Collected Essays Part 11

The readers of this essay are, I imagine, very largely composed of people who would be shocked to be regarded as anything but enlightened Protestants. It is not unlikely that those of them who have accompanied me thus far may be disposed to say, "Well, this is all very amusing as a story, but what is the practical interest of it? We are not likely to believe in the miracles worked by the spolia of SS.

Marcellinus and Petrus, or by those of any other saints in the Roman Calendar."

The practical interest is this: if you do not believe in these miracles recounted by a witness whose character and competency are firmly established, whose sincerity cannot be doubted, and who appeals to his sovereign and other contemporaries as witnesses of the truth of what he says, in a doc.u.ment of which a MS. copy exists, probably dating within a century of the author's death, why do you profess to believe in stories of a like character, which are found in doc.u.ments of the dates and of the authorship of which nothing is certainly determined, and no known copies of which come within two or three centuries of the events they record? If it be true that the four Gospels and the Acts were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all that we know of these persons comes to nothing in comparison with our knowledge of Eginhard; and not only is there no proof that the traditional authors of these works wrote them, but very strong reasons to the contrary may be alleged. If, therefore, you refuse to believe that "Wiggo" was cast out of the possessed girl on Eginhard's authority, with what justice can you profess to believe that the legion of devils were cast out of the man among the tombs of the Gadarenes? And if, on the other hand, you accept Eginhard's evidence, why do you laugh at the supposed efficacy of relics and the saint-worship of the modern Romanists? It cannot be pretended, in the face of all evidence, that the Jews of the year 30 A.D., or thereabouts, were less imbued with the belief in the supernatural than were the Franks of the year 800 A.D. The same influences were at work in each case, and it is only reasonable to suppose that the results were the same. If the evidence of Eginhard is insufficient to lead reasonable men to believe in the miracles he relates, _a fortiori_ the evidence afforded by the Gospels and the Acts must be so.[43]

But it may be said that no serious critic denies the genuineness of the four great Pauline Epistles--Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, and Romans--and that in three out of these four Paul lays claim to the power of working miracles.[44] Must we suppose, therefore, that the Apostle to the Gentiles has stated that which is false? But to how much does this so-called claim amount? It may mean much or little. Paul nowhere tells us what he did in this direction; and in his sore need to justify his a.s.sumption of apostleship against the sneers of his enemies, it is hardly likely that, if he had any very striking cases to bring forward, he would have neglected evidence so well calculated to put them to shame. And, without the slightest impeachment of Paul's veracity, we must further remember that his strongly-marked mental characteristics, displayed in unmistakable fashion by these Epistles, are anything but those which would justify us in regarding him as a critical witness respecting matters of fact, or as a trustworthy interpreter of their significance. When a man testifies to a miracle, he not only states a fact, but he adds an interpretation of the fact. We may admit his evidence as to the former, and yet think his opinion as to the latter worthless. If Eginhard's calm and objective narrative of the historical events of his time is no guarantee for the soundness of his judgment where the supernatural is concerned, the heated rhetoric of the Apostle of the Gentiles, his absolute confidence in the "inner light," and the extraordinary conceptions of the nature and requirements of logical proof which he betrays, in page after page of his Epistles, afford still less security.

There is a comparatively modern man who shared to the full Paul's trust in the "inner light," and who, though widely different from the fiery evangelist of Tarsus in various obvious particulars, yet, if I am not mistaken, shares his deepest characteristics. I speak of George Pox, who separated himself from the current Protestantism of England, in the seventeenth century, as Paul separated himself from the Judaism of the first century, at the bidding of the "inner light"; who went through persecutions as serious as those which Paul enumerates; who was beaten, stoned, cast out for dead, imprisoned nine times, sometimes for long periods; who was in perils on land and perils at sea. George Fox was an even more widely-travelled missionary; while his success in founding congregations, and his energy in visiting them, not merely in Great Britain and Ireland and the West India Islands, but on the continent of Europe and that of North America, were no less remarkable. A few years after Fox began to preach, there were reckoned to be a thousand Friends in prison in the various gaols of England; at his death, less than fifty years after the foundation of the sect, there were 70,000 Quakers in the United Kingdom. The cheerfulness with which these people--women as well as men--underwent martyrdom in this country and in the New England States is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of religion.

