 by so broad a line, that if we admit the fact of 
 their occmTence, we cannot with any reason 
 question their miraculous character. Besides, we 
 must not overlook that the miracles of Scripture 
 took place not spontaneously, but at the command 
 of some individual man. A human mouth speaks, 
 
 1 Dr Lindsay, Lecture^ as above, pp. 26, 27. Other remarks on this 
 point will be found in a subsequent page, where we seek to show 
 that the apostles were quite competent to judge of the miraculous 
 character of the works done by Jesus. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 61 
 
 and the blind see, the deaf hear, the rigid joint 
 relaxes. Christ says, " Lazarus, come forth," and 
 the dead man stands alive before him. To allow 
 such facts, and yet to say that they may have 
 sprung from natural causes, is to concede to 
 Christ a mastery over nature's secrets unequalled 
 since the world began ; which, if he were a mere 
 man, and his religion a fable, is not less miracu- 
 lous than all the miracles recorded in Scripture.' 
 Even men of science, in the presence of such 
 works as he performed, would, if candid and 
 unbiassed men, lower their pretensions, and say 
 with the magicians, when they could no longer 
 imitate Moses, ' This is the finger of God.' 
 
 Nor is this all : are scientific men, such as 
 ' physiologists, physicists, and chemists,' not just as 
 liable to be imposed upon as others ? We appre- 
 hend it would not be difficult to bring together a 
 list of instances in which the credulity of many 
 modern ' savans^ would appear in a most ridicu- 
 lous light, as showing that their prepossessions 
 and prejudices very largely affect their conclu- 
 sions, and make them act in some cases in a 
 manner altogether inconsistent with just prin- 
 
62 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 ciples of ' historieal criticism.' ^ Besides, where is 
 the question on which scientific men will not be 
 found ranged on either side, uttering the most 
 opposite things? Let any one throw himself 
 back upon the records of important trials in our 
 own land for the last ten years, and think of the 
 conflicting statements in relation to poisons and 
 insanity which have been put forth by one. class 
 of men of science among us, and if after that he 
 be disposed to place implicit faith in a commis- 
 sion of ' chemists and physicists/ we shall be 
 greatly surprised. There are subjects which the 
 mass of the people understand, to say the least, as 
 well as men of science, and on which the judg- 
 ment of the community, howsoever it may be 
 arrived at, is more reliable than theirs. In 
 writing thus we mean no disrespect to the great 
 body of earnest and philosophic thinkers who are 
 numbered among our men of science; we only 
 allege that they have not a monopoly of common 
 
 ^ For proof of this, and of the fact that the satirical exposure of 
 the credulity of antiquarians in Sir W. Scott's Antiquary is quite 
 as applicable to some of our modern men of science, see The Abbe- 
 ville Jaw: An Episode in a Great Controversy. By the Rev. J. L. 
 Rome, F.G.S. Longman. A most able, convincing, and humorous 
 brochure. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 63 
 
 sense, to the utter exclusion of the ' common 
 people and the men of the world.' 
 
 But to proceed with our anatomy of this plausible 
 argjument. Observe how the miracles of Christ 
 are first classed with ' the gross frauds and puerile 
 illusions with which almost all respectable people 
 in these days have been duped;' and then see 
 how, because contemporary miracles will not bear 
 scrutiny, it is held as probable that those of Jesus 
 were impostures, and could be proved to be so if 
 it were possible to criticise them in detail. Now, 
 on the first point we will not insult our readers 
 by bringing forth any reasons why we refuse to 
 degrade the gospel miracles, by allowing them to 
 be placed side by side with those said to be per- 
 formed by St Francis and St Vincent de Paul : ^ 
 the simple reading of the records in which they 
 are severally reported, will be enough to show any 
 one the difference between them ; but in any case, 
 we demand that those of our Lord be looked at by 
 themselves, and judged upon their own merits. 
 Still, as reference has been made to the expo- 
 
 1 For an able examination of the alleged miracles of St Francis, 
 see the Eev. J. B. Paton's review of Vie de Jesus. 
 
64 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 sure of contemporary miracles, we may be allowed 
 to insist upon this, that if spurious miracles among 
 us have been detected by the scrutiny of those 
 who have examined them, would not those of 
 Jesus, if they were impositions, have been dis- 
 covered and exposed by the men of his own time ? 
 We too readily take it for granted, that in the 
 matters of shrewdness and penetration w^e of this 
 nineteenth century are superior to those who lived 
 in Palestine in the first half of the first. The age 
 in which our Lord appeared was undeniably the 
 most cultivated which the world up till that time 
 had seen ; the people among whom he lived were 
 not deficient either in intelligence or in the 
 faculty of observation ; there was, moreover, 
 wherever he went, a section of the community 
 animated by the most bitter hatred of him and 
 of his doctrines, who watched him eagerly that 
 they might ' entangle him in his talk,' and if 
 possible prove him a deceiver ; yet, though every 
 work he did was scanned through the keen micro- 
 scope of malice, it was never alleged that his 
 miracles w^ere not real. Sometimes, indeed, they 
 tried to ascribe them to Satanic agency, but it was 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 65 
 
 never insinuated that tliey were impostures. But 
 human nature was the same then that it is now ; 
 and as the miracles lay in no hidden region which 
 it required scientific hnoivledge to understand^ it is 
 impossible to believe that the scribes and Phari- 
 sees, though we may grant their inferiority to 
 the scientific men of our times, could not have 
 detected their spuriousness if they were false. That 
 with all their bitter antagonism to him, they failed 
 to do so, we must ever hold to be one great proof of 
 the fact that these ^ mighty works ' were genuine. 
 But leaving these skilfully put and plausible 
 assertions, let us look at the evidence in behalf of 
 one of our Lord's miracles, and see if we have 
 not an amount of proof which, judging from the 
 case which he has put before us, ought to satisfy 
 even M. Kenan. We say ought to satisfy him, 
 for after all we feel persuaded that if every con- 
 dition prescribed by himself were complied with 
 to the very letter, he would yet contrive to evade 
 the conclusions which he seems to admit would 
 in that case be logically deducible. We do not 
 forget who it was that said, ' If they believe not 
 Moses and the prophets, neither will they be per- 
 
66 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 suaded though one rose from the dead/ — words 
 as deeply true to-day as when they were first 
 uttered. Still, that we may show that even on 
 Eenan's own ground the evidence is satisfactory, 
 let us take the miracle of our Lord's resurrection, 
 and see if in the main it do not satisfy all his 
 ' scientific conditions.' 
 
 In the first place, the disciples were not looking 
 for his resurrection, neither were they a priori dis- 
 posed to believe it ; ^ for though Jesus himself had 
 repeatedly referred to it in his intercourse with 
 them, they had at the time misunderstood his 
 meaning, and they had afterwards forgotten his 
 words. Nothing seems more clear on the face of 
 the record than that the resurrection took the dis- 
 ciples by surprise; hence they had no prepossession 
 in favour of believing it, and so on this point they 
 are witnesses according to Eenan's own heart. 
 
 Again, Christ was really dead. This is ad- 
 mitted by Eenan himself, who gives an accomit 
 of the crucifixion scene, and ends with a strange 
 rhapsodical apostrophe to Jesus. But in order to 
 
 1 ' Their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed 
 them not.' — Luke xxiv. 11. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 67 
 
 show that even no man of science need have 
 doubt on this point, we maj simply recall the 
 facts, that the soldiers, accustomed to look on 
 death, and who therefore knew it when they saw 
 it, did not break the legs of Jesus, for they per- 
 ceived he was dead already; and that one of them, 
 to make assurance doubly sure, ^with a spear 
 pierced his side, and forthwith came thereout 
 blood and water.' Now, strangely enough, a 
 scientific commission, so to speak, though at the 
 distance of eighteen centuries, has sat upon this 
 occurrence, and has given a decision on it to the 
 effect that death was not caused by the spear-thrust, 
 but that the blood and water which flowed from the 
 wound showed that a very short while before, Jesus 
 had died of a broken heart.^ About the reality 
 of his death, therefore, there can be no dispute. 
 
 Next let us look at the sepulchre. This, as we 
 know, was not a place chosen by those who wished 
 to have it as the best possible ' in which the ex- 
 periment should be made,' but virtually it was all 
 
 ^ See this subject very fully treated by Dr Hanna in his Last 
 I^<^y of our Lord's Passion^ pp. 290, etc. ; see also the appendix to 
 the same work, where the opinion of Dr Stroud is corroborated by 
 that of Drs Begbie, Simpson, and Struthers. 
 
68 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 that any scientific commission could have desired, 
 for it was a new tomb, in which no body had ever 
 been laid, and where, therefore, there was no pos- 
 sibility of substituting one corpse for another ; 
 besides this, it was closely secured by the stone 
 and seal, and strictly watched by the guard of 
 soldiers. Here, tlierefore, great precautions were 
 exercised ; but how utterly useless they all were ! 
 
 ' Hell and the grave combined their force 
 
 To hold our Lord in vain ; 
 Sudden the Conqueror arose, 
 And burst their feeble chain.' 
 
 In proof of this resurrection we appeal to the 
 testimony of those who saw him ' alive after his 
 passion,' and who had no motive for saying other 
 than the truth. He was really dead ; they saw 
 him afterwards alive, with such marks of identity 
 as made it clear to them that it was he. Can any 
 evidence be better? To all this, however, M. 
 Eenan only says, ' Such was the impression he 
 had left in the hearts of his disciples, and of a 
 few devoted women, that during some weeks more 
 it was as if he were living and consoling them. 
 Had his body been taken away? or did enthu- 
 siasm, always credulous, create afterwards the 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 69 
 
 group of narratives by which it was sought to 
 establish faith in his resurrection? In the absence 
 of opposing documents, this can never be ascer- 
 tained. Let us say, however, that the strong 
 imagination of Mary Magdalene played an impor- 
 tant part in this circumstance.'^ Verily, with 
 such historical criticism as this, we could disprove 
 the occurrence of the facts of yesterday! Be- 
 cause there are no 'opposing documents,' it can 
 never be ascertained whether his body was taken 
 away, or whether the enthusiasm of his followers 
 did not create the story of his resurrection ! What 
 a canon of criticism have we here ! Whatever 
 statement in history is unopposed by any docu- 
 ment must be doubted, and the truth about it 
 can never be ascertained. Must we then hold 
 also, that the most disputed things are those of 
 which we have most certainty? and if so, must 
 we not write history by the rule of contrary, put- 
 ting the uncontradicted for the false, and the dis- 
 puted for the true? Truly, when witnesses are 
 consentaneous, it is an easy way of disposing of 
 their evidence to say, that because there is no 
 
 ^ Life ofJesus^ English Translation as before, p. 296. 
 
70 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 opposing statement, the real state of the case 
 cannot be discovered. 
 
 Besides, on what principle is the New Testa- 
 ment record accepted for some parts of the story 
 and rejected for others? We cannot allow M. 
 Eenan thus to trample under foot the laws of 
 historic evidence; and we insist that if the Gos- 
 pels be accepted on such matters as he receives, 
 they be regarded also as at least credible state- 
 ments of what the mtnesses themselves have said 
 on other points. Now, we find that not ^the 
 imagination of Mary Magdalene' only, but the 
 sober sense of John and Peter, the observation of 
 the ten apostles in the upper room, and the very 
 scepticism of Thomas which was so thoroughly 
 removed, all go together to establish the fact of 
 the Saviour's reappearance. Nor was it only an 
 impression of weeks ; for Paul, writing at least 
 thirty years after the event, could say, ' He was 
 seen of about five hundred brethren at once, 
 of whom the greater part remain unto this pre- 
 sent, but some have fallen asleep ; last of all, he 
 was seen of me also.' ^ Here, then, we have a 
 
 ' 1 Cor. XV. 6, 8. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 71 
 
 miracle which took the disciples by surprise, and 
 was performed as nearly as possible under scien- 
 tific conditions. All that is needed to complete 
 Eenan's requirements is its repetition again and 
 again ; but as the resurrection of Christ was itself 
 the fourth miracle of the kind which Jesus 
 wrought, each one ascending above the other in 
 regular gradation up to this last and crowning 
 one, we may hold that even that is satisfied, and 
 press him to the admission of his two conclusions : 
 first, that supernatural events happen in the world ; 
 and second, that the power of producing them be- 
 longs or is delegated to certain persons. Without 
 waiting for any ^ new order of things to prevail,' ^ 
 therefore, we insist on it that he abandon the 
 principle that a supernatural event cannot be ad- 
 mitted as such, but always implies either credulity 
 or imposture ; and over against his treatment of 
 the miracles and resurrection of Christ, we take 
 
 1 We cannot see, indeed, how Kenan needs tliiis to qualify his 
 words, for on his principle how is a ' new order of things ' to be 
 introduced ? how are men to prove it when it comes ? and how, 
 without credulity, is it to be acknowledged as real ? The phrase, 
 however, is valuable, as revealing that in a moment of unconscious- 
 ness even he returns to the common modes of expression, and the 
 recognition of the truths that lie beneath them. 
 
72 CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 
 
 leave to place the statement of one of whose 
 name and fame England is justly proud, and 
 who is entitled in this department to be heard 
 with deference. Dr Arnold of Rugby, in one of 
 those sermons to the ' boys ' which are so full of 
 manliness and true Christian nobleness, has said : 
 ' The evidence of our Lord's life and death and re- 
 surrection may be, and often has been, shown to be 
 satisfactory ; it is good according to the common 
 rules for distinguishing good evidence from bad. 
 Thousands and tens of thousands of persons have 
 gone through it piece by piece as carefully as ever 
 judge summed up on a most important cause. I 
 have myself done it many times over, not to per- 
 suade others, but to satisfy myself. I have been 
 used for many years to study the history of other 
 times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of 
 those who have written about them, and / know 
 of no one fact in the history of mankind which is 
 proved hy better and fuller evidence of every sort, to 
 the understanding of a fair inquirer ^ than the great 
 sign ivhich God hath given us that Christ died and 
 rose again from the dead^ ^ 
 
 1 Sermons on Christian Life^ pp. 15, 16. 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 Having removed the barriers which some have 
 attempted to place in the way even of an investi- 
 gation of the miracles of the New Testament, we 
 are now prepared to consider the evidence by 
 which they are attested. For this purpose we 
 must betake ourselves to the gospel narratives 
 themselves ; nor let any one imagine that in doing 
 so we are pursuing a course which is unwarranted 
 or illogical. We are not now taking for granted 
 the divine authority of these documents : we 
 are, as in the outset we were careful to show, 
 examining their credibility ; and in settling that, 
 it is indispensable that we look to the state- 
 ments which they contain. These books are, to 
 use a common expression, the depositions of the 
 witnesses; and as in a court of justice it is im- 
 possible to judge of the credibility of those who 
 
74 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 give evidence apart from the evidence they give, 
 so we cannot hope to arrive at any right conclusion 
 as to the worth of this testimony without examin- 
 ing it ; only let it be understood that we view it 
 now as an ordinary deposition, and not yet as a 
 supernatural production. 
 
 I. THE TESTIMONY OF THE LORD JESUS HIMSELF. 
 
 Bearing these things in mind, then, we find in 
 the Gospels passages which undoubtedly affirm 
 that the Lord Jesus Christ himself claimed to be 
 a worker of miracles. Now, we may very fairly 
 and honestly ask, whether such an one, as all 
 through these narratives he is represented as being, 
 would make this claim if it were ill-founded and 
 untrue. We have it here asserted, that when 
 the disciples of John the Baptist came in their 
 master's name to ask, ^ Art thou he that should 
 come, or do we look for another?' Jesus answered, 
 ' Go and show John again those things which ye 
 do hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and 
 the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the 
 
 * Matt. xi. 5, 6. 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 75 
 
 deaf hear ; the dead are raised to life, and the poor 
 have the gospel preached to them.' Again, to the 
 Jews he said/ ' I have greater witness than that 
 of John: for the works which the Father hath 
 given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear 
 witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.' 
 And on another occasion he expressed himself 
 thus : ^ ' If I do not the works of my Father, 
 believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe 
 not me, believe the works ; that ye may know and 
 believe that the Father is in me, and I in him.' 
 Here, then, is a plain, open, and repeated affirma- 
 tion on the part of Jesus himself that he wrought 
 miracles ; and the question is. Can we believe 
 him ? If we cannot, then we must regard him as 
 having been either an impostor, who made a claim 
 which he knew to be false ; or a visionary enthu- 
 siast, arrogating to himself a power which he 
 really had not, but which he honestly believed 
 that he possessed. 
 
 Let us first ask. Was he an impostor? Those 
 who answer this question in the affirmative com- 
 monly allege, that as the Messiah was expected 
 
 1 John V. 36. 2 joiin x. 37, 38. 
 
76 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 to work miracles, it was quite to be supposed that 
 Jesus, in laying claim to that office, should make 
 pretensions to the supernatural. He could not 
 have hoped, as they affirm, to have succeeded 
 without conforming in this respect to the require- 
 ments of the people ; and therefore, whether or 
 not it entered into his original design, he was in a 
 manner forced to assume the character of a worker 
 of miracles. Now, waiving the consideration that 
 this view makes of very little account the discern- 
 ment and sagacity of the people of Judea, who, 
 so far as we know, were just as able to detect 
 any trickery of the sort that is impKed as we 
 are, we find it inconceivable that Jesus should 
 have made false pretensions in this matter in 
 order to secure the favour of the people, while in 
 other respects he ran directly counter to their 
 most cherished prepossessions. It is well known 
 to every student, that in the time of Christ the 
 Jewish ideal of what their Messiah was to be was 
 entirely different from what Jesus was. They 
 expected him to be a temporal prince, and hoped 
 that he would work out for them a great deUver- 
 ance from that foreign dominion under which 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 77 
 
 they felt so humiliated. Looking now at the 
 prophecies, in the light of what we believe to be 
 their fulfilment^ we are surprised that they should 
 have formed such a one-sided and partial notion 
 of the person and work of their Messiah ; never- 
 theless the fact is undeniable. Even the disciples 
 of Jesus themselves were found nursing to the 
 very last this fond anticipation, and repeatedly 
 the same view is expressed by the common people 
 in their intercourse with him. On one occasion, 
 indeed, there seemed nothing wanting on his part 
 to secure the universal favour of the multitude 
 but the proclamation of his earthly royalty. Still 
 he refused to yield, and because he would not 
 be the king they wanted, many went back, and 
 walked no more with him.^ Here, then, is an 
 inconsistency which, on the ground taken up by 
 those who affect to believe that Jesus claimed to 
 be a miracle-worker in order to pander to the 
 prejudices of the multitude, cannot be explained 
 away.^ If he yielded to them on the one point, 
 
 ^ Jolin vi. 15, 66. 
 
 2 Eenan's account of this transaction is : ' One day, it is said, the 
 simple men of Galilee wished to carry him away, and make him 
 king ; but Jesus fled into the mountain, and remained there some 
 
To EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 why not also on the other ? and if he refused to 
 conform to the prepossessions of the people at a 
 time when his yielding was all that was needed to 
 float him to success, is it conceivable that, in the 
 matter of the miracles, he should have made a 
 claim which he knew to be false, simply with the 
 view of suiting himself to the ideas of the multi- 
 tude ? ' Who live to please, must please to live,' 
 is a principle on which all impostors have acted ; 
 and had there been nothing better in Jesus than 
 the mere adroitness of a deceiver, he would un- 
 doubtedly have yielded to the pressure of the 
 populace, and raised the standard of a new royalty 
 in the land. But that he so solemnly and steadily 
 refused their importunity on this head, clearly 
 shows that he had some nobler principle to guide 
 him than the love of popular applause, and makes 
 
 time alone. His noble nature preserved him from the error which 
 would have made him an agitator, or a chief of rebels, a Theudas, 
 or a Barkokeba ' (p. 108). But if his noble nature kept him from this 
 error, would it not have kept him also from that of pretending to 
 have a power which he really had not ? We doubt, however, if 
 M. Eenan can see the moral obliquity which such a course would 
 imply, at least his work is full of expressions that indicate a low 
 standard of rectitude ; for instance, he says (p. 91), ' To conceive 
 the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed 
 amongst men. To accomplish this, less pure paths must be fol- 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 79 
 
 untenable the view of those who hold that he 
 was in a manner forced to pretend to work 
 miracles, in order to secure the favour of the 
 common people. He was no more compelled 
 to do that than he was to yield to their m^gent 
 entreaties in the matter of the kingdom ; and 
 that he refused in this latter case, is a proof 
 that, in regard to the miracles, there was some 
 higher aim before him than the pleasing of the 
 populace. 
 
 But apart from this, the idea that Jesus was an 
 impostor is beset with moral difficulties that are 
 absolutely insuperable. For the record that con- 
 tains his claim to the possession of supernatural 
 power, gives us at the same time such a descrip- 
 tion of his moral nature as is utterly inconsistent 
 with the supposition that he could knowingly 
 speak that which was false. Consider the attri- 
 
 lowed.' Again : ' Sometimes Jesus employed an innocent artifice (the 
 italics are ours) which Joan of Arc also used ; he affected to know- 
 something intimate respecting him whom he wished to gain, or he 
 would perhaps recall to him some circumstance dear to his heart ' 
 (p. 133). And 3''et once more : ' Nothing great has been established 
 which does not rest on a legend. The only culprit in such cases is 
 the humanity which is willing to be deceived ' (p. 187). All this 
 reveals too sadly that Renan has not yet outgrown his early train- 
 ing in the casuistry of the Jesuits. 
 
