07-Chapter 6.The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles

Chapter 6.The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles A most interesting question remains; namely this, What place should they who are occupied with marshalling and presenting the evidences of Revelation ascribe to the miracles? what is the service which they may render here? The circumstances have been already noticed which were sufficient to hinder them from taking a very prominent place in the early apologies for Christianity.^[1] The Christian miracles had not as yet sufficiently extricated themselves from the multitude of false miracles, nor was Christ sufficiently discerned and distinguished from the various wonder-workers of his own and of past ages; and thus, even if men had admitted his miracles to be true and godlike, they would have been hardly nearer to the acknowledging of Christianity as the one faith, or to the accepting of Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life.” A far more important position has been assigned them in later times, especially during the last two centuries; and the tone and temper of modern theology abundantly explains the greater prominence, sometimes, I believe, the undue, because the exclusive, prominence, which in this period they have assumed. The apologetic literature of this time partook, as was inevitable, in the general depression of all its theology. There is no one, I think, who would now be satisfied with the general tone and spirit in which the defences of the faith, written during the two last centuries, and beginning with the memorable work of Grotius,^[2] are composed. Much as this book and others of the same character contain of admirable, yet in well nigh all that great truth of the Italian poet seems to have been forgotten, “They struggle vainly to preserve a part, Who have not courage to contend for all.”

These apologists would seem very often to have thought that Deism was best to be resisted by reducing Christianity to a sort of revealed Deism. As men that had renounced the hope of defending all, their whole endeavour was to save something; and when their pursuers pressed them hard, they were willing to delay the pursuit by casting to them as a prey much that ought to have been the dearest to themselves. They have been well compared to men, who should cry “Thieves and robbers!” and were yet themselves all the while throwing out of the windows the most precious things of the house. And thus it sometimes happened that the good cause suffered quite as much from its defenders as its assailants: for that enemies should be fierce and bitter, this was only to be looked for; but that friends, those in whose keeping was the citadel, should be. timid and half-hearted and ready for a compromise, if not for a surrender, this was indeed an augury of ill. Now this, which caused so much to be thrown greatly out of sight, as generally the deeper mysteries of our faith, which brought about a slight of the inner arguments for the truth of revelation, caused the argument from the miracles to assume a disproportionate importance. A value too exclusive was set on them; they were rent away from the truths for which they witnessed, and which witnessed for them,—only too much like seals torn off from the document, which at once they rendered valid, and which in return gave importance. to them.. And thus, in this unnatural isolation, separated from Christ’s person and doctrine, the whole burden of proof was laid on them. They were the apology for Christianity, the reason which men were taught they should give for the faith which was in them.^[3]

It is not hard to see the motives which led to this. Men wanted an absolute demonstration of the Christian faith,—one which, objectively, should be equally good for every man: they desired to bring the matter to the same sort of proof as exists for a problem in mathematics or a proposition in logic. And consistently with this we see the whole argument cast exactly into the same forms of definitions, postulates, axioms, and propositions.^[4] Yet was not the state of mind which made men desire either to find for themselves, or to furnish for others, proofs of this nature, altogether a healthy one. It was plain that their faith had become very much an external historic one, who thus eagerly looked round for outward evidences, and found a value only in such; instead of turning in upon themselves as well, for evidence that they had “not followed cunningly devised fables,” and saying, “We know the things which we believe,— they are to us truer than aught else can be, for we have the witness of the Spirit for their truth. We have found these things to be true, for they have come to us in demonstration of the Spirit and in power.” In place of such an appeal to those mighty influences which Christ’s words and doctrine exercise on every heart that receives them, to their transforming, transfiguring power, to the miracles of grace which are the heritage of every one who has believed to salvation, in place of urging on the gainsayers in the very language of the Lord, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God” (John 7:17), this all as vague and mystical (instead of being seen to be, as it truly was, the most sure and certain of all) was thrown into the background. Men were afraid to trust themselves and their cause to evidences like these, and would know of no other statement of the case than this barren and hungry one:—Christianity is a divine revelation, and this the miracles which accompanied its promulgation prove.

