04-Chapter 3.The Authority of Miracles

Chapter 3.The Authority of Miracles Is the miracle to command absolutely, and without further question, the obedience of those in whose sight it is done, or to whom it comes as an adequately attested fact, so that the doer and the doctrine, without further debate, shall be accepted as from God? It cannot be so, for side by side with the miracles which serve for the furthering of the kingdom of God, runs another line of wonders, counterworks of his who is ever the ape of the Most High; who has still his caricatures of the holiest; and who knows that in no way can he so realize his character of Satan, or “the Hinderer,” as by offering that which shall either be accepted instead of the true, or, being discovered to be false, shall bring the true into like discredit with itself. For that it is meant in Scripture to attribute real wonders to him there seems to me no manner of doubt. They are “lying wonders” (2Th 2:9), not because in themselves mere illusions and jugglery, but because they are wrought to support the kingdom of lies.^[1]

Thus I cannot doubt that, according to the intention of Scripture, we are meant to understand of the Egyptian magicians, that they stood in relation to a spiritual kingdom as truly as did Moses and Aaron. Indeed, only so does the conflict between those and these come out in its true significance. It loses the chiefest part of this significance if we think of their wonders as mere conjurors’ tricks, dexterous sleights of hand, with which they imposed upon Pharaoh and his servants; making believe, and no more, that their rods also changed into serpents (Exo 7:11-12), that they also changed water into blood (Exo 7:22). Rather was this a conflict not merely between the might of Egypt’s king and the power of God; but the gods of Egypt, the spiritual powers of wickedness which underlay, and were the informing soul of, that dark and evil kingdom, were in conflict with the God cf Israel. In this conflict, it is true, their nothingness very soon was apparent; their resources came very soon to an end; but yet most truly the two unseen kingdoms of light and darkness did then in presence of Pharaoh do open battle, each seeking to win the king for itself, and to draw him into its own element.^[2] Else, unless it had been such a conflict as this, what meaning would such passages have as that in Moses’ Song, “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods” (Exo 15:11)? or that earlier, “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment; I am the Lord” (Exo 12:12. cf. Numb. 33:4). As it was then, so probably was it again at the Incarnation, for Satan’s open encounter of our Lord in the wilderness was but one form of his manifold opposition; and we seem to have a hint of a resistance similar to that of the Egyptian magicians in the withstanding of Paul which is attributed to Elymas (Acts 13:8. cf. 2Ti 3:8).^[3] But whether at that time it was so, or not, so will it be certainly at the end of the world (Mat 24:24; 2Th 2:9; Rev 13:13). Thus it seems that at each great crisis and epoch of the kingdom, the struggle between the light and the darkness, which has ever been going forward, comes out into visible manifestation.

Yet, while the works of Antichrist and his organs are not mere tricks and juggleries, neither are they miracles in the very highest sense of the word; they only in part partake of the essential elements of the miracle. This they have, indeed, in common with it, that they are real works of a power which is suffered to extend thus far, and not merely dexterous feats of legerdemain; but this, also, which is most different, that they are abrupt, isolated, parts of no organic whole; not the highest harmonies, but the deepest discords, of the universe;^[4] not the omnipotence of God wielding his own world to ends of grace and wisdom and love, but evil permitted to intrude into the hidden springs of things just so far as may suffice for its own deeper confusion in the end, and, in the mean while, for the needful trial and perfecting of God’s saints and servants.^[5] 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 (Deu 13:1-5). A miracle does not prove the truth of a doctrine, or the divine mission of him that brings it to pass. That which alone it claims for him at the first is a right to be listened to: it puts him in the alternative of being 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 conscience, to the moral nature in man. For all revelation presupposes in man a power of recognizing the truth when it is shown him,—that it will find an answer in him,—that he will trace in it the lineaments of a friend, though of a friend from whom he has been long estranged, and whom he has well nigh forgotten. It is the finding of a treasure, but of a treasure which he himself and no other had lost. The denial of this, that there is in man any organ by which truth may be recognized, opens the door to the most boundless scepticism, is indeed the denial of all that is godlike in man. But “he that is of God, heareth God’s word,” and knows it for that which it proclaims itself to be.

