^s, tte ®i«f<»%lai ^ '*%>, CETON, N. J. '% ft£aJUN.1880 BR 50 .E78 T4 1870 Thomson, William, 1819-1890 Shelj Aids to faith < AIDS TO FAITH; A SEEIES OF THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. BY SEVERAL WRITERS. By WILLIA]\PTH0MS0N, D.D., LOED ARCHBISHOP OF YOEK. TniJiD EDITION. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1870. The right nf Translation is reserved. UNIFORM WITH THE PRESENT VOLUME. PRINCIPLES AT STAKE. Essays on Church Questions of THE Day. By various Writers. Edited by GEORGE HENRY SUMNER, M.A., Rector of Old Alresford, Hants. Second Edition, 8vo., 12S. I. Ritualisjii and Uniforfnity. Benjamin Shaw, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. II. Increase of the Episcopate oj the Church oj Englatid. Lord Arthur Hervey, M.A., Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells. III. Powers and Duties of tlie Priesthood. R. Payne Smith, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. IV. National Education. Alexander R. Grant, M.A., Rector of Hitchara, Suffolk. V. Doctri?ie of the Eucharist, considered in connection with Statements recently put forth respecting that Holy Sacrament. The Editor. VL Scripture and Rittial. T. D. Bernard, M.A., Rector of Walcot, and Canon of Wells. VII. T^ie Church in South Africa. Arthur Mills, M.A., of Balliol College, O.xford. VIII. Schismatical Tendency of Riinalism. George Salmon, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin. IX. Revisions of tlie Liturgy considered i7i their hearing on Ritualism. W. G. Hum- phry, B.D., Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. X. Parties and Party Spirit. John Saul Howson, D.D., Dean of Chester. n. THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. A series of Essays on THE Principles and Present Position of the Anglican Church. Edited by REV. ARCHIBALD WEIR, D.C.L., and REV. WILLIAM DALRYMPLE MACLAGAN, M.A. 8vo. Introduction. Dean of Chichester. I. Progress and Direction of Modern Thought. Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. II. The State, the Church, and the Synods of the Future. Rev. W. J. Irons, D.D. III. Religions Use of Taste. Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt. IV. Place of the Laity in Chu7-ch Government. Professor Montagu Burrows. V. Private Life and Ministrations of the Parish Priest. Rev. Walsham How. VI. Anglican Divines of the j6th and i-jth Centuries. Rev. A. W. Haddan. VII. Liturgies and Ritual. Rev. M. F. Sadler. VIII. Indiati Missio?is. Sir I!artle Frere. IX. The Church atid Education. Rev. Alfred Barry, D.D. X. The Church and the People. Rev. W. D. Maclagan. XI. Coticiliatiofi and Co7nprehension: Charity -within the Church and Icyond. Rev. Archibald Weir, D.C.L. PREFACE. RECJUN 18b0 THBOLOGICAli The Essays in this volume are intended to offer aid to those whose faith may have been shaken by recent assaults. The writers do not pretend to have exhausted subjects so vast and so important, within the compass of a few pages ; but they desire to set forth their reasons for believing the Bible, out of which they teach, to be the inspired Word of God, and for exhorting others still to cherish it as the only message of salva- tion from Grod to man. They hope that these Essays may be, to those whose attention they can secure, incentives to further thought and reading. They have avoided rather than sought direct controversy. They have excluded personality ; they have not spoken with undue harshness of the views they have been forced to oppose. For the choice of contributors and the arrangement of subjects the Editor is responsible. Most of the writers gave their names without knowing those of their coadjutors ; and not one of them, but the Editor, has seen all the Essays up to the day of publica- tion. Each has written independently, without any editorial interference, beyond a few hints to prevent omissions and repetitions, such as must arise when several writers work without concert. iv PREFACE. On the withdrawal of one of the contributors, Dr. McCaul most kindly undertook a second paper, at a short notice. No one has a better claim to be heard on the important subjects that have been confided to him. Professor Mansel lent much valuable aid to the Editor in an unexpected increase of labour. This volume is humbly offered to the Great Head of the Church, as one attempt among many to keep men true to Him in a time of much doubt and trial. Under His protection, His people need not be afraid. The old difficulties and objections are revived ; but they will meet in one way or another the old defeat. While the world lasts sceptical books will be written and answered, and the books, perhaps, and the answers alike forgotten. But the Rock of Ages shall stand unchange- able ; and men, worn with a sense of sin, shall still find rest " under the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." W. G. & B. 1861. CONTENTS. PAGE I.— ON MIRACLES AS EVIDENCES OF OHRISTANITY .. 1 H. L. Mansel, B.D., Dean of St. Paul's. II._ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRIS- TIANITY 43 William Fitzgerald, D.D., Lord Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross. III.— PROPHECY 81 A. McCaul, D.D., late Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, King's College, London, and Prebendary of St. Paul's. IV.— IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION 133 F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter, Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Lincoln. v.— THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION 189 A. McCaul, D.D., late Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, Kings College. London, and Prebendary of St. Paul's. VI.— ON THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE PENTATEUCH 237 George Rawlinson, M.A., Camdeu Professor of Ancient History, Oxford, and late Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College. VII.— INSPIRATION 287 Edward Harold Browne, D.D., Lord Bishop of Ely. VIII.— THE DEATH OF CHRIST 325 WiLLiASi Thomson, D.D., Lord Archbishop of York. IX.— SCRIPTURE, AXD ITS INTERPRETATION 371 Charlks John Ellicott, D.D., Lord Bishop of Glouces- ter and Bristol. ESSAY I. ON MIRACLES AS EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ADDITIONAL NOTES. Page 8. — f Butler, ' Analogy,' Part ii.,Ch. 2. " Supposing it acknowledged that our Savioui- spent some years in a course of working miracles, there is no more presumption, worth mentioning, against His having exerted this miraculous power in a certain degree greater, than in a certain degree less ; in one or two more instances, than in one or two fewer." Page 16. — t Compare the language of Julius Miiller, ' De Miraculorum Jesu Christi Natura et Necessitate,* Pars i., p. 23. " Propter id ipsum ilia est naturae lex, quod natur?e viribus modum et rcgulam agendi ponit, neque si quse sunt vires superiores, cum iisdem quidquam rei ijisi est. Qua cum ita Bint, violari vel snspendi miraculo naturae legem nuUus dicere poterit, nisi qui natuiaj virihus illud effici opinctur." ' el CONTENTS OF ESSAY I. 1. Inteoduction— A belief in the re- ality of miracles is indispensable to Christianity. 2. Miracles belong to the moral as well as to the sensible evidences of Christianity, and are part of its essential doctrines, not merely of its external accessories. 3. Fallacy of the argmnent from the disbelief in reported miracles of the present day : this argument not applicable to the miracles of Christ. 4. Testimony how far able to prove a miracle as such : the proof of one miracle removes the antece- dent presumption against others of the same series. 5. Connection lietween the miracles of the Old Testament and those of the New. 6. Amount of testimony in support of tlie Oliristian miracles. 7. Fitness of the miracles as accom- paniments of man's redemption. 8. Statement of tlio question as re- lated to modern science. 9. Position of miracles with reference to the empirical laws of matter. 10. Supposed objection against mira- cles from the uniformity of nature — Hume's argument not strength- ened by the subsequent progress of science 11. Advance of physical science tends to increase our conviction of the supernatural character of the Christian miracles. 12. Difference, as regards science, be- tween physical phenomena and works done by human agency. 13. Final alternative necessitated by scientific progress. 14. Kefutation of Hume's argument: a miracle is not properly a vio- lation of the laws of nature, but the introduction of a special cause. 1.5. Introduction of special causes is not incredible — Objection from tlie supposed necessary relations of natural forces to each other. 1 G. Exception to this necessity in the case of the human will — Exten- sion of the argument from the human vnll to tJie Divine. 18. 26. 27, True conception of a miracle as the interposition of a superhuman will — Relation of this superhuman will to the conception of nature, active and passive, and to that of law. Position of miracles with reference to our conceptions of God's nature and attributes — Limits within which this question must be dis- cussed — Form which it assumes in relation to miracles. Man's conception of God is derived from mind, not from matter. Conceptions of law, and order, and causation, are borrowed by mate- rial from mental science. God is necessarily conceived as a Person, and as related to the personal soul of man. Nature conceals God: man reveals God. Consequences of the above prin- ciples : miracles must be judged, not merely from physical, but also from moral and religious grounds, and their probability estimated by that of a revelation being given at all. The possibility of miracles follows from the belief in a personal God. Evidential value of miracles— Er- roneous views on this point — Miracles how far objects, how far evidences of faith. Miracles and doctrines, their rela- tion to each otiier — Negative character of the doctrinal crite- rion : its relation to the question whether miracles have been wrought at all. Agency of evil spirits is practically excluded from the question : practical question is between a Divine and a human origin of Christianity, as regards the au- thority due to each. Theoretical authority of miracles as evidences of doctrines. , Practical extension of this autho- rity — Doctrines of natural reli- gion may practically bo proved by miracles, and have actually been so. Principle on which the evidential value of miracles depends. Conclusion. ON MIRACLES AS EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITT. 1. What is the exact position of Miracles among the Evidences of Christianity, is a question which may be differently answered by different believers, without prejudice to their common belief. It has pleased the Divine Author of the Christian religion to fortify His revelation with evidences of various kinds, appealing with different degrees of force to different minds, and even to the same mind at different times. The grounds of belief consisting, not in a single demonstration, but in an accumulation of many probabilities, there is room, in the evidences as in the doctrines of Christianity, for special adaptations of different