No one who reads the voluminous autobiography of "Honest George" can doubt the man's utter truthfulness; and though, in his mult.i.tudinous letters, he but rarely rises for above the incoherent commonplaces of a street preacher, there can be no question of his power as a speaker, nor any doubt as to the dignity and attractiveness of his personality, or of his possession of a large amount of practical good sense and governing faculty.

But that George Fox had full faith in his own powers as a miracle-worker, the following pa.s.sage of his autobiography (to which others might he added) demonstrates:--

Now after I was set at liberty from Nottingham gaol (where I had been kept a prisoner a pretty long time) I travelled as before, in the work of the Lord. And coming to Mansfield Woodhouse, there was a distracted woman, under a doctor's hand, with her hair let loose all about her ears; and he was about to let her blood, she being first bound, and many people being about her, holding her by violence; but he could get no blood from her. And I desired them to unbind her and let her alone; for they could not touch the spirit in her by which she was tormented. So they did unbind her, and I was moved to speak to her, and in the name of the Lord to bid her be quiet and still. And she was so. And the Lord's power settled her mind and she mended; and afterwards received the truth and continued in it to her death. And the Lord's name was honoured; to whom the glory of all His works belongs. Many great and wonderful things were wrought by the heavenly power in those days. For the Lord made bare his omnipotent arm and manifested His power to the astonishment of many; by the healing virtue whereof many have been delivered from great infirmities, and the devils were made subject through his name: of which particular instances might be given beyond what this unbelieving age is able to receive or bear.[45]

It needs no long study of Fox's writings, however, to arrive at the conviction that the distinction between subjective and objective verities had not the same place in his mind as it has in that of an ordinary mortal. When an ordinary person would say "I thought so and so," or "I made up my mind to do so and so," George Fox says, "It was opened to me," or "at the command of G.o.d I did so and so." "Then at the command of G.o.d on the ninth day of the seventh month 1643 (Fox being just nineteen), I left my relations and brake off all familiarity or friendship with young or old." "About the beginning of the year 1647 I was moved of the Lord to go into Darbyshire." Fox hears voices and he sees visions, some of which he brings before the reader with apocalyptic power in the simple and strong English, alike untutored and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his contemporary, he was a master.

"And one morning as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me and a temptation beset me; and I sate still. And it was said, _All things come by Nature_. And the elements and stars came over me; so that I was in a manner quite clouded with it.... And as I sate still under it, and let it alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true voice arose in me which said, _There is a living G.o.d who made all things_. And immediately the cloud and the temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all, and my heart was glad and I praised the living G.o.d" (p. 13).

If George Fox could speak, as he proves in this and some other pa.s.sages he could write, his astounding influence on the contemporaries of Milton and of Cromwell is no mystery. But this modern reproduction of the ancient prophet, with his "Thus saith the Lord," "This is the work of the Lord," steeped in supernaturalism and glorying in blind faith, is the mental antipodes of the philosopher, founded in naturalism and a fanatic for evidence, to whom these affirmations inevitably suggest the previous question: "How do you know that the Lord saith it?" "How do you know that the Lord doeth it?" and who is compelled to demand that rational ground for belief, without which, to the man of science, a.s.sent is merely an immoral pretence.

And it is this rational ground of belief which the writers of the Gospels, no less than Paul, and Eginhard, and Fox, so little dream of offering that they would regard the demand for it as a kind of blasphemy.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] My citations are made from Teulet's _Einhardi omnia quae extant opera_, Paris, 1840-1843, which contains a biography of the author, a history of the text, with translations into French, and many valuable annotations.

[34] At present included in the Duchies of Hesse-Darmstadt and Baden.

[35] This took place in the year 826 A.D. The relics were brought from Rome and deposited in the Church of St.

Medardus at Soissons.

[36] Now included in Western Switzerland.

[37] Probably, according to Teulet, the present Sandhoferfahrt, a little below the embouchure of the Neckar.

[38] The present Michilstadt, thirty miles N.E. of Heidelberg.

[39] In the Middle Ages one of the most favourite accusations against witches was that they committed just these enormities.

[40] It is pretty clear that Eginhard had his doubts about the deacon, whose pledges he qualifies as _sponsiones incertae_. But, to be sure, he wrote after events which fully justified scepticism.

[41] The words are _scrinia sine clave_, which seems to mean "having no key." But the circ.u.mstances forbid the idea of breaking open.

