Supernatural Religion Volume I Part 20

than Naples or La Salette. The inevitable inference from this fact is fatal to the ma.s.s of miracles, and it is not possible to protect them from it. Miracle cures by the relics of saints, upheld for fifteen centuries by all the power of the Church, utterly failed when medical science, increasing in spite of persecution, demonstrated the natural action of physiological laws. The theory of the demoniacal origin of disease has been entirely and for ever dispelled, and 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 superst.i.tion. "A l'epoque ou les faits merveilleux qui s'y (dans les legendes) trouvent consignes etaient rapportes," asks an able French writer, "posse dait-on les lumieres suffisantes pour exercer une critique veritable et serieuse sur des temoignages que venaient affirmer des faits en contradiction avec nos connaissances? Or, on peut a.s.surer hardiment que non. Au moyen-age, l'intime conviction que la nature voit tres frequemment ses lois interverties par la volonte divine regnait dans les esprits, en sorte que pour peu qu'un fait se presentat avec des apparences extraordinaires, on se hatait de le regarder comme un miracle, comme loeuvre directe de la divinite. Aujourd'hui on cherche au contraire a tout rapporter a 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 possedait sur la nature etait fort restreint, et tout ce qui n'y rentrait pas etait regarde comme surnatural.

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Actuellement ce cercle s'agrandit sans cesse; et loin d'en avoir arrete definitivement la limite, on le declare 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 revelees, les faits merveilleux ou miraculeux s'evanouissent."(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 superst.i.tion 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 superst.i.tion or science and unvarying experience? Science has already demonstrated the delusion involved in the largest cla.s.s 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 superst.i.tion 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 cla.s.ses of society, we shall find that they are superst.i.tious 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.

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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 superst.i.tious 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 superst.i.tion 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

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now, have either the knowledge or the leisure requisite to enable them to enter upon such an examination of miracles as can ent.i.tle 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 ma.s.s 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 superst.i.tious ages, "because it is easy to satisfy those who do not inquire."

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

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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 a.s.sumption 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 lat.i.tude 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 a.s.sume 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

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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 are recorded in the sacred volume.

It could scarcely be otherwise, for in point of fact the Gospel miracles stand upon no other testimony. We are therefore in this position: We are asked to believe astounding announcements beyond the limits of human reason, which, as Br. Mozley admits, we could only be justified in believing upon miraculous evidence, upon the testimony of miracles which are only reported by the records which also alone convey the announcements which those miracles were intended to accredit. There is no other contemporary evidence whatever. The importance of the Gospels, therefore, as the almost solitary testimony to the occurrence of miracles can scarcely be exaggerated.(1) We have already

1 Dr. Farrar, winding up the antecedent discussion, says: ".... we arrive at this point--that the credibility of miracles is in each instance simply and solely a question of evidence, and consequently that our belief or rejection of the Christian miracles must mainly depend on the character of the Gospels in which they are recorded." The Witness of History to Christ, 1872, p. 51. It is somewhat singular that after such a declaration he considers it unnecessary to enter into the question of the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels, deeming it sufficient for his purpose, that Strauss and Renan admit that some portion of these doc.u.ments existed at the beginning of the second century, or earlier, in the country where the events narrated took place.

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made an antic.i.p.atory remark regarding the nature of these doc.u.ments, to which we may add that they are not the work of perfectly independent historians, but of men who were engaged in disseminating the new doctrines, and in saying this we have no intention of accusing the writers of conscious deception; it is, however, necessary to state the fact in order that the value of the testimony may be fairly estimated.

The narratives of miracles were written by ardent partizans, with minds inflamed by religious zeal and enthusiasm, in an age of ignorance and superst.i.tion, a considerable time after the supposed miraculous occurrences had taken place. All history shows how rapidly pious memory exaggerates and idealizes the traditions of the past, and simple actions might readily be transformed into miracles, as the narratives circulated, in a period so p.r.o.ne to superst.i.tion and so characterized by love of the marvellous. Religious excitement and reverence for the n.o.blest of Teachers could not, under such circ.u.mstances and in such an age, have escaped this exaggeration. How few men in more enlightened times have been able soberly to appreciate, and accurately to record exciting experiences, where feeling and religious emotion have been concerned. Prosaic accuracy of observation and of language, at all times rare, are the last qualities we could expect to find in the early ages of Christianity. In the certain fact that disputes arose among the Apostles themselves so shortly after the death of their great Master, we have one proof that even amongst them there was no accurate appreciation of the teaching of Jesus,(1) and the frequent instances of their misunderstanding of very simple matters, and of their want of enlightenment, which occur throughout the

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Gospels are certainly not calculated to inspire much confidence in their intelligence and accuracy of observation. Now it is apparent that the evidence for Miracles requires to embrace two distinct points: the reality of the alleged facts, and the accuracy of the inference that the phenomena were produced by supernatural Agency. The task would even then remain of demonstrating the particular supernatural Being by whom the miracles were performed, which is admitted to be impossible. We have hitherto chiefly confined ourselves to a consideration of the antecedent credibility of such events, and of the fitness of those who are supposed to have witnessed them to draw accurate inferences from the alleged phenomena. Those who have formed any adequate conception of the amount of testimony which would be requisite in order to establish the reality of occurrences in violation of an order of Nature, which is based upon universal and invariable experience, must recognize that, even if the earliest a.s.serted origin of our four Gospels could be established upon the most irrefragable grounds, the testimony of the writers--men of like ignorance with their contemporaries, men of like pa.s.sions with ourselves--would be utterly incompetentto prove the reality of Miracles.

