Supernatural Religion (Discovering the Reality of Divine Revelation). Walter Richard Cassels

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      CHAPTER V. THE PERMANENT STREAM OF MIRACULOUS PRETENSION

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      We have given a most imperfect sketch of some of the opinions and superstitions prevalent at the time of Jesus, and when the books of the New Testament were written. These, as we have seen, continued with little or no modification throughout the first centuries of our era. It must, however, be remembered that the few details we have given, omitting most of the grosser particulars, are the views deliberately expressed by the most educated and intelligent part of the community, and that it would have required infinitely darker colours adequately to have portrayed the dense ignorance and superstition of the mass of the Jews. It is impossible to receive the report of supposed marvellous occurrences from an age and people like this without the gravest suspicion. Even so thorough a defender of miracles as Dr. Newman admits that: "Witnesses must be not only honest, but competent also; that is, such as have ascertained the facts which they attest, or who report after examination;"l and although the necessities of his case oblige him to assert that "the testimony of men of science and general knowledge" must not be required, he admits, under the head of "deficiency of examination," that—"Enthusiasm, ignorance, and habitual credulity are defects which no number of witnesses removes."(1) We have shown how rank were these "defects" at the commencement of the Christian era, and among the chief witnesses for Christianity. Miracles which spring from such a hot-bed of superstition are too natural in such a soil to be objects of surprise and, in losing their exceptional character, their claims upon attention are proportionately weakened if not altogether destroyed. Preternatural interference with the affairs of life and the phenomena of nature was the rule in those days, not the exception, and miracles, in fact, had lost all novelty, and through familiarity had become degraded into mere commonplace. The Gospel miracles were not original in their character, but were substantially mere repetitions of similar wonders well known amongst the Jews, or commonly supposed to be of daily occurrence even at that time. In fact, the idea of such miracles, in such an age and performed amongst such a people, as the attestation of a supernatural Revelation, may with singular propriety be ascribed to the mind of that period, but can scarcely be said to bear any traces of the divine. Indeed, anticipating for a moment a part of our subject regarding which we shall have more to say hereafter, we may remark that, so far from being original either in its evidence or form, almost every religion which has been taught in the world has claimed the same divine character as Christianity, and has surrounded the person and origin of its central figure with the same supernatural mystery. Even the great heroes of history, long before our era, had their immaculate conception and miraculous birth. There can be no doubt that the writers of the New Testament shared the popular superstitions of the Jews.

      We have already given more than one instance of this, and now we have only to refer for a moment to one class of these superstitions, the belief in demoniacal possession and origin of disease, involving clearly both the existence of demons and their power over the human race. It would be an insult to the understanding of those who are considering this question to pause here to prove that the historical books of the New Testament speak in the clearest and most unmistakable terms of actual demoniacal possession. Now, what has become of this theory of disease? The Archbishop of Dublin is probably the only one who asserts the reality of demoniacal possession formerly and at the present day,(1) and in this we must say that he is consistent. Dean Milman, on the other hand, who spoke with the enlightenment of the 19th century, "has no scruple in avowing his opinion on the subject of demoniacs to be that of Joseph Mede, Lardner, Dr. Mead, Paley, and all the learned modern writers. It was a kind of insanity … and nothing was more probable than that lunacy should take the turn and speak the language of the prevailing superstition of the times."(2) The Dean, as well as "all the learned modern writers" to whom he refers, felt the difficulty, but in seeking to evade it they sacrifice the Gospels. They overlook the fact that the writers of these narratives not only themselves adopt "the prevailing superstition of the times," but represent Jesus as doing so with equal completeness. There is no possibility, for instance, of evading such statements as those in the miracle of the country of the Gadarenes, where the objectivity of the demons is so fully recognized that, on being cast out of the man, they are represented as requesting to be allowed to go into the herd of swine, and being permitted by Jesus to do so, the entry of the demons into the swine is at once signalized by the herd running violently down the cliff into the lake, and being drowned.(1) Archbishop Trench adopts no such ineffectual evasion, but rightly objects: "Our Lord Himself uses language which is not reconcilable with any such explanation. He everywhere speaks of demoniacs not as persons of disordered intellects, but as subjects and thralls of an alien spiritual might; He addresses the evil spirit as distinct from the man: 'Hold thy peace and come out of him;'" СКАЧАТЬ