portions to dif- ferent minds ; nor can such adaptation be regarded as matter of regret or censure, so long as the personal preference of certain portions does not involve the rejection of the remainder. The question, however, assumes a very different character when it relates, not to the comparative importance of miracles as evidences, but to their reality as facts, and as facts of a super- natural kind. For if this is denied, the denial does not merely remove one of the supports of a faith which may yet rest securely on other grounds. On the contrary, the whole system of Chris- tian belief with its evidences, the moral no less than the intel- lectual influences, the precept and example for the future no less than the history of the past, — all Christianity in short, so far as it has any title to that name, so far as it has any special relation to the person or the teacliing of Christ, is overthrown at the same time. 2. For this question must be considered, not merely, as is too often done, in relation to a purely hypothetical case, to a sup- position of possible means by which the Chiistian rehgion might, had it so pleased God, have been introduced into the world otherwise than it was ; but in relation to the actual means by which it was introduced, to the teaching and practice of Christ and His Apostles, as they are portrayed in the only records 4 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. from which we can learn anything about them. Whether the doctrinal truths of Christianity could or could not have been propagated among men by moral evidence alone, without any miraculous accompaniments, it is at least certain that such was not the manner in which they actually were propagated, accord- ing to the narrative of Scripture. If our Lord not only did works apparently surpassing human power, but likewise ex- pressly declared that He did those works by the power of God, and in witness that the Father had sent Him ; — if the Apostles not only wrought works of a similar kind to those of their Master, but also expressly declared that they did so in His name, the miracles, as thus interpreted by those who wrought them, become part of the moral as well as the sensible evidences of the religion which they taught, and cannot be denied without destroying both kinds of evidence alike. " That ye may know that the Son of Man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, I say unto thee. Arise, and take up thy couch, and go unto thine house : " " If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you :" " By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man stand here before you whole : " — let us imagine for an instant such words as these to have been uttered by one who was merely employing a superior know- ledge of natural laws to produce a false appearance of superna- tural power ; by an astronomer, for instance, who had predicted an eclipse to a crowd of savages, or by a chemist, availing him- self of his science to exhibit relative miracles to an ignorant people, — and we shall feel at once how even the most plausible of the natural explanations of miraculous phenomena deals the deathblow to the moral character of the teacher, no less than to the sensible evidence of his mission. But there is a yet higher witness to this intimate association of the Christian Evidences one with another, in that great fact which forms at once the central point of apostolical preaching and the earnest of the future hope of all Christian men. If there is one fact recorded in Scripture which is entitled, in the fullest sense of the word, to the name of a Miracle, the Eesukkection OF Christ is that fact. Here, at least, is an instance in which the entire Christian faith must stand or fall with our belief in the supernatural. " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching Essay 1.] ON MIRACLES. 5 vaiu, and your faith is also vain." Here, at least, is a test by which all the evidences of Christianity alike, internal as well as external, moral as well as intellectual, may be tried. If Christ did not truly die and truly rise from the dead, preaching is vain and faith is vain ; the Apostles are false witnesses of God ; nay, Christ Himself, if we may dare to say so, has witnessed falsely of Himself. It is necessary to state the case in this manner, in order to point out the real importance of the interests at stake. Nothing can be more erroneous than the view sometimes taken, which represents the question of the possibility of miracles as one which merely affects the external accessories of Christianity, leaving the essential doctrines untouched.* Such might possibly be the case, were the argument merely confined to an inquiry into the evidence in behalf of some one miracle as an isolated fact, without impeaching the possibility of miracles in general. But such is not the question which has been raised, or can be raised, as regards the relation of miracles to the alleged dis- coveries of modern science. If the possibility of miracles be granted, the question, whether any particular miracle did or did not take place, is a question, not of science, but of testimony. The scientific question relates to the possibility of supernatural occurrences at all ; and if this be once decided in the negative, Christianity as a religion must necessarily be denied along with it. Some moral precepts may indeed remain, whicli may or may not have been first enunciated by Christ, but which in them- selves have no essential connection with one person more than with another ; but all belief in Christ as the great Example, as the Teacher sent from God, as the crucified and risen Saviour, is gone, never to return. The perfect sinlessness of His life and conduct can no longer be held before us as our type and pattern, if the works which He professed to perform by Divine power were either not performed at all or were performed by human science and skill. No mystery impenetrable by human reason, no doctrine incapable of natural proof, can be believed on His * See 'Essays and Reviews,' p. 94: ''third edition i. A similar view is taken tiken,' 1858, p. 23) tliat "Miracles and Prophecies are not adjuncts appended by Schleiermacher, ' Der Christliche from without to a revelation in itself Glaube,' §14, pp. 100, sqq. With far I independent of them, but constitutive greater truth it is maintained on the elements of the revelation itself." other hand by Rothe (' Studien und Kri- I 6 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. authority ; for if He professed to work mii-acles, and wrought them not, what warrant have we for the trustworthiness of other parts of His teaching? The benefits obtained by His Cross and Passion, the promises conveyed by His Eesurrection, are no longer the objects of Christian faith and hope ; for if miracles are impossible, He died as other men die, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption. The prayers which we offer to Him who ascended into Heaven, and there liveth to make intercession for us, are a delusion and a mockery, if miracles are impossible ; for then is Christ not ascended into Heaven. 3. In point of fact, even single miracles cannot be treated as isolated occurrences, and judged as we should judge of any simi- lar fact narrated at another time. There is a latent fallacy in the appeal which is sometimes made to the manner in which well- informed men deal with alleged marvels at the present day.* The Christian miracles can only be judged in connection with the scheme of which they form a part, and by the light of all the collateral evidence which that scheme is able to furnish. The true question is, not what should we think of, or how should we endeavour to explain, a single marvellous occurrence, or even a series of such occurrences, reported as taking place at the present lime ? but, what should we think of one who should come now, as Christ came, supported by all the evidences which combined to bear witness to Him ? If the world, with all its advance in physical science, were morally and religiously in the same state as at the time of Chi'ist's coming ; if we, like the Jews of old, had been taught by a long series of prophecies to expect a Ke- deemer in whom all the ftimilies of the earth should be blessed ; if the events of our national history tended to shew that the time was come to which those prophecies pointed as the epoch of their fulfilment ; if we were in possession of a religion, itself claiming a divine origin, yet in all its institutions bearing witness to something yet to come, — a religion of type, and cere- mony, and sacrifice, pointing to a further purpose and a spiritual significance beyond themselves; if one were to appear, pro- claiming himself to be the promised Kedeemer, appealing to our * See 'Essays and Reviews,' p. 107. I nunft,' p. 100, ed. Rosenkranz; though A similar appeal to the practical denial Kant does not go so far as to deny of miracles is made hy Kant, ' Religion | the theoretical possibility of miracles, iuncrhalb der Grenzeu der blossen Ver- Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. sacred writings as testifying of himself, doing works, not only full of power but of goodness, full of wonder, but also full of love, and confirmed by Scriptures expressly declaring that such works should be done by him that was to come ; doing them, not in secret, nor in an appointed place, nor with instruments prepared for the purpose, but openly and without effort, and upon occasions as they naturally presented themselves, in the street and in the market-place, in the wilderness and on the sea, by the sick man's bed and the dead man's bier ; and expressly declaring that he did them by the power of God and in proof that God had sent him ; — witli all these circumstances com- bined, let any unprejudiced man among ourselves say which would be the more reasonable view to be taken of such works performed by such a person ; whether to admit his OAvn account of them, guaranteed by all the weight of his character, or to refer them to some natural cause, which will at some future time receive its explanation by the advance of discovery. Surely those who, even in this enlightened age, chose to adopt the latter hypothesis, rather than admit the teacher's own testimony con- cerning himself, would be the legitimate successors of those who, under like circumstances, declared, " He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils." * 4. But it is said that testimony is unable to prove a miracle as such. " No testimony," we are told on high scientific authority, " can reach to the supernatural ; testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts ; testimony can only prove an extraor- dinary and perhaps inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon : that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the previous belief and assumptions of the parties." f Whatever may be the value of this objection as applied to a hypothetical case, in which the objector may select such occm-rences and such testimonies as suit his pm-pose, it is singularly inapplicable to the works actually recorded as having been done by Christ and His Apostles, and to the testimony by which they are actually sup- ported. It may, with certain exceptions, be applicable to a case in which the assertion of a supernatural cause rests solely on the * For this argument I am partly in- debted to Dean Lyall, ' Preparation of Prophecy,' p. 151, ed. 1854. t ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 107. This objection is partly borrowed from Dean Lyall, p. 23, who however uses it for a very diftereut purpose. 