80 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 butes of character by which he was distinguished. 
 His meekness and humility were only equalled 
 by his honesty and benevolence. There was 
 about him a conscientious thoroughness which 
 was carried out at every sacrifice; and so far 
 from having that love of ostentation which might 
 have been expected in a deceiver, there was 
 rather the disposition to check the impulsive 
 ardour of those who wished to blaze abroad the 
 glory of his power. His Sermon on the Mount 
 evinces that, above and beyond all other things 
 in religion, he delighted in ' truth in the inward 
 parts,' and held in utter abhorrence that cold and 
 hollow ritualism which is content with ' the form 
 of godliness while denying its power.' Never 
 Avas there such an equipoise of moral attri- 
 butes as we find in him. To an all-embracing 
 love, he joined a sternness of principle which 
 exposed wrong wherever he found it, and in- 
 sisted on faithfulness even in that which is least. 
 With the humility of a child, there was com- 
 bined in him the sublime self-consciousness of 
 the divine I AM; and with the tenderness of 
 woman there was associated the courage of a 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 81 
 
 hero ; yea, in him every moral quality resided in 
 its normal state, no one shading or eclipsing 
 another. Before the portrait which these evan- 
 gelists have painted, men of every age have stood 
 in rooted admiration ; and even among those who, 
 as we think, blasphemously deny him divinity, 
 he is held in estimation as the noblest of men. 
 For centuries his life has been the object of the 
 keenest investigation : ^ through all this tract of 
 years ' men have looked at him 
 
 ' In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, 
 And blackens every blot ; ' 
 
 but still they have seen in him, and that too in a 
 far higher sense than the poet has employed the 
 words, only 
 
 ' The white flower of a blameless life.'^ 
 
 As one has very correctly put it, ' No character 
 known to history has been subjected to scrutiny 
 so piercing as that of Jesus Christ ; and there is 
 no character known to history except his, of which 
 moral perfection could for a moment be main- 
 tained. It is beyond doubt that no being has yet 
 appeared in human form, whom the suffrage of 
 
 ^ Tennyson. 
 F 
 
82 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 the race has pronounced so pure, so holy, as Jesus 
 Christ.' ^ From the very spotlessness of the 
 picture, an argument as forcible as it is eloquent 
 has been drawn by a powerful thinker,^ for the 
 divinity of the original ; but for the present we 
 put the matter thus, — Is it likely, is it conceivable, 
 is it morally j^ossible, that such a man should 
 deliberately and habitually make a claim which, 
 as an impostor, he knew to be false ? Look at 
 his honesty in other things, and consider if it be 
 in harmony with his character that he should be 
 dishonest in this. He never enticed a man to 
 follow him by false pretences ; he never sought to 
 gain adherents by dazzling their eyes with bright 
 Adsions of unbroken ease. He said, ' If any man 
 will come after me, let him deny himself, and take 
 up his cross daily and follow me.'^ He desired 
 those who came to him to ' count the cost ' * when 
 they attached themselves to him, lest, meeting un- 
 expected difficulties, they should be discouraged 
 
 1 Bayne's Testimony of Christ to Christianity^ pp. 67, 68. 
 
 2 Bushnell's Nature and the Supernatural^ chap. x. p. 213. The 
 chapter has been published separately, and is one of the noblest 
 expositions of the character of our Lord, and of the evidence 
 afforded by it to his divinity, which our language contains. 
 
 3 Luke ix. 23. * Luke xiv. 27-30. 
 
EVIDENCE m BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 83 
 
 and turn back. Now, if he was thus frank, fair, 
 and candid in this matter, is it consistent with pro- 
 bability to suppose that he was deceitful in regard 
 to the miracles ? Verily, if he were a deceiver, 
 instead of being ranked with the noblest of men, 
 he must be numbered with the basest of mankind ; 
 for he knew the right and the true far better than 
 others whose sayings have been recorded and pre- 
 served, and the deception being that of one with 
 the clearest moral perceptions, must be charac- 
 terized as the most aggravated of iniquities. If 
 the claims he made were untrue, then in making 
 them he was sinning against the brightest light, 
 and at the same time trifling with the most sacred 
 interests of humanity. Thus the miracles and 
 the moral character of Jesus must stand or fall 
 together. If they were true, then still may we 
 gaze in love and admiration on that spotless one, 
 and feel that in worshipping him we are guilty of 
 no idolatry ; but if they were false, and his claim 
 to work them a lie, then must we turn away from 
 him in execration, hating even his apparent moral 
 excellence, as being but the garment of light 
 wherein another Satan has arrayed himself. To 
 
 I 
 
84 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 this issue we fearlessly put the case : if we accept 
 the common view of the character of Jesus, we 
 are shut up to receive his miracles; if we deny 
 his miracles, and look upon him as an impostor in 
 pretending to work them, we are equally obliged 
 to deny to him that exalted purity with which 
 his name has been commonly associated. There 
 is no middle course. Some, indeed, appear to 
 imagine that it is possible for them to let the 
 miracles go, while yet they keep what they are 
 pleased to call the spirit of Jesus. But of what 
 sort is that spirit that can deliberately and habi- 
 tually lie, while yet it has the clearest perception 
 of the right and the true ? And is it worth the 
 keeping? Those are the questions which these 
 loose thinkers have to consider, — for Jesus is 
 himself the ' leading ' witness to the truth of his 
 miracles, and if they repudiate them they cannot 
 receive or retain his spirit ; since, as Bushnell has 
 excellently said, ' that spirit unabridged is itself 
 the grand miracle of Christianity, about which 
 all the others play, as scintillations only of the 
 central fire.'^ To suppose, therefore, that he 
 
 * Nature and the Szipematural, p. 284. 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 85 
 
 could be an impostor, is as inconsistent with the 
 spirit which he breathed as it is with the character 
 which he bore.^ 
 
 But there remains yet this question to be asked 
 concerning Jesus ; namely, Was he a visionary 
 enthusiast,* believing himself to possess a power 
 which he really had not ? Now here it must be 
 conceded that many such individuals have appeared 
 at different times on the world's stage ; but of 
 them all it may be affirmed, either that they were 
 signally deficient in intellectual balance, or that 
 they were wanting in moral principle, or that both 
 of these privations were combined in them. We 
 have seen, however, that Jesus cannot be said to 
 have been deceitful or immoral;^ we have now 
 therefore to ask whether there was about him any 
 such mental peculiarity as to render it probable 
 
 1 The moral incongruities incidental to the view we have been 
 exposing are well illustrated by the manner in which Eenan deals 
 with the character of Jesus, for an exposure of which by the hand 
 of a master see Appendix C. 
 
 2 On this point Mr Bayne very justly says: 'It is a notable 
 fact that honest and manly characters, though inflamed in the 
 highest degree with religious enthusiasm, have not been betrayed 
 into the fancy that they possessed miraculous power. Mohammed 
 lived in a barbarous age, among a barbarous people, and announced 
 himself as the prophet of God, commissioned to overturn the 
 religious institutions of his nation. He was a vehement enthu- 
 
86 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 or conceivable that he should foolishly believe 
 himself to be what he really was not. It would, 
 however, be out of place in a condensed argument 
 like this, to enter upon an exhaustive analysis 
 of the intellectual powers of Jesus, as these are 
 brought out before us in the gospel narratives; 
 we may simply say, that no one can read these 
 records without feeling that the mind of Christ 
 was pre-eminently a healthy one, and that his 
 intellect was admirably balanced. There is no 
 morbid exaggeration of any faculty to the detri- 
 ment of the rest ; the speculative does not destroy 
 the practical, neither does the practical interfere 
 with the speculative. His mind, as it is here pre- 
 sented to us, is full-orbed and complete. In other 
 men we must discover that, no matter how great 
 they are in some respects, they are signally de- 
 
 siast; his imagination luxuriated in descriptions of the bliss of 
 Paradise; his words, compared with those of Christ, are as the 
 wild flashings of a torch to the serene and steady burning of a 
 lamp. But Mohammed was never deluded into the belief that he 
 could work miracles. He expressly declared that he could not. 
 A striking illustration of the fact on which I insist is furnished by 
 the biography of Edward Irving. His mind was violently heated 
 by enthusiasm. He believed implicitly in the visions and revela- 
 tions of the enthusiasts by whom he was surrounded. But he was 
 an upright man. Even in his aberrations he was a powerfully- 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 87 
 
 ficient in others ; but in Jesus we have ' the vision 
 and the faculty divine ' by which the poet is dis- 
 tinguished, and along with that the philosophic 
 faculty in the highest development, while at the 
 same time we have the sagacity and shrewd com- 
 mon sense of a practical man of the world. There 
 is in him thus a wonderful ^harmony of opposites/ 
 and we cannot peruse the account of his treatment 
 of the different classes of men with whom he 
 came into contact, without having the conviction 
 forced upon us that this is no crazy fanatic or 
 hair-brained enthusiast. In point of intellectual 
 ability he must be placed above Zeno, or Socrates, 
 or Plato, or Aristotle ; and in the matter of 
 practical wisdom there is not one of them who 
 may be even compared with him. He is as far 
 removed as possible from the mere one-sided 
 
 minded man. The result was, that, while wondering that privi- 
 leges were not vouchsafed to him similar to those of the persons 
 in whom he believed, he never imagined that he was supernatu- 
 rally gifted or visited. It has been proved that Christ was morally 
 sound. It has been shown that even infidels recoil from the 
 startling impossibility of his perpetrating a trick. Was his enthu- 
 siasm then so uncontrollable, or his intellectual faculty so weak, 
 that he was beguiled into delusions from which common sense 
 guarded Mohammed and Edward Irving?' — Testimony of Christ, 
 etc.^ pp. 77, 78. 
 
88 EVIDENCE m BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 man ; he looks all round every subject, and sees 
 with unerring precision and at once the principle 
 by which it is to be settled. He is not carried 
 away by impulse or caprice ; but his emotions rise 
 out of his judgment, and are as sound as their 
 source. Even those who cavil at his system, and 
 refuse to receive it entire, are forward to confess 
 all this. Kenan himself has said, ' that his ad- 
 mirable good sense guided him with marvellous 
 certainty;'^ that ^his leading quality was an infinite 
 delicacy,'^ and that ^he laid with rare forethought 
 the foundations of a church destined to endure.' ^ 
 Now we may safely ask if such a man, judging 
 him at present by no higher than a human stan- 
 dard, w as likely to become a cracked enthusiast, 
 believing himself to have a power which he did 
 not possess ? Recollect that the deposition which 
 declares that he professed to work miracles, de- 
 clares also that he 'possessed the most clear, 
 balanced, serene, and comprehensive intellect 
 known to history ;' ^ and then the dilemma appears 
 as before. Either we must receive this description 
 
 • Life of Jesus, as above, p. 108. ^ Ihid. p. 209. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 207. ■* Bayne, p. 79. 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 89 
 
 of his intellectual character, and with it receive 
 his miracles ; or if we" hold, that though his 
 miracles were false he sincerely believed he could 
 work them, then we must reject the account 
 which has been given us of his mental greatness. 
 But it is absolutely inconceivable, that such a 
 man should have been so egregiously silly, as to 
 believe himself a miracle-worker when he was 
 nothing of the kind. To suppose such a mental 
 incongruity is to do violence to human nature, 
 and requires us to believe that which would be a 
 psychological impossibility. To all this it falls to 
 be added, that Jesus sealed his testimony with his 
 blood, and went calmly and heroically to the 
 cross, not viewing it as an unexpected termination 
 of his career, but rather regarding it as the great 
 sacrifice of his priestly office, and submitting to it 
 in such a way as to be quite incongruous with the 
 idea that he was a deceiver, and absolutely incon- 
 sistent with the notion that he was himself the 
 victim of a mental hallucination. Let all this be 
 taken candidly and dispassionately into account, 
 and then say if there be anything in this testi- 
 mony which warrants us to reject it. But the 
 
90 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 history which contains the claim of Jesus to work 
 miracleSj contains also this description of himself ; 
 so that the choice lies between rejecting the 
 miraclesj and with them the whole story of the 
 love and life and death of Jesus, and receiving 
 them both. Here w^e might leave the whole 
 matter, sure what the verdict of a thoughtful man 
 must be, for the Jesus of the Gospels will not 
 lightly be let go by any one who loves the true, 
 the beautiful, and the good; and we may conclude 
 this section in the eloquent words of Bushnell : 
 ' If the miracles, if revelation itself, cannot stand 
 upon the superhuman character of Christ, then 
 let it fall. If that character does not contain 
 all truth, and centralize all truth in itself, then 
 let there be no truth ; if there is anything not 
 worthy of belief found in this, we may well con- 
 sent to live and die without it. Before this 
 sovereign light, streaming out from God, the 
 deep questions, and dark surmises and doubts 
 unresolved, which make a night so gloomy and 
 terrible about us, hurry away to their native 
 abyss. God who commanded the light to shine 
 out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 91 
 
 US the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
 in the face of Jesus Christ. This it is that has 
 conquered the assaults of doubt and false learning 
 in all past ages, and will in all ages to come. No 
 argument against the sun will drive it from the 
 sky. No mole-eyed scepticism, dazzled by its 
 brightness^ can turn away the shining it refuses 
 to look upon. And they who long after God will 
 be ever turning their eyes thitherward, and either 
 with reason or without reason, or if need be 
 against manifold impediments of reason, will see 
 and believe.' ^ 
 
 II. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES AND OTHER 
 WITNESSES. 
 
 In considering the evidence given by the 
 apostles and early disciples of Jesus to the reality 
 of his miracles, there are two preliminary circum- 
 stances which require to be taken into account. 
 
 1 Nature and the Supernatural^ p. 285. I cannot pass from this 
 part of tlie argument which I am prosecuting, without saying 
 how deeply I have been indebted here, as indeed throughout, to 
 the able work of Mr Peter Bayne. The reader who desires to see 
 more fully and elaborately treated the value of Christ's testimony 
 to his miracles, is referred to the book itself, where he will find 
 reasoning both clear and cogent, expressed in a style of the most 
 
92 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 1. They had perfect opportunities for investigating 
 the wondrous works to which they gave testimony. 
 The miracles of Jesus were not wrought in secret ; 
 they were not ' done in a corner/ neither did they 
 require darkness for their performance ; but they 
 were wrought in open day, before enemies and 
 friends ahke, and the fullest opportunity of expos- 
 ing them, if they were forgeries, was given to the 
 world. On one or two occasions, indeed, none 
 but the three favoured disciples were present ; 
 but even then we have every word established in 
 the mouth of two or three witnesses ; and at all 
 other times there was the most open and undis- 
 guised procedure. The daughter of Jairus was 
 raised to life, in spite of the mocking scorn of 
 those who were perfectly convinced that she was 
 dead ; and though the scoffers were excluded 
 from the chamber, the father and the mother of 
 the maiden, and the ^ first three' of the apostles, 
 were present with him at the time. The widow's 
 
 chastened elegance, and illustrated by the figures of a fine fancy, 
 and by facts which evince an extensive acquaintance with the 
 events of history. Ere yet Renan's book had been published, we 
 have here sketched with marvellous accuracy the theory on which 
 his work is constructed, and we are shown how it is to be contro- 
 verted. 
 
EVIDENCE m BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 93 
 
 son was recalled to life at the gate of Nain, the 
 place of public concourse, and in the presence 
 of all who bore the bier and followed it ; and 
 Lazarus was brought out of the sepulchre before 
 a promiscuous assemblage of individuals, who had 
 come from Jerusalem to comfort his sorrowing 
 sisters. So with the rest of his miracles. What 
 could be more public than his feeding of the 
 multitude upon the mountain-side? what more 
 unconcealed than his healing of the blind man at 
 the gate of Jericho ? Nor must it be alleged that 
 all these things were done only before his friends, 
 who were willing to believe anything about him ; 
 for even at the raising of Lazarus there were 
 some present, who, while unable to deny the 
 miracle, were yet so full of enmity toward him, 
 that they went and told the Pharisees ; and when 
 the blind man was healed at the gate of the 
 temple, there was a judicial investigation into 
 the case by the rulers of the people. Let any one 
 read the ninth chapter of John's Gospel, and he 
 will be able to judge whether it is likely that the 
 men who could use such means as the rulers em- 
 ployed on that occasion, and were filled with such 
 
94 EVIDENCE m BEHALF OF MIKACLES. 
 
 bitter hatred toward Jesus as then they mani- 
 fested, would leave his other miracles unsifted. 
 Whatever else may be said, therefore, about the 
 miraculous works of Jesus, it cannot with truth 
 be alleged that they were done in secret, or 
 that no proper opportunity of inquiring into them 
 was furnished to the world. Now, this is of the 
 greatest importance from its bearing on the value 
 of the testimony given by his followers. For 
 here we have a strong contrast between Jesus and 
 all who have pretended to the possession of super- 
 natural power. The gold plates of which Joseph 
 Smith made so much account could not be shown 
 to Michael Harris,^ and they have never yet been 
 brought before the gaze of men in public; and 
 even while we write, the land is ringing with the 
 exposure — certainly more vigorous than polite — 
 of those who claimed to do the old rope trick 
 of the conjuror by preternatural agency, while 
 they secretly ensconced themselves behind a 
 closed ' cabinet.' We feel as if it were almost a 
 degradation of our theme to name it in the same 
 
 1 See The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints. London, 1852. 
 P. 22. 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 95 
 
 breath with these ; but still the very contrast will 
 be sufficient to impress on every unprejudiced 
 man, that in the open candour and undisguised 
 publicity with which the miracles of Christ were 
 wrought, there was the fullest opportunity for 
 investigation, so that no one can object to the 
 evidence of his disciples, on the ground that they 
 were denied the means of examining into the 
 character of the works of their Master. 
 • 2. They were competent to judge of them, — On 
 this point we have already remarked, when reply- 
 ing to Eenan's demand for miracles under ' scien- 
 tific conditions,' and it may be sufficient simply to 
 remind our readers of what we then advanced. 
 Had the works of Jesus been performed on sub- 
 stances with which the disciples were not familiar ; 
 had they borne any resemblance to the experi- 
 ments of the laboratory; or had he in working 
 them used any material agent with whose pro- 
 perties they were not perfectly acquainted, — then 
 their testimony, however valuable it might have 
 been in establishing the fact that Christ did the 
 wonders, would yet have been insufficient to prove 
 that these wonders were true miracles. But in- 
 
 r 
 
96 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 stead of tliis he employs means which are perfectly 
 within the sphere of their knowledge, and pro- 
 duces effects entirely beyond anything which these 
 means themselves would accomplish, so that the 
 proof of a miracle is plain and conclusive. Thus, 
 every man knows quite well what a human touch 
 can do, and what is beyond its power. It does 
 not require a college of philosophers to inform us 
 on that matter, for here one man knows quite as 
 much as another ; but Jesus by a touch cleansed 
 the leper, opened the eyes of the blind, and un- 
 stopped the ears of the deaf ; and hence, when he 
 did so, there is a miracle, on which every man of 
 ordinary discernment is competent to pronounce 
 an opinion. So also we know as much of the 
 properties of earth and the human saliva, as to 
 convince us that, in itself considered, the clay 
 formed by the mixture of the two will be in ordi- 
 nary circumstances useless as an eye-salve. No 
 medical man, with the least hope of success, would 
 ever employ such a remedy ; yet in the case of a 
 man born blind, and well known in the neigh- 
 bourhood, we have the anointing of his eyes with 
 this preparation, and the washing of it off in a 
 
EVIDENCE m BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 97 
 
 certain pool, the means of producing a perfect 
 cure. Let these facts, as simple facts, be but 
 well authenticated, and one man is just as good a 
 judge as another of their miraculous character. 
 But to authenticate them we do not require any 
 more than the average intelligence and common 
 sense of men ; so that we must not reject the testi- 
 mony of the disciples, on the allegation that they 
 were incompetent to examine the miracles, and 
 pronounce upon them. 
 
 Now, that the disciples do give testimony to 
 these facts, is patent to every one who reads their 
 narratives. This is, indeed, the reason why very- 
 many reject their writings ; but on what ground 
 is this rejection based? If we cannot believe 
 them, then in their case, as in their Master's, we 
 have a choice between these two alternatives, — 
 either they were the victims of their own credulity, 
 or they were themselves practising on the credulity 
 of others. In plain Saxon phrase, they were either 
 fools or knaves, if they were not trustworthy 
 witnesses. 
 
 Can they reasonably be supposed to have been 
 
 the victims of their own credulity? We have 
 G 
 
98 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 seen that no secrecy was attempted by Jesus^ 
 and that the works themselves were wrought 
 in the plane of their knowledge, and therefore 
 that they were thoroughly competent to judge 
 regarding them, — as much so, indeed, as any 
 common jury among ourselves is to deal with the 
 evidence which is generally submitted to them. 
 Now, with these preliminaries conceded, — and I 
 see not 'how they can be denied, — ^it follows that 
 if the disciples were deceived, they must have been 
 the veriest simpletons. But does this accord with 
 the description that is given of their mental en- 
 dowments ? We grant, indeed, that the majority 
 of them were plain, blunt men, of little educa- 
 tion, and with no great social position ; but we 
 cannot harmonize their character in other re- 
 spects with the idea that they were such imbeciles 
 as to be easily duped by the pretences of an 
 impostor. They had practical sagacity of the 
 soundest kind ; and, as their writings show, they 
 were possessed of intellectual ability of no mean 
 order. Take Peter, for example, and what force 
 of character appears in him ! Read his Epistles, 
 and you will be struck with the wisdom of his 
 
EVIDENCE m BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 99 
 
 counsels and the tlioughtfulness of his words; and 
 as you peruse the opening chapters of the Acts of 
 the ApostleSj you will not be able to help admiring 
 the earnestnessj the acuteness, the power of debate, 
 and skill in the management of difficult matters 
 which he displays. Plainly this is not the type of 
 a man who is easily imposed upon. Let him be 
 what he may, he is no fool. There is about him 
 soundness of judgment and clearness of intellec- 
 tual perception, coupled with an outspoken honesty 
 of nature which would have revolted against any- 
 thing like systematic fraud. True, he denied his 
 Lord in the palace of the high priest ; but that was 
 under pressure of momentary temptation, and was 
 out of keeping with his entire life, while the bitter- 
 ness of his after weeping, and the character of his 
 subsequent life, betoken how deeply he repented 
 of his sin. Now this man gives no uncertain tes- 
 timony on the point before us. Again and again 
 he appeals to the miracles which Jesus did before 
 the multitude, and declares that he was ^ a man ap- 
 proved of God among them by miracles, and signs, 
 and wonders, which God did by him in the midst 
 of them.' Nor is this all ; when writing in his old 
 
100 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 age a letter, which might be valued by men after 
 his decease, he reiterates his assertion, saying, 
 ^ We have not followed cunningly devised fables, 
 but were eye-witnesses of his majesty.' Now, we 
 ask, is it likely that a man of this mould could be 
 so imposed upon by a pretender, that he should 
 thus adhere so pertinaciously to the witness which 
 he gives ? 
 
 But there were others among the disciples with 
 distinctive characteristics as inconsistent with the 
 supposition that they were deceived as any which 
 Peter possessed. What shall we say of such an 
 one as Thomas? Here was a man who would 
 accept of no testimony save that of his own 
 senses, and who would sift for himself every 
 matter to the bottom. Whatever others might 
 be disposed to do, he would not receive anything 
 save on his own personal experience ; yet even he 
 was satisfied, and constrained to cry out, ^My 
 Lord, and my God ! ' 
 
 There was Philip too, who, as is evident from 
 his interruption of the valedictory discourse, ^ Lord, 
 show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,' ^ had very 
 
 ' John xiv. 8. 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OiE^ MIRACLES. iOx 
 
 much in common with Thomas, and was possessed 
 of an inquisitive mind, not easily satisfied, and not 
 wiUing to rest in that which he did not clearly 
 comprehend. 
 