It may be objected, indeed, 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 heathen sage or poet was from Him;—but not as 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 good word, signs that he has a special mission for the realization of the purposes of God in regard of humanity.^[6] When the truth has found a receptive heart, has awoke deep echoes in the innermost soul of man, he who brings it may thus show that he stands yet nearer to God than others, that he is to be heard not merely as one that is true, but as himself the Truth (see Mat 11:4-5; John 5:36); or at least, as a messenger standing in direct connexion with Him who is the Truth (1Ki 13:3); claiming unreserved submission, and the reception, upon his authority, of other statements which transcend the mind of man,—mysteries, which though, of course, not against that measure and standard of truth which God has given unto every man, yet which cannot be weighed or measured by it. To demand such a sign from one who comes professing to be the utterer of a new revelation, the bringer of a direct message from God, to demand this, even when the word already commends itself as good, is no mark of unbelief, but on the contrary is a duty upon his part to whom the message is brought. Else might he lightly be persuaded to receive that as from God, which, indeed, was only the word of man. Credulity is as real, if not so great, a sin as unbelief. Thus it was no impiety on the part of Pharaoh to say to Moses and Aaron, “Show a miracle for you” (Exo 7:9-10); on the contrary, it was altogether right for him to require this. They came averring they had a message for him from God: it was his duty to put them to the proof. His sin began, when he refused to believe their credentials. On the other hand, it was a mark of unbelief in Ahaz (Isa 7:10-13), however he might disguise it, that he would not ask a sign from God in confirmation of the prophet’s word. Had that word been more precious to him, he would not have been satisfied till the seal was set to it; and that he did not care for the seal was a sure evidence that he did not truly care for the promise with which that was to be sealed. But the purpose of the miracle being, as we have seen, to confirm that which is good, so, upon the other hand, where the mind and conscience witness against the doctrine, not all the miracles in the world have a right to demand submission to the word which they seal.^[7].^[9] But if these things are so, there might seem a twofold danger to which the simple and unlearned Christian would be exposed—the danger, first, of not receiving that which indeed comes from God, or secondly, of receiving that which comes from an evil source. But indeed these dangers do not beset the unlearned and the simple more than they beset and are part of the trial and temptation of every man; the safeguard from either of these fatal errors lying altogether in men’s moral and spiritual, and not at all in their intellectual, condition. They only find the witness which the truth bears to itself to be no witness, they only believe the lying wonders, in whom the moral sense is already perverted; they have not before received the love of the truth, that they might be saved from believing a lie. Thus, then, their believing this lie and rejecting that truth is, in fact, but the final judgment upon them that have had pleasure in unrighteousness. “With this view exactly agree the memorable words of St. Paul (2Th 2:9-12), wherein he declares that it is the anterior state of every man which shall decide whether he shall receive the lying wonders of Antichrist or reject them (cf. John 5:43). For while these come “with all deceivableness of unrighteousness” to them whose previous condition has fitted them to embrace them, who have been ripening themselves for this extreme judgment, there is ever something in these wonders, something false, or immoral, or ostentatious, or something merely idle, which detects and lays them bare to a simple faith, and for that at once broadly differences them from those which belong to the kingdom of the truth.^[10]

These differences have been often brought out. Such miracles are immoral;^[11] or if not so, yet futile, without consequences, leading to and ending in nothing. For as the miracle, standing as it does in connexion with highest moral ends, must not be itself an immoral act, so may it not be in itself an act merely futile, issuing in vanity and nothingness. This is the argument which Origen continually uses, when he is plied with the alleged miracles of heathen saints and sages. He counts, and rightly, that he has sufficiently convinced them of falsehood, when he has asked, and obtained no answer to, this question, “What came of these? In what did they issue? Where is the society which has been founded by their help? What is there in the world’s history which they have helped forward, to show that they lay deep in the mind and counsel of God? The miracles of Moses issued in a Jewish polity; those of the Lord in a Christian Church; whole nations were knit together through their help.^[12] What have your boasted Apollonius or Esculapius to show as the fruit of theirs? What traces have they left behind them?”^[13] And not merely, he goes on to say, were Christ’s miracles effectual, but effectual for good,—and such good was their distinct purpose and aim; for this is the characteristic distinction between the dealer in false shows of power and the true worker of divine works, that the latter has ever the reformation of men in his eye, and seeks always to forward this; while the first, whose own work is built upon fraud and lies, can have no such purpose of destroying that very kingdom out of which he himself springs.^[14]

