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

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СКАЧАТЬ the host of miracles in connection with it retrospectively exploded by the progress of science. Witchcraft and sorcery, the belief in which reigned supreme for so many centuries, are known to have been nothing but the delusions of ignorant superstition. "A l'époque où les faits merveilleux qui s'y (dans les légendes) trouvent consignés étaient rapportés," asks an able French writer, "possé dait-on les lumieres suffisantes pour exercer une critique véritable et sérieuse sur des témoignages que venaient affirmer des faits en contradiction avec nos connaissances? Or, on peut assurer hardiment que non. Au moyen-age, l'intime conviction que la nature voit tres fréquemment ses lois interverties par la volonté divine régnait dans les esprits, en sorte que pour peu qu'un fait se présentat avec des apparences extraordinaires, on se hatait de le regarder comme un miracle, comme loeuvre directe de la divinité. Aujourd'hui on cherche au contraire à tout rapporter à la loi commune; on est tellement sobre de faits miraculeux, que ceux qui paraissent tels sont ^cartes comme des fables ou tonus pour des faits ordinaires mal expliques. La foi aux miracles a disparu. En outre, au moyen-age le cercle des connaissances qu'on possédait sur la nature était fort restreint, et tout ce qui n'y rentrait pas était regardé comme surnatural.

      Actuellement ce cercle s'agrandit sans cesse; et loin d'en avoir arreté définitivement la limite, on le déclare infini." In a note the writer adds: "On voit par la que le nombre des miracles doit etre en raison inverse du nombre des lois connues de la nature, et, qu'a mesure que celles-ci nous sont révélées, les faits merveilleux ou miraculeux s'évanouissent."(1) These remarks are equally applicable to the commencement of the Christian era. On the one hand, we have no other testimony for the reality of miracles than that of ages in which not only the grossest superstition and credulity prevailed, but in which there was such total ignorance of natural laws that men were incapable of judging of that reality, even if they desired impartially to investigate such occurrences, which they did not; on the other hand, we have the sober testimony of science declaring such phenomena violations of the invariable laws of nature, and experience teaching us a perfectly simple and natural interpretation of the legends regarding them. Are we to believe ignorance and superstition or science and unvarying experience? Science has already demonstrated the delusion involved in the largest class of miracles, and has so far established the superiority of her testimony.

      In an early part of his discussion Dr. Mozley argues: "Christianity is the religion of the civilized world, and

      1 L. F. Alfred Maury. Essai sur los Legendes pieuses du Moyen-age, 1843, p. 234 f., and p. 233, note (1).

      The same arguments are employed by the late Mr. Buckle. "Hence it is that, supposing other things equal, the superstition of a nation must always bear an exact proportion to the extent of its physical knowledge. This may be in some degree verified by the ordinary experience of mankind. For if we compare the different classes of society, we shall find that they are superstitious in proportion as the phenomena with which they are brought in contact have or have not been explained by natural laws." Hist, of Civilization, 1867, i. p. 373.

      it is believed upon its miraculous evidence. Now, for a set of miracles to be accepted in a rude age, and to retain their authority throughout a succession of such ages, and over the ignorant and superstitious part of mankind, may be no such great result for the miracle to accomplish, because it is easy to satisfy those who do not inquire. But this is not the state of the case which we have to meet on the subject of the Christian miracles. The Christian being the most intelligent, the civilized portion of the world, these miracles are accepted by the Christian body as a whole, by the thinking and educated as well as the uneducated part of it, and the Gospel is believed upon that evidence."(1) The picture of Christendom here suggested is purely imaginary. We are asked to believe that succeeding generations of thinking and educated as well as uneducated men, since the commencement of the period in which the adequate inquiry into the reality of miracles became possible, have made that adequate inquiry, and have intelligently and individually accepted miracles and believed the Gospel in consequence of their attestation. The fact, however, is that Christianity became the religion of Europe before men either possessed the knowledge requisite to appreciate the difficulties involved in the acceptance of miracles, or minds sufficiently freed from ignorant superstition to question the reality of the supposed supernatural interference with the order of nature, and belief had become so much a matter of habit that, in this nineteenth century, the great majority of men have professed belief for no better reason than that their fathers believed before them. Belief is now little more than a transmitted quality or hereditary custom. Few men, even now, have either the knowledge or the leisure requisite to enable them to enter upon such an examination of miracles as can entitle Dr. Mozley to affirm that they intelligently accept miracles for themselves. We have shown, moreover, that so loose are the ideas even of the clergy upon the subject, that dignitaries of the church fail to see either the evidential purpose of miracles or the need for evidence at all, and the first intelligent step towards inquiry—doubt—has generally been stigmatized almost as a crime.

      So far from Dr. Mozley's statement being correct, it is notorious that the great mass of those who are competent to examine, and who have done so, altogether reject miracles. Instead of the "thinking and educated" men of science accepting miracles, they, as a body, distinctly deny them, and hence the antagonism between science and ecclesiastical Christianity, and Dr. Mozley surely does not require to be told how many of the profoundest critics and scholars of Germany, and of all other countries in Europe, who have turned their attention to Biblical subjects, have long ago rejected the miraculous elements of the Christian religion. Such being the case we necessarily revert to the first part of Dr. Mozley's representation, and find with him, that it is no great result for miracles to accomplish, merely to be accepted by, and retain authority over, a succession of ignorant and superstitious ages, "because it is easy to satisfy those who do not inquire."

      It is necessary that we should now refer to the circumstance that all the arguments which we have hitherto considered in support of miracles, whether to explain or account for them, have proceeded upon an assumption of the reality of the alleged phenomena.

      Had it been first requisite to establish the truth of facts of such an astounding nature, the necessity of accounting for them might never have arisen. It is clear, therefore, that an assumption which permits the argument to attain any such position begs almost the whole question. Facts, however astounding, which, it is admitted, did actually occur, claim a latitude of explanation, which a mere narrative of those alleged facts, written by an unknown person some eighteen centuries ago, could not obtain. If, for instance, it be once established as an absolute fact that a man actually dead, and some days buried, upon whose body decomposition had already made some progress,(1) had been restored to life, the fact of his death and of his subsequent resuscitation being so absolutely proved that the possibility of deception or of mistake on the part of the witnesses was totally excluded—if such conclusive evidence be supposed possible in such a case—it is clear that an argument, as to whether such an occurrence were to be ascribed to known or unknown laws, would assume a very different character indeed from that which it would have borne if the argument merely sought to account for so astounding a phenomenon of whose actual occurrence there was no sufficient evidence.

      It must not be forgotten, therefore, that, as the late Professor Baden Powell pointed out: "At the present day it is not a miracle, but the narrative of a miracle, to which any argument can refer, or to which faith is accorded."(2) The discussion of miracles, then, is not one regarding miracles actually performed within our own knowledge, but merely regarding miracles said to have been performed eighteen hundred years ago, the reality of which was not verified at the time by any scientific examination, and whose occurrence is merely reported in the Gospels. Now, although Dr. Mozley rightly and logically maintains that Christianity requires, and should be believed only upon, its miraculous evidence, the fact is that popular Christianity is not believed because of miracles, but miracles are accepted because they are related in the Gospels which are supposed to contain the doctrines of Christianity. The Gospels have for many generations been given to the child as inspired records, and doubt of miracles has, therefore, either never arisen or has been instantly suppressed, simply because miracles СКАЧАТЬ