 There was also the author of the fourth Gos- 
 pel, who was very far from being intellectually 
 incapable ; so far, indeed, that the record he has 
 given taxes the highest minds of our age to 
 understand it, for all so simple as at first it 
 looks. No one can thoughtfully read his pages 
 without seeing the stamp of reality on every one 
 of them, and feeling that he spoke no words of 
 course, but the plain unvarnished truth, when he 
 said,^ ' That which we have seen with our eyes, 
 which we have looked upon, and our hands have 
 handled, of the Word of life ; that which we 
 have seen and heard, declare we unto you.' 
 
 Of the other apostles and disciples (with the 
 exception of Paul, who comes behind as one ^born 
 out of due time '), there are too few personal traits 
 given us to enable us to speak with precision re- 
 garding them ; but surely, concerning those to 
 whom we have referred, there is no plausible 
 
 1 1 John i. 1, 3. 
 
102 E'YII>EK^GS' IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 ground for maintaining the idea that they were 
 deluded simpletons, the victims of a designing im- 
 postor. Take their intellectual ability as evinced 
 not only in their writings, but in the effects pro- 
 duced by them upon their age, and then view, 
 in connection with it, the considerations already 
 presented as to the opportunities afforded them 
 for investigation, and the knowledge required to 
 enable them to come to a decision on the subject, 
 and we arrive at but one conclusion, — namely, 
 that these men cannot be viewed as the blindly 
 credulous followers of one by whom they were 
 cunningly deluded. 
 
 There remains the other horn of the dilemma, 
 Were they themselves deceivers ? Now here, 
 as in the case of their Master, there are moral 
 considerations which render it utterly impossible 
 for us to think them guilty of such baseness. 
 In the first place, there is the uniform good 
 character w^hich they bore. Even their enemies 
 give testimony to the rectitude and blameless- 
 ness of their lives. They stood out from among 
 those by whom they were surrounded, as men 
 of truth and purity and excellence. They were 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 103 
 
 not brought before the judges for ' matters of 
 wrong or wicked lewdness ;' they were shnple 
 in manners, pure in speech, holy in behaviour, 
 and there was found ^no occasion against them, 
 except it were in the matter ' of their Lord. The 
 well-known letter of Pliny to the Emperor Trajan 
 gives an account of the mode of life of the early 
 Christians generally, but of these excellent ones 
 the apostles were the leaders and the best ; and if 
 they were impostors, we are asked to believe that 
 a system which even its enemies declare to be the 
 purest the world has ever seen, was founded, and 
 conduct which even their persecutors declared 
 to be irreproachable, was practised by men who 
 yet were systematically and deliberately living a 
 lie. We have no words strong enough to express 
 the revulsion with which we would turn from such 
 a man as Peter, if, after his exposure of the sin of 
 Ananias, such a course could be pursued by him. 
 But it cannot be : the prickly thistle of deceit 
 never yet produced the mellow berries and rich 
 grape clusters of the vine, and never from such a 
 lying root could the fair tree of gospel morality 
 have sprung. 
 
104 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 Besides, what conceivable motive could tliev 
 have had for persevering in this course of decep- 
 tion? From the time of Pentecost forward, all 
 their ideas of earthly glory were abandoned, 
 and they became convinced that the kingdom of 
 Jesus was ^not of this world;' yet from that 
 same date their testimony was of the clearest 
 and most unwavering character. Not riches, 
 nor honour, nor power, nor glory, in a worldly 
 sense, could they expect; but instead, persecu- 
 tion, reproach, and a violent death. Yet ^none 
 of these things moved them;' but they Hook 
 joyfully the spoiling of their goods,' and 
 ^ counted not their lives dear unto them,' that 
 they might be Christ's witnesses wherever they 
 went. 
 
 Nor is this all : among such a company of de- 
 ceivers, if they were deceivers, it is inconceivable 
 that no one of them should have turned against 
 the rest, and sought his personal safety by bring- 
 ing their trickery to view; yet this was never 
 done. The nearest approach to anything of the 
 kind was in the case of Judas ; but as one has very 
 quaintly said, ^ He was so struck with remorse at 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 105 
 
 the thought of giving up his lies and becoming an 
 honest man, that he went and hanged himself.'^ 
 On the whole, then, we may sum up this part of 
 the argument in the words of Dr Hill : ' The his- 
 tory of mankind has not preserved a testimony so 
 complete and satisfactory as that which I have 
 now stated. If, in conformity to the exhibitions 
 which these writings give of their character, you 
 suppose their testimony to be true, then you can 
 give the most natural account of every part of 
 their conduct — of their conversion, their stedfast- 
 ness, their heroism. But if, notwithstanding 
 every appearance of truth, you suppose their tes- 
 timony to be false, inexplicable circumstances of 
 glaring absurdity crowd upon you. You must 
 suppose that twelve men of mean birth, of no 
 education, living in that humble station which 
 placed ambitious views out of their reach and far 
 from their thoughts, without any aid from the 
 state, formed the noblest scheme that ever entered 
 into the mind of man, adopted the most daring 
 means of executing that scheme, and conducted it 
 with such address as to conceal the imposture 
 
 ^ Lindsay's Lecture, as above, p. 30. 
 
106 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 under the semblance of simplicity and virtue. 
 You must suppose that men guilty of blasphemy 
 and falsehood, united in an attempt the best con- 
 trived, and which has in fact proved the most 
 successful for making the world virtuous ; that 
 they formed this singular enterprise without seek- 
 ing any advantage to themselves, with an avowed 
 contempt of honour and profit, and with the cer- 
 tain expectation of scorn and persecution ; that 
 although conscious of one another's villany, none 
 of them ever thought of providing for his own 
 security by disclosing the fraud ; but that amidst 
 sufferings the most grievous to flesh and blood, 
 they persevered in their conspiracy to cheat the 
 world into piety, honesty, and benevolence.' 
 ' Truly,' adds the Principal, ' they who can 
 swallow such suppositions, have no title to object 
 to miracles.' ^ 
 
 1 Lectures in Divinity^ by the late George Hill, D.D., Principal of 
 St Mary's College, St Andrews, vol. i. pp. 47, 48. 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 107 
 
 III. OBJECTION TO THEIR TESTIMONY ON THE GROUND OF 
 ALLEGED DISCREPANCr BETWEEN THEM. 
 
 In opposition to all this, however, it is alleged by 
 the assailants of the miracles, that the statements 
 of the witnesses do not harmonize, but that in 
 their different accounts there are so many discre- 
 pancies and contradictions as to destroy entirely 
 the value of their testimony. Thoroughly to 
 answer this objection, we would require to take up 
 and examine every case of alleged inconsistency, 
 and show either that it is possible that the 
 accounts may be all correct, despite their apparent 
 antagonism ; or that even if it be impossible for us, 
 with our limited knowledge of the original circum- 
 stances, to explain how they are all in harmony, 
 still there is nothing in the existence of such things 
 to warrant our disbelief of the testimony of the 
 evangelists where they thoroughly agree. To do 
 this, however, would require a bulky volume for 
 itself, since it is well known that an objection may 
 be stated in a line which it would require a disser- 
 tation to remove. We content ourselves, therefore, 
 with referring to the explanations given in our best 
 
108 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 commentaries of the alleged discrepancies, and we 
 merely offer a few general considerations on the 
 whole subject, without seeking to enter into detail. 
 It is to be remembered, then, that a certain 
 degree of diversity is to be expected in four 
 depositions, which profess to be, and which really 
 are, separate and independent of each other. If 
 you enter into a court of law, and take note of 
 the testimony given by different individuals to the 
 same facts, you will not fail to remark that there 
 are characteristic traits in every deposition. Each 
 witness describes what he saw from his own angle 
 of observation, and in minor details each one 
 expresses himself differently from another ; but to 
 the great facts they all, if truthful, bear the most 
 distinct and unequivocal testimony. Now as the 
 evangelists are witnesses of matters of fact, or at 
 least give the statements of those who were wit- 
 nesses, we may expect similar diversity in their 
 narratives if they be independent and distinct. 
 Had they all agreed in every minute phasis of 
 description, their value as distinct witnesses would 
 have been destroyed, and it might have been said 
 that though they were four in name they were in 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 109 
 
 reality but one, each repeating like an echo what 
 the other had said. There are here two possibili- 
 ties : either four narratives alike in everything, 
 and so bearing the marks of collusion and arrange- 
 ment ; or four accounts, as we really have them, 
 with distinctive differences and indications of in- 
 dependence of each other, yet agreeing in the 
 same great and important particulars. Now every 
 one who knows anything of the laws of evidence, 
 will declare that witnesses of the latter character 
 are immensely more valuable and reliable than of 
 the former. Hence the discrepancies, of which so 
 much is made by antagonists, are really unavoid- 
 able, if we would have the best and least sus- 
 picious kind of testimony. It is here as we have 
 seen it on former occasions, the man who is dis- 
 posed to find fault will make a fault however it 
 may be. Give him accounts verbatim et literatim 
 the same, and that will be evidence of designed 
 imposture ; give him accounts differing apparently 
 in some minor respects from each other, while yet 
 agreeing substantially, and that is made a reason 
 why they should not be believed ; but the man of 
 common sense will at once see and admit that 
 
 I 
 
110 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 minor discrepancy is always to be expected when 
 we have different and independent witnesses. 
 
 Again, it must not be forgotten that the depo- 
 sitions here are in writing, and that w^e cannot do 
 with a document precisely as we would with a 
 witness whom we are examining viva voce. There 
 is no doubt a sort of cross-examination made by 
 every good interpreter of Scripture w^hen he sub- 
 mits each separate statement to a rigid analysis, 
 and endeavours to see precisely what it means ; 
 but even this, valuable as it has been in removing 
 the appearance of discrepancy on many occasions, 
 is not for a moment to be compared with the 
 advantage for the elucidation of truth, which is 
 furnished by oral examination in the witness-box. 
 We have frequently embraced the opportunity 
 afforded us in an assize town of spending a few 
 hours in a court of justice, and have seen with no 
 little admiration, how, under the guidance of the 
 judge, and by the acuteness of the counsel on 
 both sides, the whole truth has been gradually 
 evolved. Repeatedly have we heard one witness 
 seem to contradict another far more thoroughly 
 than any one of the evangelists appears to contra- 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. Ill 
 
 vene another, and yet a question has been put by 
 the bar, or the bench, or the jury, the answer to 
 which has brought out some new fact by which 
 harmony has been restored ; or perhaps the for- 
 mer witness has been recalled, and a question put 
 to him which has elicited particulars of which 
 before he had said nothing, and the knowledge of 
 which was all that was needed to explain the 
 difference that had appeared. Now this source 
 of information we cannot have in dealing with 
 the Gospels. Here the record is closed, no new 
 fact can be evolved by cross-examination, and so 
 we are deprived of a great means of throwing 
 light upon the matters in dispute. This is a very 
 important consideration, especially when we take 
 into account the fact, that the great mass of dis- 
 crepancies which have been heaped together by 
 the labours of objectors, consists of such as arise 
 out of our unacquaintance with the whole circum- 
 stances ; and the answers to a question or two, 
 like those to which we have referred, would go 
 very far to settle the whole matter in each case. 
 One whose labours in this field gives him a right 
 to speak with some weight, has said, ' that if we 
 
 I 
 
112 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 knew the real process of the transactions them- 
 selves, that knowledge would enable us to give 
 an account of the diversities of narration and 
 arrangement which the Gospels now present to 
 us.'^ 
 
 Nor must we lose sight of the truth, that with 
 all their appearance of diversity in some details, 
 the gospel writers yet concur in bearing testimony 
 to the great fact that Jesus wrought miracles. 
 About the surroundings of some of them they 
 may seem to vary one from another, but as to the 
 fact that he wrought the miracles they agree ; and 
 in these circumstances any unbiassed mind seeking 
 to give an impartial verdict would at once accept 
 their statement as to the matters in which they 
 are at one, reserving his judgment as to those in 
 regard to which they seem to differ. Let it be 
 observed that we are arguing here, not as to the 
 extent of the inspiration claimed for these narra- 
 tives — that is an after-question : at present we are 
 concerned only with their credibility ; and though 
 it would not, we think, be difficult to answer all 
 the objections which might be brought against the 
 
 * Alford's Greek Testament^ vol. i., Prolegomena, p. 23. 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 113 
 
 plenary theory of inspiration from these apparent 
 inconsistencies, yet we may not encumber our 
 argument now with such considerations. We 
 are deahng simply with their credibility ; and the 
 position which we here take up is, that since we 
 have found that the witnesses agree in certain 
 great and important matters, among which is the 
 fact that Jesus performed miracles, and since 
 we have seen that the men themselves are both 
 morally and intellectually trustworthy, therefore 
 we may fairly hold as proved the things in which 
 they are in perfect harmony, without waiting to 
 determine what is the precise truth as to those 
 things in which they appear, to be at variance. 
 We do not say, observe, that in regard to these 
 last it is in every case impossible precisely to dis- 
 cover what was the true order of occurrences (for 
 in many instances a patient study of the records 
 has led to a solution of the difficulty, though there 
 are others of which all explanation must be mainly 
 conjectural) ; yet even if this were impossible, we 
 must not allow ourselves on that account to reject 
 the things in which such witnesses agree ; and in 
 
 laying down this principle, we feel we would be 
 H 
 
114 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 supported by the authority of every judge on the 
 bench. There is scarcely a trial of importance 
 on record in which there has not been some par- 
 ticular concerning which there has been difficulty, 
 uncertainty, and discrepancy, and about which it 
 has been felt to be almost impossible to get at the 
 precise truth. Almost every cause celebre has had 
 its mystery, which, in spite of the facilities afforded 
 by cross-examination, has not been thoroughly 
 cleared up ; nevertheless, that has not prevented 
 the jury from coming to a verdict on those things 
 in the evidence which were clear. Now, we ask 
 that the testimony of the evangelists shall be 
 treated in the same way, and then we are sure 
 that every intelligent inquirer will give his voice 
 in favour of the reality and genuineness of the 
 miracles of Christ. No more striking illustration 
 of the principle on which we are here insisting can 
 be found than that which is furnished by the case 
 of our Lord's resurrection, and in presenting it to 
 the minds of our readers we gladly avail ourselves 
 of the words of Dean Alford: 'What can be more 
 undoubted and unanimous than the testimony of 
 the evangelists to the Eesuerection of the 
 
EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 115 
 
 Lord ? If there be one fact rather than another 
 of which the apostles were witnesses, it was this ; 
 and in the concurrent narratives of all four evan- 
 gelists it stands related beyond all cavil or question. 
 Yet of all the events which they have described, 
 none is so variously put forth in detail, or with so 
 many minor discrepancies. And this was just 
 what might have been expected on the principles 
 above laid down. The great fact that the Lord 
 ivas risen — set forth by the ocular witness of the 
 apostles who had seen him — became from that 
 day first in importance in the delivery of their 
 testimony. The precise order of his appearances 
 would naturally, from the overwhelming nature 
 of their present emotions, be a matter of minor 
 consequence, and perhaps not even of accurate 
 inquiry till some time had passed. Then, with 
 the utmost desire on the part of the women and 
 apostles to collect the events in the exact order 
 of time, some confusion would be apparent in the 
 history, and some discrepancies in versions of it, 
 which were the results of separate and independent 
 inquiries, the traces of which pervade our present 
 accounts. But what fair-judging student of the 
 
116 EVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF MIRACLES. 
 
 Gospels ever made these variations or discrepancies 
 a ground for doubting the veracity of the evan- 
 gelists as to the fact of the resurrection, or the 
 principal details of our Lord's appearance after 
 it ? ' ^ We may not quite agree with the Dean's 
 conjectural theory as to the origination of the 
 variations, but no one who has giA^en attention to 
 the laws of evidence will cavil with the principle 
 on which he proceeds ; and we are convinced that 
 if the few real discrepancies (if, indeed, they be 
 real) were looked at in the light in which we 
 have here put them, they would not be felt as 
 any difficulty in the w^ay of the reception of the 
 testimony of the apostles to the miraculous occur- 
 rences in the history of our Lord, where it is con- 
 sentaneous and clear. 
 
 1 Alford's Greek Testament^ Second Edition, vol. i., Prolegomena, 
 pp. 19, 20. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 
 
 In opposition to the weighty evidence, a summary 
 of which we have laid before our readers, it has 
 been attempted by some to show that the Gospels 
 originated in such a way as to be perfectly con- 
 sistent with probability, and with the absence of 
 fraudulent intention on the part of Christ and his 
 apostles, while yet they do not contain a record 
 of actual occurrences. Indeed, the problem to 
 Avhich, in recent years, the antagonists of the 
 supernatural have set themselves, is to account 
 on their principles for the formation of the evan- 
 gelic narratives. In America, the most conclusive 
 exposure of the imposture practised by Joseph 
 Smith, was the discovery of the fact, that the so- 
 called book of Mormon was in reality an unpub- 
 lished work of fiction, written by one Solomon 
 Spaulding ; and though the idea of wilful impos- 
 
118 THE MYTHICAL THEOKY OF STKAUSS. 
 
 ture is not strongly insisted on by the school of 
 rationalists to which we now allude, their position 
 must be utterly untenablcj if they cannot explain 
 the origination of the four Gospels. This has 
 been attempted by many authors, and in many 
 different ways ; but the most skilful form in 
 which the effort has been made is that of Strauss, 
 in the work which, after a time of notoriety, is 
 already beginning to be forgotten. More re- 
 cently, a modification of his view, made, as we 
 shall presently see, at the expense of the moral 
 integrity of Jesus and his followers, has been 
 given to the world by Eenan ; and though, in 
 the space to which we have restricted ourselves, 
 it will be impossible to track these authors 
 through all the turnings and windings of their 
 ingenious subtlety, yet our treatment of the sub- 
 ject, of miracles would be wanting in unity and 
 completeness, if we did not look a little into the 
 attacks made by these authors on the historic 
 verity of the gospel narratives. 
 
 We begin with the mythical theory of Strauss, 
 that our readers may the better understand the 
 legendary hypothesis of Eenan. A myth, accord- 
 
THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 119 
 
 ing to StrausSj is a religious idea clothed in a 
 historic form. This form may either be a pure 
 fiction, or it may have a nucleus of fact, enlarged 
 and modified by the ideas which have sought 
 through it to find expression. He distinguishes 
 between myths and legends. ' A myth is an idea 
 translated by mental realism into fact : a legend 
 is a group of ideas round a nucleus of fact ;' ^ 
 and he endeavours to show that if a small basis 
 of fact, heightened by legend, be allowed in the 
 gospel history, the influence of myth will account 
 for the remainder. In the words of the writer 
 just quoted, ' The idea is regarded as prior to the 
 fact ; the need of a deliverer, he pretends, created 
 the idea of a Saviour; the misinterpretation of 
 old prophecy presented conditions which, in the 
 popular mind, must be fulfilled by the Messiah. 
 The gospel history is regarded as the attempt 
 of the idea to realize itself in fact.' ^ Thus 
 viewed, the events of the Saviour's history are 
 
 1 Farrar's Critical History of Free Thought in reference to the 
 Christian Religion^ p. 380. 
 
 2 Ibid. See also The Essay on Ideology and Subscription^ by Rev. 
 F. C. Coote, M.A., in Aids to Faith, p. 155; and a Review of 
 Strauss in the first volume of The British and Foreign Evangelical 
 Revieio, pp. 630, 631. 
 
] 20 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 
 
 reduced to the fewest possible number. He was 
 brought up in Nazareth ; he was baptized by- 
 John ; he formed disciples, whom he impressed 
 with his wisdom and goodness ; he taught in 
 various districts of Palestine ; he proclaimed the 
 Messianic kingdom; he opposed the outwardness 
 of the PhariseeSj and provoked their enmity, so 
 that they put him to death upon the cross, — 
 such is the substance of the facts of our Lord's 
 history, which remain after the Gospels have 
 been subjected to the criticism of Strauss ; and 
 round these, the ideas and aspirations of the early 
 Christians wove the stories which we find now 
 under the names of the evangelists, imagination 
 lending itself not only to glorify and illustrate, 
 but also in a great degree to create the object of 
 faith. These books are thus not the record of 
 actual facts, but the product of a mental effort 
 to realize and embody the idea which the Jews 
 entertained of their Messiah ; and much of their 
 colouring is derived from the Old Testament 
 Scriptures with which they had been so long 
 familiar. Thus the visit of the Magi is suggested 
 by the prophecy of Balaam ; the massacre of the 
 
THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 121 
 
 Bethlehem infants corresponds to the destruction 
 of the Hebrew children by Pharaoh; the flight 
 into Egypt has sprung out of the flight of Moses 
 into Midian ; the appearance in the temple at 
 the age of twelve has been derived from similar 
 records regarding Samuel and Solomon ; the temp- 
 tation is an embodiment of the idea brought out 
 in the history of Job, that good men are the 
 objects of special hatred to Satan ; the transfigu- 
 ration is another form of the glories of Sinai. 
 These are specimens of the modus operandi pur- 
 sued by this author ; his theory being that all 
 this was done, not by any one individual, or with 
 any fraudulent design, but ' that it was a gradual 
 and spontaneous aggregation about the person of 
 Christ of the various types and analogies which 
 the Jews supposed would be realized in the 
 Messiah.' ^ To this source of the narratives there 
 falls to be added the legendary portion, derived 
 from the influence of the personal character of 
 Jesus ; and these together, he contends, serve to 
 account for the documents as they are now in our 
 possession. We have thus a kind of historical 
 
 1 British and Foreign Evangelical Review^ as above. 
 
122 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 
 
 reproduction of the famous nebular hypothesis; 
 but we need only to apply to it the test of rigid 
 analysis, and we shall see it fade away as did its 
 scientific prototype before the telescope of Lord 
 Eosse ; for there are many objections to it, each 
 of which is fatal. 
 