8 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. testimony of the spectator of the fact ; but it is not applicable to those in which the cause is declared by the performer. Let us accept, if we please, merely as a narrative of " apparent sensible facts," the history of the cure of the blind and dumb demoniac, or of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate ; but we cannot place the same restriction upon the words of our Lord and of St. Peter, which expressly assign the supernatural cause : " If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you :" " By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth doth this man stand here before you whole." * We have here, at least, a testi- mony reaching to the supernatural ; and if that testimony be admitted in these cases, it may be extended to the whole series of wonderful works performed by the same persons. For if a o-iven cause can be assigned as the true explanation of any single occurrence of the series, it becomes at once the most reasonable and probable explanation of the remainder. The antecedent presumption against a narrative of mu-aculous occurrences, what- ever may be its weight, is only applicable to the narrative taken as a whole, and to the entire series of miracles which it contaius. But if a single true miracle be admitted as established by suffi- cient evidence, the entire history to which it belongs is at once removed from the ordinary calculations of more or less proba- bility. One mii-acle is enough to shew that the series of events with which it is connected is one which the Almighty has seen fit to mark by exceptions to the ordinary course of His Providence ; and, if this be once granted, we have no a priori grounds on which we can determine how many of such exceptions are to be expected. If a single miracle recorded in the Gospels be once admitted, the remainder cease to have any special antecedent improbability, and may be established by the same evidence which is sufficient for ordinary events. For the improbability, whatever it may be, reaches no further than to shew that it is unlikely that God should work miracles at all ; not that it is unlikely that He should work more than a certain number, f 5. Hitherto we have spoken only of the miracles of Christ and His Apostles. But the miracles of the Old Testament also can only be rightly estimated through their connection with those of the New. The promise of man's redemption was coeval * St. Matt. xii. 28 ; Acta iv. 10. f See note, p. 1. Essay I.J ON MIRACLES. with his fall ; and the whole intervening history, as it is told in Scripture, is a narrative of the steps by which the world was prepared for the fulfilment of that promise. The miracles of the Old Testament, as has been observed, are chiefly grouped round two great epochs in the history of the theocratic kingdom — that of its foundation under Moses and Joshua, and that of its resto- ration by Elijah and Elisha.* They thus have a direct relation to the establishment and preservation of the Mosaic covenant, itself a supernatural system, provided with supernatural institu- tions, and preparing the way for the final consummation of God's supernatural providence in the advent of His Son.t Not merely the occasional miracles of Jewish history, but some of the established and prominent features of their religion down to the time of the Captivity — the gift of Prophecy, the Shechinah, the Urim and Thummim, the Sabbatical year, and others — mani- fest themselves as the supernatui-al parts of a supernatural sys- tem, and that system one having a definite purpose and pointing to a definite end.:}: They were the adjuncts of the Law ; and " the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." 6. The real question at issue between the believer and the unbeliever in the Scripture miracles is not whether they are established by sufficient testimony, but whether they can be established by any testimony at aU. If it be once granted that testimony is admissible in the case, it is scarcely possible to con- ceive a stronger testimony than that which the Christian miracles can claim. It is the testimony, if ever such testimony was, not of man merely, but of God. Even as regards one who does not believe in the distinctive doctrines of Christianity, there are two witnesses to Christ which no other man, whatever may be his worth, can claim — the history of the Jewish nation before His coming, and the history both of the Jewish and of the Chi'istian world afterwards. Whether it was by natural or by supernatural means, it cannot be denied that He to whom the natural and the supernatural are alike subject has permitted the course of events in the world to bear a witness to Christ, such * See Trench, 'Notes on the Mi- racles,' p. 45 (sixth edition). t Compare Neander, 'Life of Christ,' p. 138, English translation ; Twesten, * Vorlesungon ueber die Dogiuatik,' ii., p. 178 ; Van Mildert, ' Boyle Lectures,' Sermon xxi. X Comimre Bp. Atterbury, ' Sermons (1730), voL i., p. 153. 10 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. as has never been borne to any other person who has appeared upon earth in the hkeness of a man. It cannot be denied that the prophetic writings contain descriptions which, account for the correspondence as we may, do, as a fact, agree with the per- son and history of Jesus of Nazareth, as they agree with no other man, or body of men ; that the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish religion have a meaning as typical of Him, which no other interpretation can give to them ; that the temple and its services were brought to an end after His appearance on earth, as if expressly to exclude the claims of any future Messiah ; that His dominion has been spread over the civilised world to such an extent, and by such means, as no other ruler, temporal or spiritual, can claim ; that superstitions have given way before His name which no other adversary had been able to sliake ; that doctrines have been established by His teaching which in the hands of other teachers were but plausible and transitory conjectures. However these tilings may be accounted for, they are sufficient at least to mark Him as the central figure of the world's history, looked forward to by all preceding generations, looked backward to by all following ; they are sufficient to secure for His sayings and His acts an authority whicli cannot be claimed by those of any other person. 7. It is scarcely necessary to state how much this argument is strengthened when it is addressed to one who believes, no matter on what gi'ounds, in any of the fundamental articles of the Christian Faith. I do not speak of one who believes in the narrative of the Gospels ; for to such an one the miracles are not matters of question ; but of one who in any sense believes in Christ as the Eedeemer of mankind, though doubting some of the records of His earthly life. If God has seen fit to redeem the world by Christ and by Chi-ist alone, what marvel if the his- tory of Christ and of the dispensation preparatory to Christ exhibits signs and wonders such as no other history can claim? The antecedent probability, in this case, is for the miracles, not against them. It is to be expected that an event unique in the world's history should be marked by accompaniments partaking of its own character. The miracles are not every-day events, because the redemption of mankind is not an every-day event ; they belong to no cycle in the recurring phenomena of nature, because Christ has not often suffered since the foundation of the Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 11 world. Kound this great fact of man's redemption the accessory featu-res of that wondrous narrative are grouped and clustered as around their proper centre ; no longer the uncouth prodigies of the kingdom of Nature, biit the fitting splendours of the king- dom of Grace. It was meet that He who came as the conqueror of sin and death, who had power to lay down His life, and power to take it again, should come also as the Lord of Body and the Lord of Spirit, having power over the elements of matter and over the thouglits of men's minds ; foretold by predictions which no human wisdom could have suggested, testified to by works which no human power could have accomplished. Viewed as part of the scheme of Kedemption, the marvels of the Scripture narrative are no longer isolated and unmeaning anomalies, but a foreordained and orderly system of powers, working above the ordinary course of nature because their end is above the ordinary course of nature. The incongruity, the anomaly, would be if they were not there — if the salvation of the souls of men were to be brought about by no higher means than those wliich minister to their bodily appetites and material comforts. The daily wants of the individual, or the progressive culture of the race, may be provided for or advanced by laws which work imceasingly from day to day, and from generation to generation ; but we seek no recurring law of the Scripture miracles, because we expect no recurrence of that fact to which all Scripture bears witness. * 8. The above remarks, though only preliminary to the main question, are necessary in order to shew what is the real point to be established, if the belief in the supernatural is to be over- thrown. It is not the rarity of miracles — no one asserts them to be common : it is not their general improbability— no one asserts them to be generally probable : it is not that they need an extraordinary testimony as compared with other events — such a testimony we assert that they have. It is neither more nor less than their impossibility — an impossibility to be esta- blished on scientific grounds, such as no reasonable man would reject in any other case ; grounds such as those on which we believe that the earth goes round the sun, or that chemical elements combine in definite proportions. In this pomt of view the argument is altogether of a general character, and is un- affected by any peculiarities of probability or testimony which may distinguish one miraculous narrative from another. If the * Sec additional paragraph, p. 40. 