[42] Eginhard speaks with lofty contempt of the "vana ac superst.i.tiosa praesumptio" of the poor woman's companions in trying to alleviate her sufferings with "herbs and frivolous incantations." Vain enough, no doubt, but the "mulierculae" might have returned the epithet "superst.i.tious" with interest.

[43] Of course there is nothing new in this argument: but it does not grow weaker by age. And the case of Eginhard is far more instructive than that of Augustine, because the former has so very frankly, though incidentally, revealed to us not only his own mental and moral habits, but those of the people about him.

[44] See 1 Cor. xii. 10-28; 2 Cor. vi. 12; Rom. xv. 19.

[45] _A Journal or Historical Account of the Life, Travels, Sufferings, and Christian Experiences, &c., of George Fox_, Ed. 1694, pp. 27, 28.

VI: POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES

[1891]

In the course of a discussion which has been going on during the last two years,[46] it has been maintained by the defenders of ecclesiastical Christianity that the demonology of the books of the New Testament is an essential and integral part of the revelation of the nature of the spiritual world promulgated by Jesus of Nazareth.

Indeed, if the historical accuracy of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles is to be taken for granted, if the teachings of the Epistles are divinely inspired, and if the universal belief and practice of the primitive Church are the models which all later times must follow, there can be no doubt that those who accept the demonology are in the right. It is as plain as language can make it, that the writers of the Gospels believed in the existence of Satan and the subordinate ministers of evil as strongly as they believed in that of G.o.d and the angels, and that they had an unhesitating faith in possession and in exorcism. No reader of the first three Gospels can hesitate to admit that, in the opinion of those persons among whom the traditions out of which they are compiled arose, Jesus held, and constantly acted upon, the same theory of the spiritual world. Nowhere do we find the slightest hint that he doubted the theory, or questioned the efficacy of the curative operations based upon it.

Thus, when such a story as that about the Gadarene swine is placed before us, the importance of the decision, whether it is to be accepted or rejected, cannot be over-estimated. If the demonological part of it is to be accepted, the authority of Jesus is unmistakably pledged to the demonological system current in Judaea in the first century. The belief in devils who possess men and can be transferred from men to pigs, becomes as much a part of Christian dogma as any article of the creeds. If it is to be rejected, there are two alternative conclusions. Supposing the Gospels to be historically accurate, it follows that Jesus shared in the errors, respecting the nature of the spiritual world, prevalent in the age in which he lived and among the people of his nation. If, on the other hand, the Gospel traditions gives us only a popular version of the sayings and doings of Jesus, falsely coloured and distorted by the superst.i.tious imaginings of the minds through which it had pa.s.sed, what guarantee have we that a similar unconscious falsification, in accordance with preconceived ideas, may not have taken place in respect of other reported sayings and doings? What is to prevent a conscientious inquirer from finding himself at last in a purely agnostic position with respect to the teachings of Jesus, and consequently with respect to the fundamentals of Christianity?

In dealing with the question whether the Gadarene story was to be believed or not, I confined myself altogether to a discussion of the value of the evidence in its favour. And, as it was easy to prove that this consists of nothing more than three partially discrepant, but often verbally coincident, versions of an original, of the authorship of which n.o.body knows anything, it appeared to me that it was wholly worthless. Even if the event described had been probable, such evidence would have required corroboration; being grossly improbable, and involving acts questionable in their moral and legal aspect, the three accounts sank to the level of mere tales.

Thus far, I am unable, even after the most careful revision, to find any flaw in my argument; and I incline to think none has been found by my critics--at least, if they have, they have kept the discovery to themselves.

In another part of my treatment of the case I have been less fortunate. I was careful to say that, for anything I could "absolutely prove to the contrary," there might be in the universe demonic beings who could enter into and possess men, and even be transferred from them to pigs; and that I, for my part, could not venture to declare _a priori_ that the existence of such ent.i.ties was "impossible." I was, however, no less careful to remark that I thought the evidence hitherto adduced in favour of the existence of such beings "ridiculously insufficient" to warrant the belief in them.