These, too, are marks of the true miracles, and marks very nearly connected with the foregoing, that they are never mere freaks and plays of power, done as in wantonness, and for their own sakes, with no need compelling, for show and ostentation. With good right in that remarkable religious romance of earliest Christian times, The Recognitions of Clement,^[15] and in the cognate Clementine Homilies,^[16] Peter is made to draw a contrast between the wonderful works of Christ and those alleged by the followers of Simon Magus to have been wrought by their master. Speaking of the last, he asks what profit, what significance was there in his dogs of brass or stone that barked, his talking statues, his flights through the air, his transformations of himself now into a serpent, now into a goat, his putting on of two faces, his rolling himself unhurt upon burning coals, and the like?—which even if he had done, the works possessed no meaning; they stood in relation to nothing; they were not, what each true miracle is always more or less, redemptive acts; in other words, works not merely of power but of grace, each one an index and a prophecy of the inner work of man’s deliverance, which it accompanies and helps forward.^[17] But, as we should justly expect, it was preeminently thus with the miracles of Christ. Each of these is in small, and upon one side or another, a partial and transient realization of the great work, which He came that in the end He might accomplish perfectly and for ever. They are all pledges, in that they are themselves first-fruits, of his power; in each of them the word of salvation is incorporated in an act of salvation. Only when regarded in this light do they appear not merely as illustrious examples of his might, but also as glorious manifestations of his holy love.

It is worth while to follow this a little in detail. What evils are they, which hinder man from reaching the true end and aim of his creation, and from which he needs a redemption? It may briefly be answered that they are sin in its moral and in its physical manifestations. If we regard its moral manifestations, the darkness of the understanding, the wild discords of the spiritual life, none were such fearful examples of its tyranny as the demoniacs; they were special objects, therefore, of the miraculous power of the Lord. Then if. we ask ourselves what are the physical manifestations of sin; they are sicknesses of all kinds, fevers, palsies, leprosies, blindness, each of these death beginning, a partial death—and finally, the death absolute of the body. This region therefore is fitly another, as it is the widest region, of his redemptive grace. In the conquering and removing of these evils, He eminently bodied forth the idea of Himself as the Redeemer of men. But besides these, sin has its manifestations more purely physical; it reveals itself and its consequences in the tumults and strife of the elements among themselves, as in the rebellion of nature against man; for the destinies of the natural world were linked to the destinies of man; and when he fell, he drew after him his whole inheritance, which became subject to the same vanity as himself. Therefore do we behold the Lord, Him in whom the lost prerogatives of the race were recovered, walking on the stormy-waves, or quelling the menace of the sea with his word; incorporating in these acts the deliverance of man from the rebellious powers of nature, which had risen up against him, and instead of being his willing servants, were oftentimes now his tyrants and his destroyers. These also were redemptive acts. Even the two or three of his works which seem not to range themselves so readily under any of these heads, yet are not indeed exceptions. For instance, the multiplying of the bread easily shows itself as such. The original curse of sin was the curse of barrenness,—the earth yielding hard-won and scanty returns to the sweat and labour of man; but here this curse is removed, and in its stead the primeval abundance for a moment reappears. All scantness and scarceness, such as this lack of bread in the wilderness, such as that failing of the wine at the marriage-feast, belonged not to man as his portion at the first; for all the earth was appointed to serve him, and to pour the fulness of its treasure into his lap. That he ever should hunger or thirst, that he should ever have lack of anything, was a consequence of Adam’s sin,—fitly, therefore, removed by Him, the second Adam, who came to give him back all which had been forfeited by the first. The miracle, then, being this ethical act, and only to be, received when it is so, and when it seals doctrines of holiness, the forgetting or failing to bring forward that the divine miracle must, of necessity, move in this sphere of redemption only, that the doctrine also is to try the miracle, as well as the miracle to seal the doctrine, is a most dangerous omission on the part of many who, in modern times, have written “Evidences of Christianity,” and have found in the miracles wrought by its Founder, and in those mainly as acts of power, well nigh the exclusive argument for its reception as a divine revelation. On the place which these works should take in the array of proofs for the things which we believe, there will be occasion, by and by, to speak. For the present it may be sufficient to observe, that if men are taught that they should believe in Christ upon no other grounds than because He attested his claims by works of wonder, and that simply on this score they shall do so, how shall they consistently refuse belief to any other, who shall come attesting his claims by the same? We have here a paving of the way of Antichrist, for as we know that he will have his signs. and wonders (2Th 2:9), so, if this argument is good, he will have right on the score of these to claim the faith and allegiance of men. But no; the miracle must witness for itself, and the doctrine must witness for itself, and then, and then only, the first is capable of witnessing for the second;^[18] and those books of Christian evidences are utterly maimed and imperfect, fraught with the most perilous consequences, which reverence in the miracle little else but its power, and see in that alone what gives either to it its attesting worth, or to the doctrine its authority as adequately attested truth.