 In particular, this theory is altogether incon- 
 sistent with the generally received date of the 
 four Gospels. Myths, as Dr Strauss defines them, 
 are necessarily of slow growth, and are the pro- 
 duct of many years. Indeed, in regard to the 
 mythologies of Greece and Rome, every one 
 knows that the origin of the fables of which they 
 are composed is lost in the prehistoric ages ; and 
 if the Gospels are to be reduced to a level 
 with them, we naturally expect that the same 
 thing will be true in their case. Instead of this, 
 however, we find that these narratives were 
 written, as all evidence goes to establish, before 
 the close of the first century, and some of them in 
 the early part of the latter half of that century ; 
 so that we have a space of little more than thirty 
 years allowed for the aggregation of those so^ 
 called fictions round the small nucleus of admitted 
 
THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 123 
 
 facts which they contain. That is to say, applying 
 the same test to our own times, we are asked to be- 
 lieve that it is possible that events which occurred 
 in the year 1829, many of the chief actors in which 
 still survive, may in the present day have become 
 amalgamated with mythical fables, through which 
 the people of this country desire to express certain 
 of their own preconceived ideas. Nay, we may 
 put the case still more strongly ; for in these days 
 of steam and electricity, events of which the his- 
 torian must take cognizance, succeed each other 
 so much more rapidly than in former ages, that 
 what used to be enough for the history of half a 
 century, is now crushed into little more than a 
 fifth of the time. We may therefore declare, that 
 the mythical hypothesis of Strauss is tantamount 
 to an affirmation that the occurrences of 1848, the 
 year of political earthquakes all over Europe, have 
 already gathered round them a nebula of fable, 
 and were in reality very different from the shape 
 which they have now assumed in the idea of the 
 multitude; or, to take a particular illustration, that 
 the election of Louis Napoleon as President of the 
 French Republic is as much a myth as is the 
 
124 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 
 
 story that Romulus and Remus were suckled by 
 a wolf. 
 
 To get rid of this fatal objection to his theory, 
 Strauss, with a cool contempt for all historical 
 evidence, has fixed the date of the Gospels about 
 the middle of the second century after Christ ; 
 but independently of the consideration that even 
 that date, late as it is, does not appreciably lessen 
 the difficulty which must be felt by any one who 
 seeks to show how, within such a period, myths 
 could be formed into a shape so beautiful and 
 complete as these Gospels are, there is the most 
 convincing proof, as any one may see by con- 
 sulting works on the canon, that the Gospels 
 were written long before the time at wliich he 
 arbitrarily dates them. Even Renan acknow- 
 ledges that they belong to the first century ; and 
 the fact that he cannot get over this well-estab- 
 lished position, may be the reason why, for the 
 myths of Strauss, he has preferred his own 
 legends. But we are not yet dealing with him, 
 and go back again to Strauss, who admits the 
 genuineness, at least of the main parts, of four of 
 Paul's Epistles. This admission, however, meagre 
 
THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 125 
 
 as it 1S5 IS fatal to his whole hypothesis ; for if you 
 give us a pou sto^ on anything of Paul's, it will not 
 be difficult to demolish all such visionary views, 
 — since the letters presuppose the man, and the 
 man cannot be seen without the fact of his con- 
 version being recognised ; and the fact of his 
 conversion cannot be explained, save on the 
 ground of the reality of the resurrection of Christ ; 
 and the resurrection of Christ being admitted, 
 there is no longer any room for argument. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that Strauss, pressed in this 
 matter of time, bolsters up his theory by saying 
 that the myths were already to a large extent 
 made to hand in the Old Testament, and that the 
 Jews only transferred their ideas of the Messiah 
 to Jesus. But to this it can be replied, that the 
 notion of the Messiah, as commonly held by the 
 Jews of the Saviour's day, was very different from, 
 was in many respects precisely the opposite of, that 
 which was realized in Jesus, so that it is palpably 
 absurd to suppose that they clothed his history 
 with the dress of their own imagination. Besides, 
 
 ' ' Who learns the one Pou sto, whence after hands may move 
 the world.' — Tennyson's Princess. 
 
126 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 
 
 the Christ of the Gospels was rejected by the 
 Jews, and his followers latterly were mainly of 
 the Gentiles. By the time the Gospels were 
 written, the Gentiles formed a large proportion of 
 the entire Church; and who that thinks of the 
 circumcision controversy, and the heart-burning 
 which it created, can suppose that the non-Jewish 
 portion of the new community would be content 
 to receive the ready-made ideas of the Jews as to 
 their Messiah? Taking into consideration the 
 Gentile elements in the Church therefore, the 
 attempt to trace the Gospel narratives to mere 
 Jewish idealism must be pronounced a failure. 
 
 But further, how on such a supposition are we 
 to account for the origin and success of the Chris- 
 tian Church ? On the view of Strauss, Christ is 
 the creation of the Church, and not the Church 
 founded upon Christ. But whence came the 
 Church itself ? The existence of this society, and 
 its great and astonishing success during the latter 
 part of the first century, are among the best 
 attested facts in ancient history ; but how did it 
 originate ? The ordinary believer traces its origin 
 to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
 
THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 127 
 
 And on this view of the matter all is plain ; for 
 in these things, viewed as facts, you have a cause 
 adequate to the production of the effect. But 
 Strauss reverses all this, and ascribes the creation 
 of the stories concerning Jesus to the Church itself. 
 Hence there is no account given of the beginning 
 of that remarkable institution. Herein surely is a 
 marvellous thing, — ^that a religion, the grandest 
 and noblest which the world has ever seen, should 
 rise in an age unequalled by any before it for 
 enlightenment and philosophy, and should march 
 in peaceful progress over the wide world, and that 
 after all there should be no way of accounting 
 for its beginning ! In the case of Islamism, which 
 rose in an era not to be compared with that which 
 was glorified by the advent of the Messiah, we 
 have no such difficulty. Why, then, should there 
 be perplexity here ? The theory of Strauss, fairly 
 carried out, would make Christianity self-pro- 
 duced ; but who can accept of such an explanation 
 of its appearance ? Admit these narratives to be 
 authentic and credible records of real occurrences, 
 and you have a clear explanation of the most 
 marvellous fact in history : declare them to be 
 
128 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 
 
 myths, and you leave unaccounted for a move- 
 ment of the grandest and most glorious character ; 
 nay, you are reduced to the necessity of believ- 
 ing, that in an age of the greatest civilisation to 
 which men without the gospel have reached, — an 
 age, too, abounding in records of contemporaneous 
 events, — a movement began, and made immense 
 progress in all parts of the known world, while 
 yet we can have no more certainty of the real truth 
 as to its beginning, than we have of the early 
 history of Greece from the fables of its mythology. 
 We have spoken of the age in which Christ 
 appeared in one connection ; it cannot surely be 
 necessary for us to insist, as a further objec- 
 tion, on the unsuitableness of such an era for the 
 formation of myths. The time which found its 
 representative man, among the Romans, in Pilate, 
 that prince of trimmers, with his sneering ques- 
 tion, ^ What is truth ? ' and, among the Jews, in 
 the sceptic Sadducee, with his denial of spirit, and 
 the haughty Pharisee, with his broad phylactery 
 and hollow heart, was not surely a fitting season 
 for the spontaneous generation of such beautiful 
 stories, even if they were only myths, as those 
 
THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 129 
 
 which we have here preserved to us in the pure 
 
 amber of the gospel narrative. Water cannot rise 
 
 above its level ; and that which is the product of 
 
 the ideas of an age, cannot transcend the age 
 
 itself. Here, however, we have a history which 
 
 stands out and above not that age alone, but every 
 
 era of human history. Surely the conclusion must 
 
 be inevitable, that it had a superhuman source. 
 
 We cannot believe that by any ' natural selection ' 
 
 of existing varieties and modes of thought, this new 
 
 species of truth could have been thus ' developed,^ 
 
 The Darwinian hypothesis is as improbable when 
 
 applied thus to history as it is in other departments. 
 
 Nothing short of a fresh creation can account for 
 
 such a glorious character as that which is limned 
 
 for us by the hands of the four evangelists ; and 
 
 in any case we may be sure, that the age which 
 
 crucified Jesus for being what he was, never 
 
 could have developed out of itself the story of his 
 
 life. 
 
 More than this, the manner in which the 
 
 evangelic narratives are dealt with by Strauss is 
 
 evermore landing him in palpable absurdities and 
 
 contradictions. He denies the authenticity of the 
 I 
 
130 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 
 
 Gospelsj and yet when it serves his purpose he 
 refers to them as if they were of the most credible 
 character. He takes what suits his need, and 
 complacently ignores the rest, or coolly says. It is 
 evidently mythical. At one time he regards the 
 narratives of the Gospels as the result of a very 
 simple process, going on almost imperceptibly, and 
 without any fraudulent intention, in the minds of 
 thousands at once ; at another, when perhaps he 
 is dealing with some details, he assumes a degree 
 of reflection and study on the part of the origi- 
 nators of the stories, in their harmonizing of the 
 character of Jesus with its ideal, which is perfectly 
 inconsistent with the absence of design. In look- 
 ing at the mode in which he accounts for some 
 of the portions of these books, and contemplating 
 the transcendental mysticism of the philosophy 
 on which he represents the first Christians as 
 acting in their formation, we are tempted to say, 
 in the caustic words of Dr Alexander, ' Is it 
 indeed true that through this " palpable obscure " 
 of speculation, these simple-minded children of an 
 all-believing uncritical age walked with a fiim step 
 and an open eye ? Is it indeed true that the deep 
 
THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 131 
 
 philosophy of Hegel was embodied by the early 
 Christians in their conception of Jesus ? Was 
 Teutonic science anticipated by childish simplicity? 
 If sOj we are forced upon one of two conclusions : 
 Either the early Christians were not such credu- 
 lous children as Dr Strauss represents, or Teutonic 
 philosophy is but a child's dream after all.' ^ 
 
 We only add, that the method of Strauss, if 
 rigidly applied to other records, would make all 
 history impossible. He starts with a foregone 
 conclusion : everything consistent, or which with 
 a little manipulation can be made consistent, with 
 that, he retains, and all else, on one pretence or 
 another, he rejects. He is not sparing of dogma- 
 tism, and has at his command a whole corps of 
 reserve resources to which in times of perplexity 
 he betakes himself. He sets forth in imposing 
 array the whole list of discrepancies, real or ima- 
 ginary, which the Gospels contain, and works 
 wonders by the mere ' silence ' of Josephus and 
 other writers. But who does not see that on such 
 
 ^ Christ and Christianity^ p. 117. The section of Dr Alexander's 
 book wliich deals with Strauss is the most searching, trenchant, 
 and scathing exposure of the mythical theory which has appeared 
 among us. 
 
132 THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 
 
 principles all history may be rendered mythical ? ^ 
 With a very little ingenuity, one might, after the 
 example of Strauss, show most conclusively that 
 the late Danish war never occurred, but is a 
 purely mythical thing; while yet the bleeding, 
 panting victim lies before the eye of Europe, 
 and the haughty conquerors swagger over their 
 success, or quarrel about the division of the prey. 
 
 But enough has been said to show the falsity of 
 tHe principle on which the work of Strauss is 
 based, and there is the less reason to dwell upon 
 it, that even by rationalists themselves it is now to 
 a large extent discarded. Recently, indeed, Strauss 
 has reissued his work in what he means to be a 
 people's edition ; but as this newest form of his 
 production has not yet reached our hands in an 
 English dress, we are unable to speak positively 
 regarding it. One who is well qualified to express 
 an opinion has said : ' He still absolves Jesus from 
 deception, ascribing the parts of the narrative 
 which, if historical, would involve it, to the mis- 
 
 ^ Examples of this may be seen in Beard's Voices of the Churchy 
 in reply to Strauss ; also in The Eclipse of Faith^ in the paper 
 headed ' The Papal Aggression Impossible,' p 340. 
 
THE MYTHICAL THEORY OF STRAUSS. 133 
 
 representation of the evangelists ; but it is no 
 longer invariably unconscious, though often so, 
 and thus the mythical theory^ properly so called^ 
 is at an endJ ^ Still an understanding of its 
 nature, and of the manner in which it is to be 
 met, was needful to a proper comprehension of 
 the position which has been taken up by Eenan, 
 to whose view we shall now seek to devote a little 
 attention. 
 
 ^ False Christs and the True, by Dr Cairns, p. 6, note. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAK 
 
 This writer differs from Strauss in preferring the 
 legendary to the mythical in the source of the 
 Gospels ; and instead of setting himself to the 
 work of critical destruction alone, he has* by the 
 aid of a vivid imagination, attempted to build up 
 a Life of Jesus, ^ which shall constitute a logical, 
 probable, harmonious narrative throughout,' while 
 yet all that is miraculous is unceremoniously ex- 
 cluded. Whether he has succeeded in this will 
 perhaps appear as we advance ; but we shall seek 
 to make plain the method on which he proceeds, 
 premising that many of the objections already 
 brought against the mythical theory, especially 
 those which have regard to the age in which Christ 
 appeared, and the inconsistencies involved in such 
 a treatment of the narratives, apply with as much 
 force to the legendary. The germ of his book is 
 
136 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 to be found in a passage of an earlier work/ in 
 whichj speaking of the theory of Strauss, he says, 
 ' It is not without many restrictions that the 
 denomination of myths can be employed in treat- 
 ing of the gospel narratives. I would prefer for 
 my part the word legends or legendary stories, 
 which, while giving large scope for the operation 
 of popular opinion, allows the action and personal 
 influence of Jesus to remain entire.' In the In- 
 troduction to his work he has given, with consider- 
 able firiness, his views as to the origin of the 
 Gospels, and he has devoted one of his chapters 
 to an unfolding of the manner in which the 
 legendary stories involving miracles were pro- 
 duced. We shall glance shortly at each of these, 
 restricting ourselves in our criticism to those 
 objections which, without involving any recon- 
 dite lore, are best calculated to show the falseness 
 of his opinions, and we greatly mistake if the 
 account which he presents to us do not clearly 
 appear to be anything but ' probable, logical, and 
 harmonious throughout.' 
 
 ' Quoted by Rev. J. B. Paton, M.A., ia his sifting Review of 
 Renan, reprinted from the London Quarterly^ p. 117. 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 137 
 
 As we have already incidentally observed, he 
 has, yielding to the force of incontrovertible evi- 
 dence, fixed the date of the completion of the 
 Gospels before the end of the first century. Be- 
 ginning with that of Luke, he says regarding 
 it, that ^ doubt is scarcely possible.' ^ He admits 
 that its author is the same as that of the Acts of 
 the Apostles, and that its date is only a short time 
 after the destruction of Jerusalem ; adding, ' We 
 are here, then, upon solid ground, for we are con- 
 cerned with a work written entirely by the same 
 hand, and with the most perfect unity.' When 
 we inquire on what ground the date of this Gospel 
 is placed after the destruction of Jerusalem, we 
 are referred in the footnote to the passage con- 
 taining the prophecy of that event; and the 
 reasoning implied, though not expressed, is that 
 because that prediction is there, the book in which 
 it is found could not have been written till after 
 the event. But apart from the dogmatic assump- 
 tion involved in such a mode of procedure, how 
 does this date harmonize with the admission that 
 the Gospel was written by the author of the Acts'? 
 
 1 Life of Jesus J p. 9. 
 
138 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 In the beginning of the latter book it is shown 
 that the Gospel had been already written ; but the 
 Acts, as is clear from their closing chapters, were 
 finished during the imprisonment of Paul, which is 
 placed by no one later than a.d. 65. Hence the 
 admission that the Gospel was written by the 
 author of the Acts, leads us to the conclusion that 
 it was finished before the year a.d. 65, and there- 
 fore some years befo7'e the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 But leaving that, let us show our readers how M. 
 Renan moves over the ' solid' ground of this third 
 Gospel. In another part of his Introduction, re- 
 moved by a few pages from the passage to which 
 we have referred, and when the reader may have 
 forgotten the admissions made, we come upon the 
 following: ' The historical value of Luke's work is 
 sensibly weaker [than that of Mark]. It is a docu- 
 ment which comes to us second-hand. . . . Some 
 sentences are distorted and exaggerated. . . . He 
 subdues some details in order to make the different 
 narratives agree : he softens the passages which 
 had become embarrassing on account of a more 
 exalted idea of the divinity of Christ : he exagge- 
 rates the marvellous, commits errors in chronology: 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 139 
 
 we feel we have to do with a compiler^ with a 
 man who has not himself seen the witnesses, but 
 who labours at the texts, and wrests their sense to 
 make them agree : he interprets the documents 
 according to his own idea. ' ^ Now if this be solid 
 ground, we wonder what our author's idea of a 
 marshy quagmire is ; and we should like to see bj 
 what process these two views of Luke's Gospel can 
 be made harmonious. Nor is it better when we 
 look below the surface, and ask on what grounds 
 all these assertions are made. There is of course 
 a long array of proof texts in the notes, but they 
 have very frequently no bearing on the assertion 
 which they are intended to support; and those 
 that have a reference to the subject, are given 
 precisely as if no other view could be taken of 
 them than that which he wishes to be received. 
 Thus, in proof that Luke exaggerates the mar- 
 vellous, we are directed to chap. iv. 14 : ^ And 
 Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into 
 Galilee; and there went out a fame of him through 
 all the region round about.' But what is there 
 peculiar to the third evangelist here that he 
 
 J Pp. 22, 23. 
 
140 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 should be placed beneath the others on account 
 of it ? and when in the matter of chronology he 
 refers to the decree of the taxing, we are tempted 
 to ask if he has never seen any of the explanations 
 of the difficulty which it presents, that he should 
 so complacently ignore them all. This is not 
 criticism, it is dogmatism ; and as in the case of 
 Strauss, so here we may remark, that on such 
 principles as these no historic document, even the 
 most recent and authentic, could escape. 
 
 But it is not better with the other evangelists. 
 Here is his account of the first two Gospels. 
 They are ' impersonal compositions, in which the 
 author totally disappears. That which appears 
 most likely is, that we have not the entirely 
 original compilations of either Matthew or Mark, 
 but that our first two Gospels are versions in 
 which the attempt is made to fill up the gaps of the 
 one text by the other. Every one wished in fact 
 to possess a complete copy. He who had in his 
 copy only discourses, wished to have narratives, 
 and vice versa. It is thus that the Gospel accord- 
 ing to Matthew is found to have included almost 
 all the anecdotes of Mark ; and that the Gospel 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 141 
 
 according to Mark now contains numerous features 
 which came from the Logia of Matthew. There 
 was no scruple in inserting additions, in variously 
 combining them, and in completing some by 
 others. The poor man who has but one book, 
 wishes that it may contain all that is dear to his 
 heart. These little books were lent: each one 
 transcribed in the margin of his copy the words 
 and the parables he found elsewhere which touched 
 him. The most beautiful thing in the world has 
 thus proceeded from an obscure and purely popu- 
 lar elaboration. ' ^ It is moreover ' certain that 
 the third Gospel is posterior to the first two.' ^ 
 Hence, on our author's own showing, we must 
 place the date of these two productions before a 
 period very shortly subsequent to the destruction 
 of Jerusalem ; and as he says that the Gospel of 
 Luke ^ exhibits the character of a much more 
 advanced compilation,' we shall, in his view, be 
 compelled to place them a considerable time before 
 it, — say at the least ten years, — so that we have 
 allowed to us about thirty years for the purely 
 ' popular elaboration ' of which he has spoken. 
 
 1 Life of Jesus, Introduction, pp. 9, 10, 11, 12. ^ yj^-j. p. 9, 
 
142 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 But waiving the force of this consideration, how 
 utterly impossible is this whole theory ! M. Ren an 
 forgets that he has to do with documents which 
 were not simply private possessions, but the public 
 property of the Church : hence, however possible 
 it might have been for the poor man with his 
 one book to have added on the margin of his 
 own copy incidents which interested him, the 
 thing which is to be accounted for is the public 
 reception of these two separate books in their pre- 
 sent form by the Church ; and we boldly say that 
 on his principles it is impossible to explain this. 
 Suppose it had been as he has imagined in the 
 passages which we have quoted, then what must 
 have been the issue ? Clearly, either one great 
 aggregate agglomeration of the two Gospels, in 
 which what was Matthew's and what was Mark's 
 would be indistinguishable, or an endless number 
 of separate compilations, each formed accord- 
 ing to the taste of the compiler, and consisting 
 of the portions which ' touched him ' most ten- 
 derly. But instead, we have two books bearing 
 very clear marks of separate individuality. Now, 
 how did this happen? How were the texts of these 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 143 
 
 two narratives so fixed that the various readings, 
 numerous though they be, are so small in impor- 
 tance as to be scarcely appreciable ? Taking one 
 original text in each case as the standard of each 
 Gospel, we can naturally explain the manuscript 
 variations by the process of transcription ; but if 
 with Kenan we hold that the two were formed by 
 a kind of ' fortuitous concourse ' of narratives, or 
 historical chance-medley, then we shall find it 
 impossible to account for the fact, that from 
 the earliest age of the Church they existed very 
 much as we have them now. 
 