We have already sufficiently discussed this point, more especially in connection with Hume's argument, and need not here resume it Every consideration, historical and philosophical, has. .h.i.therto discredited the whole theory of miracles, and further inquiry might be abandoned as unnecessary. In order, however, to render our conclusion complete, it remains for us to see whether, as affirmed, there be any special evidence regarding the alleged facts ent.i.tling the Gospel Miracles to exceptional attention. If, instead of being

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clear, direct, the undoubted testimony of known eyewitnesses free from superst.i.tion, and capable, through adequate knowledge, rightly to estimate the alleged phenomena, we find that the actual accounts have none of these qualifications, the final decision with regard to Miracles and the reality of Divine Revelation will be easy and conclusive.

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PART II. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

INTRODUCTION.

Before commencing our examination of the evidence as to the date, authorship, and character of the Gospels, it may be well to make a few preliminary remarks, and clearly state certain canons of criticism. We shall make no attempt to establish any theory as to the date at which any of the Gospels was actually written, but simply examine all the testimony which is extant with the view of ascertaining what is known of these works and their authors, certainly and distinctly, as distinguished from what is merely conjectured or inferred. Modern opinion, in an Inquiry like ours, must not be mistaken for ancient evidence. We propose, therefore, as exhaustively as possible to search all the writings of the early Church for information regarding the Gospels, and to examine even the alleged indications of their use.

It is very important, however, that the silence of early writers should receive as much attention as any supposed allusions to the Gospels. When such writers, quoting largely from the Old Testament and other sources, deal

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with subjects which would naturally be a.s.sisted by reference to our Gospels, and still more so by quoting such works as authoritative,--and yet we find that not only they do not show any knowledge of those Gospels, but actually quote pa.s.sages from unknown sources, or sayings of Jesus derived from tradition,--the inference must be that our Gospels were either unknown, or not recognized as works of authority at the time.

It is still more important that we should constantly bear in mind, that a great number of Gospels existed in the early Church which are no longer extant, and of most of which even the names are lost. We need not here do more than refer, in corroboration of this fact, to the preliminary statement of the author of the third Gospel: "Forasmuch as many [--Greek--] took in hand to set forth in order a declaration of the things which have been accomplished among us," &c.(1) It is therefore evident that before our third Synoptic was written many similar works were already in circulation. Looking at the close similarity of large portions of the three Synoptics, it is almost certain that many of the writings here mentioned bore a close a.n.a.logy to each other and to our Gospels, and this is known to have been the case, for instance, amongst the various forms of the "Gospel according to the Hebrews." When, therefore, in early writings, we meet with quotations closely resembling, or we may add, even identical with pa.s.sages which are found in our Gospels, the source of which, however, is not mentioned, nor is any author's name indicated, the similarity or even ident.i.ty cannot by any means be admitted as proof that the quotation is necessarily from our Gospels, and not from some other similar work

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now no longer extant,(1) and more especially not when, in the same writings, there are other quotations from sources different from our Gospels. Whether regarded as historical records or as writings embodying the mere tradition of the early Christians, our Gospels cannot be recognized as the exclusive depositaries of the genuine sayings and doings of Jesus. So far from the common possession by many works, in early times, of sayings of Jesus in closely similar form being either strange or improbable, the really remarkable phenomenon is that such material variation in the report of the more important historical teaching should exist amongst them. But whilst similarity to our Gospels in pa.s.sages quoted by early writers from unnamed sources cannot prove the use of our Gospels, variation from them would suggest or prove a different origin, and at least it is obvious that anonymous quotations which do not agree with our Gospels cannot in any case necessarily indicate their existence. We shall in the course of the following pages more fully ill.u.s.trate this, but such a statement is requisite at the very outset from the too general practice of referring every quotation of historical sayings of Jesus exclusively to our Gospels, as though they were the only sources of such matter which had ever existed.

It is unnecessary to add that, in proportion as we remove from apostolic times without positive evidence of the existence and authenticity of our Gospels, so does the value of their testimony dwindle away. Indeed, requiring as we do clear, direct, and irrefragable evidence of the integrity, authenticity, and historical character of these Gospels, doubt or obscurity on these points must inevitably be fatal to them as sufficient testimony,--if

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they could, under any circ.u.mstances be considered sufficient testimony,--for miracles and a direct Divine Revelation like ecclesiastical Christianity.

We propose to examine first, the evidence for the three Synoptics and, then, separately, the testimony regarding the fourth Gospel.

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CHAPTER I. CLEMENT OF ROME--THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS--THE PASTOR OF HERMAS.

The first work which presents itself for examination is the so-called first Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, which, together with a second Epistle to the same community, likewise attributed to Clement, is preserved to us in the Codex Alexandrinus,(1) a MS. a.s.signed by the most competent judges to the second half of the fifth, or beginning of the sixth century, in which these Epistles follow the books of the New Testament. The second Epistle, which is evidently not epistolary, but the fragment of a Homily,(2) although it thus shares with the first the honour of a canonical position in one of the most ancient codices of the New Testament, is not mentioned at all by the earlier fathers who refer to the first;(3)

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