Footnotes

^[1] Gerhard (Loc. Theoll. loc. xxiii. 11, 274): Antichristi miracula dicuntur mendacia..... non tarn ratione forma, quasi omnia futura sint falsa et adparentia duntaxat, quam ratione finis, quia scilicet ad confirmationem mendacii erunt directa. Chrysostom, who at first explains the passage in the other way, that they are “lying” quoad formam. (οὐδὲν ἀληθές, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἀπάτην τὰ πάντα), yet afterwards suggests the correcter explanation, ἢ διεψευσμένοις, ἢ εἰς ψεῦδος ἄγουσι. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xx. 19) does not absolutely determine for either. Solet ambigi, he says, utrum propterea dicta sint signa et prodigia mendacii, quoniam mortales sensus per phantasmata decepturus sit [Antichristus]; ut quod non faciat, facere videatur; an quia ilia ipsa, etiamsi erunt vera prodigia, ad mendacium pertrahent credituros non ea potuisse, nisi divinitus fieri, virtutem diaboli nescientes. According to Aquinas they will only be relative wonders (Summ. Theol. p. 1^a, qu. 114, art. 4): Daemones possunt facere miracula, quae scilicet homines mirantur, in quantum eorum facultatem et cognitionem excedunt. Nam et unus homo in quantum facit aliquid quod est supra facultatem et cognitionem alterius, ducit alium in admirationem sui operis, et quodam modo miraculum videatur operari.

^[2] The principal argument against this, is the fact that extraordinary feats of exactly like kinds are done by the modern Egyptian charmers; some, which are perfectly inexplicable, are recounted in the great French work upon Egypt, and attested by keen and sharp-sighted observers. But taking into consideration all which we know about these magicians, that they apparently have always constituted an hereditary guild, that the charmer throws himself into an ecstatic state, the question remains, how far there may not be here a wreck and surviving fragment of a mightier system, how far the charmers do not even now, consciously or unconsciously, bring themselves into relation with those evil powers, which more or less remotely do at the last underlie every form of heathen superstition. On this subject Hengstenberg (Die Bücher Mose’s und Agypten, pp. 97-103) has much of interesting matter.

^[3] Gregory the Great (Moral, xxxiv. 3) has an interesting passage on the miracles of Antichrist. According to him, one of the great trials of the elect will be, the far more glorious miracles which he shall show, than any which in those last days the Church shall be allowed to accomplish. From the Church signs and wonders will be well nigh or altogether withdrawn, while the greatest and most startling of these will be at his beck.

^[4] They have the veritas formae;, but not the veritas finis.

^[5] See Augustine, Be Trim. iii. 7-9.

^[6] Gregory the Great (Hom. iv. in Evang): Unde et adjuncta sunt praedicationibus sanctis miraeula; ut fidem verbis daret virtus ostensa, et nova facererit, qui nova praedicarent.

^[7] As Gregory the Great says well, The Church does not so much deny, as despise the miracles of heretics (Moral, xx. 7): Sancta Ecclesia, etiam si qua fiunt haereticorum miracula, despicit; quia haec sanctitatis specimen non esse cognoscit. On the contrary, the great act of faith is to believe, against, and in despite of, them all, in what God has revealed to, and implanted in, the soul, of the holy and the true; not to believe another Gospel, though an Angel from heaven, or one transformed into such, should bring it (Deu 13:3; Gal 1:8 ^[8]); and instead of compelling assent, miracles are then rather warnings to us that we keep aloof, for they tell us that not merely lies are here, for to that the conscience bore witness already, but that he who utters them is more than a common deceiver, is eminently “a liar and an Antichrist,” a false prophet,—standing in more immediate connexion than other deceived and evil men to the kingdom of darkness, so that Satan has given him his power (Rev 13:2), is using him to be an especial organ of his, and to do a signal work for him