To my surprise, this statement of what, after the closest reflection, I still conceive to be the right conclusion, has been hailed as a satisfactory admission by opponents, and lamented as a perilous concession by sympathisers. Indeed, the tone of the comments of some candid friends has been such that I began to suspect that I must be entering upon a process of retrogressive metamorphosis which might eventually give me a place among the respectabilities. The prospect, perhaps, ought to have pleased me; but I confess I felt something of the uneasiness of the tailor who said that, whenever a customer's circ.u.mference was either much less, or much more, than at the last measurement, he at once sent in his bill; and I was not consoled until I recollected that, thirteen years ago, in discussing Hume's essay on "Miracles," I had quoted, with entire a.s.sent, the following pa.s.sage from his writings: "Whatever is intelligible and can be distinctly conceived implies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning _a priori_."[47]

Now, it is certain that the existence of demons can be distinctly conceived. In fact, from the earliest times of which we have any record to the present day, the great majority of mankind have had extremely distinct conceptions of them, and their practical life has been more or less shaped by those conceptions. Further, the notion of the existence of such beings "implies no contradiction." No doubt, in our experience, intelligence and volition are always found in connection with a certain material organisation, and never disconnected with it; while, by the hypothesis, demons have no such material substratum. But then, as everybody knows, the exact relation between mental and physical phenomena, even in ourselves, is the subject of endless dispute. We may all have our opinions as to whether mental phenomena have a substratum distinct from that which is a.s.sumed to underlie material phenomena, or not; though if any one thinks he has demonstrative evidence of either the existence or the non-existence of a "soul," all I can say is, his notion of demonstration differs from mine. But, if it be impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of a "substance" of mental phenomena--that is, of a soul--independent of material "substance"; if the idea of such a "soul" is "intelligible and can be distinctly conceived," then it follows that it is not justifiable to talk of demons as "impossibilities." The idea of their existence implies no more "contradiction" than does the idea of the existence of pathogenic microbes in the air. Indeed, the microbes const.i.tute a tolerably exact physical a.n.a.logue of the "powers of the air" of ancient belief.

Strictly speaking, I am unaware of any thing that has a right to the t.i.tle of an "impossibility" except a contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities logical, but none natural. A "round square," a "present past," "two parallel lines that intersect," are impossibilities, because the ideas denoted by the predicates, _round, present, intersect_, are contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects, _square, past, parallel_. But walking on water, or turning water into wine, or procreation without male intervention, or raising the dead, are plainly not "impossibilities" in this sense.

In the affirmation, that a man walked upon water, the idea of the subject is not contradictory of that in the predicate. Naturalists are familiar with insects which walk on water, and imagination has no more difficulty in putting a man in place of the insect than it has in giving a man some of the attributes of a bird and making an angel of him; or in ascribing to him the ascensive tendencies of a balloon, as the "levitationists" do. Undoubtedly, there are very strong physical and biological arguments for thinking it extremely improbable that a man could be supported on the surface of the water as the insect is; or that his organisation could be compatible with the possession and use of wings; or that he could rise through the air without mechanical aid. Indeed, if we have any reason to believe that our present knowledge of the nature of things exhausts the possibilities of nature, we might properly say that the attributes of men are contradictory of walking on water, or floating in the air, and consequently that these acts are truly "impossible" for him. But it is sufficiently obvious, not only that we are at the beginning of our knowledge of nature, instead of having arrived at the end of it, but that the limitations of our faculties are such that we never can be in a position to set bounds to the possibilities of nature. We have knowledge of what is happening and of what has happened; of what will happen we have and can have no more than expectation, grounded on our more or less correct reading of past experience and prompted by the faith, begotten of that experience, that the order of nature in the future will resemble its order in the past.

The same considerations apply to the other examples of supposed miraculous events. The change of water into wine undoubtedly implies a contradiction, and is a.s.suredly "impossible," if we are permitted to a.s.sume that the "elementary bodies" of the chemists are, now and for ever, immutable. Not only, however, is a negative proposition of this kind incapable of proof, but modern chemistry is inclining towards the contrary doctrine. And if carbon can be got out of hydrogen or oxygen, the conversion of water into wine comes within range of scientific possibility--it becomes a mere question of molecular arrangement.