 But improbable as this theory regarding the 
 Gospels of Matthew and Mark is on the very face 
 of it, the difficulties increase upon us when we 
 look into the books themselves, and take note of 
 their contents, for then we are struck with the 
 marks of individuality which they present. Mr 
 Paton, in his reply to Kenan, has brought before 
 his readers a summary of those things w^hich are 
 distinctive of Matthew : we shall therefore restrict 
 ourselves here to the consideration of the pecu- 
 liarities of Mark, the rather as it is too generally 
 taken for granted that the second Gospel is but 
 
144 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF REN AN. 
 
 an epitome of the first. Absolutely shorter than 
 that of Matthew, it will yet be found that the 
 narrative of Mark is in many instances more full, 
 detailed, and explicit than that of his brother 
 evangelist ; and every one who has given himself 
 to the study of gospel harmony knows, that very 
 frequently the element that is needed to explain 
 the apparent discrepancy between the others is 
 supplied by Mark. In particular, his Gospel is 
 distinguished by the graphic portraiture of events 
 in the present tense. He places the whole circum- 
 stances before his readers' eyes, and with his often 
 recurring ' straightway,' ^ there is a vivid distinct- 
 ness given to each occurrence. Then we find that 
 more attention is bestowed by him on the works 
 of Jesus than on his words, so that we have com- 
 paratively few of the Lord's discourses preserved 
 in his chapters. This circumstance is fatal to the 
 theory we are considering ; for if those who had a 
 record of the works wished one of the discourses, 
 and vice versa^ then how comes it that so few 
 discourses are in Mark ? As one has very well 
 
 ' Ev$ias, ivdhi. These two terms taken together occur no fewer 
 than forty-one times in the second Gospel. 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 145 
 
 remarked here : ' Mark is silent on the greatest of 
 these discourses which Matthew records. What 
 were the persons about who wished to have a 
 complete copy out of the two, and yet forgot to 
 adopt the Sermon on the Mount? Two very 
 small books, subjected to this process of active 
 assimilation, still show marks of independence in 
 every chapter, and the background of resem- 
 blances throws out the differences into stronger 
 relief. Had the object been to produce one 
 Gospel out of two, any unskilful hand, used freely 
 for a couple of days, would have produced a more 
 successful result than a whole community, work- 
 ing as M. Eenan supposes, has done.' ^ But more 
 minute individualisms even than those which 
 we have noted appear in Mark ; for to him it is 
 that Ave are mainly indebted for the information 
 we have regarding our Lord's looks, gestures, and 
 feelings. It is he who tells us that ^ he looked 
 round upon his accusers with anger, being grieved 
 for the hardness of their hearts.'^ To him we 
 owe the statement that he was ^ much dis- 
 pleased ' with the disciples for commanding away 
 
 ^ North British Rt-view, No. 79, pp. 189, 190. ^ ;^/[ark iii. 5. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 the children from him.^ He speaks of his look 
 of love directed to his spiritual children ; ^ his 
 look of reproof on the disciples as a whole, and 
 specially on Peter ; ^ his beholding in love the 
 young man who came to him ; ^ his looking round 
 about upon his disciples in the enforcement of 
 his words.^ So, too, regarding the incidents in 
 the career of Peter, with whom Mark is generally 
 connected, a similar individuality appears, bring- 
 ing out a modesty of nature which we do not 
 commonly associate with that apostle, but in 
 which we recognise how much the grace of God 
 had subdued the inherent forwardness of the man. 
 There is the absence of reference to the honours 
 which Christ bestowed upon him, and of which the 
 others have spoken. No mention is made of the 
 gift of the keys, or of the walking on the waves, 
 or of the feet-washing, or of the scene by the sea 
 of Galilee ; while, on the other hand, the reproof 
 given him by the Lord immediately after his 
 promise about the keys is inserted, and we have 
 furnished to us a full and particular account of 
 
 1 Mark x. 14. 2 Chap. iii. 84. ^ c^^ap. viii. 33. 
 
 * Chap. X. 21. 5 ohap. x. 23-27. 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 147 
 
 the details of his denial of his Master. Only in 
 one instance does there seem to be a departure 
 from this rule, which the author appears to have 
 studiously followed, and that is when, after 
 Christ's resurrection, the command is given, ' Go, 
 tell my disciples and Peter;' but even this is no 
 exception, for it is there as a mark of the divine 
 condescension and generous love of Jesus to him 
 even after his thrice repeated sin, and is inserted 
 not to do honour to Peter, but to give glory to his 
 Lord. On the whole, then, we may allege that 
 the distinctive characteristics of this Gospel are 
 too strongly marked to admit of our reception of 
 any such theory in regard to its origin as that 
 which Eenan has propounded ; and we may 
 leave the matter to the judgment of our readers, 
 merely quoting the remarks of a recent com- 
 mentator in regard to this very precious, but 
 we fear too greatly neglected book : — ' What 
 strikes every one is, that though the briefest 
 of all the Gospels, this is, in some of the prin- 
 cipal scenes of oui* Lord's history, the fullest. 
 But what is not so obvious is, that wherever 
 the finer and subtler feelings of humanity, or 
 
148 THE LEGENDAEY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 the deeper and more peculiar hues of our Lord's 
 character were brought out, these, though they 
 should be lightly passed over by all the other 
 evangelists, are sure to be found here, and in 
 touches of such quiet delicacy and power, that, 
 though scarcely observed by the cursory reader, 
 they leave indelible impressions upon all the 
 thoughtful, and furnish a key to much that is 
 in the other Gospels.' ^ 
 
 Our author does not succeed better with the 
 Gospel of John, and gives us anything but a pro- 
 bable account of its formation. Recognising, as 
 every intelligent reader must, the intense indi- 
 viduality of this evangelist, and the difference 
 between him and the rest, he yet endeavours 
 unduly to magnify it, and seeks to show that the 
 view which he gives of Christ is altogether incon- 
 sistent with that furnished by the synoptics. In 
 doing this, he speaks of the beloved disciple in a 
 
 1 Commentary^ Critical^ Experimental^ and Practical^ on the Old 
 and New Testaments^ vol. v., Matthew to John, by Dr David Brown ; 
 under Mark i. The reader who desires to prosecute this subject, 
 as far as the Gospel of Mark is concerned, will do well to consult 
 an excellent article upon it in the London Quarterly Review^ No. 46, 
 January 1865. See also the portion of Lange's Commentary which 
 treats of the characteristics of this evangelist. 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 149 
 
 manner that must be repugnant to every spiritual 
 mind. Here are some of his words : ^ We are 
 tempted to believe that John in his old age 
 having read the gospel narratives^ on the one 
 hand remarked their various inaccuracies, and on 
 the other was hurt at seeing that there was not 
 accorded to him a suiHciently high place in the 
 history of Christ ; that then he commenced to 
 dictate a number of things which he knew better 
 than the rest, with the intention of showing that 
 in many instances in which only Peter was spoken 
 of, he had figured with him, and even before him.' ^ 
 And again, ^ We see, in the disorder of the compila- 
 tion, the irregularity of the narrative, the dis- 
 join tedness of the first chapters, the remembrances 
 of an old man, sometimes of remarkable freshness, 
 sometimes having undergone strange modifica- 
 tions.'^ Yet though the discourses of Jesus given 
 by him are ^not historical, but compositions in- 
 tended to convey with the authority of Jesus certain 
 doctrines dear to the compiler,' we are afterwards 
 told that ' every one who sets himself to write the 
 
 1 Life of Jesus, English Translation, as before, pp. 15, 16. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 16. 
 
150 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OE RENAN. 
 
 Life of Jesus without any predetermined theory as 
 to the relative value of the Gospels, letting himself 
 be guided solely by the sentiment of the subject, 
 will be led in numerous instances to prefer the 
 narrative of John to that of the synoptics.' ^ Now 
 such a treatment of the fourth Gospel is most 
 unfair, and every reader will see that it is incon- 
 sistent with itself, while at the same time it gives 
 an account of its origin that is on every side 
 inconceivable. What ! John jealous of Peter, so 
 that the divinest book in the world had its origin 
 in the personal pique and petty pride of its author ! 
 Who can believe this of a man who throughout 
 his record has never named his own name, and 
 has kept himself studiously in the background? 
 Who can believe this of him who was the apostle 
 of brotherhood, and who in his last days, when this 
 book was written, was in the habit of repeating 
 his well-known exhortation, ^Little children love 
 one another ' ? Think of the venerable old man of 
 Ephesus preaching thus to the people, and yet all 
 the while inwardly fretting and chafing because 
 Peter was preferred before him by the other evan- 
 
 ^ Life of Jesus, English Translation, as before, p. 19. 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 151 
 
 gelists ! The moral impossibility of this seems 
 never to have been dreamed of bj the ingenious 
 and sentimental Frenchman. But it is not true 
 that the other evangelists have exalted Peter at the 
 expense of John. Even in the Gospel of Mark, 
 which, as all allow, was Petrine in its origin, there 
 is no trace of this ; rather, as we have seen, does 
 Peter modestly keep himself out of view as much 
 as possible, and especially when any honour is 
 conferred upon him ; so that the idea of jealousy 
 in the heart of John toward his brother Peter has 
 no foundation whatever in the narratives, and is 
 wholly the creature of Kenan's fertile imagination. 
 But let us see the inconsistency of his view with 
 itself, and with the contents of the book. How 
 can that be a disjointed narrative, which, as all 
 allow, gives us the key to the chronology of the 
 Saviour s life, and to which in this very department 
 our author confesses himself indebted? and there 
 cannot surely be much disorder marking a com- 
 pilation which, from beginning to end, is devoted 
 to the proof of one great thesis, which the author 
 never allows us to forget. Never, though the 
 external forms of logic be wanting, was there 
 
152 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 a more masterly marshalling of arguments in 
 favour of any conclusion than there is in the 
 Gospel of John, for each portion of the narrative 
 converges toward the great point at the close : 
 ' These are written that ye may believe that Jesus 
 is the Christ, the Son of God.' Indeed, the per- 
 son of Christ — as revealed through his character, 
 his actions, and his words — is the grand theme 
 of the fourth evangelist ; and every thoughtful 
 reader will see that each chapter has its own part 
 in the elaboration of this great argument. In the 
 first he is the Lamb of God; in the second, the 
 temple ; in the third, the glorious antitype to the 
 brazen serpent ; in the fourth, the water of life ; in 
 the fifth, the judge of all ; in the sixth, the bread 
 of life; in the seventh, he is again the water of life; 
 in the eighth and ninth, the light of the world; in 
 the tenth, the good shepherd ; in the eleventh, the 
 resuiTection and the life ; in the tw elf th, the King 
 af Zion ; in the thirteenth, the perfect example ; 
 in the fourteenth, the way, the truth, and the life ; 
 in the fifteenth, the true vine ; in the sixteenth, 
 the precursor of the Paraclete ; in the seventeenth, 
 the priestly intercessor ; in the eighteenth and 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF REN AN. 153 
 
 nineteenth^ the willing victim ; and in the twen- 
 tieth again, the resurrection and the life. Take 
 these divine I ams, in w^hich this Gospel abounds ; 
 let them be set in order thus, and then, instead 
 of a chaotic compilation, w^e have a compact and 
 well-built argument, the method of which is onlj 
 hidden beneath the awful importance of the truths 
 which come incidentally into view. But enough : 
 before such a presentation of the fourth Gospel, 
 the theory of Renan appears to be not only untrue 
 to fact, but also the most heartless mockery of 
 our most sacred things ; and w^e cannot think of 
 his treatment of this, the innermost sanctuary of 
 the New Testament, without recalling to mind 
 the conduct of that blaspheming king, who set 
 up the statue of Jupiter in the holy of holies, 
 where once the glory of the Shechinah hovered 
 above the mercy-seat. But we need not be sur- 
 prised that the man w^ho has not scrupled to 
 charge Jesus with deception, should have a buffet 
 for the cheek of John. 
 
 It is time, however, having shown the impro- 
 bability — nay, we will say the impossibility — of 
 his theory of the origination of the Gospels as 
 
154 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF REN AN. 
 
 a whole, that we should proceed to speak of the 
 manner in which he accounts for the legendary 
 stories into which he resolves all the narratives of 
 the miraculous. We shall best describe it in his 
 own words : ' The legends about him were the 
 fruit of a great and entirely spontaneous con- 
 spiracy, and were developed around him during 
 his lifetime. The title, Son of David, was the 
 first which he accepted, probably without being 
 concerned in the innocent frauds by which it was 
 sought to secure it unto him. He allowed a title 
 to be given him, without which he could not 
 hope for success. He ended, it seems, by taking 
 pleasure therein, for he performed most willingly 
 the miracles which were asked of him (^N,B, — 
 By miracles here he means tricks, or what he calls 
 below illusions, acts of folly) by those who used 
 this title in addressing him.' ^ ^ As to miracles, 
 they were regarded at this period as an indispens- 
 able mark of the divine, and as the sign of the 
 prophetic vocation. Jesus was therefore obliged to 
 choose between two alternatives : either to renounce 
 his mission, or to become a thaumaturgus.' ^ ' It 
 
 1 Life of Jesus, as before, p. 178. ^ /^^-^/^ p^ 139, 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF REN AN. 155 
 
 is probable that the hearers of Jesus were more 
 struck by his miracles than by his eminently 
 divine discourses. Let us add, that doubtless 
 popular rumour, both before and after the death 
 of Jesus, exaggerated enormously the number of 
 occurrences of this kind.' ^ ' We will admit, then, 
 without hesitation, that acts which would now be 
 considered as acts of illusion or folly, held a large 
 place in the life of Jesus.' ^ ' We must remember 
 that every idea loses something of its purity as 
 soon as it aspires to realize itself. Success is 
 never attained without some injury being done to 
 the sensibility of the soul. Such is the feeble- 
 ness of the human mind, that the best causes 
 are ofttimes gained by the worst arguments.' ^ 
 ' Nothing great has been established that does not 
 rest upon a legend. The only culprit in such cases 
 is the humanity which is willing to be deceived.' * 
 ' History is impossible if we do not fully admit 
 that there are many standards of sincerity. All 
 great things are done through the people ; now we 
 can only lead the people by adapting ourselves to 
 
 ' Life of Jesus, as before, p. 190. ^ P. 195. 
 
 3 P. 190. * P 187. 
 
156 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 its ideas. The philosopher who, knowing this, 
 isolates and fortifies himself in his integrity^ is 
 highly praiseworthy ; but he who takes humanity 
 with its illusions, and seeks to act with it and 
 upon it, cannot be blamed. It is easy for us who 
 are so powerless to call this falsehood ; when we 
 have effected by our scruples what they accom- 
 plished by their falsehood, we shall have a right 
 to be severe upon them.' ^ 
 
 We have grouped these quotations together, 
 that our readers may have at one view the sub- 
 stance of what this author has written on the rise 
 and growth of the stories which he calls legen- 
 dary ; and we may almost leave them to pronounce 
 judgment, how far a process such as that which 
 he has described, can be called an ' entirely spon- 
 taneous conspiracy,' and how far the result of it 
 can be regarded as ^logical, probable, and har- 
 monious throughout.' We do not dwell now on 
 such considerations as those which we have already 
 presented in treating of the theory of Strauss, 
 but would call attention to these two things : first, 
 this view is inconsistent with itself ; and second, 
 
 * Life ofJesus^ as before, p. 187. 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 157 
 
 it involves all those moral incongruities which 
 we have already seen to be inseparable from the 
 opinion that Jesus was in any sense of the word a 
 deceiver. 
 
 First, It is inconsistent with itself. When we 
 ask the question, how Jesus came to be called the 
 Son of David, this author tells us, he allowed a 
 title to be given him without which he could not 
 look for success ; and when we inquire how he 
 came to have miracles associated with him, the 
 answer is, he professed to work them, because 
 without this he could not have been received as 
 the Messiah, one of whose well-known appellations 
 was the ' Son of David.' Now, let us analyse these 
 statements. When were these miracles wrought 
 by Jesus ? They must have been performed 
 either before or after he was received as the 
 Messiah. If before, then it could not be said that 
 he merely allowed himself to be called by a name, 
 to obtain which was the very purpose for which 
 the miracles, as Hen an understands miracles, were 
 wrought by him ; if after, then he did not need to 
 work them in order to be received as the Messiah, 
 for he was already so recognised. If Jesus had 
 
158 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 the title in a manner forced upon him, he could 
 not have ^vrought miracles with the view of 
 getting it ; if he wrought miracles with the 
 object of being received as the Messiah, then 
 when he was so received, he could not be said 
 merely to allow himself to be so called. 
 
 But in the second place, this view involves all 
 the moral incongruities which we have seen are 
 inseparable from the opinion that Jesus was in any 
 sense of the word a deceiver. For a deceiver Jesus 
 was if this account is true, and the miracles are de- 
 graded to mere acts of illusion, performed for the 
 purpose of substantiating a claim to which he had 
 no shadow of title. Renan, indeed, attempts to 
 vindicate him for his imposture, by a species of 
 casuistry ; but his vindication is a failure. True, 
 he says that ' a mere sorcerer, after the manner 
 of Simon the magician, could not have brought 
 about a moral revolution like that effected by 
 Jesus ; ' but the question here is. Could the author 
 of a moral revolution, like that effected by Jesus, 
 employ such immoral means as that of palming 
 himself upon the people as a worker of real 
 miracles, while he was only a thaumaturgus, that 
 
THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 159 
 
 is, a performer of acts of illusion and folly ? Thus 
 are we brought back to the point at which our 
 former argument broke off : either Jesus was a de- 
 ceiver, and knowingly passed off as miracles what 
 were only feats of legerdemain, and so we are 
 beset with all the moral difficulties on which there 
 we have enlarged ; or he was the Truth, and his 
 miracles were genuine. To the character of 
 Jesus himself, and the influence of the system 
 which he introduced, this, like all our other 
 modern religious controversies, narrows in ; and so 
 far as the subject of the miracles is concerned, 
 we shrink not from the issue; for if that pure 
 and holy character be sullied, the miracles are not 
 worth the keeping, while if that be retained 
 spotless, the miracles will present no difficulty, 
 since the character of Christ is itself the grandest 
 miracle the world has ever seen. Not from a root 
 of deception could such a goodly tree, bearing on 
 its branches twelve manner of fruits, and whose 
 leaves are for the healing of the nations, spring ; 
 and we may well say with a recent reviewer, ' If 
 falsehood about the holiest things is so blessed 
 with fruit that is not false, then surely there is 
 
160 THE LEGENDARY THEORY OF RENAN. 
 
 no such divine rule of truth and justice over 
 the world as we had supposed; and grapes may 
 blossom upon the thorns, and figs be sought 
 among the thistles. God blesses alike the truth 
 and the lie ; and the record of eighteen centuries 
 of church history is the account of the exuberant 
 vitality of a pious fraud at best, and at worst of 
 simple fraud and falsehood. From the edge of 
 this precipice even the non-Christian world try 
 to struggle backwards. This moral earthquake, 
 where an underlying falsehood shakes all the firm 
 ground of truth, which we thought solid to the 
 axis, we can only think upon with horror.' ^ 
 
 » North British Review, No. 79, p. 208. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 The removal of the objections wliicli have been 
 raised against the possibiUty and credibiHty of 
 miracles, and the attempt to show that the origin 
 of the documents which contain the records of 
 these wondrous works cannot be satisfactorily ex- 
 plained, unless we admit that they are the histories 
 of real occurrences, have prepared the way for 
 our entering now upon the question, What do the 
 miracles themselves prove ? What conclusion are 
 we warranted to draw regarding Christ and his 
 apostles from the fact that they wrought super- 
 natural works ? And if we were right in our 
 definition of a miracle at the outset, this question 
 need not detain us long. We said that they were 
 works out of the usual course of natural occur- 
 rences, and produced by the intervention of the 
 power of God. Hence if they be performed 
 
162 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 through the instrumentality of one who claims to 
 be a messenger from God, they are the divine 
 authentication and confirmation of that claim. 
 They are God's attestation of the commission pre- 
 sented by him who represents himself as being 
 God's messenger to men. They are his creden- 
 tials as the legate of God ; and as an inference 
 from them, we are prepared to receive his words 
 as the message of God. Nicodemus was not 
 wrong, therefore, when he came to Jesus seeking 
 divine trutli, and saying, ' We know that thou art 
 a teacher come from God, for no man can do 
 these miracles which thou doest except God be 
 with him.' It has often been said, indeed, that 
 power cannot in the nature of things confirm 
 truth ; but that all depends on whose power it is. 
 Now in this instance it is the power of God, and 
 the moral excellence of Deity gives its weight to 
 the forthputting of that power in attestation of 
 the claims made by him through whose instru- 
 mentality, or rather perhaps at whose word, the 
 miracle is wrought. The name at the bottom of 
 the letter does not in itself give me a guarantee 
 for the truth of the contents of the epistle : for 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 163 
 
 that I must fall back upon the character of him 
 whose name it is ; and in like manner the power of 
 the miracle per se does not assure me either of the 
 divinity of the claims put forth, or of the autho- 
 rity of the doctrines taught by the miracle-worker : 
 for that I must fall back upon the character of 
 him whose power performed the supernatural work; 
 and considering that he is God, I may be well 
 assured that he would not affix the seal of his 
 confirmation to anything that is false, or sanction 
 a claim to speak in his name which was not well 
 founded. 
 
 Thus viewed, miracles are the outward and 
 visible confirmation by supernatural agency of a 
 claim to the possession of an inward commission 
 equally supernatin:al, but lying in a region which 
 is not so patent to our observation as the other. 
 The prophet declares that he speaks in God's name 
 and by divine inspiration ; that is to say, he affirms 
 that there is what in the present connection we 
 may call a spiritual and intellectual miracle being 
 WTOught within him, by virtue of which he speaks 
 to us the truth of God; but the reality of this 
 mental miracle we have not the means of directly 
 
164 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OE MIRACLES. 
 
 testing, and so it is confirmed by another super- 
 natural work, lying in the department of external 
 nature, which we can see and determine for our- 
 selves. 
 
 In illustration of this mode of putting the case, 
 we may refer here to the case of the paralytic, as 
 that is related in the gospel narrative. We are 
 told that when Jesus saw the faith of the poor 
 man and his bearers, he said unto him,^ ' Son, thy 
 sins be forgiven thee. But there were certain of 
 the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their 
 hearts, AVhy doth this man thus speak blas- 
 phemies ? who can forgive sins but God only ? 
 And immediately, when Jesus perceived in his 
 spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he 
 said unto them. Why reason ye these things in 
 your hearts ? Whether is it easier to say to the 
 sick of the palsy. Thy sins be forgiven thee ; or to 
 say. Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk ? But 
 that ye may know that the Son of Man hath 
 power on earth to forgive sins (he saith to the sick 
 of the palsy), I say unto thee. Arise, and take up 
 thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And 
 
 1 Mark ii. 5-11. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 165 
 
 immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went 
 forth before them all ; insomuch that they were 
 all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never 
 saw it on this fashion.' Now from these words, 
 ' That ye may hnow that the Son of Man hath 
 power on earth to forgive sins^ it is apparent 
 that the miracle of healing was designed to prove 
 the truth of the claim which Jesus put forth 
 when he said, ' Thy sins be forgiven thee.' We 
 prefer here, however, for a reason which will be 
 afterwards evident, to avail ourselves of the very 
 clear and forcible explanation given by Arch- 
 bishop Trench : ' They were murmuring, no 
 doubt, within themselves, " These honours are 
 easily snatched ; any pretender may go about the 
 world claiming this power, and saying to this man 
 and that. Thy sins be forgiven thee, but where is 
 the evidence that his word is allowed and ratified 
 in heaven — that this which is spoken on earth is 
 sealed in heaven ? In the very nature of the 
 power which this man asserts for himself he is 
 secure from detection ; for this releasing of a man 
 from the condemnation of his sin is an act 
 wrought in the inner spiritual world, attested by 
 
166 THE EYIDENTTAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 no outer and visible sign ; therefore it is easily 
 claimed, since it cannot be disproved." And our 
 Lord's answer, meeting this evil thought in their 
 hearts, is in fact this : " You accuse me that I am 
 claiming a safe power, since in the very nature of 
 the benefit bestowed no sign follows — nothing to 
 testify w^hether I have challenged it rightfully or 
 not. I will therefore put myself now to a more 
 decisive proof. I will speak a word. I wdll claim 
 a power, which, if I claim falsely, I shall be con- 
 vinced upon the instant to be an impostor and 
 deceiver. I will say to this sick man. Rise up 
 and walk : by the effects as they follow, or do not 
 follow", you may judge whether I have a right to 
 say to him. Thy sins be forgiven tlieeP And again : 
 " By doing that which is submitted to the eyes of 
 men, I will attest my right and power to do that 
 which in its very nature lies out of the region of 
 proof." ' ^ Here, then, the miracle is the attestation 
 and confirmation by the supernatural which is 
 seen, of the claim to a supernatural commission 
 which is unseen. 
 