What must first be found fault with in this is the wilful abandonment of such large regions of proof, which the Christian apologist ought triumphantly to have occupied as his proper domain—the whole region, mainly and chiefly, of the inner spiritual life; his foregoing of any appeal to the mysterious powers of regeneration and renewal, which are ever found to follow upon a true affiance on Him who is the Giver of this faith, and who has pledged Himself to these very results in those who rightly receive it. To these proofs he might at least have ventured an appeal, when he was seeking not to convince an unbeliever, but, as would be often his aim, to carry one that already believed round the whole circle of the defences of his position, to make him aware of the relative strength of each, to give him a scientific insight into the grounds on which his faith rested. Here, at any rate, the appeal to what he had himself known and tasted of the powers of the world to come, might well have found room. For, to use the words of Coleridge,^[5] “Is not a true,, efficient conviction of a moral truth, is not the creating of a new heart, which collects the energies of a man’s whole being in the focus of the conscience, the one essential miracle, the same and of the same evidence to the ignorant and to the learned, which no superior skill can counterfeit, human or demoniacal; is it not emphatically that leading of the Father, without which no man can come to Christ; is it not that implication of doctrine in the miracle, and of miracle in the doctrine, which is the bridge of communication between the senses and the soul;—that predisposing warmth which renders the understanding susceptible of the specific impressions from the history, and from all other outward seals of testimony ?” And even were the argument with one who had never submitted himself to these blessed powers, and to whose experience therefore no like appeal could be made, yet even for him there is the outward utterance of this inward truth, in that which he could not deny, save as he denied or was ignorant of everything, which would make him one to be argued with at all,—the fact, I mean, of a Christendom—the standing miracle of a Christendom “commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized world, “—the mighty changes which this religion of Christ has wrought in the earth,—the divine fruits which it everywhere has borne,—the new creation which it has everywhere brought about,—the way in which it has taken its place in the world, not as a forcible intruder, but finding all that world’s preëstablished harmonies ready to greet and welcome it, ready to give it play and room,—philosophy, and art, and science practically confessing that only under it could they attain their highest perfection, that in something they had all been dwarfed and stunted and incomplete till it came. Little as it wears of the glory which it ought, yet it wears enough to proclaim that its origin was more than mundane; surely from a Christendom, even such as it shows itself now, it is fair to argue back to a Christ such as the Church receives as the only adequate cause. It is an oak which from no other acorn could have unfolded itself into so tall and stately a tree.