12 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. progress of physical or metaphysical science has shewn beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt that miracles are impossible — if, as seems to be the tendency of a recent argument, the asser- tion of a miracle is now known to be as absurd as the assertion that two and two make five*— it is idle to attempt a comparison between greater or less degi'ees of probability or testimony. The preceding observations will in that case only serve to shew what it is that we have to surrender, and to rescue the inquiry fr-om the particular fallacy which seeks to underrate its import- ance by representing it as only affecting the accidents and excrescences of Christianity. Let us, at the outset, be clearly convinced of tlie vital importance of the question, in order that we mav enter on its examination prepared, if necessary, to sacri- fice our most valued convictions at the demand of truth, but, at the same time, so convinced of their value as to be jealous of sacrificing them to anything but truth. 9. The inquiry concerning the possibility of miracles in general (as distinguished from that which concerns the credibility of the Scripture miracles in particular) involves two distinct questions, which must be considered separately from each other. The first of these questions relates to the position occupied by miracles with reference to experience and to the empirical laws of matter ; the second relates to their position with reference to philoso- phical conceptions of God's nature and attributes. It is indis- pensable to a clear understanding of the subject that these two questions should be kept apart from each other ; though it will be necessary, in discussing the first, to take for granted some conclusions Avhich will afterwards have to be established in con- nection with the second. Let us then assume, for the present, that we are justified in conceiving God as a Person, and in speaking of His nature and operations in the language which we should employ in describing the analogous qualities and actions of men. We shall speak, as theists in general are accustomed * Soc ' Essays and Eeviews,' p. 141. It, is iistonisliing that this acute author should not have seen the absurdity of introducing tiiis stiitemcnt in connec- tion with testimony. No witness could possibly mi', two and two midic five, or four, or any number, in the (tlmtrarf ; Ik! must see it in connection with ocrlain visible objects. Put the case in its only possible form : — let a man say that ho had seen two balls, and then two more, put together, and five balls produced from them ; and, instead of an impossi- bility, we have but the commonest ot jugglers' tricks. Essay L] ON MIRACLES. 13 to speak, of the will, and the purpose, and the design of God ; of the contrast between His general and special providence ; of His government of the world and control over its laws ; reserving for a subsequent inquiry the vindication of these and similar ex- pressions from a philosophical point of view. 10. The argument which denies the possibility of miracles, on the ground of the uniformity of nature, may be considered under two heads : first, as regards the general conception of a system of natural laws ; and, secondly, as regards the special experience of the mode in which those laws are manifested. The former may be fairly stated in the words of Hume, whose reason- ing has received no substantial addition from the labours of subsequent writers on the same side : " A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature ; and as a firm and unalterable experience has estabhshed these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from expe- rience can possibly be imagined."* The argument, as thus stated, was just as strong or just as weak at the day when it was written as at the present time : it has received no additional strength fi-om the progress of science during the interval, — indeed it is hard to see how the evidence of "a firm and unalter- able experience," if such existed at any time, is capable of being made stronger. No scientific man in the last century had any doubt that the sensible phenomena which came under his own experience and that of his contemporaries were owing to some natural cause acting by some natm-al law, whether the actual cause and law were known or unknown. The nature of this conviction is not altered by any subsequent increase in the number of known as compared wdth unknown causes: the general conception of "a firm and unalterable experience" is wide enough to contain all discoveries anticipated in the future, as well as those already made. 11. In one respect, indeed, the advance of physical science tends to strengthen rather than to weaken our conviction of the supernatural character of the Christian miracles. In whatever proportion our knowledge of physical causation is limited, and the number of unknown natural agents comparatively large, in the same proportion is the probability that some of these unknown Philosophical Works,' vol. iv., p. 133. 14 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. causes, acting in some unknown manner, may have given rise to the alleged marvels. But this probability diminishes when each newly-discovered agent, as its properties become known, is shewn to be inadequate to the production of the supposed efiects, and as the residue of unknown causes, which might produce them, becomes smaller and smaller. We are told, indeed, that " the inevitable progress of research must, within a longer or shorter period, unravel all that seems most mar- vellous ;"* but we may be permitted to doubt the relevancy of this remark to the presejit case, until it has been shewn that the advance of science has in some degree enabled men to perform the mii-acles performed by Christ. When the inevitable pro- gress of research shall have enabled men of modern times to give sight to the blind with a touch, to still tempests with a word, to raise the dead to life, to die themselves, and to rise again, we may allow that the same causes might possibly have been called into operation, two thousand years earlier, by some great man in advance of his age. But until this is done, the unravelling of the marvellous in other phenomena only serves to leave these mighty works in their solitary grandeui*, as wrought by the finger of God, unapproached and unapproach- able by all the knowledge and all the power of man. 12. We have already observed that there is one kind of testi- mony which can reach to the supernatural ; namely, the tes- timony of the person who himself performs the work ; and we may now add that the fact of a work being done by human agency places it, as regards the future progress of science, in a totally different class from mere physical phenomena. The appearance of a comet, or the fall of an aerolite, may be reduced by the advance of science from a supposed supernatural to a natural occurrence ; and this reduction furnishes a reason- able presumption that other phenomena of a like character will in time meet with a like explanation. But the reverse is the case with respect to those phenomena which are narrated as having been produced by personal agency. In proportion as the science of to-day surpasses that of former generations, so is the improbability that any man could have done in past times, by natural means, works which no skill of the present age is able * • Essays and Reviews,' p. 109. Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 15 to imitate. The two classes of plienomena rest in fact on exactly opposite foundations. In order that natural occurrences, taking place without human agency, may wear the appearance of prodigies, it is necessary that the cause and manner of their production should be unknoivn ; and every advance of science from the unknown to the known tends to lessen the number of such prodigies by referring them to natural causes, and increases the probability of a similar explanation of the remainder. But on the other hand, in order that a man may perform mar- vellous acts by natural means, it is necessary that the cause and manner of their production should be knoivn by the performer ; and in this case every fresh advance of science from the un- known to the known diminishes the probability that what is unknown now could have been known in a former age. 13, The effect therefore of scientific progress, as regards the Scriptural miracles, is gradually to eliminate the hypothesis which refers them to unknown natural causes, and to reduce the question to the following alternative : Either the recorded acts were not performed at all (in which case it is idle to talk of the probable " honesty or veracity " of the witnesses *), or they were performed, as their authors themselves declare, by virtue of a supernatural power, consciously exercised for that very purpose. The intermediate theory, which attempts to explain them as distorted statements of events reducible to hiown natural causes, has been tried already, in the scheme of Paulus, and has failed so utterly as to preclude all expectation of its revival, even in the land of its birth. There remains only the choice between a deeper faith and a bolder unbelief; between accepting the sacred narrative as a true account of miracles actually per- formed, and rejecting it as wholly fictitious and incredible ; whether the fiction be attributed to the gradual accretion of mythical elements, or (for a later criticism has come back again to the older and more intelligible theory!) to the conscious fabrication of a wilful impostor. 14. The argument of Hume, wJiich may be taken as the repre- * See ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 106. | of Bruno Bauer, wlio rejects tlie hypo- t In tliis way the mythical theory of thesis of a traditional origin of the Strauss, after having overthrown the i Gospels, in favour of that wliicli as- naturalistic theory of Paulus, has itself cribes them to deliberate fabrication. in turn been subjected to the criticism i 16 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. sentative of all those wliich rest merely on the general concep- tion of laws of nature, was refuted long ago by one who wrote as the advocate of his teaching in some other respects* A miracle is not "a violation of the laws of natui-e," in any sense in which such a violation is impossible or inconceivable. It is simply the introduction of a new agent, possessing new powers, and therefore not included under the rules generalized from a previous experience. Its miraculous character, distinguishing it from mere new discoveries in nature, consists in the fact that the powers in question are supposed to be introduced for a special purpose, and to be withdrawn again when that purpose is accomplished, and thus to be excluded from the field of future observation and investigation. But the supposition of such powers need not imply any violation of the present laws observed by present natural agents. The laws of nature, in the only sense of the phrase which is relevant to the present argument, are simply general statements concerning the powers and pro- perties of cei-tain classes of objects which have come under our observation. They say nothing about the powers and properties of other objects or classes of objects wliich have not been observed, or which have been observed with a different result. There are laws, for instance, of one class of material agents wliich do not apply to another ; and there are laws of matter in general which are not applicable to mind ; and so there may be other orders of beings of which we have no knowledge, the laws of whose action may be different from all that we know of mind or body. A violation of the laws of nature, in this sense of the expression, woidd take place if, in two cases in which the cause or antecedent fact were exactly the same, the effect or con- sequent fact were different. But no such irregularity is asserted by the believer in miracles. He does not assert that miracles ai-e produced by the abnormal action of natural and known causes — on the contrary, he expressly maintains that they are pi-oduced by a special interposition of Divine Power ; and that such an interposition, constituting in itself a different cause, may reasonably be expected to be followed by a different efifect.f 15. So far then as miracle is regarded as the operation of a s(;nting from some of liis details, and theroloie unable to adopt his exact lan- guage;, t i^ee note, p. 1. * S(;e r.rown on Cinisp aiK 1 Effi'ct. Note E. I Imvc l.oiT.i\v,..l til,' leading iiU'R of Brown'.s iiri^tiinciit. tlm M-1. dia- EesAV 1.1 ox MIRACLES. 