Supernatural Religion (Vol. 1-3). Walter Richard Cassels

have seen how incompetent those who lived at the time when the Gospel miracles are supposed to have taken place were to furnish reliable testimony regarding such phenomena; and the gross mistake committed in regard to the largest class of these miracles, connected with demoniacal possession, seems altogether to destroy the value of the evidence for the rest, and to connect the whole, as might have been expected, with the general superstition and ignorance of the period. It may be well to inquire further, whether there is any valid reason for excepting any of the miracles of Scripture from the fate of the rest, and whether, in fact, there was any special "Age of Miracles" at all, round which a privileged line can be drawn on any reasonable ground.

      We have already pointed out that the kind of evidence which is supposed to attest the Divine revelation of Christianity, so far from being invented for the purpose, was so hackneyed, so to speak, as scarcely to attract the notice of the nation to which the revelation was, in the first instance, addressed. Not only did the Old Testament contain accounts of miracles of every one of the types related in the New, but most of them were believed to be commonly performed both before and after the commencement of the Christian era. That demons were successfully exorcised, and diseases cured, by means of spells and incantations, was never doubted by the Jewish nation. Satanic miracles, moreover, are not only recognized throughout the Old and New Testaments, but formed a leading feature of the Patristic creed. The early Christians were not more ready than the heathen to ascribe every inexplicable occurrence to supernatural agency, and the only difference between them was as to the nature of that agency. The Jews and their heathen neighbours were too accustomed to supposed preternatural occurrences to feel much surprise or incredulity at the account of Christian miracles; and it is characteristic of the universal superstition of the period that the Fathers did not dream of denying the reality of Pagan miracles, but merely attributed them to demons, whilst they asserted the Divine origin of their own. The reality of the powers of sorcery was never questioned. Every marvel and every narrative of supernatural interference with human affairs seemed matter of course to the superstitious credulity of the age. However much miracles are exceptions to the order of nature, they have always been the rule in the history of ignorance. In fact, the excess of belief in them throughout many centuries of darkness is fatal to their claims to credence now. The Christian miracles are rendered almost as suspicious from their place in a long sequence of similar occurrences, as they are by being exceptions to the sequence of natural phenomena. It would indeed be extraordinary if whole cycles of miracles occurring before and since those of the Gospels, and in connection with every religion, could be repudiated as fables, and those alone maintained as genuine.

      No attempt is made to deny the fact that miracles are common to all times and to all religious creeds. Dr. Newman states amongst the conclusions of his essay on the miracles of early ecclesiastical history: "That there was no Age of Miracles, after which miracles ceased; that there have been at all times true miracles and false miracles, true accounts and false accounts; that no authoritative guide is supplied to us for drawing the line between the two."(1) Dr. Mozley also admits that morbid love of the marvellous in the human race "has produced a constant stream of miraculous pretension in the world, which accompanies man wherever he is found, and is a part of his mental and physical history."(2) Ignorance and its invariable attendant, superstition, have done more than mere love of the marvellous to produce and perpetuate belief in miracles, and there cannot be any doubt that the removal of ignorance always leads to the cessation of miracles.(3) The Bampton lecturer proceeds: 'Heathenism had its running stream of supernatural pretensions in the shape of prophecy, exorcism, and the miraculous cures of diseases, which the temples of Esculapius recorded with pompous display."(4) So far from the Gospel miracles being original, and a presentation, for the first time, of phenomena until then unknown and unlikely to suggest themselves to the mind, "Jewish supernaturalism was indeed going on side by side with our Lord's miracles."(1) Dr. Mozley, however, rebuts the inference which has been drawn from this: "That His miracles could not, in the very nature of the case, be evidences of His distinctive teaching and mission, inasmuch as miracles were common to Himself and His opponents," by the assertion that a very marked distinction exists between the Gospel miracles and all others.(2) He perfectly recognizes the consequence if such a distinction cannot be clearly demonstrated. "The criticism, therefore, which evidential miracles, or miracles which serve as evidence of a revelation, must come up to, if they are to accomplish the object for which they are designed, involves at the outset this condition—that the evidence of such miracles must be distinguishable from the evidences of this permanent stream of miraculous pretension in the world; that such miracles must be separated by an interval not only from the facts of the order of nature, but also from the common running miraculous, which is the simple offshoot of human nature. Can evidential miracles be inserted in this promiscuous mass, so as not to be confounded with it, but to assert their own truth and distinctive source? If they cannot there is an end to the proof of a revelation by miracles: if they can, it remains to see whether the Christian miracles are thus distinguishable, and whether their nature, their object, and their evidence vindicate their claim to this distinctive truth and Divine source."(3)

      Now, regarding this distinction between Gospel and other miracles, it must be observed that the religious feeling which influenced the composition of the Scripture narratives of miracles naturally led to the exclusion of all that was puerile or ignoble in the traditions preserved regarding the Great Master. The elevated character of Jesus afforded no basis for what was petty, and the devotion with which he was regarded when the Gospels were written insured the noblest treatment of his history within certain limits. We must, therefore, consider the bare facts composing the miracles rather than the narrative of the manner in which they are said to have been produced, in order rightly to judge of the comparative features of different miracles. If we take the case of a person raised from the dead, literary skill may invest the account with more or less of dramatic interest and dignity, but whether the main fact be surrounded with pathetic and picturesque details,.as in the account of the raising of Lazarus in the fourth Gospel, or the person be simply restored to life without them, it is the fact of the resurrection which constitutes the miracle, and it is in the facts alone that we must seek distinction, disregarding and distrusting the accessories. In the one case the effect may be much more impressive, but in the other the bare raising of the dead is not a whit less miraculous. "We have been accustomed to read the Gospel narratives of miracles with so much special veneration, that it is now difficult to recognize how much of the distinction of these miracles is due to the composition, and to their place in the history of Jesus. No other miracles, or account of miracles, ever had such collateral advantages. As works attributed to our sublimest Teacher, described with simple eloquence and, especially in the case of those in the fourth Gospel, with artistic perfection, and read generally with reverential wonder untempered by a thought of criticism, these miracles have seemed to be surrounded by a mystic halo certainly not emanating from themselves. It must not be forgotten, therefore, that the miracle lies in the bare act, and not in its dramatic arrangement. The restoration of life to a dead man is the very same miracle whether it be effected by the relics of a saint or by the word of an apostle. A miracle is not antecedently more credible because of the outstretched arm and word of command, than it is in the silence of the shrine. Being supernatural, the real agency is not seen in either case, although the human mind is more satisfied by the presentation of an apparent cause in the one case, which seems to be absent in the other. In preferring the former type, we are not only influenced by a more dramatic narrative, but we select for belief the miracle from which we can unconsciously eliminate more of the miraculous elements, by tracing it to a visible natural cause which cannot be seen in the latter. The antecedent incredibility of miracles, however, is not affected by literary skill, and is independent of scenic effect.

      The Archbishop of Dublin says: "Few points present greater difficulties than the attempt to fix accurately the moment when these miraculous powers were withdrawn from the Church;" and he argues that they were withdrawn when it entered into what he calls its permanent state, and no longer required "these props and strengthenings of the infant plant."(1) That their retrocession was gradual, he considers natural, and he imagines the fulness of Divine power as gradually waning as it was subdivided, first among the Apostles, and then amongst the ever-multiplying members of the Church, until by sub-division it became virtually extinct, leaving as a substitute "the standing wonder of a Church."(1) This, of course, is not argument, but merely the Archbishop's