Chapter V
CHARLES READE, tthe great novelist, thus states in his own inimitable way the attitude of the Christianised sceptic toward the miraculous in Scripture: “Say there never was. a miracle and never will be, and I differ with, but cannot confute you. Deny the creation and: the possibility of a re-creation or resurrection ;. call David a fool for saying, ‘It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves,’ and a wise: man for suggesting that, on the contrary, molecules created themselves without a miracle, and we made ourselves out of molecules without a miracle; and although your theory contradicts. experience as much as, and staggers credulity more than, any miracle that has ever been ascribed by Christians or Jews to infinite power, I admit it is consistent, though droll.” But, he goes on to say, once grant the creation
of the world, and “it is a little too childish to 52
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draw back” and to haggle over miracles of the kind recorded in the Bible.
The intelligent and consistent sceptic is entitled to respect and sympathy. But what can be said for the man who professes to believe in the Apostles’ Creed, and yet rejects on prior grounds the Gospel miracles!
Here is the preface to the Fourth Gospel : — “‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” The sceptic at once declares his unbelief. And from his own standpoint he is right; for he regards the record as human, and no one but a credulous fool would believe such statements on merely human authority. The Christianised sceptic, on the other hand, assures us that ‘‘the Nazarene” was really the God who made the heavens and the earth; and yet he cannot believe in His healing a case of paralysis, or raising Lazarus from the dead.t Was there ever such an instance of ‘‘straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel”!
For not only do the minor and incidental
t John v. 1-9; xi. 44.
miracles of the Ministry rest upon the same testimony as the great foundation miracle of the Incarnation, but if that greatest of the miracles be accepted, the others are in such sense connected with it that, even if no record of them remained, we might reasonably assume they took place. Will my readers decide this question for themselves? Suppose a parent, or wife, or husband, or child were lying at the point of death, and you knew that He who made the world was sojourning in our midst ‘‘in fashion as a man,” would all the Professors and sceptics of Christendom prevent you from seeking His presence, and casting yourself at His feet with the appeal that He would cure your loved one?
But it may be said, if this argument were sound such cures would be as frequent now as in the days of the Ministry. To which I answer first, that this objection is not legitimate with the Christian, for the Scriptures themselves explain the mystery of a silent heaven in the present dispensation; and secondly, that notwithstanding that explanation, the silence is the greatest trial which faith has to endure. Matthew Arnold’s God — ‘“the Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness” — may satisfy the student in the dreamland of his library; but men who have to
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do with the stern realities of life will say of this fastidious sceptic what Pascal said of Descartes, that the only God he admitted was a God who was useless. There are times in every life when “heart and flesh cry out for the Living God” : — a real, personal God. Reason revolts against the conception of a God that could not cure our sick, and heal our afflicted ones. His power is beyond question. If, then, He does not do it, are we to conclude that His goodness and love are at fault? This is a part of the searching discipline of the life of faith.?
It is at the foundations that intelligent and true scepticism challenges the truth of Christianity. The miracles controversy is the merest skirmishing. The Divinity of Christ is the field upon which must be fought the decisive battle between faith and unbelief. From the human standpoint, the supreme miracle of the Incarnation is incredible. Here the Christian and the unbeliever measure their distance. And the one as well as the other holds a position which is unassailable. It is the attempted compromise of the Christianised sceptic which is intellectually contemptible. The sceptic says, “No amount of human testimony
t Psa. lxxxiv. 2. 2 The Silence of God deals specially with this question.
OILS could avail to accredit such a miracle; therefore I reject it.” The Christian leaves that position unchallenged, but he answers, “The truth you refuse does not rest upon human testimony, but upon a Divine revelation; therefore I accept it.”
Let me repeat my question in another form. And here I appeal to any honest, sane, and sensible man, I care not whether he be believer or unbeliever, Christian or Pagan: Suppose the Divine Being who made heaven and earth were sojourning among us, would you expect Him to work what we call miracles? In other words, would you attribute to Him power greater than we ourselves possess? The question needs only to be stated; for the answer is obvious. Not only should we look for miracles, but if, in circumstances which would lead any good man to act, the miracles were wanting, their absence would discredit the assumption that the Being was Divine.
The more closely this matter is investigated, the more clearly it will appear that the Divinity of Christ is the pivot on which the whole controversy turns; and the effect of sceptical criticism upon every fearless and logical thinker will be to compel him to make choice “between a deeper faith and a bolder unbelief.”
Says Matthew Arnold, “At the stage of ex-Cu. V.| MATTHEW ARNOLD ON MIRACLES 57
perience where menhave now arrived, it is evident to whoever looks at things fairly that the miraculous data of the Bible... proceed from a medium of imperfect observation and boundless credulity. The story of the miraculous birth and resuscitation of Jesus was bred in such amedium.”! I respect a thinker and writer of this type, and I freely acknowledge that if the Bible be nothing more than these Higher Critics would have us believe, he is entirely in the right. The Christian believes, while the sceptic rejects, “the story of the miraculous birth.” But the Christianised sceptics accept the Christian’s creed while they destroy the foundation on which it rests. And yet they pose as persons of superior enlightenment and intelligence!