17 special cause, producing a special effect, it offers no antagonism to that general uniformity of nature, according to which the same effects will always follow from the same causes. The opposition between science and miracle, if any exist, must be sought in another quarter ; namely, in the assumption (provided that such an assumption is warranted by science) that the intro- duction of a special cause is itself incredible. The ground of such an assumption appears to lie in the hypothesis that the existing forces of nature are so mutually related to each other Lhat no new power can be introduced without either disturbing the whole equilibrium of the universe, or involving a series of miracles, coextensive with the universe, to counteract such disturbance. This seems to be the meaning of the following observation by a recent writer : — '• In an age of physical research like the present, all highly cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects have imbibed, more or less, the lessons of the inductive philosophy, and have at least in some measure learned to appre- ciate the gi-and foundation conception of universal law — to recogTiise the impossibility even of any two material atoms sub- sisting together without a determinate relation — of any action of the one or the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without reference to a physical cause — of any modification what- soever in the existing conditions of material agents, unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences, following in some necessary chain of orderly con- nexion— however imperfectly known to us." * This operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences could hardly be described more graphically or forcibly than in the following words of a great German philosopher : — " Let us imagine, for instance, this grain of sand lying some few feet further inland than it actually does. Then must the storm- wind that drove it in from the sea-shore have been stronger than it actually was. Then must the preceding state of the atmo- sphere, by which this wind 'Was occasioned and its degree of strength determined, have been different from what it actually was ; and the previous changes which gave rise to this particular weather ; and so on. We must suppose a different temperature from that which really existed, and a different constitution of the bodies which influenced this temperature. The fertility or ' Essays and Kevicws,' p. 183. IS AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay 1. barrenness of countries, the duration of the life of man, depend, unquestionably, in a gr-eat degree, on temperature. How can you know — since it is not given us to penetrate the arcana of nature, and it is therefore allowable to speak of possibilities — how can you know that in such a state of the weather as we have been supposing, in order to carry this grain of sand a few vards further, some ancestor of yours might not have perished from hunger, or cold, or heat, long before the birth of that son from whom you are descended ; that thus you might never have been at all ; and all that you have ever done, and all that you ever hope to do in this world, must have been hindered, in order that a grain of sand miglit lie in a different place?"* 16. Without attempting to criticise the argument as thus elo- quently stated, let us make one alteration in the circumstances supposed — an alteration necessary to make it relevant to the present question. Let us suppose that the grain of sand, instead of being carried to its present position by the wind, has been placed there by a man. Is the student of physical science prepared to enumerate a similar chain of material antecedents, which must have been other than they were, before the man could liave chosen to deposit the grain of sand on any other spot * Ficlite, 'Die Bestimmung des Mensclien,' Werke, ii., p. 178. For the translation I am indebted to an excel- lent American work, wliich deserves to be better known in this country, and to which I take this opportunity of ex- pressing my own obligations—' Tlie Principles of Metaphysical and Ethical Science,' by my friend Professor Bowen. of Harvard College. [Since this note was first published, I have been in- formed that the passage is an extract from the translation of the 'Bestim- mung," by Mrs. Percy Sinnett, and is acknowledged as such in the first edi- tion of Professor Bawen's work.] Schleiermaoher (' Der Christliche Glaube,' § 47, p. 200) expresses in ge- neral terms, and witli express reference to miracles, the same view which Fichte has exhibited by an instance in relation to necessity in general. " A miracle," he says, "has a positive relation, by which it extends to all that is future, and a negative relation, which in a cer- tain sense affects all that is past. In so fill as that does not follow which would have followed according to the natural connecticm of the aggregate of finite causes, in so far an effect is hin- dered, not by the influence of other natural counteracting causes belonging to the same series, but notwithstanding the concurrence of all effective causes to the production of the effect. Every- thing, therefore, which from all past time contributed to this effect is in a cer- tain measure annilulated; and instead of the interpolation of a single super- natural agent into the course of nature, the whole conception of nature is de- stroyed. On the positive side, some- thing takes place which is conceived as incapable of following from the aggre- gate of finite causes. But, inasmuch as this event itself now becomes an actual link in the chain of nature, every future event must be other than it would have been had this one miracle not iaken place. Every miracle thus not only destroys the original order of na- ture for ever after ; but each later mi- racle destroys the earlier ones, so far as these have become parts of the series of effective causes." The whole ar- gument, as Rothe has observed, rests on tiie assumption of absolute deter- minism. Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 19 than that on which it is now lying? Sucli a conclusion has indeed been maintained in general terms, without any specifica- tion of antecedents, by the advocates of Fatalism ; and it is main- tained in the continuation of the passage from which the above extract is taken.* But the question is, not whether such a con- clusion has been asserted, as many other absurdities have been asserted, by the advocates of a theory ; f but whether it has been established on such scientific grounds as to be entitled to the assent of all duly cultivated minds, whatever their own consci- ousness may say to the contrary. X The most rigid prevalence of law and necessary sequence among purely material pheno- mena may be admitted without apprehension by the firmest believer in miracles, so long as that sequence is so interpreted as to leave room for a power indispensable to all moral obliga- tion and to all religious belief - the power of Free Will in man. Deny the existence of a free will in man ; and neither the possibility of miracles, nor any other question of religion or morality, is worth contending about. Admit the existence of a free will in man ; and we have the experience of a power, ana- logous, however inferior, to that which is supposed to operate in the production of a miracle, and forming the basis of a legitimate argument from the less to the greater. § In the Will of man we have the solitary instance of an Efficient Cause in the highest sense of the term, acting among and along with the jihysical causes of the material world, and producing results which would not have been brought about by any invariable sequence of physical causes left to their own action. We have evidence, also, of an elasticity, so to speak, in the constitution of nature, which * Not however as the author's own conclusion ; but as one of two conflict- ing doubts, to be afterwards resolved. t "Nihil tarn absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosopho- xum.'' — Cicero, Be Divinatione, ii., 58. J An attempt has recently been made to prove the non-existence of free will, by means of statistical calculations, shewing an average uniformity in tlie recurrence of certain actions in certain periods of time. The resemblance, how- ever, between statistical averages and natural laws fails at the very point on which the wliole weight of tlie argu- ment rests. A naturrd law is valid for a class of object.^ only because and in so far as it is valid for each individual of that class : tlie law of gravitation, for instance, is exiiibited in a single apple as much as in an orchard ; and is concluded of tlie latter from being observed in tlie former. But the uniformity represented by statistical averages is one wliicli is observed in masses only, and not in individuals ; and hence "the law, if law it be, whicli such averages indicate, is one which offers no bar to the existence of in- dividual freedom, exercised, as all human power must be exercised, within certain limits. § Compare Twesten, ' Vorh^sungen ueber die Dogmatik,' ii., p. J7l. c^ 2 20 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay T. permits the influence of human power on the phenomena of the workl to be exercised or suspended at will, without affecting the stability of the whole. We have thus a precedent for allowing the possibility of a similar interference of a higher will on a grander scale, provided for by a similar elasticity of the matter subjected to its influence. Such interferences, whether produced by human or by superhuman will, are not contrary to the laws of matter ; but neither are they the result of those laws. They are the work of an agent who is independent of the laws, and who, therefore, neither obeys them nor disobeys them.