It is true that in this there is an abandoning of the attempt to put the proof of Christianity into the same form as that of a proposition in an exact science. There is no more the claim made of giving it that kind’ of certainty. But this, which may seem at first sight a loss, is indeed a gain; for the argument for all which as Christians we believe, is in very truth not logical and single, but moral and cumulative; and the attempt to substitute a formal proof, where the deepest necessities of the soul demand a moral, is one of the most grievous shocks which the moral sense can receive, as it is one, too, of the most fruitful sources out of which unbelief has sprung. Few who have had books of evidences constructed on this scheme put into their hands, but must painfully remember the shock which they suffered from their perusal,—how it took them, it may be, some time to recover the healthy tone of their minds, and how, only by falling back upon what they themselves had felt and known of the living power of Christ’s words and doctrine in their own hearts, could they deliver themselves from the injurious influences, the seeds of doubt and of misgiving, which these books had now, for the first time perhaps, sown in their minds. They must remember how they asked themselves, in deep inner trouble of soul: “Are these indeed the grounds, and the only grounds, upon which the deep foundations of my spiritual life repose? is this all that I have to answer? are these, and no more, the reasons of the faith that is in me?” And then, if at any moment there arose a suspicion that some link in this chain of outward proof was wanting, or that any one would not bear all the weight which was laid upon it,—and men will be continually tempted to try the strength of that to which they have trusted all,—there was nothing to fall back upon, with which to scatter and put to flight suspicions such as these. And that such should arise, at least in many minds, were inevitable; for how many points, as we have seen, are there at which a suspicion may intrude. Is a miracle possible? Is a miracle provable? Were the witnesses of these miracles competent? Did they not too lightly admit a supernatural cause, when there were adequate natural ones which they failed to note? These works may have been good for the eye-witnesses, but what are they for me? And these doubts and questionings might be multiplied without number. Happy is the man, and he only is happy, who, if the outworks of his faith are at any time thus assailed, can betake himself to an impregnable inner citadel, from whence in due time to issue forth and repossess even those exterior defences, who can fall back on those inner grounds of belief, in which there can be no mistake, the testimony of the Spirit, which is above and better than all.^[6] And as it is thus with him, who entirely desiring to believe, is only unwillingly disturbed with doubts and suggestions, which he would give worlds to be rid of for ever, so on the other hand the expectation that by arguments thrown apparently into strict syllogistic forms there is any compelling to the faith one who does not wish to believe, is absurd, and an expectation which all experience contradicts. All that he is, and all that he is determined to be, has bribed him to an opposite conclusion. Rather than believe that a miracle has taken place, a miracle from the upper world, and connected with precepts of holiness, to which precepts he is resolved to yield no obedience, he will take refuge in any the most monstrous supposition of fraud, or ignorance, or folly, or collusion. If no such solution presents itself, he will wait for such, rather than accept the miracle, with the hated adjunct of the truth which it confirms. In what different ways the same miracle of Christ wrought upon different spectators! He raised a man from the dead; here was the same outward fact for all; but how diverse the effects!—some believed, and some went and told the Pharisees (John 11:45-46). Heavenly voices were heard,—and some said it thundered, so dull and inarticulate were those sounds to them, while others knew that they were voices wherein was the witness of the Father to his own Son (John 12:28-30). 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 presented Him as a Lord and a 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 analogous wonders in nature,—claiming to be the Life, and yet Himself helpless in the encounter with death; however much He promised in word, never realizing any part of his promises in deed; giving nothing in hand, no first fruits of power, no pledges of greater 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 invisible world? why did He 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?”^[7] And who would not feel that they had reason in this, that a Saviour who so bore Himself during his earthly life, and his actual daily encounter with evil, would forfeit his right to this name? that He must needs show Himself, if He were to meet the wants of men, mighty not only in word but in work? When we object to the use often made of these works, it is only because they have been forcibly severed from the whole complex of Christ’s life and doctrine, and presented to the contemplation of men apart from these; it is only because, when on his head are “many crowns” (Rev 19:12), one only has been singled out in proof that He is King of kings and Lord of lords. The miracles have been spoken of as though they borrowed nothing from the truths which they confirmed, but those truths everything from the miracles by which they were confirmed; when, indeed, the true relation is one of mutual interdependence, the miracles proving the doctrines, and the doctrines approving the miracles,^[8] and both held together for us in a blessed unity, in the person of Him who spake the words and did the works, and through the impress of highest holiness and of absolute truth and goodness, which that person leaves stamped on our souls;—so that it may be more truly said that we believe the miracles for Christ’s sake, than Christ for the miracles’ sake.^[9] Neither when we thus affirm that the miracles prove the doctrine, and the doctrine the miracles, are we arguing in a circle: rather 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.

Footnotes

^[1] Thus, in the Apologies of Justin Martyr, they are scarcely made use of at all. It is otherwise indeed with Arnobius, who (Adv. Gen. i. 42) lays much stress on them. Speaking of the truth of Christianity and of Christ’s mission, he says, Nulla major est comprobatio quam gestarum ab eo fides rerum, quam virtutum,—and then appeals through ten eloquent chapters to his miracles.

^[2] De Veritate Religionis Christiana.

^[3] I include, in the proofs drawn from the miracles, those drawn from the O. T. prophecies,—for it was only as miracles (miracula praescientise, as the others are miracula potentiae), that these prophecies were made to do service and arrayed in the forefront of this battle; as by the learned and acute Huet, in his Demonstratio Evangelica, in which the fulfilment of prophecy in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is altogether the point round which the whole argument turns, as he himself in the Preface, § 2, declares.

^[4] For example, by Huet in his work referred to above. He claims for the way of proof upon which he is entering that it is the safest, and has the precision, and carries the conviction, of a geometrical proof (Praefatio, §2): Utpote quae constet hoc genere demonstrationis, quod non minus certum sit quam demonstratio quaevis geometrica.

^[5] The Friend, vol. iii. Essay ii.

^[6] See the admirable words of Calvin, Instit. i. 7. §§ 4, 5, on the Holy Scripture as ultimately αὐτόπιστος.

^[7] Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ, vol. ii. p. 204.

^[8] See Pascal, Pensees, 27, Sur les Miracles.

^[9] Augustine was indeed affirming the same, when, against the Donatists, and their claims to be workers of wonders, he said (De Unit. Eccles. 19): Quaecunque talia in Catholicâ [Ecclesiâ] fiunt, ideo sunt approbanda, quia in Catholicâ fiunt; non ideo manifestatur Catholica, quia haec in eâ fiunt.