^[9] Thus Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. II. xxxi. 3) calls such deceitful workers “precursors of the great Dragon,” and speaks exactly this warning, saying, Quos similiter atque ilium devitare oportet, et quanto majore phantasmate operari dicuntur, tanto magis observare eos, quasi ma-jorum nequitiae spiritum perceperint. And Tertullian, refuting Gnostics, who argued that there was no need that Christ should have been prophesied of beforehand, since He could at once prove his mission by his miracles [per documenta virtutum], replies (Adv. Marc. iii. 3): At ego negabo solam hanc illi speciem ad testimonium competisse, quam et Ipse postmodum exauctoravit. Siquidem edicens multos venturos, et signa facturos, et virtutes magnas edituros, aversionem [eversionem?] etiam electorum; nec ideo tamen admittendos, temerariam signorum et virtutum fidem ostendit, ut etiam apud pseudocliristos facillimarum.

^[10] “You complain,” says Dr. Arnold, in a letter to Dr. Hawkins (Life, vol. ii. p. 220), “of those persons who judge of a revelation not by its evidence, but by its substance. It has always seemed to me that its substance is a most essential part of its evidence; and that miracles wrought in favour of what was foolish or wicked, would only prove Manicheism. We are so perfectly ignorant of the unseen world, that the character of any supernatural power can only be judged by the moral character of the statements which it sanctions. Thus only can we tell whether it be a revelation from God or from the Devil.”

^[11] Thus Arnobius (Adv. Gen. 1:43) of the heathen wonder-workers: Quis enim hos nesciat aut imminentia studere praenoscere, quae necessario (velint nolint) suis ordinationibus veniunt? aut mortiferam immittere quibus libuerit tabem, aut familiarium dirumpere caritates: aut sine clavibus reserare, quae clausa sunt; aut ora silentio vincire, aut in curriculis equos debilitare, incitare, tardare; aut uxoribus et liberis alienis (sive illi mares sint, sive foeminei generis) inconcessi amoris flammas et furiales immittere cupiditates?. Cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Hm. ii. xxxi. 2, 3.

^[12] Con. Gels. ii. 51: Ἐθνῶν ὅλων συστάντων μετὰ τὰ σημεῖα αὐτῶν.

^[13] Con. Gels. i. 67: Δεικνύτωσαν ἡμῖν Ἕλληνες τῶν κατειλεγμένων τινὸς βιωφελὲς, λαμπρὸν, καὶ παρατεῖναν ἐπὶ τὰς ὕστερον γενεὰς, καὶ τηλικοῦτον ἔργον, ὡς ἐμποιεῖν πιθανότητα τῷ περὶ αὐτῶν μύθῳ, λέγοντι ἀπὸ θείας αὐτοὺς γεγονέναι σποράς .

^[14] Con. Cels. i. 68; cf. Eusebius. Dem. Evang. iii. 6.

^[15] 3:6 (Cotelerii Patt. Apost. vol. i. p. 529).

^[16] Horn. ii. 32-44 (Cotelerii Patt. Apost. vol. i. p. 629).

^[17] iii. 60 (Cotelerii Patt. Apost. vol. i. p. 529): Nam die, quaeso, quae utilitas est ostendere statuas ambulantes? latrare aereos aut lapideos canes? salire montes? volare per aërem? et alia his similia, quae dicitis fecisse Simonem? Quae autem a Bono sunt, ad hominum salutem deferuntur; ut sunt ilia quae fecit Dominus nosier, qui fecit caecos videre, fecit surdos audire; debiles et claudps erexit, languores et daemones effugavit.....Ista ergo signa quae ad salutem hominum prosunt, et aliquid boni hominibus confevunt, Malignus facere non potest.Cf. Irenaeus, Con. Haer. II. xxxii. 3.

^[18] Gerhard (Loc. Theoll. loc. xxiii. 11): Miracula sunt doctrinae tesserae ac sigilla; quemadmodum igitur sigillum a literis avulsum nihil probat, ita quoque miracula sine doctrinâ, nihil valent.