* If a man, of his own free will, throws a stone into the air, the mo- tion of the stone, as soon as it has left his hand, is determined by a combination of purely material laws ; partly by the attrac- tion of the earth ; partly by the resistance of the air ; partly by the magnitude and direction of the force by which it was thro^vn. But by what law came it to be thrown at all ? What law brought about the circumstance through which the aforesaid combination of material laws came into operation on this par- ticular occasion and in this particular manner? The law of gravitation, no doubt, remains constant and unbroken, wliether the stone is lying on the ground or moving through the air ; but neither the law of gravitation, nor all the laws of matter put together, could have brought about this particular result, without the interposition of the free will of the man who thrbws the stone. Substitute the will of God for the will of man ; and the argmnent, which in the above instance is limited to the narrow sphere within which man's power can be exercised, becomes applicable to the whole extent of creation, and to all the pheno- mena which it embraces. 17. The fundamental conception, which is indispensable to a true apprehension of the nature of a miracle, is that of the distinc- tion of Mind from Matter, and of the power of the former, as a personal, conscious, and free agent, to influence the phenomena of the latter. We are conscious of this power in ourselves ; we experience it in our everyday life ; but we experience also its restriction within certain narrow limits, the principal one being that man's influence upon foreign bodies is only possible through the instrumentality of his own body.f Beyond these limits is * Roe Rolho, in ' Stmlien und Kritikeu,' 1858, p. 33. t Twcsfcii, Vorlusungeri iiber die Dogmatik,' i. p. 368. Cf. Jul. Muller, ' De Mir. Naturti," Part I., p. ;58 Essay I.J ON MIRACLES. 21 the region of the miraculous. lu at least the gi-eat majority of the mu-acles recorded in Scripture, the supernatural element appears, not in the relation of matter to matter, but in that of matter to mind ; in the exercise of a personal power transcend- ing the limits of man's will. They are not so much supermaterial as superhuman. Miracles, as evidences of religion, are connected with a teacher of that religion ; and their evidential character consists in the witness which they bear to him as "a man approved of God by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him." He may make use of natural agents, acting by their own laws, or he may not: on this question various con- jectures may be hazarded, more or less plausible. The miracle consists in his making use of them, so far as he does so, under circumstances which no human skill could bring about. When a sick man is healed, or a tempest stilled, by a word, the mere action of matter upon matter may possibly be similar to that which takes place when the same effects occur in a natural way : the miracle consists in the means by which that action is brought about. And those means, we are assured by the word of the Teacher himself, are nothing less than the power of God, vouchsafed for the express purpose of bearing witness that God has sent him. Is it more reasonable, taking the whole evidence into account, to believe his word ; or to sup- pose, either that the works were not done at all, or that they were done by a scientific deception ? This is the real question to be decided. If, indeed, we include, under the term nature, all that is po- tential, as well as all that is actual, in the constitution of the world — all that can be brought about in it by divine power, as well as all that is brought about in it by physical causes, — in such an extended sense of the term, a miracle, like any other occurrence, may be included within the province of nature. We may, doubtless, believe that God, from the beginning, so ordered the constitution of the world as to leave room for the exercise of those miraculous powers which He foresaw would at a certain time be exercised; just as He has left similar room for the ex- ercise, within narrower limits, of the human will. In this sense, some of the scholastic chvines maintained, with reason, that a miracle is contraiy to nature only in so far as nature is regarded as an active manifestation, not in so far as It is regarded as a 22 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I, passive recipient of power.* If this distinction is once clearly understood, the question, whether miracles may be represented as the result of laiv, or not, is a mere verbal question, which is only important from its liability to be mistaken for a real one. Properly speaking, a natural effect is not produced by a law, but by an agent acting according to a law. Every natural phe- nomenon has its physical cause in some antecedent natural phenomenon which it regularly follows ; and the laws of nature are merely classifications of some of these sequences with others of a similar character ;t or, as they have been aptly called, " the uniformities which exist among natural phenomena, when re- duced to their simplest expression."^ In this sense, miracles cannot be referred to a natural law, known or unknown ; for they do not resemble any sequence of one sensible phenomenon from another; nor can any sensible phenomenon or group of phenomena be pointed out, or even supposed to exist, the occur- rence of which would be invariably followed by such results. But if the term law be used in a different sense, to denote a method or plan conceived in the mind of an intelligent Being ; and if, by referring miracles to a law, no more is meant than that the}', like other events, formed part of God's purpose from the beginning, and were the result, not of sudden capi-ice, but of a preordained plan, by which provision was made for them, that they should be wrought at their proper time and place without disturbing the economy of the universe, — such an expression, allowing for the necessary imperfection of all human terms when applied to divine things, is perhaps the most true and reverent conception of these events which we are capable of * This is clearly expressed in the lan- guage of AlexandtT ab Ales, ' Suinma,' p. ii., qu. xlii., numb, v., art. 5 : — "Est eniui potentia activa, et est potentia sus- ccptiva, ct est potentia aptata et po- tentia non aptata. Et est potentia ac- tiva tiun naturiB inferiinis quam supe- rioris ; susceptiva autem naturae iufe- rioris. Et verum est quod quicquid est Deo possibilo seeuiuluni potentiam activuin, est naturte possibilo, non sini- plieiter, sed secundum potentiam sus- ceptivam ; et hoc est dicta possibilitas ; sed non secundum aetivam potentiam, neo secundum aptiitam." A similar view is held by Albertus Magnus, ' Summa,' p. ii., tract viii., qu. xxxi. ; and by Aquinas, in 1 Sent., dist. xlii., qu. ii., art. 2. See also Neander, ' Church His- tory,' vol. viii. p. 161, Eng. tr., ed. Bohn. t "No further insight into why the apple falls is acquu-ed by saying it is forced to fall, or it falls by the force of gravitation : by the latter expression we are enabled to relate it most usefully to other phenomena ; but we still know no more of the particular phenomena tlian tliat under certain circumstances the apple does fall." — Grove on the Cor- relation of Physical Forces, p. 18, "ad edition. I Mill's ' Lfisic,' vol. i. p. 385. Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 23 forming diiriug this present life ; though, like other analogies transferred from the human mind to the Divine, it is the object rather of religious belief than of philosophical speculation. 18. Our argument has hitherto proceeded on the assumption that we are justified in regarding the visible world as under the government of a personal God, and in speaking of His acts and purposes in language which implies an analogy between th^ Divine mind and the human. It now becomes necessary to make some remarks in vindication of the assumption itself, which has been included by recent criticism in the same condemnation with the consequences which we have endeavoured to deduce from it. Of the argument from design, " as popularly pursued," we are told that it '■' proceeds on the analogy of a personal agent, whose contrivances are limited by the conditions of the case and the nature of his materials, and pursued by steps corresponding to those of human plans and operations: — an argument leading only to the most unworthy and anthropomorphic conceptions."* We are told, again, that " to attempt to reason from law to voli- tion, from order to active power, from universal reason to distinct personality, from design to self-existence, from intelligence to infinite perfection, is in reality to adopt grounds of argument and speculation entirely beyond those of strict philosophical in- ference."t We are told, again, that " the simple argument from the invariable order of nature is wholly incompetent to give us any conception whatever of the Divine Omnipotence, except as maintaining, or acting through, that invariable universal system of ijhysical order and law ;"' and that " a theism of Omnipotence in any sense deviating from the order of nature must be entirely de- rived from other teaching.''^ In order to test the value of these * Powell, ' Order of Nature,' p. 237. i with the exercise of intellect, and the It is natural to turn to this more elabo- ; volition, or power of moral causation, of rate work, publisiied but a short time ! which we are conscious within our- before the ' Essays and Reviews,' as the , selves, that we speak of the Supreme most probable source from which to ! Mind, and Moral Cause of the universe, complete or explain anytliing which \ of whose operation, order, arrangement, seems defective or obscure in the au- \ and adaptation are the external mani- thor's contribution to the latter volume, i festations. Order implies what by ana- At the same time it is but just to call logij we call intelligence : subserviency attention to some indications of a very to an observed end implies intc Uigence diflerent and a far truer view, in an foreseeing, which, by analogy, we call earlier work by the same writer ; as in the design.'' — On the Spirit of the Inductive following passage, which I venture to Fhilosophy, p. 166. cite, though unable to reconcile it with | t Powell, 'Order of Nature,' p. 244. Lis later language: — "It is l-y analonij + Ibid., p. '247. 