 But this is true, not of this one miracle alone ; 
 
 ^ Notes on the Miracles of our Lord. Fifth Edition, pp. 205, 206. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MTKACLES. 167 
 
 for our Lord has used language which implies 
 that his miracles as a wJiole were designed to 
 have to his claims as a whole precisely the same 
 relation which the healing of the paralytic here 
 had to his claim of the right on earth to forgive 
 sins. Let us look at the following passages : ' The 
 works that I do in my Father's name bear witness 
 of me.' ^ If I do not the works of my Father, 
 believe me not ; but if I do, though you believe 
 not me, believe the works, that ye may know and 
 believe that the Father is in me and I in him.' 
 ' If I had not done among them the works which 
 none other man did, they had not had sin.' ' Be- 
 lievest thou not that I am in the Father, and the 
 Father in me ? The words that I speak unto you, 
 I speak not of myself ; but the Father that dwelleth 
 in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am 
 in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe 
 me for the very works' sake.' Now, putting to- 
 gether all these words of the X^ord Jesus, it is most 
 evident that they imply the following things, — 
 viz. that our Lord declared that his miracles were 
 the Father's testimony to his claims ; that, simply 
 on the ground of the evidence which they gave. 
 
168 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 men ought to hear and believe him ; and that if, 
 in the face of such evidence as they gave to him, 
 men should reject him, they would be held guilty 
 of aggravated and inexcusable sin. 
 
 The same deductions must be made from the 
 words of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews: 
 ' How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salva- 
 tion ; which at the first began to be spoken by the 
 Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that 
 heard him ; God also hearing tliem witness j both 
 with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, 
 and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own 
 will ? ' ^ Most evidently, therefore, the New Testa- 
 ment view of the miracles is, that they are God's 
 attestation and confirmation of the claims of those 
 at whose word they were performed, and that 
 thereby they also seal to us the truth of the 
 doctrines which, in connection with them, were 
 taught. The woman of Samaria rightly con- 
 cluded that Jesus was a prophet, on the ground 
 of the supernatural knowledge of her history 
 which he manifested ; and then she believed what 
 he said to be the true word of a prophet, when, 
 
 1 Heb. ii. 3, 4. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 169 
 
 in answer to her reference to the Messiah, he 
 declared, ^ I that speak unto thee am he.' Eea- 
 soning from similar premises we come to a similar 
 conclusion, and affirm that the miracles, when 
 themselves proved to be genuine and real, do in 
 their turn attest the claims put forth by Christ 
 and his apostles, and so affix to all their statements 
 the official and authoritative seal of God. 
 
 Against this reasoning, however, it has been by 
 some contended, that so far from confirming the 
 claims of those at whose word they were per- 
 formed, and attesting the doctrines which they 
 taught, the miracles must first be themselves 
 tested by the doctrines, before they can hold any 
 place as evidences for their divine authority. And 
 it may be well to enter somewhat fully into the 
 consideration of this subject, the rather that since 
 the days of Coleridge, and very much owing to the 
 influence exerted by him on modern theological 
 inquiry, there has been a tendency among many 
 to adopt opinions which, when fairly carried out, 
 would, to our thinking, make the evidential value 
 of miracles a vanishing quantity, and reduce it, in 
 fact, to a nonentity. 
 
170 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 Let us concede here that, in the age of the 
 apologists, attention was too exclusively devoted 
 by many to the department of external evidences, 
 while that of the experimental was to a large 
 extent neglected. Yet this affords no proper 
 reason why, in a reaction from that which was 
 undoubtedly one extreme, we should rush at once 
 into the opposite. There are external evidences, 
 and there are experimental evidences. Each 
 species has its own province, and each is to be 
 taken also in its own order. There is a divine 
 adaptation in the doctrines of the gospel to the 
 wants and condition of the human heart, and in 
 seeking to establish the truth of Christianity, this 
 must by no means be lost sight of ; but neither, 
 on the other hand, must we ourselves ignore, or 
 suffer others to forget, the attestation of the claims 
 of Jesus, which was given so gloriously by God in 
 the miracles which he wrought. We do not put 
 the miracles in the place of Christian experience ; 
 but neither must we allow Christian experience to 
 push the miracles entirely into the shade. In the 
 line of proof the miracles come first, introducing 
 the messenger from heaven ; then, on the ground 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 171 
 
 of that divine testimony which is borne to him, 
 we beheve his teaching; thereafter, his teaching 
 being believed, there comes into force the argu- 
 ment from experience. Reverting again to the 
 case of the woman of Samaria, it was the evidence 
 given by her to the people of her city, regarding 
 his miraculous knowledge of her history, that 
 induced them to go to Jesus as the Messiah ; but 
 after they had gone, they came back saying, 
 ^Now we believe, not because of thy saying' (or, 
 no longer do we believe on thy mere word), ' for 
 we have heard him ourselves, and know that this 
 is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world,' 
 — that is to say, they had now additional evidence 
 besides that of the miracle to which she bore testi- 
 mony, and from their own experience in their 
 interview with him they were sure that he was 
 Christ. But it must not be supposed that the 
 miracle was of no value here, though they thus 
 put their later experience above it ; on the con- 
 trary, but for it, and the woman's testimony to it, 
 they had never gone to see him. Now similarly 
 with ourselves : if we have attained to the evi- 
 dence of inward experience, we will unquestion- 
 
172 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 ably, like these men of Sychar, declare that it is 
 of far higher value than any which is merely 
 external in its nature ; but we are not at liberty 
 to say that the miracles have done little or nothing 
 to help us to such a condition. It is most unwise 
 and pernicious to the interests of truth to set up 
 one branch of evidence against another, as some 
 writers have done ; and if, in the remarks which 
 follow, we shall be led to speak almost exclusively 
 of the worth of miracles, and to take high ground 
 in reference to that, let it not be supposed that, 
 in order thereto, we are disposed to lower the 
 platform on which the evidence of experience 
 stands. On the contrary, we value the evidence 
 from miracles mainly because it furnishes the 
 gate through which we pass into the fortress of 
 experience; and we seek to strengthen it on the 
 same principle as, when a castle is beleaguered, the 
 drawbridge is uplifted and the portcullis lowered, 
 even although the garrison be confident that the 
 innermost stronghold is impregnable. 
 
 By far the ablest exponent of the view which 
 we are now to controvert is Archbishop Trench ; 
 and that we may not misrepresent his opinions. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 173 
 
 we shall quote a few sentences from two of the 
 preliminary dissertations prefixed to his valuable 
 Notes on the Miracles. His words are these : 
 ' A miracle does not prove the truth of a doctrincj 
 or the divine mission of him that brings it to pass. 
 That which alone it claims for him at the first is 
 the right to be listened to; it puts him in the 
 alternative of coming from heaven or from hell. 
 The doctrine must first commend itself to the 
 conscience as being good, and only then can the 
 miracle seal it as divine. But the first appeal is 
 from the doctrine to the moral nature of man.' ^ 
 Again : ^ It may be objected, if this be so, if there 
 be this inward witness of the truth, what need then 
 of the miracle ? to what end does it serve when 
 the truth has accredited itself already? It has 
 indeed accredited itself as good, as from God in 
 the sense that all which is good and true is from 
 him, as whatever was precious in the teaching 
 even of the heathen sage or poet was from him, 
 but not yet as a new word directly from him, a 
 new speaking on his part to man. The miracles 
 are to be the credentials for the bearer of that 
 
 ' Notes on the Miracles^ as before, p. 24. 
 
174 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIKACLES. 
 
 good wordj signs that lie has a special mission for 
 the realization of the purpose of God in regard to 
 humanity.' ^ Once more : ' Are, then, it may be 
 asked, the miracles to occupy no place at all in 
 the array of proofs for the certainty of the things 
 which we have believed? On the contrary, a 
 most important place. We should greatly miss 
 them if they did not appear in sacred history, if 
 we could not point to them there ; for they belong 
 to the very idea of a Redeemer, which would 
 remain most incomplete without them. We could 
 not ourselves, without having that idea infinitely 
 weakened and impoverished, conceive of him as 
 not doing such works ; and those to whom we pre- 
 sented him as a Lord and Saviour might very 
 well answer, — Strange that one should come to 
 deliver men from the bondage of nature which 
 was crushing them, and yet himself have been 
 subject to its heaviest laws ; himself wonderful, 
 and yet his appearance accompanied by no analo- 
 gous wonders in nature ; claiming to be the life, 
 and yet himself powerless in the encounter with 
 death ; however much he promised in word, never 
 
 ^ Notes on the 3Iirac!es, as before, p. 24. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 175 
 
 realizing any part of his promise in deed ; giving 
 nothing in hand, no first-fruits of power, no 
 pledges of great things to come. They would 
 have a right to ask, Why did he give no signs 
 that he came to connect the visible with the in- 
 visible world ? Why did he do nothing to break 
 the yoke of custom and experience, nothing to 
 show men that the constitution which he pretended 
 to reveal has a true foundation ? ' ^ 
 
 Along with these remarks there are others of 
 great power and beauty, setting forth the value 
 of the miracles as parabolic illustrations of the 
 truth which Jesus taught, and the spiritual work 
 which he came to perform ; but regarding that 
 aspect of the wondrous works of the Saviour, 
 we are in perfect harmony with the Archbishop, 
 believing that the character of the works and the 
 circumstances in which they were wrought, throw 
 a wondrous light upon the nature of the gospel, 
 and the manner in which sinners become partakers 
 of its salvation. We shall therefore confine our 
 remarks to the extracts we have given. In them 
 we find not a little of that luminous haze which 
 
 ^ Notes on the Miracles^ as before, p. 93. 
 
176 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 IS SO characteristic of the school of divines to 
 which in this particular ^ he belongs ; and it is 
 sometimes difficult, for all so simple as the lan- 
 guage looks, to seize the precise thought, if indeed 
 there be precision in the thought, which he de- 
 signs to express. Nevertheless we shall look some- 
 what minutely into his words, and endeavour 
 to show their inconsistency, not only with the 
 scriptural view which we have attempted to set 
 forth, but also with his own explanation of the 
 design of one of the miracles on which he has 
 commented. 
 
 We may best expose the erroneous nature of his 
 view in a series of observations. 
 
 Firstj it is utterly inconsistent with the clear 
 meaning of the words of the Lord already 
 quoted. Again and again the Saviour claimed 
 to be received ' for the very works' sake ; ' and 
 on one very solemn occasion he declared that 
 the guilt of the Jews was greatly aggravated by 
 the fact, that he had done such miracles in the 
 
 * We do not presume to place the name of the Archbishop in any 
 one of the existing schools, as they are called, of the Church. He 
 is more 'evangelical' than those usually called 'broad,' and yet 
 more in sympathy with the ' broad ' than are the evangelicals. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 177 
 
 midst of tliem. Now, how could Jesus have 
 spoken on this fashion, if his supernatural works 
 claimed for him at first only the right to be 
 listened to? He does not blame the Jews for 
 not listening to him, neither does he find fault 
 with them because, after hearing his words, they 
 still refused to acknowledge his works as divine ; 
 but his charge is that thej did not believe him, 
 or receive him as the Messiah; and he declares 
 that in rejecting him, they were guilty of aggra- 
 vated sin, because the works which he did clearly 
 proved him to be from the Father. Even when 
 he was accused of casting out devils by Beelzebub 
 the prince of devils; when, as Trench phrases it, he 
 was ' put in the alternative of coming either from 
 heaven or hell,' — he did not appeal to his doctrines 
 to show that he was from heaven, as, on the Arch- 
 bishop's showing, he might have been expected to 
 do, but he referred simply to the nature of the 
 miracle, and the absurdity involved in the idea of 
 Satan casting out Satan. We do not dispute, 
 indeed, that the truth has in it a self-evidencing 
 power, and that sometimes our Lord gave pro- 
 minence to that idea ; but it is noteworthy, that 
 M 
 
178 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 it IS in the Gospel of John, who was, if we may 
 so say, the evangelist who was most likely to dwell 
 on that aspect of the matter, that we find these 
 very strong appeals to the external miracles ; and 
 we cannot put any intelligible construction on 
 these words of Jesus, if they do not mean that by 
 the miracles God the Father attested his claims 
 as the Messiah, and that, simply on the ground of 
 that attestation, he had a right not only to be 
 listened to, but to be believed and received as 
 having come from God. Let the passage in the 
 fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel be closely 
 examined, and it will be seen that the language of 
 our Lord implies, that if Philip could not receive 
 so profound an utterance as that he was in the 
 Father and the Father in him, on his simple 
 word, there was enough in the works of a mira- 
 culous nature which he had seen Christ perform 
 to warrant his faith, and that on that ground Jesus 
 claimed his belief. As Alford has well put it in 
 his note on the verse : ' The object seems to be to 
 fix their attention on the works as a plain testi- 
 mony, even to such as could not simply believe so 
 deep a thing on his assertion, and one which should 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 179 
 
 become subjective in themselves hereafter, by 
 virtue of their Hving union with him who is gone 
 to the Father, and become the dispenser and 
 channel of the Spirit ; ' or in simpler terms, on the 
 plain ground of miracle he asks their acceptance of 
 that which, now mysterious, was by and by to be 
 to them matter of experience. But in all this, on 
 Trench's principle, Jesus is laying a stress on the 
 miracles which they are not able to bear, and 
 weakening his cause by putting his claim to accept- 
 ance on purely objective grounds. Surely there 
 must be something wrong with a theory which, in 
 its sweeping results, would blame the Master for 
 asking to be believed ^ for the very works' sake.' 
 
 Secondlyj This mode of viewing the miracles 
 is inconsistent with the Archbishop's own explana- 
 tion of the evidential value of the healing of the 
 paralytic, in the passage which we have already 
 quoted.^ Let the reader go back and re-peruse 
 the very clear and admirable expansion of the 
 Saviour's reply to the unspoken murmur of the 
 Scribes, ' Why doth this man thus speak blas- 
 phemies? who can forgive sins but God only?' and 
 
 1 See before, pp. 165, 166. 
 
180 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 then let him consider whether that account of this 
 individual case can be rendered consistent with the 
 canons which he has laid down regarding miracles 
 in general. Was this act of healing only designed 
 to claim for Jesus ' a right to be listened to ' ? did 
 it simply place him ' in the alternative of coming 
 from heaven or hell ' ? Nay, for the Archbishop 
 himself has declared that our Lord, in performing 
 it, did in effect say, ' By doing that which is sub- 
 mitted to the eye of men, / will attest my right 
 and power to do that which in its very nature lies 
 out of the region of proof. ^ Here, then, is one 
 case where a miracle did prove, on our author's 
 own showing, the truth of a doctrine and the 
 divine mission of him who brought it to pass. 
 But if in one instance the principle of Trench is 
 falsified, can it be received at all ; especially when, 
 as we have shown, we have our Lord speaking of 
 his miracles as a whole in language which plainly 
 indicates, that they stood in relation to his claims 
 and doctrines as a whole, precisely as this miracle 
 of healing did in relation to his assumption of 
 power on earth to forgive sin ? 
 
 Once more, was the first appeal in this case 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 181 
 
 from the doctrine to the moral nature in man? 
 Nay, for the eloquent commentator has affirmed 
 that the thing which the miracle was produced to 
 attestj was one ' which in its very nature lay out 
 of the region of proof/ and of which the objectors 
 could not have any positive assurance otherwise 
 than by miracle. 
 
 Again, had the doctrine here to commend itself 
 as good, before the miracle could seal it as divine ? 
 So far from this, if in this instance the goodness of 
 a doctrine were to be admitted as an infallible test 
 of a miracle, then the Scribes would have been jus- 
 tified in rejecting both the miracle and the Lord. 
 Undoubtedly they were right in their belief that 
 only God could forgive sin ; that was a good doc- 
 trine ; and yet, as we see, if they had been bound 
 only to test the miracle by that, they would have 
 been blameless in rejecting it. But here perhaps 
 Trench would try to save himself by saying, that 
 the miracle in this case proclaims it to be a new 
 ivord dii^ectly from God, that Jesus, as the Son of 
 Man, had power on earth to forgive sin. Unfor- 
 tunately, however, on his own showing, it cannot 
 be authenticated as a new word by the miracle. 
 
182 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 until it has first been received as a true word by 
 the conscience. Now on the very surface of the 
 narrative it appears that the work was done, not 
 after the doctrine was received as good and true, 
 but for the purpose of convincing all present of 
 its truth ; since, before he spoke to the sick man, 
 he said he did it ' that they might know that the 
 Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sin.^ 
 Here, therefore, most unquestionably, the first 
 appeal was not to the moral nature, but to the 
 miracle, the supernatural work being done to 
 prove the truth of the doctrine, and confirm the 
 claims of the Messiah ; and as we have already 
 seen that what was true of this particular case 
 is true also of all the miracles, it must follow 
 that the opinion which we are controverting is 
 untenable. 
 
 Finally here, this opinion is inconsistent with 
 itself, in giving a changing value to the miracle, 
 according to the time at which it is considered. 
 At first it is only a call to attention ; then, when 
 the doctrine is approved by the conscience, the 
 miracle becomes a divine attestation of the doc- 
 trine as a new word from God. Now this is most 
 
I 
 
 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 183 
 
 shifting grounc^, and betrays a disposition to put 
 a different value on the same thino; at different 
 times. What a miracle is, we maintain, it is 
 always. It stands on its own foundation, and is to 
 be judged by its own standard ; and if received as a 
 divine work, its testimony is distinct, determinate, 
 and constant — not one thing now, and another 
 again. If it do not at first attest the doctrine as 
 from God, it cannot afterwards ; if it confirm the 
 divinity of the doctrine at all, it must do so from 
 the first and always. Such a method of dealing 
 with it as the Archbishop has adopted, must end in 
 making it prove nothing. ' If,' as Dr Wardlaw ^ 
 says admirably here, ' so far as the miracle is con- 
 cerned, the message which it accompanies may be 
 from hell as well as from heaven ; from the devil as 
 well as from God ; from the kingdom of lies no less 
 than from the kingdom of truth ; if the miracle 
 implies no more than a right to be listened to, 
 having nothing in it at all evidential of the source 
 from which the message comes, it is not easy to 
 see how it can become evidential of this, after that 
 source has been ascertained, from the nature of the 
 
 1 Wardlaw On Miracles, pp. 215, 216. 
 
184 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 message itself. If it is not proof at first of the 
 message being from God, it cannot be proof after- 
 ^vards. It may, if you will, be regarded as attest- 
 ing its being " a new word," but not as attesting a 
 new word from him^ or a new speaking on his part 
 to man. That is determined by the character of 
 the message itself, as attested by man's conscience 
 or moral nature. The miracle attests nothing. 
 It may be a diabolical sign just as really and as 
 much as a divine one. It is soleli/ the nature 
 of the doctrine that certifies its origin, not the 
 miracle at all. The theory, as it appears to me, 
 divests miracles of their evidential value entirely.' 
 This difficulty seems to have been felt by Trench 
 himself, for once and again he asks, ^Are the 
 miracles to occupy no place in the array of 
 proofs?' and then having given them, in one 
 sentence only, a subjective value as belonging to 
 the very idea of a Redeemer, which would remain 
 incomplete without them, he oscillates back, as we 
 think, to the old view, admitting that, if there were 
 no miracles, men would be justified in saying of 
 Jesus, ' Why did he give no signs that he came 
 to connect the visible with the invisible w^orld ? 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 185 
 
 Strange that one should come, himself wonderful, 
 and yet his appearance accompanied by no analo- 
 gous wonders in nature ! ' But what is this if it 
 be not a craving for some external attestation or 
 sign of the wonderful mission ? What is this 
 but asking some evidence by means of the super- 
 natural that is seen, of the supernatural that is 
 unseen, and lies out of the region of proof ? The 
 more we ponder over these somewhat mysterious 
 sentences, the more are we disposed to ask. Can 
 it be that the miracles were things with such an 
 intangible value that w^e cannot shape it into dis- 
 tinctness ? or that works to which our Lord so 
 clearly appealed in proof of his mission, should 
 thus, like a dissolving view, pass while we look at 
 them from one thing into another, and finally fade 
 away into nonentity? It were a poor exchange 
 for the definiteness of the old scriptural teaching 
 on this point, to accept the vagueness of that 
 which has here been substituted. 
 
 Thirdly J This opinion is unsatisfactory, inasmuch 
 as the appeal which it makes to the moral nature 
 of man, by the issue of which the miracle is to be 
 tested, must ever be a most uncertain, and there- 
 
186 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 fore a very useless criterion. We have here, in- 
 deed, the very foundation principle of rationalism, 
 which, fairly carried out, would lead to the rejec- 
 tion by each man of the miracles and doctrines 
 which his moral nature did not acknowledge. We 
 of course admit, and that too most cheerfully, that 
 the truth of God does commend itself to every 
 man's conscience in the sight of God ; but that is 
 a very different thing from making the conscience, 
 depraved as it is, the standard by which all that 
 claims to be truth is to be tried. Why, let us ask, 
 is an external revelation needed by man at all, if 
 it be not to give him a standard which shall have 
 the virtue of certainty, and so deliver him from the 
 discordant utterances of his own and his fellows' 
 intuitions ? But precisely as there was need for an 
 external revelation to be a standard of truth, so 
 there was a necessity that that revelation should 
 itself, in some external way, convince us of its 
 genuineness ; and this is done by miracles. As a 
 very able and acute writer on this subject has said : 
 ^They are the criterion by which a real is dis- 
 tinguished from a pretended revelation — the mark 
 by which we know that God has spoken, and 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 187 
 
 discriminate his word from the word of man. An 
 external, objective, palpable test is the only one 
 which can meet the exigencies of the case. If 
 men are thrown upon their intuitions, impulses, 
 and emotions, their pretended revelations will be 
 as numerous and as discordant as the dialects of 
 Babel. Each man will have his doctrine and his 
 psalm. The necessity of such a test has been 
 universally acknowledged. The Catholic feels it, 
 and appeals to a visible, infallible society, which is 
 to judge between the genuine and spurious ; the 
 Protestant feels it, and appeals to his Bible ; the 
 Bible bows to the same necessity, and appeals to 
 miracles. These, it triumphantly exclaims, dis- 
 tinguish my doctrines from those of every other 
 book, and seal them with the impress of God. A 
 religion of authority is the only bulwark against 
 fanaticism on the one hand, and a dead natural- 
 ism on the other. ' ^ 
 
 Foiirtlily^ This view of Trench's is based on 
 what seems to us the erroneous opinion, that true 
 
 1 British and Foreign Evangelical Review for January 1858, pp. 
 88, 89. The whole article from which this quotation is made de- 
 serves the study of every one who would arrive at a sound conclu- 
 sion on the subject which we are here discussing. 
 