If people would use their reason and common sense in this matter, the battle would soon be joined
God and the Bible (Preface). His argument against the evidential value of miracles (Lif. and Dogma, chap. vi. especially) I deal with in my Silence of God, though without citing him. With much of it I agree. The assumption that miracles are impossible indicates merely the stupid tendency of the human mind to become enslaved to the results of experience. It reminds me of Dean Swift’s story of the man with the wonderful nose. The learned society of the place met to discuss the case, and passed a resolution that no man could have such a nose. At which juncture the man himself walked in, nose and all! Any one can find proofs that what are called miracles occur even in our own day.
between faith and unbelief, and we should be rid of the shallow and illogical half-scepticism of the critics. A teacher appeared in Judea, and proclaimed himself to be the Son of God and Israel’s Messiah. Utterly unaccredited by the established religion of the time, he gathered round him a company of disciples — humble men all of them, mostly peasants and fishermen, wholly unknown to fame. Every element that, in our own day, we should call orthodox and respectable agreed in repudiating him. We are apt to assume that the religious leaders of the Jews were either fools or fiends, whereas the testimony of the Apostle Paul gives proof that they were men of piety and zeal — men who were certainly not inferior in these respects to the religious leaders of Christendom at any period of its history.
But these men rejected Him on perfectly reasonable grounds. It is, perhaps, impossible for us to understand their position, or to view the facts as they viewed them. But here is the startling testimony of one who in early life had stood where they did. ‘ There was in such a Messiah,” he writes, “absolutely nothing — past, present, or possible; intellectually, religiously, or even nationally — to attract, but all to repel.”!
* Dr. Edersheim, Life and Times of the Messiah (vol. i., p. 145)-
ECan) CHRIST AND THE BIBLE 59
How was it, then, that His disciples believed on Him? “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” was the Apostle Peter’s testimony. To which the Lord made answer, ‘“‘ Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”! The facts were the same for both. But the facts were regarded from wholly different points of view. The Jews regarded them in the light of human judgment: the disciples viewed them in the light of a Divine revelation.
And the reasons given for disparaging the Bible to-day are but the echo of the reasons urged for rejecting Christ in the days of the Ministry. One of the popular exponents of the Higher Criticism has denounced the “baseless notion that a book written by human pens and handed down by human methods, transcribed, translated, compiled by fallible minds, is, or can be, the Word of God.” Yes; this is so very like what they said about the Lord. ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us? And” (the record adds) ‘‘they were offended at Him.”? Of course
Matt. xvi. 16, 17. Mark vi. 3.
they were; and if the critics, including the writer I have quoted, had lived in the days of the Ministry, their principles would have led them to take sides with those who rejected Him.
“But the Bible contains not only what is false, but what is positively immoral and evil.” Yes; and they said of Him, “Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber.”! They even called Him Beelzebub ;2 and the critics have never gone so far as this in denouncing Holy Scripture.
These grosser charges against the Lord were altogether blasphemous; and so are these baser libels upon the Scriptures. They discredit only those who make them. But as regards what may be described as legitimate criticisms, it will be urged that the critics are fair and intelligent and devout, and that they can prove the truth of all they say. Yes, they ¢hzzk they can prove the truth of it. And many of the leaders of the Jews were quite as devout and intelligent and fair as they. The facts, moreover, on which the Jews relied in denying that the Nazarene could be the Son of God were indisputable; whereas the grounds on which the critics deny that the Bible can be the Word of God are most of them
™ Matt. xi. 19.? Ibid. x. 25.
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untenable, and all of them disputed.t. And those that are admitted — the “human pens” and “human methods” — have their counterpart in the facts of the family and workshop at Nazareth. Iam not playing with words. Nor am I using the rejection of Christ as a mere illustration of my theme. This would be irreverent. I insist that the cases are parallel. There is a definite analogy between the grounds on which the Jews rejected Christ and the grounds on which some critics reject the Bible. And the cause of the rejection is the same in both cases — the incapacity of unspiritual men to deal with spiritual things. If the Lord had not claimed to be Divine, they would have ranked Him among the greatest of their Rabbis. And if the Bible did not claim to be Divine, it would be held in the highest honour by many who now disparage it. But the Jews insisted that the Lord should be judged like any other human being, just as the critics maintain that the Bible must be treated like any human book. And the inevitable result in the one case was the crucifixion of Calvary: in the other, it is the apostasy of the Eucyclopedia Biblica.
That “a book written by human pens, and
t See Chaps. VII. and VIIL., fosé.
handed down by human methods,” should be the Word of God, does not seem so wild a suggestion as that “the carpenter, the son of Mary,” should be the Son of God. As for the book, even if we throw in the “transcribing” and “translating,” not only does the notion not appear ‘‘baseless” at all, but the objections to it can be shown to be either inapplicable or frivolous.!
If positive proof be demanded that the Bible is the Word of God, we must rise above the level at which the critics ply their trade — we must take account of its deeper, spiritual meaning; but in answering their objections and criticisms we can meet the critics on their own ground. Not so with the truth that ‘the Nazarene” was the Son of God. Here we are confronted with that which not only clashes with all experience, but which transcends all human thought. Therefore it is that flesh and blood cannot reveal it.
And these solemn words of the Lord Jesus Christ are not falsified by the fact that there are multitudes who, apart from any spiritual appreciation of a Divine revelation, profess to believe in His Divinity. For the acceptance of what is true in itself, if it be based on grounds which are * See Chaps. VII. and VIII., post.
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either false or inadequate, is not faith but superstition. And of this character are all beliefs begotten of mere “religion,” whether the religion be called Christian or Pagan. For, as Pascal wrote, religion makes people stupid.!
t The passage is given in God and the Bible (Preface). He is dealing with the difficulty people urge that they cannot believe, and his prescription is that they should act as if they believed; using “the ordinances” — taking holy water, having masses said, &c., and he adds : — Naturellement méme cela vous fera croire & vous abétira. No wonder that the Port Royal editors suppressed a passage so cruelly cynical but so true! For while Christianity elevates and ennobles the whole being, mere religion seems to make men either fools or fiends.