24 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. and similar arguments, it will be necessary that we should clearly understand what this other teaching is, and what it teaches us ; as well as the relation in which it stands to the generalizations and inductions of physical science. In examining this question, we are not du-ectly concerned with the higher inquiry regarding the degree and character of man's knowledge of God, as a whole and from whatever source derived, in its relation to the absolute essence of its Divine Object, and to the necessary limits of man's faculties. The diffi- culties connected with metaphysical theories of the Absolute and Infinite, which have driven so inany speculative minds into the extravagances of Pantheism, do not affect our present argument. How any relation between the infinite and the finite can be con- ceived as existing ; — how God can be contemplated as acting in time at all, whether in connection with the phenomena of the material world, or with the thoughts and feelings of men : — questions of this kind are equally applicable to eveiy positive conception of Divine Providence which we are capable of forming, and have no direct bearing on the peculiar claims of one class of such conceptions as compared with another. The general answer to such difficulties is to be found in the confession of our ignorance as regards the mystery from which they spring and on which their solution depends ; but this ignorance, arising as it does from the universal limits of human thought, has no special relation to one age or state of man's knowledge, more than to another, and is not removed by any advance in those depart- ments which fall within his legitimate field. Pantheistic speculation has flourished with much the same result, or want of i-esult, in the earliest and in the latest days of philosophy, in ancient India and in modern Germany ; and if any advance is to be expected in relation to the questions with which such speculation deals, it is probably to be looked for, not in the fuller solution of the questions themselves, but in the clearer appre- hension of the reasons why they are insoluble. The question now before us is of another character. It relates to that knowledge of God which, be it more or less philosophic- ally perfect, is that which practically determines the thoughts and feelings and actions of the majority of mankind ; being connected with facts of their daily experience, and with ideas intimately a.-^o -iatpd with those facts. And the form in whicli Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 25 it meets us at present may be expressed as follows: — Is the truest and highest conception of God to which man can practi- cally attain with his present faculties that which is suggested by the observation of Law and Order, as existing in the material world ? or is there a higher conception, derived from a different class of objects, by which the errors of an exclusively physical theology may be discovered and corrected ? 19. Reduced to its simplest terms, the question really stands thus : — Is Matter or Mind the truer image of God ? We are told, indeed, " that the study of physical causes is the sole real clue to the conception of a moral cause ; and that physical order, so far from being opposed to the idea of supreme in- telligence, is the very exponent of it."* We are referred to '•' the grand contemplation of cosmical order and unity " as furnishing " proofs of the ever-present mind and reason in nature;"! but we have yet to learn what is the exact process by which the desired conclusion is elicited from the premises. 20. In opposition to these statements I do not hesitate to repeat, with a very slight modification, the words of Sir William Hamilton, " that the class of phenomena which requires that hind of cause we denominate a Deity is exclusively given in the phe- nomena of mind ; that the phenomena of matter, taken by them- selves (you will observe the qualification, — taken by themselves), do not Avarrant any inference to the existence of a God."| The argument which would deduce the conception of God solely from physical causation bears witness, in the very Avords in which it is announced, to its own imperfection. The very names of law, and order, and cause, had a literal before they had a figurative meaning, and are borrowed, in common with the whole phraseology of causation, by the sciences of invariable succession, from those of moral action and obligation. We dis- cern Law as Law, solely by means of the personal consciousness of duty ; we gain the conception, not by the external observa- tion of what is, but by the internal apprehension of what ought to be. We discern Causation, as Causation, solely in and by the productive energy of the personal will, — the one solitary fact of human experience in which is presented the consciousness of effort, — of power in action, exerting itself to the production Powell, ' Order of Nature,' p. 235. I J ' Lecturea on Metaphysice,' vol, i., Ibid. p. 2JS. I p. -IG. 26 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. of an eftect. We discern Order, as Order, only in so far as we conceive the many as constituting the One, — the varied pheno- mena of sense as combined into a single whole; and the ideas of miity and totality are given only in the personal consciousness, — in the immediate perception of the one indivisible Self, and its several modes of conscious existence.* What do we mean when we speak of the Order of Nature as implying a presichng Mind ? The language is unintelligible, save as interpreted by what the personal consciousness tells us of our own mind and its control over the objects that are under its dominion. In the little world of man's thouglit and its objects, that Order, that System from which the Cosmos derives its name, — that Unity which binds together the diverse elements into a consistent wliole, — is the factor contributed by the mind to its objects, — the product of Intelligence, comprehending, arranging, general- izing, classifying. Without this action of mind upon its object s, the little world of each man's knowledge would be, not a Cosmos, but a Chaos, — not a system of parts in mutual relation to each other, but an endless succession of isolated phantoms, coming and going one by one. It is from this little world of our own consciousness, with its many objects, marshalled in their array under the rule of the one conscious Mind, that we are led to the thought of the great universe beyond, — that we conceive this also as a world of Order, and as being such by virtue of its relation to an ordering and presiding Mind. Design, Purpose, Relation, of parts to a whole, of means to an end, — these con- ceptions, borrowed from the world of mind, can alone give order and unity to the world of matter, by representing it as moulded and governed by a ruling and purposing Mind, the centre and the source of that relation which mind does not take from matter, but confers upon it. Through this alone can Chaos be conceived as Cosmos ; through this alone can the Many point to the One. 21. But this is not all. The very conception of a Design in creation implies the existence of a Free Will in the Designer. * " Lc moi est In siule uniti: qui nous 8oit doiine'e imnjediatriiieut par la na- ture; nousnelarciicon1roiiH:s. We see that it will not do to 44 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. address the head alone, and therefore we will not address it at all, but speak only to the heart. Now it is important to observe that this reaction was so far from springing from any failure of the apologists in their proper work, that it would hardly have been possible if that work had not been thoroughly done. Their proper work was to drive the infidel writers of their own age out of the field ; and never was task more completely accomplished. No literature, of any recent date, has perished more completely than the infidel literature of the early and middle parts of the last century, Ipsa3 periere ruina3. It is only some curious antiquary, loving to parade forgotten lore, who now searches the pages of such writers as Toland or Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and Coward, and Collins — though some of them were really men of parts, and all con- spicuous in their day. Their very names, indeed, would have passed wholly from remembrance, but that some of them were answered in works which " posterity will not easily let die ;" and almost all are found by the young student of theology enume- rated by Leland in his ' View of the Deistical Writers.'* They survive, hke the heroes of the 'Newgate Calendar,' in the annals of that public justice which chastised their faults. 3. The long controversy with the infidels assumed, in the course of it, many forms. But these changes of position, on the part of the defenders of Christianity, were caused by the changing tactics of their assailants, who, when driven from one point of attack, immediately occupied a new one. The necessity for an English apologetic \ literature began to * "The best book," says Burke, "that perly so called, which required pnH- ever has been written against these ciples as certain as those of natural people, is that in which the author has science. They could not find such a collected in a body the whole of the certainty in moral evidence, and there- infidel code, and has brought their j fore had recourse to supernatural liglit. writings into one body, to cut them all The Reformers partook in their mis- oflF together."— /S^jeecA on Relief of Pro- \ take of requiring an assent out of pn)- testant Dissenters, 1773. j portion to the evidence ; but suhsti- t It has been supposed that our early i tuted tlie infallible Scripture as its Reformers, conscious of the weakness j object for the infallible Church. The of external proofs, rested tlie authority ; true distinction between assent and of Scripture wholly iqioii its self-evi- i adhesion was drawn by Hooker iu his dencing light. But tlic doetrini! of the ' great sermon on the 'Faith of the self-evidencing light liail quite a dif- Elect,' and, after him, by Jackson, forcnt origin. The sclioolim-n had : Works, vol. iii., Oxford, 1841. erected tlieology into a seienen, pio- \ Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 be felt even before the Kestoration, and is attested by such works as Jeremy Taylor's ' Moral Demonstration,' and Ham- mond's remarkable little tract on the ' Evidences of Religion.' After it, still more. The press, indeed, was not yet free to the infidels (though Hobbes, by masking his attack on all religion and morality under the form of a defence of despotism, con- trived to evade its restrictions) ; but it is plain, from incidental notices, that sceptical objections were largely circulated in MS. and in conversation. Men read, in secret, authors whose names sound strange to this generation — Averroes, Jordanes Brunus, Cardan, Pomponatius, Vanini ; and their doubts, denied a free expression, festered into grotesque and monstrous forms of atheism, of which Smith, and More, and Cudworth occasionally reveal to us portentous specimens. Learning, too, was beginning to suggest literary difficulties, of which we have indications in Isaac Vossius and Sir John Marsham. It was in this state of things that those two great works. Cud- worth's ' Intellectual System,' and Stillingfleet's ' Origines Sacra?,' * were published. They were certainly very far from being popular and easy defences of religion, but they were not intended as replies to popular attacks. They were the weapons ' Non jaculo, neque enim jaculo vitam ille dedisset, Sed magnum stridens contorta Falarica venit." Those who despise them have probably never read, and cer- tainly never understood, them. 4. The point of attack was now gradually changed. Science was every day bringing fresh aids to religion. Before the arguments of More, and Cudworth, and Green, and Eay, and Boyle, and Clarke, the position of Atheism was generally abandoned as untenable. The divines had proved to their op- ponents that there was such a thing as natural religion; and those opponents now adopted that system of natural religion. * Let any competent person read the chapters on Ancient History in the first book of the ' Origines,' and the account of the laws against the Christians in b. ii. c. 9, and he will see that those who sneer at that great work are them- selves the proper objects of pity or contempt. Stillingfleet, in his old age, and when his temper liad been spoiled by flattery, and his faculties decayed by years, engaged foolishly in a con- troversy with Locke, in which he did not appear to advantage. Yet he singled out most of those points which later metaphysicians luive deemed the weak points in Locke's harness. 