188 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 miracles may be performed in attestation of false- 
 hood. Immediately preceding the extracts which 
 we have given we find this statement : ' This fact, 
 however, that the kingdom of lies has its wonders 
 no less than the kingdom of truth, would be alone 
 sufficient to convince us, that miracles cannot be 
 appealed to absolutely and simply in proof of the 
 doctrine which the worker of them proclaims ; and 
 God's word expressly declares the same (Deut. 
 xiii. 5).'^ But a little before,^ he had said that 
 the works of antichrist and his organs are not 
 ' miracles, in the very highest sense of the word ; 
 they only in part partake of the essential elements 
 of the miracle.' Now if this be so, surely the 
 conclusion to be drawn from the fact, if it be a 
 fact, that the kingdom of lies has its wonders as 
 well as the kingdom of truth, ought to be, not 
 that a miracle purely and simply cannot prove a 
 doctrine, but that only miracles in the very 
 highest sense of the term (as all through we have 
 been using it), and possessing all the essential 
 elements of the miracle, do absolutely and simply 
 prove a doctrine. The amount of the argument 
 
 ^ Notes on the Miracles, as above, pp. 23, 24. ^ /j/^/, p^ 23. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 189 
 
 here, therefore, is simply to put us on our guard, 
 to warn us against being imposed upon by 
 miracles which are not so in the very highest 
 sense of the term, and to bid us, before implicitly 
 receiving the doctrine on the faith of the miracle, 
 be sure that it be a miracle that will warrant us to 
 do so. The Archbishop here, therefore, touches the 
 criterion of miracles, and not at all the evidential 
 value of those, which on right grounds are re- 
 ceived as works of God. We gladly here avail 
 ourselves of the words of the able author already 
 quoted : ^ ' The true doctrine being, that as the 
 miracle proves by an evidence inherent in itself, 
 no miracles should be admitted as the creden- 
 tials of a messenger or doctrine, but those which 
 carry their authority upon their face. Doubtful 
 miracles are in the same category with doubtful 
 arguments ; and if a religion relies upon this class 
 alone to substantiate its claims, it relies upon a 
 broken reed. There are some things which w^e 
 pronounce intuitively to be the sole prerogative of 
 God. Others may be doubtful, but these are as 
 clear as light. This is the class of miracles on 
 
 ' British and Foreign Evangelical Review^ as before, pp. 85, 86. 
 
190 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 which a reKgion must rely.' Thus f ar, therefore, 
 granting the Archbishop's premises, we admit that 
 the conclusion from them will carry us ; but we 
 demur entirely to the sweeping inference, that no 
 miracle can be simply and absolutely appealed to 
 in proof of a doctrine. 
 
 Let us look, however, at his premises them- 
 selves. Is it the case that miracles, in any 
 proper sense of the word, have been wrought by 
 evil spirits, or by the organs of antichrist, in 
 support of error? In answer to this question it 
 might perhaps be enough to say with Mansell,^ 
 'It remains yet to be shown, that in all human 
 experience any instance can be produced of a 
 real miracle wrought by evil spirits for the 
 purposes of deception ; ' but to content ourselves 
 w^ith this would perhaps leave room for the asser- 
 tion, that we shrink from an investigation of the 
 passages of Scripture which are generally supposed 
 to bear upon this point. The most important of 
 these are the chapters in the beginning of 
 Exodus, relative to the works of the Egyptian 
 magicians, and the verses in Deuteronomy re- 
 
 1 Aids to Faith, p. 33. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 191 
 
 ferred to by Trench in the extract already quoted. 
 Let us examine them both. 
 
 First, as to the wonders wrought by the magi- 
 cians. From a careful study of the chapters in 
 the sacred narrative which record the doings of 
 Jannes, Jambres, and their coadjutors, the follow- 
 ing things may be gathered, — namely, that they 
 could only go a certain length in their reproduc- 
 tion (allowing for the moment that they were re- 
 productions) of the work of Moses ; that on all 
 the occasions on which their feats were successful, 
 intimation was given by Moses of what he was 
 about to do, in time to allow opportunity on their 
 part for preparation ; that in the case in which 
 they failed this intimation was not given, and so 
 they were taken unawares, having had no infor- 
 mation furnished them, and no preparation made. 
 Now, does not all this look as if they had in the 
 successful instances prepared themselves by some 
 natural means to produce something like what 
 Moses was to do ; but that on this new occasion, 
 being taken by surprise, they only made a feint 
 of attempting to counterfeit it, and immediately 
 covered their retreat by saying, ' This is the finger 
 
192 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 of God ' ? Indeed, if this explanation be not ac- 
 cept ed, it will be hard to see what there was more 
 difficult in the bringing of the lice than in the 
 production of the frogs ; nay, if it be allowed that 
 they really and truly changed a rod into a serpent, 
 which was a virtual act of creation, it will be im- 
 possible to tell why those who could do that divine 
 work could not perform this other. Hence, put- 
 ting all these things together, we are compelled to 
 conclude that the wonders done by the magicians 
 were not miracles at all, but mere feats of leger- 
 demain, similar to those which are common to this 
 day among the jugglers of the East. 
 
 But some will say. Is it not affirmed that the 
 magicians did so, and does not this imply that 
 they did the same things as Moses ? No, we 
 reply ; for in the instance in which they failed the 
 same words are employed, ' The magicians did so, 
 and they could not.' 
 
 What is conclusive on the point, however, is the 
 fact already adverted to, that the things done at 
 the word of Moses were virtual creations. Now, 
 if there be one power which may be regarded as 
 more peculiarly and incommunicably divine than 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 193 
 
 another, it is that of creation ; yet here, if these 
 magicians did real miracles, we are required to 
 believe that created spirits, it makes no matter 
 whether human or demoniacal, working in antagon- 
 ism to God, did exercise this divine omnipotence. 
 The thing is preposterous. Even if we were to 
 admit, what indeed we are not concerned to deny, 
 that evil spirits can produce physical effects just 
 as the will- of man can, yet it is inconceivable 
 either that tliey should have a power that is dis- 
 tinctively divine, or that God should delegate that 
 power to them for the mere purpose of contending 
 with it, as if one in a game of chess should match 
 his right hand against his left. Clearly, there- 
 fore, whatever those works of the magicians were, 
 they were not miracles in the only sense in which 
 we can employ tliat term. 
 
 But neither is there any foundation for the view 
 of Trench in the passage in Deuteronomy to which 
 he has referred. The words are these (chap. xiii. 
 1-5) : ' If there arise among you a prophet, or a 
 dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a 
 wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, 
 whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after 
 
 N 
 
194 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIEACLES. 
 
 other godsj which thou hast not known, and let 
 us serve them; thou shalt not hearken unto the 
 words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams : 
 for the Lord your God proveth you, to know 
 whether ye love the Lord your God with all your 
 heart, and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after 
 the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his 
 commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall 
 serve him, and cleave unto him. And that pro- 
 phet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to 
 death ; because he hath spoken to turn you away 
 from the Lord your God, which brought you 
 out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you 
 out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee 
 out of the way which the Lord thy God com- 
 manded thee to walk in: so shalt thou put the 
 evil away from the midst of thee.' Now let us 
 remember that this passage is adduced to prove 
 that the first appeal is from the doctrine to the 
 moral nature of man, because the kingdom of 
 lies has its wonders as well as the kingdom of 
 truth. But a little investigation will convince any 
 one that the appeal here is not to the conscience 
 at all, but to a previous external revelation from 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIEACLES. 195 
 
 God miraculously attested ; and the argument is, 
 that as God cannot deny or contradict himself, 
 when signs or wonders are wrought in opposition 
 to the doctrine of that revelation, these wonders 
 are to be held as impostures, and the doer of them 
 is to be put to death. The case is not that of a 
 people to whom miracles are presented for the 
 first time, but rather that of those who had 
 themselves seen such sublime works wrought by 
 God, as the dividing of the sea, the giving of 
 the manna, the bringing of water out of the rock, 
 and the leading of the tribes by the pillar and the 
 cloud. Now as their law had been thus un- 
 equivocally established by God, they were not to 
 allow themselves to be moved from it by anything 
 else, however much it might resemble miracle; 
 even although the wonder should seem to come 
 to pass, they were to account it false and not 
 from God, inasmuch as he could not deny himself. 
 Hence this passage makes its appeal not to the 
 moral nature of man, but to the consistency of 
 God; and it makes the doctrines only a test of 
 miracle, after they have themselves been received as 
 miraculously attested as divine. The verses pre- 
 
196 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIKACLES. 
 
 suppose that God has already spoken, and that 
 his words have been confirmed by miracle, and 
 have as such been received; thereafter, but not 
 till then, the doctrines become a test by v^hich to 
 try all other claimants to the supernatural, and no 
 one is to be received who proclaims another Lord, 
 and seeks to withdraw us from him whose revela- 
 tion we have already in our hands. Thus inter- 
 preted, the words in Deuteronomy are for the law, 
 what Paul's are for the gospel : ^ Though we, or 
 an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel 
 unto you, than that which we have preached 
 unto you, let him be accursed.' 
 
 It may be said, however, that if a previous 
 external revelation, miraculously attested, ought to 
 be thus employed to try the miracles of those who 
 might arise and pretend to work them, then, by 
 parity of reasoning, the prior revelation which 
 God has made of himself in the heart of man 
 should be employed to test the doctrines of the 
 divine messenger, and through them the miracles 
 which he professes to perform; so that thus we are 
 brought back to the old appeal to the moral nature 
 of man. But we must distinguish between things 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 197 
 
 that differ. In the case supposed by Moses, the 
 pretender to miraculous power seeks to oppose 
 and draw men away from truth which they have 
 abeady received on good evidence as divine ; 
 whereas, in the other case, he is adducing his 
 supernatural works as witnesses of the divinity of 
 some new truth, not contradicting that which they 
 have already received, but so far transcending it 
 as to be above the reach of their discovery. In 
 this last instance, the miracle-worker takes his 
 stand upon admitted and accepted truth, and seeks 
 to lead men up to some new and higher prin- 
 ciples, the miracle being not a witness of the old 
 which they have already received, but of the new 
 which he desires them to accept. If he contro- 
 verted the old, then the law laid down by Moses 
 might come into operation ; but if he simply builds 
 upon it, and seeks only to rise above it, then most 
 evidently the old received doctrine cannot be made 
 a test of any kind wherewith to try the miracle 
 by which he confirms the new. The miracles are 
 not wrought by him in support of natural religion, 
 or those truths which may be eliminated from the 
 moral nature of man, but in confirmation of the 
 
198 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 new truths which he is bringing to light : hence it 
 must be evident at a glance, that in a case like this, 
 the old truths of natural religion, admitted and 
 acted upon as they are by both parties, are com- 
 paratively worthless as tests either of the miracles 
 or of the new truths revealed in connection with 
 them. In the case of the Scriptures, indeed, the 
 harmony of their doctrines with the moral nature of 
 man is one of the proofs of their truth, but it is not 
 on this that the value of the evidence of miracles 
 depends. They have their own distinct and in- 
 dependent place. They stand upon a footing of 
 their own ; and if the works be received as divine, 
 then, since they proceed on the admission of the 
 truths of natm^al theology, the natural theologian 
 has nothing further to do than to listen and be- 
 lieve the revelation which they introduce. 
 
 But we need not linger longer here, since the 
 thoughtful reader must be already convinced of 
 the unsatisfactory and untenable character of 
 the views maintained by the eminent writer to 
 whom we have referred; nor would we have 
 dwelt so long upon his argument, if it had not 
 been that the weight of his great ability, and 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 199 
 
 deservedly high position, is apt to influence many 
 who will not take the trouble to look thoroughly 
 into his reasoning. His error seems to us to be, 
 that he has given forth his Christian view of 
 miracles, as if it were that of an inquirer coming 
 toward Christianity, but not yet a believer in its 
 truth. There is a sense in which it is correct to 
 say, that ' the true relation is one of mutual inter- 
 dependence, the miracles proving the doctrines, 
 and the doctrines approving the miracles, and 
 both held together for us in blessed unity in the 
 person of him who spake the words and did 
 the works ; ' but this is after the divinity of the 
 miracles and the truth of the doctrines have been 
 both believed. It may be true also, that in 
 looking on the doctrines as throwing back light 
 on the miracles, we are receiving ' the sum total 
 of the impression which this divine revelation 
 is intended to make on us, instead of taking an 
 impression only partial and one-sided;' but it is 
 equally true, that this sum total comes to us in two 
 different instalments.^ 
 
 » Similarly Isaac Taylor, in liis thoughtful book, entitled The 
 Restoration oj Beliefs p. 103, has said : You have to do with one who 
 
200 THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 Our readers must not imagine that, in placing 
 the miracles on this ground, we are contending 
 for what is of comparatively minor importance. 
 The rationalism of Germany was preceded by 
 that mystic Pietism, which, in its overvaluing of 
 experience, gave no heed to miracles and the 
 other departments of external evidence, and so 
 prepared the way for the dreary naturalism which 
 followed; and in our own day the Intuitionalism 
 which Coleridge did so much to introduce, and 
 
 offers to your eye liis credentials, his diploma, duly signed and sealed, 
 and which declare him to be a personage of the highest rank. All 
 seems genuine in these evidences. At the same time the style and 
 tone, the air and behaviour of this personage, and all that he says 
 and what he informs you of, and the instructions he gives you, are 
 in every respect consistent with his pretensions, as set forth in the 
 instrument he brings with him. It is not, then, that you alternately 
 believe his credentials to be genuine, because his deportment and 
 his language are becoming to his alleged rank ; and then that you 
 yield to the impression which has been made upon your feelings 
 by his deportment, because you have admitted the credentials to 
 be true. Your belief is the product of a simultaneous accordance 
 of the two species of proof; it is a combined force that carries 
 conviction, not a succession of proofs in line.' Hardly so, for the 
 credentials are presented before the instructions of the person are 
 heard or his deportment observed. So acute a thinker must have 
 seen that there is succession here, and that the accordance of two 
 species of proof of this sort cannot be simultaneous. The creden- 
 tials have their own tests, and the instructions and deportment 
 have theirs. They are both distinct, and must be separately ex- 
 amined ; so that the impression derived from both cannot be called 
 a simultaneous accordance of the two. 
 
THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 201 
 
 which, as taught by him, laughed all evidences to 
 scorn, and treated Paley with contempt, has been 
 the precursor of such books as Essays and Reviews 
 and the volumes of Oolenso. Hence, judging 
 the present in the light of the past, it is of the 
 greatest moment that, while we carefully main- 
 tain the testimony of experience, we allow the 
 miracles also to speak for themselves and to give, 
 as they were designed to give, a clear, certain, 
 and independent confirmation of the claims of the 
 divine messenger, and the truth of the divine 
 message. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 We have now reached the close of the argument 
 which in these pages we have attempted to pro- 
 secute ; and if we have succeeded in estabhshing 
 the various points to which we have directed the 
 attention of our readers, we stand on a founda- 
 tion of rock, while with Nicodemus we say to 
 Jesus, ' We know that thou art a teacher come from 
 God, for no man can do these miracles which thou 
 dost except God be with him.' But if this be so, 
 what then ? Can we consistently stop short with 
 this assertion, and not go on to receive the truth 
 which he has come to communicate, and accept 
 the salvation which he has so completely wrought 
 out and so freely proffered ? If the line of proof 
 which we have adopted be conclusive, it must 
 follow not only that Jesus is a Saviour, but that 
 there is no other Saviour than he ; and so a keen 
 
204 CONCLUSION. 
 
 edge IS given to the question of the apostle, ' How 
 shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ? ' 
 
 Will my readers forgive me, if in this closing 
 paragraph I quit the calm argumentative style 
 to which throughout I have studiously confined 
 myself, and make a personal appeal, beseeching 
 them to consider the choice which is thus pre- 
 sented to them — salvation through the reception 
 of the crucified but divinely attested Christ ; or, 
 as the punishment of rejecting him, everlasting 
 destruction from the presence of the Lord and 
 from the glory of his power. Take heed how 
 you decide between these alternatives, for it is 
 ETERNITY that trembles in the balance. Beware, 
 I beseech you, of the sin and doom of those of 
 whom the Lord himself thus spoke : ^ If I had not 
 come and spoken unto them, they had not had 
 sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin. 
 He that hateth me, hateth my Father also. If I 
 had not done among them the works that none 
 other man did, they had not had sin ; but now 
 they have both seen and hated both me and my 
 Father.' 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note A.— See Page ^ L(^ 
 
 THE DARWINIAN THEORY. 
 
 ^It does not require an intimate acquaintance 
 with science to enable one to estimate the logical 
 worth of the arguments by which scientific men 
 arrive at conclusions on the questions considered 
 in this lecture. If it did, I should hesitate about 
 offering any strictures upon their reasonings. But 
 logic is the same for science as for other depart- 
 ments of inquiry ; and a fallacy may be detected 
 in the form of scientific reasoning by one who is 
 obliged to take the materials of reasoning on trust 
 from the party who reasons. This consideration 
 has been present with me in writing this lecture, 
 and I would now take courage from it to offer a 
 remark on the development theory, as it has been 
 called. At the basis of this theory lies a fallacy 
 which necessarily vitiates and nullifies the entire 
 conclusion. Its exponents have confounded pro- 
 gress in series with growth from a germ, two 
 things as distinct in themselves as number and 
 
206 APPENDIX. 
 
 magnitude. It may seem incredible that men of 
 ability should fall into a paralogism like this ; but 
 that they have done so, the following extracts 
 from one of the ablest of the advocates of the 
 development theory will clearly show. " To sup- 
 pose," says Mr Darwin, " that the eye, with all its 
 inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to 
 different distances, for admitting different amounts 
 of light, and for the correction of spherical and 
 chromatic aberration, could have been formed by 
 natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd 
 in the highest degree. Yet reason tells us that, of 
 numerous gradations from a perfect and complex 
 eye, to one very imperfect and simple, each grade, 
 being useful to its possessor, can be shown to 
 exist." Now the argument here is, that though a 
 perfect eye seems to indicate indubitably that it is 
 the product of a designing mind, this conclusion is 
 invalidated by the fact, that a gradation of eyes, 
 from the perfect to the imperfect, is discoverable. 
 A gradation in what ? we ask : a gradation in the 
 eyes of animals of the same species, or in the 
 eyes of animals of different species? a grada- 
 tion from a perfect human eye to an imperfect 
 one, or from the perfect human eye to the imper- 
 fect eye of the lowest of the brute tribes ? The 
 latter is obviously that which IVIr Darwin has in 
 view, as the former does not exist. But what has 
 this to do with development or natural selection ? 
 
APPENDIX. 207 
 
 Could It be shown that in the human race there is 
 a gradation from a perfect eye to an imperfect, 
 and that races, as they advance in culture, develop 
 gradually the organ more and more perfectly ; or 
 could it be sworn that a change of this sort has 
 ever happened to the human race, a case of 
 development would then be worth looking at. 
 But to argue that the human eye has been gradu- 
 ally developed from that of the fish, because a 
 gradation may be traced through different kinds 
 of animals from the one to the other, is not less 
 absurd than it would be, where a regular grada- 
 tion in size may be traced from the eldest children 
 in a family to the youngest, to maintain that 
 therefore the former had been developed out of 
 the latter. Absurd, also, is this talk about perfect 
 eyes and imperfect. The eyes of one animal are as 
 perfect as those of another, i,e. equally fitted for 
 the purposes for which they are designed, and for 
 the place the animal was to occupy. We need not 
 go to the human eye for evidences of design ; the 
 eye of an insect, a bird, or a fish will serve as well. 
 Each is, as an organ, perfect in relation to that for 
 which it exists, and we never find it passing by a 
 series of changes into something more perfect. 
 
 ^ Mr Darwin goes on to say, " If further, the 
 eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations 
 be inherited, which is certainly the case, and if 
 any variation or modification of the organ be ever 
 
208 APPENDIX. 
 
 useful to an animal under cliano-ins: conditions of 
 life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect 
 or complex eye could be formed by natural selec- 
 tion, though inseparable to an imagination, can 
 hardly be considered real." To this I cannot 
 reply, as I do not understand it. It may be at 
 once conceded that the eyes of different men vary, 
 and that these varieties may be inherited ; that a 
 man with black eyes, or prominent eyes, or whose 
 sight is short, may propagate tliese peculiarities to 
 his children. This, however, cannot be what Mr 
 Darwin refers to, for this has nothing to do with 
 his subject. To what variations, then, does he 
 refer ? To variations which may occur in the eyes 
 of the same animal in the course of life ? But what 
 are they ? A man's eyes change, no doubt, as he 
 grows older ; the orb becomes less convex, the 
 glance less piercing, the movement less quick ; but 
 are such changes propagated to his children, 
 should he beget any, in his old age ? or in what 
 possible sense can such changes be regarded as 
 ministering to the uses of the man under changing 
 circumstances ? I feel myself quite thrown out 
 here. That the author had a meaning which 
 he sought to express by the words I have quoted, 
 I am bound to believe; but what he meant by 
 them I confess myself utterly unable to make out.' ^ 
 
 1 Note to Lecture v. in St Paul at Athens, by Dr W. L. Alex- 
 ander, pp. 140-143. 
 
APPENDIX. 209 
 
 The latest view of Hugh Miller on this matter 
 may prove interesting to the reader. We extract 
 the following from The Testimony of the Rocks : 
 ' When the Lamarckian affirms that all our recent 
 species of plants and animals were developed out 
 of previously existing plants and animals of species 
 entirely different, he affirms what, if true, would 
 be capable of proof ; and so, if it cannot be 
 proven, it is only because it is, not true. The 
 trilobites have been extinct ever since the times of 
 the mountain limestone ; and yet, by a series of 
 specimens, the individual development of certain 
 species of this family, almost from the extrusion of 
 the animal from the egg until the attainment of 
 its full size, has been satisfactorily shown. By 
 specimen after specimen has every stage of growth 
 and every degree of development been exemplified, 
 and the palaeontologist has come as thoroughly to 
 know the creatures in consequence, under their 
 various changes from youth to age, as if they had 
 been his contemporaries, and had grown up under 
 his eye. An had and existing species, vegetable 
 and animal, been derived from other species of the 
 earlier periods, it would have been equally possible 
 to demonstrate by a series of specimens their rela- 
 tionship. Let us again instance the British shells. 
 Losing certain species in each of the older and 
 yet older deposits at which we successively arrive, 
 we at length reach the red and coralline crags, 
 o 
 
210 APPENDIX. 
 
 where we find mingled with the famihar forms a 
 large percentage of forms now extinct ; then 
 going on to the shells of the lower miocene, more 
 than six hundred species appear, almost all of 
 which are strange to us ; and then passing to the 
 eocene shells of the calcaire gronier^ we find our- 
 selves among well-nigh as large a group of yet 
 other and older strangers, not one of which we are 
 able to identify with any shell now living in the 
 British area. There could thus be no lack of 
 materials for forming such a genealogy of the 
 British shells had they been gradually developed 
 out of the extinct species, as that which M. Bar- 
 randee has formed of the trilobites. But no such 
 genealogy can be formed. We cannot link on a 
 single recent shell to a single extinct one. Up to 
 a certain point we find the recent shells exhibiting 
 all their present specific peculiarities, and beyond 
 that point they cease to appear. Down to a cer- 
 tain point the extinct shells also exhibit all thei?' 
 specific peculiarities, and then they disappear for 
 ever. There are no intermediate species — no con- 
 necting links — no such connected series of speci- 
 mens to be found, as enables us to trace a trilobite 
 through all its metamorphoses from youth to age. 
 All geologic history is full of the beginning and 
 ending of species — of their first and their last 
 days ; but it exhibits no genealogies of develop- 
 ment. The Lamarckian sets himself to grapple 
 
APPENDIX. 211 
 
 in his dream with the history of all creation. We 
 awaken him, and ask him to grapple instead with 
 the history of but a few individual species ; with 
 that of the mussel or the whelk, the clam or the 
 oyster ; and we find, from his helpless ignorance 
 and incapacity, what a mere pretender he is.' ^ 
 
 We gladly also refer the reader to the excellent 
 prefatory remarks of Mrs Miller in the last edition 
 of the Footprints of the Creator^ where he will find 
 an excellent summary of the fatal objections to 
 Mr Darwin's views, warranting the conclusion : 
 ' There is surely something egregiously false in a 
 theory which has both to supplant real by sup- 
 posititious facts, and to come into collision with 
 that attribute of law, without which man's reason 
 would be useless, and his researches vain.' ^ 
 
 Note B. 
 