As for virgin procreation, it is not only clearly imaginable, but modern biology recognises it as an everyday occurrence among some groups of animals. So with restoration to life after death. Certain animals, long as dry as mummies, and, to all appearance, as dead, when placed in proper conditions resume their vitality. It may be said that these creatures are not dead, but merely in a condition of suspended vitality. That, however, is only begging the question by making the incapacity for restoration to life part of the definition of death. In the absence of obvious lesions of some of the more important organs, it is no easy matter, even for experts, to say that an apparently dead man is incapable of restoration to life; and, in the recorded instances of such restoration, the want of any conclusive evidence that the man was dead is even more remarkable than the insufficiency of the testimony as to his coming to life again.

It may be urged, however, that there is, at any rate, one miracle certified by all three of the Synoptic Gospels which really does "imply a contradiction," and is, therefore, "impossible" in the strictest sense of the word. This is the well-known story of the feeding of several thousand men, to the complete satisfaction of their hunger, by the distribution of a few loaves and fishes among them; the wondrousness of this already somewhat surprising performance being intensified by the a.s.sertion that the quant.i.ty of the fragments of the meal, left over, amounted to much more than the original store.

Undoubtedly, if the operation is stated in its most general form; if it is to be supposed that a certain quant.i.ty, or magnitude, was divided into many more parts than the whole contained; and that, after the subtraction of several thousands of such parts, the magnitude of the remainder amounted to more than the original magnitude, there does seem to be an _a priori_ difficulty about accepting the proposition, seeing that it appears to be contradictory of the senses which we attach to the words "whole" and "parts" respectively. But this difficulty is removed if we reflect that we are not, in this case, dealing with magnitude in the abstract, or with "whole" and "parts" in their mathematical sense, but with concrete things, many of which are known to possess the power of growing, or increasing in magnitude.

They thus furnish us with a conception of growth which we may, in imagination, apply to loaves and fishes; just as we may, in imagination, apply the idea of wings to the idea of a man. It must be admitted that a number of sheep might be fed on a pasture, and yet there might be more gra.s.s on the pasture, when the sheep left it, than there was at first. We may generalise this and other such facts into a perfectly definite conception of the increase of food in excess of consumption; which thus becomes a possibility, the limitations of which are to be discovered only by experience. Therefore, if it is a.s.serted that cooked food has been made to grow in excess of rapid consumption, that statement cannot logically be rejected as an _a priori_ impossibility, however improbable experience of the capabilities of cooked food may justify us in holding it to be.

On the strength of this undeniable improbability, however, we not only have a right to demand, but are morally bound to require, strong evidence in its favour before we even take it into serious consideration. But what is the evidence in this case? It is merely that of those three books,[48] which also concur in testifying to the truth of the monstrous legend of the herd of swine. In these three books, there are five accounts of a "miraculous feeding," which fall into two groups. Three of the stories, obviously derived from some common source, state that five loaves and two fishes sufficed to feed five thousand persons, and that twelve baskets of fragments remained over. In the two others, also obviously derived from a common source, distinct from the preceding, seven loaves and a few small fishes are distributed to four thousand persons, and seven baskets of fragments are left.

If we were dealing with secular records, I suppose no candid and competent student of history would entertain much doubt that the originals of the three stories and of the two are themselves merely divergent versions of some primitive story which existed before the three Synoptic gospels were compiled out of the body of traditions current about Jesus. This view of the case, however, is incompatible with a belief in the historical accuracy of the first and second gospels.[49] For these agree in making Jesus himself speak of both the "four thousand" and the "five thousand" miracle. "When I brake the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces took ye up? They say unto him, twelve. And when the seven among the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces took ye up?

And they say unto him, seven."

Thus we are face to face with a dilemma the way of escape from which is not obvious. Either the "four thousand" and the "five thousand"

stories are both historically true, and describe two separate events; or the first and second gospels testify to the very words of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples which cannot have been uttered.

My choice between these alternatives is determined by no _a priori_ speculations about the possibility or impossibility of such events as the feeding of the four or of the five thousand. But I ask myself the question, What evidence ought to be produced before I could feel justified in saying that I believed such an event to have occurred?

That question is very easily answered. Proof must be given (1) of the weight of the loaves and fishes at starting; (2) of the distribution to 4-5,000 persons, without any additional supply, of this quant.i.ty and quality of food; (3) of the satisfaction of these people's appet.i.tes; (4) of the weight and quality of the fragments gathered up into the baskets. Whatever my present notions of probability and improbability may be, satisfactory testimony under these four heads would lead me to believe that they were erroneous; and I should accept the so-called miracle as a new and unexpected example of the possibilities of nature.