46 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. which had been reasoned out for them, as their own ; declared its proofs to have been always so clear and convincing that nothing but the artifices of priestcraft could have obscured them ; and contended that revelation should at once be set aside as a superfluous incumbrance of its perfection.* The war-cry now was, " The sufficiency of natural religion !" The points in Christianity now selected for attack were those peculiar to it as distinguished from natural religion. It was contended that miracles were incredible, or utterly insignificant ; that God could not give a particular revelation ; that He could not have selected a chosen people ; that He could not accept a vicarious atonement ; that the Gospel doctrine of eternal i-ewards and punishments subverted morality by making it mercenary, &c. It was such objections as these that drew forth the masterpieces of Clarke, and Butler,! and Warburton. In theii- hands the cause of religion was safe ; but, in its management by less sagacious writers, one disastrous mistake was committed, the influence of which was long felt to the injury of the Church. In the early stage of the controversy it was the infidels who maintained (with Hobbes and Spinoza) the selfisli system of morals, and the defenders of religion who asserted the nobler doctrine that virtue was an end in itself. So much, indeed, was this the case that hardly anything excited more the general outcry against Locke's ' Essay ' than the supposition that his denial of innate ideas destroyed the proper foundation of ethics. But, in time, Locke was discovered to have been a Chi-istian ; and the Platonic theory of virtue was turned by Shaftesbury (his somewhat ungenerous pupil) into a support of naturalism, and an engine for assailing Christianity. This circumstance * See some admirable remarks upon the latest form of the same prejudice in Dr. Salmon's ' Sermons preached in Trinity College, Dublin,' (Macmillan, 1861), pp. 100-105. t I have seen a curious criticism upon Butler's style, in wliich liis disuse of technical terms is accounted for l)y saying that he was essentially a Stoic, and may be comjiared with " Epictetus, Antoninus, and Plutarch," wlio moral- ized in the language of common life. The Stoics, I had always thought, were rather remarkable for the use of tech- nical terms. " Kx omnibus Philoso- phis," says Cicero, "Stoici plurima uovaverunt. Zeno quoque, eorum prin- ceps. non tarn rerum inventor fuit quam novorum verborum." — De Finibns, lib. iii. c. 2. And most persons who have looked into Antoninus will agree with his editor tliat, so far from taking Iiis diction from common life, " utitur voci- bus plane euis, quas raro apud alios autores invenias." As for Plutarch, one is surprised to hear tliat he was a Stoic, He is commonly supposed to have writ- ten some rather smart treatises against the StoicE. Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 unhappily prejudiced some of the leading divines against even what was soundest in Shaftesbury's writings. They saw an acci- dental gain, in proving the necessity of revelation to assure man that the practice of virtue was, under all circumstances, his dearest interest, and they caught at it too eagerly. Thus " Hamlet and Laertes changed rapiers," and some of the cham- pions of Truth disgraced themselves by using the poisoned weapon which they had wrested from the maintainers of error. But, though some oversights were committed in the conduct of the war, the issue of the conflict was not, on the whole, doubt- ful. And now again the position had to be altered to meet a new assault. Lord Bolingbroke gave the signal by complain- ing that " divines had taken much silly pains to estabhsh mys- tery on metaphysics, revelation on philosophy, and matters of fact on abstract reasoning. Religion," he said truly — " such as the Christian, which appeals to facts — must be proved as all other facts that pass for authentic are proved. If they are thus proved, the religion will prevail without the assistance of so much profound reasoning." * To the proof of religion, then, as a matter of fact, the Chris- tian divines addressed themselves : and as the points to be con- sidered in this view were the credibihty of the prime witnesses to the miraculous facts of Christianity, and the trustworthiness of the tradition by which their testimony has been delivered down to us, it was these which were the chief subjects of the apologetic literature which may be said to terminate in the works of Lardner t and Paley. But though the defenders of Christianity had been expressly challenged to this field of argument, it was one into which their antagonists showed little serious disposition to follow them. Cer- tainly Lord Bolingbroke's own performances, in his ' Remarks on the Canon of Scripture,' and the historical speculations which are scattered in his ' Fragments,' were not very formidable to the faith. Gradually the attack upon revealed rehgion fell into * See Warburton's ' Doctrine of Grace.' t " I should be ungrateful," says Mr. Westeott, " not to bear witness to the accuracy and fulness of Lardner's ' Cre- dibility ;' for, liowever imperfc-ct it may be in tlie view which it ^ives of the earliest period of Christian literature, it is, unless I am mistaken, more com- plete and trustworthy than any work which has been written since on the same subject." — History of the Canon, p. 9. 48 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II, the hands of persons too ignorant and too manifestly unscru- pulous to produce much effect upon the educated part of the public. Such writers as Burgh and Paine might do mischief among the lower classes ; but they can hardly fill a place in any literary history. Two really rllustrious names do indeed close the catalogue of the infidels of the last century — Hume and Gibbon.* But neither appeared as an ofen assailant of Christianity, and neither owes his chief fame to those parts of his writings in which Christianity was assailed. After them infideKty in England appeared to have sheathed its sword, furled its banner, and retired fi'om the field. 5. But what meanwhile was the internal condition of the Church ? It was (to recur to a former comparison) too much like an estate after the decision of a long suit in Chancery to settle a litigated title. The controversy with the infidels had not been the only one of that busy century. It was an age of a thousand controversies. There was the great Nonjuring Controversy, in which political rancour was still more embittered by the gall of the odium theologicum. There was the great Bangorian Controversy, growing out of the former, and draining into it all the poisonous dregs of its predecessor. There was the great Convocation Controversy, which changed country parsons into clerical Hampdens, and ranged High Church divines in strange antagonism against the royal supremacy. There was the great Trinitarian Controversy, begun by Clarke and Waterland, and continued by a host of inferior writers, tiU the public grew weary of the very thought of Patristic litera- ture.! These and countless minor ones distracted the attention of churchmen from observing the spiritual destitution that was spreading widely around them amidst all this polemical activity. * III reference to the supposed diffi- culties and discouragements under whicli infidels labour, it is worth oh- servinR that both Hume and Gibbon held lucrative situations under Govern- ment. At an earlier period it was Walpole's policy to patronize some of the most rabid -xnd indeoent assailants of religion ; and, until the infidels had been thoroughly refuted by the wea- pons both of wit and argument, the most open avowal of their opinions was rather a recommendation to what was called " polite society." A strong re- action in the tone of popular literature began with Steele and Addison. t Warburton made an effort, in the preface to his ' Julian,' to restore the Fathers to some credit, and to put their character in a favourable light : and, in return, he has been charged with " disdain, and ignorance of Catholic theology." Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY. 49 The brilliant services oi the tongue and pen in defending Christianity, or orthodoxy, or even faction, eclipsed the less showy, but not less real, and far more generally requisite, usefulness of the pastoral care, in its ordinary forms of teach- ing and admonition. Prelates forsook their dioceses for the nobler work of writing controversy, or asserting the political interests of their order. Discipline became relaxed ; pai'ishes were neglected ; and at the end of the century the Church found itself surrounded with a swarming population, and no adequate machinery provided for dealing with this mass of ignorance. It is not true, I think, that the bulk of the lower orders ha( I been leavened with infidelity.* Their heathenism was negative, not positive ; they had been suffered to grow up in gross igno- rance of religion : and it was during the prevalence of such evils that the evangelical reaction — commencing with the Methodist movement — began. 6. But it would be an error, I apprehend, to suppose that it was Whitfield and the Wesleys who originated a Reformation. Long before them it appears manifest that a healthy reaction had set in. As the old panic dread of fanaticism abated on the one hand, and the necessities of continual controversy became less on the other, preachers insisted more and more on the peculiarities of the Christian faith as the springs and motives of Gospel obe- dience. Energetic efforts were made to build new churches and establish schools throughout the country : and (what is always a hopeful sign) some zeal began to be felt for foreign missions, and some sense of responsibility for the religious state of om- colonies. A change for the better was going on. The case of Whitfield and the W^esleys was that of other energetic men Avhose names figure in history as the originators of mighty changes. They fling themselves into a great movement before it has become conspicuous to the vulgar eye : they put them- selves at its head ; they carry it on to extravagance, and thus accelerate and extend an impulse which they partially misdirect, and may ultimately spoil for ever. * Kven that of the upper was greatly overrated : "The truth of the case," says Hurd, a cool observer, "is no more tlian this. A few fsushionable men make a noise in the world ; and tliis clamour being echoed on all sides from the slial- low circles of their a