 In his Inaugural Address as Chancellor of the 
 University of Edinburgh, Lord Brougham ex- 
 pressed himself regarding David Hume as fol- 
 low^s : ' The sound doctrines on all subjects of 
 moral, political, and theological science, at all 
 times taught within these walls, have established 
 the character of the University upon a solid 
 foundation. But it is not to be forgotten that 
 injury to the cause of truth has been done by a 
 
 1 Pp. 200, 201. 2 p, 58. 
 
212 APPENDIX. 
 
 very eminent person, in whose great capacity and 
 celebrity this city takes a just pride, how mnch 
 soever his talents may have been misapplied ; and 
 it well becomes the instructors of youth strenu- 
 ously to counteract the influence of David Hume, 
 both on account of the incalculable importance of 
 the subjects on which he was misled, and also in 
 respect of a far less material circumstance, the 
 disposition of ignorant persons in other countries 
 to represent him as having promoted an infidel 
 school or sect in Scotland. It is fit on this point 
 that the truth should be plainly spoken. Mr 
 Hume was not a sceptic either in his political or 
 his religious errors. His opinions were perfectly 
 decided when they could be held upon positive or 
 affirmative positions ; and as decided as any that 
 could be held upon mere negations. He was the 
 adversary of popular rights, and the ally of the 
 English High Church party against these rights, 
 widely as he differed from all churches upon 
 the grounds of their belief and the foundations 
 of their power. He was upon all religion, both 
 natural and revealed, a disbeliever rather than 
 an unbeliever ; rejecting the evidence of the for- 
 mer, and declaring it to be wholly insufficient to 
 prove the existence of a Deity or the immortality 
 of the soul ; and holding the statements upon 
 which the latter rests to be not only false but im- 
 possible. This is not scepticism, but dogmatism. 
 
APPENDIX. 213 
 
 It is the assertion, that of a miracle there can be 
 no proof ; that of a God and future state there is 
 no proof, no reason whatever for beUeving it. This, 
 then, is atheism, as much as anv person of sound 
 mind can hold the opinion ; and this ought 
 constantly to be exposed as such and refuted. 
 Fortunately there are the means of triumphant 
 refutation; for the whole argument of Mr Hume 
 rests upon an entire misconception of the nature 
 of inductive reasoning ; and it is not too much to 
 affirm that, if he had ever attended to any branch 
 of natural philosophy, he could not have fallen 
 into so manifest an error. There is no one part of 
 the argument which would not destroy all inductive 
 science. All generalization would be put an end 
 to ; experimental inquiries must stand still ; no 
 step could be made, no conclusion drawn, beyond 
 the mere facts observed ; and the science must be 
 turned from the process of general reasoning upon 
 particular facts into the bare records of those 
 particular facts, themselves. The late discoveries 
 in fossil osteology afford additional proof of Mr 
 Hume's hasty assumption both on the question of 
 a providence and on that of miracles. It is now 
 proved by evidence, which he must have admitted 
 to be sufficient, that at one remote period in the 
 history of our globe there was an exertion of 
 creative power to form the human and certain 
 other races not before existing ; so that he must 
 
214 APPENDIX. 
 
 have believed in the miracle of creation ; that is, 
 the interposition of a Being powerful enough to 
 suspend the established order of things and make 
 a new one. The argument rests on the same 
 grounds as to a future state, in so far as he denies 
 the proof of a power to continue the soul apart from 
 the body. But there is this material difference in 
 the evidence, that our induction is conclusive as 
 to the existence of the Deity, and the independent 
 and separate nature of the soul but only proves 
 the probability of its continued existence. Its 
 entirely different nature from matter, as shown in 
 the quickness of its operations ; its independence 
 of the body, proved by the faculties sometimes 
 becoming stronger as the body decays ; above all, 
 its surviving the complete change of the body, 
 so that hardly a particle of the corporeal frame 
 remains, while the mind continues unchanged, 
 unless perhaps by gaining strength, — all demon- 
 strate its different constitution and its independent 
 existence ; and, as there is no one example of 
 annihilation in the universe, and what is termed 
 destruction being only dissolution and new com- 
 bination, and the soul, from the singleness of its 
 nature, without parts, being incapable of such de- 
 struction, we are left to infer, from the prevalence 
 of benevolent design in all the Creator's works, 
 that he wall continue w^hat he has formed, and so 
 largely endowed, and so bountifully cherished. 
 
APPENDIX. 215 
 
 ^ It IS not perhaps just to consider Mr Hume's 
 unfortunate views as adopted from the desire to 
 take a line different from the commonly received 
 opinions, though the force of this temptation to a 
 young author may be naturally enough suspected. 
 . . . Of carelessness in some instances, and 
 prejudice in others, his writings on religious sub- 
 jects give constant proofs. The entire misapplica- 
 tion of Archbishop Tillotson's argument on the 
 real presence is one instance, and the perversion 
 or ignorance of inductive science is another ; to 
 which it may be added his failing to observe that 
 the argument against miracles would apply to cases 
 of testimony which may be put as quite decisive, 
 and which he himself must admit.' 
 
 We take the following from Caxtoniana, a 
 Series of Essays on Life, Literature, and ^fanners, 
 by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Bart. The extract is 
 from the thirteenth Essay of the first volume, ' On 
 the Spirit in which new Theories should be re- 
 ceived,' pp. 222-226. 
 
 ^Suppose that a philosopher is in doubt as to 
 the length of a telescope in a friend's possession, 
 and that ten persons, of whose general veracity 
 there is no question, tell him that they have 
 measured the telescope, and it is twenty feet long, 
 he will accept their evidence, and cease to enter- 
 tain a doubt as to the length of the telescope. 
 But suppose this same philosopher had arrived at 
 
216 APPENDIX. 
 
 the conclusion that the moon is incapable of 
 harbouring any form of organic life, and the 
 same ten persons, whose evidence he has just 
 accepted in a matter on which no pride of science 
 is involved, tell him that they have been looking 
 through a telescope at the moon, and that they 
 all, one after the other, have seen an enormous 
 creature endowed with organic life ; they entreat 
 the philosopher to come and see this phenomenon 
 himself ; would the philosopher be justified in 
 saying, " I shall not deign to take any such idle 
 trouble. I have satisfied myself that no such 
 creature can possibly exist in the moon ; your 
 declaration is against the laws of nature ; excuse 
 me if, against the laws of natui'e, I can accept no 
 evidence, however respectable. It is within the 
 laws of nature that you ten gentlemen should tell 
 a falsehood, or be deceived by an optical illusion. 
 I accept either of these hypotheses as possible, 
 and I will not debase the dignity of science by 
 examining into that which I know to be impossible." 
 Would the philosopher be justified in saying this ? 
 Certainly he would not be justified by any 
 affection for truth. He would be a bigot from 
 the motive most common to bigots, viz. inordinate 
 self-esteem. But perhaps it may be said that no 
 genuine philosopher would have so replied. Par- 
 don me, that answer would be a warrantable 
 deduction from the philosophy of Hume. When 
 
APPENDIX. 217 
 
 Hume speaks of the wonders, or as he calls them 
 miracles, ^\TOught at the tomb of Abbe Paris, the 
 famous Jansenist, he says, " Where shall we find 
 such a number of circumstances agreeing to the 
 corroboration of one fact ? And what have we to 
 oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the 
 absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the 
 events which they relate ? And this surely, in the 
 eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be re- 
 garded as a sufficient refutation." Scarcely so; 
 for what we call impossible in matters of fact 
 deponed by numerous witnesses not interested in 
 the fabrication of a lie, is merely a something 
 opposed to our own experience. And if a philo- 
 sopher is to pronounce for himself what is impos- 
 sihle and what is not, there would soon be no 
 philosophy at all. When the Indian prince 
 asserted it to be impossible that water could be- 
 come solid, it was because that assertion was 
 opposed to his experience. But in spite of his 
 experience, it was not only possible, it was a 
 positive fact; and I cannot agree with Hume, 
 that the king of Siam's incredulity was " reason- 
 able." Modern physiology has given sure solu- 
 tion of those " miracles " at the Jansenist's tomb, 
 which Hume at once declared needed no other 
 refutation than that of their own miraculous 
 nature. Cures that baffle science are effected by 
 imagination. Allow for the inevitable additions 
 
218 APPENDIX. 
 
 which all stories receive as they pass from lip to 
 lipj and not the least the stories of unusual 
 occurrences, and the cures wrought at the Jan- 
 senist's tomb are facts ; marvels if you please, yet 
 not miracles. Certainly Newton w^ould not have 
 so answered, for he never refused to examine. 
 He " was prepared at any moment to abandon 
 his theory." " When Bradley and others had 
 observed a certain rotation of the earth which 
 they could not account for, and»were thinking it 
 was destroying entirely the Newtonian system, 
 they were under the greatest difficulty how to 
 break it to Sir Isaac, and proceeded to do so by 
 degrees and in the softest manner." What was 
 his only answer ? " It may be so ; there is no 
 arguing against facts and experiments." He did 
 not reply that Bradley's discovery was impossible, 
 because it was against the laws of nature, as these 
 laws were interpreted by the Newtonian system. 
 But it is more convenient to philosophers to deny 
 the evidence of facts and experiments which 
 expose their system, than it is on the strength of 
 evidence to examine the facts, and test the 
 experiments; more consonant to "the dignity of 
 science," to say, "impossible" with Hume, than 
 " it may be so " with Newton. 
 
 ' Now had my philosopher, who had decided on 
 the laws of nature as affecting the products of the 
 moon, replied to the ten witnesses of the alleged 
 
APPENDIX. 219 
 
 creature in that orb, " It may be so ; at the same 
 time my persuasions to the contrary are so strong 
 that I must judge for myself/' and then looked 
 through the telescope with inquisitive anxious 
 eyes, perhaps he might have found the wonder 
 explicable and his system unharmed. He might, 
 indeed, have beheld the monster, whose existence 
 seemed to destroy his theory ; but discovered on 
 careful scrutiny that it was no inhabitant of the 
 moon, but a blue-bottle fly that had got on the 
 glass, and viewed through the magnifier seemed 
 bigger than a dragon. 
 
 ' Possibly if a philosopher who possessed in an 
 equal degree the virtue of candour and the acute- 
 ness of science, would condescend to examine, as 
 Bacon and Newton would unquestionably have 
 examined, some of the modern thaumaturgia re- 
 corded by witnesses whose evidence w^ould decide 
 any matter of fact in any court of law, — possibly 
 he might either make an immense progress in our 
 knowledge of the law of nature, or prevent incal- 
 culable mischief in the spread of a new super- 
 stition. If he say, " What you tell me is impos- 
 sible ; I will not stoop to examine," he abandons 
 the field to those who examine, deprived of the 
 guide which his science would be to them ; if he 
 come to examine with old-fashioned notions drawn 
 from the last century's stupid materialism, which 
 any youth of our time, fit to mature into physio- 
 
220 APPENDIX. 
 
 logist or metaphysician, knows to be obsolete rub- 
 bisbj he may call himself a philosopher ; posterity 
 will call him some hard name or another — cer- 
 tainly not philosopher. But if he say quietly 
 with NewtoDj " It may be so ; there is no arguing 
 against facts and experiments. I dare not say 
 that when you all, being respectable intelligent 
 men, agree that you see a monster in the moon, 
 you are liars or idiots ; but before I believe in the 
 monster, you must permit me to examine the tele- 
 scope," — then the philosopher is indeed a philo- 
 sopher ; and then he may find, and then he may 
 prove, to the satisfaction of all whom the portent 
 appalled, that the monster in the moon is a blue- 
 bottle fly on the lens.' 
 
 Note C. 
 
 INCONSISTENCIES WHICH EENAN's VIEW OF THE MIRACLES 
 INVOLVES IN THE CHARACTER OF JESUS. 
 
 'It is the judgment of the orthodox that the 
 Gospels have solved the amazing problem of giving 
 moral unity, not only to the elements of a perfect 
 human nature, but of that nature acting in one- 
 ness with a divine. From their point of view it is 
 inevitable that every merely human portrait of 
 Jesus that reflects with any fidelity the gospel 
 features should be a failure ; but when these 
 
APPENDIX. 221 
 
 gospel features themselves^ as hj Eenan, are ex- 
 cludedj the portrait on its human side becomes 
 still more distorted and unnatural. Ren an could 
 not have succeeded with a human Jesus, who was 
 nothing more, had he been a Shakspeare: as it 
 is, the result is at the opposite pole to every con- 
 ception of congruity and reality. The intellectual 
 attributes of the Saviour entirely annul each 
 other. He was deeply read in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and acquainted with the monarchies of 
 Daniel ; but all that he knew of the living Caesar 
 was the name.^ His normal state was in the 
 supernatural ; ^ yet he created the parables, and 
 had " an exquisite sentiment of nature." ^ He was 
 so ignorant of civil government that it seemed a 
 pure abuse ; * but " his admirable good sense " 
 guided him to the maxim, " Render unto Caesar 
 the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things 
 that are God's." ^ He was so devoid of political 
 economy that he based his church on communism ; 
 and yet, "with rare sureness of discernment, he 
 laid the foundation of a church destined to en- 
 dure." ^ This ig-norant even divined the fall of 
 the Herodian temple,^ though Ren an elsewhere 
 says that the prediction was written after the 
 event.^ 
 
 ' Still more self-repugnant are the moral features 
 
 1 P. 38. 2 P. 41. 3 P. 90. * P. 127. 
 
 5 P. 122. «P. 290. 7 p. .211. sp. 273. Note. 
 
222 APPENDIX. 
 
 which Renan unites in a picture of Jesus as new 
 as it is likely to remain singular. According to 
 him, on the one hand, "there is condensed in 
 Jesus all that is good and elevated in our nature." ^ 
 He is the author of that " eternal morality which 
 has saved humanity." ^ " Jesus is the individual 
 who has made his species take the greatest step 
 towards the divine." ^ " He remains for humanity 
 an inexhaustible principle of moral revivals."* 
 What, then, are the actions frankly ascribed to 
 this " universal reformer," ^ this hero of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, whose " delicate tact " recoiled 
 from the hypocrisy of the Pharisees,^ who always 
 " addressed himself to the refinement of moral 
 sentiment in his auditors," '' and who has " created 
 the heaven of pure souls, where we find that which 
 we seek in vain on earth, the perfect nobleness of 
 the child of God, the absolute purity, the total 
 abstraction from the pollutions of the world ?"^ 
 According to Renan, on the other hand, he ad- 
 vanced, without any evidence, a claim to be the 
 Messiah, and supported that claim by unfounded 
 prophecies and unreal miracles, — " acts which 
 would now be considered traits of illusion or of 
 folly." ^ Though he knew that he was not • the 
 son of David, he was pleased with the children 
 " giving him titles which he durst not assume him- 
 
 ' p. 458. 2 p, 283. 3 p, 457^ 4 p, 451, 5 p. ng. 
 6 P. 332. "P. 333. 8 p. 445. 9 p. 267. 
 
APPENDIX. 223 
 
 self ; and when asked if he heard them, evasively 
 replied that the praise of infant lips is the most 
 agreeable to God." ^ It is not certain but that he 
 connived at the false genealogies which traced his 
 pedigree to David ; ^ and in assuming this title, 
 " as in many other circumstances of his life, Jesus 
 adapted himself to current ideas, though they 
 were not precisely his own." ^ " He felt the need 
 of giving himself credit ; " * and it is hinted that 
 when his miraculous powers were sought to be 
 tested by Herod, ^^ with his ordinary tact he re- 
 fused." ^ Not so, however, when the family of 
 Bethany strove to overwhelm the incredulity of 
 Jerusalem with the pretended miracle of the re- 
 surrection of Lazarus, inducing the yet living 
 brother to hide himself in the tomb, for there 
 Jesus lent himself more or less to the imposture : 
 " His conscience," as Eenan says, " having lost [in 
 Jerusalem], by the fault of men, and not his own, 
 something of its original limpidity." ^ It is vain 
 to plead sincerity in such a course of deception, 
 or to appeal to Oriental standards of honour as 
 different from Occidental, in the case of one who 
 is vaunted as the moral teacher and example of 
 humanity. So little has Kenan the sense of moral 
 congruity, that he actually charges Jesus with 
 accusing Judas of treachery at the supper-table, 
 
 1 p. 192. 2 p. 239. 3 p^ 239. 
 
 4 P. 251. 5 p. 322. 6 Pp. 359, 360. 
 
224 APPENDIX. 
 
 not from knowledge, but from mere suspicion, 
 even as before he had described him as resenting 
 the complaint of the waste of ointment through 
 self-esteem.^ A more hopeless chaos than the 
 character of Eenan's imaginary Christ no artist 
 ever mistook for a creation, and the eulogies 
 heaped by him on this abortion are as offensive to 
 literary taste as they are to moral feeling. It is 
 not too strong language to say that the true Christ 
 of the Gospels w^ould have had no other word for 
 a character such as Eenan has drawn, save " Re- 
 pent ! " that he would have renewed against him 
 the thunders that smote the Pharisees, and driven 
 him from his holy presence as a worker of 
 iniquity ! ' ^ 
 
 ' p. 385. 
 
 2 Fohe Christs and the True, by John Cairns, D.D., pp. 18-20. 
 
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8 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM OLIPHANT AND CO. 
 
 VALUABLE WORK FOR FAMILY READING. 
 
 DAILY BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 By JOHN KITTO, D.D., F.S.A. 
 
 Being Original Readings for a Year on subjects relating to Sacred History, 
 Biography, Geography, Antiquities, and Theology. Especially designed 
 for the Family Circle. In Eight Volumes, foolscap 8vo, with fine Frontis- 
 piece, Vignettes, and numerous Engravings, price 6s. each. 
 
 Vol. MORNING SERIES. 
 I. The Antediluvians and Patui- 
 
 AECIIS. 
 
 n. Moses and the Judges. 
 
 III. Samuel, Saul, and David. 
 
 IV. Solomon and the Kings. 
 
 Vol. EVENING SERIES. 
 I. Job and the Poetical Books. 
 II. Isaiah and the Prophets. 
 in. Life and Death of our Lord. 
 IV. The Apostles and the Early 
 Church. 
 
 Price of the Set in Cloth Antique, 
 Do. Half Morocco, 
 
 Do. Calf Antique, 
 
 Do. Morocco Antique, . 
 
 £2 8 
 
 8 
 
 3 12 
 
 4 4 
 
 *^* The Set, in any of the above bindings, forms a handsome Present. 
 
 ' I cannot lose this opportunity of recommending, in the strongest language 
 and most emphatic manner I can command, this invaluable series of books. 
 I beUeve, for the elucidation of the historic parts of Scripture, there is nothing 
 comparable with them in the English or any other language.' — The late 
 John Angell James. 
 
 'This work has obtained, as it merits, a wide popularity. The topics are 
 selected with admirable skill, and are usually founded on some striking 
 scene or novel adventure, some fact or sentiment, some attractive feature of 
 character or remarkable incident in eastern life and enterprise. Thus, in the 
 lirst vokime, you pass from the manners of the tent to the bravery of the 
 camp, from the fire on the hearth to the flame of the altar ; and whether the 
 paper be on a marriage or a funeral, a sacrifice or a scene of revelry, — whether 
 the theme be Abel's death, Lamech's polygamy, Jubal's harp, Enoch's piety, 
 Noah's ark, Sarah's veil, Hav^ar's flight. Lot's escape, Jacob's pillar, Joseph's 
 bondage, or Pharaoh's signet, — each is told with a charming simplicity, sur- 
 rounded with numerous and beautiful illustrations, and interspersed or closed 
 with pointed and just reflections. Dr Kitto throws light throughout the 
 series on many obscure allusions, says many tender and many startling 
 things, opens his heart to the reader, as he unfolds the stores of his learning 
 — all his utterances being in harmony with his avowed design, to make this 
 work "really interesting as a reading book to the family circle, for which it 
 is primarily intended."' — Professor Eadie, in his '■Life of Dr Kitto.' 
 
 ' We scarcely remember to have met with a work which, so far as it goes, 
 better carries out its professed object — to illustrate, or throv) light upon, the 
 scripture narrative. Within a brief space, and without any parade of learn- 
 ing, Dr Kitto has brought to bear the results of his profound scholarship, of 
 his literary experience, and unaffected piety, to aid the reader of the sacred 
 volume intelligently to understand its import. Amidst the multiplicity of 
 '■•companions" to the Bible, we have never met with one better adapted for 
 use, either in the private circle, or by the unlearned Christian inquirer.'— 
 Noncovformist. 
 
 ' Contains a much larger amount of positive information (often of a very 
 curious kind) than any other work of the kind with which we are acquainted. 
 We cordially recommend it.' — Christian Treasury. ^ 
 
 9 
 
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 General Library 
 University of Cahforma