CHAP. I.] THE CRITERION OF MIRACLES LIB BRART OF THE further instructed to bathe in a particular pool, the constancy of nature certifies us that there is no medicinal property residing in the clay, the spittle, or the act of bathing, to which an instantaneously healing efficacy can be ascribed: an interference with a known law of nature has been exhibited, an obvious miracle has been wrought. Nor is the miracle less conspicuous when the sick are healed, lepers cleansed, storms hushed, or the dead raised, by a touch, or by a word. If the facts be authenticated, their nature can admit of no question. But not so with many a pretended miracle. Admit, for a moment, that the courtiers of Gustasp were enabled to handle fire unscathed, as the Parsee legends assert;-any one disposed to make the experiment, will find that the flame of naptha, which abounds in Persia, may be freely suffered to play upon the human body: and many a similar trick with fire may be resolved into some similar cause. Admit that Mahomet literally pointed out a riven moon: he may have taken advantage of some natural optical phenomenon, whose counterpart it were not difficult to find in the records of science, and persuaded his followers that the change had take place at his bidding. Admit that the enemy fled when he threw dust in the air, to rescue his overmatched warriors, the artifice was one of a kind that has been resorted to, in a multitude of instances, with an equally signal success. The fact may be admitted, but there is no need to have recourse to a miraculous interposition to account for the result; ordinary natural causes will fully explain every incident by which the transaction is accompanied. * I have endeavoured to express myself in such a way as to avoid implying that every transaction which can possibly be resolved into a mere developement of natural causes, whether rare, or of a more ordinary kind, ought, on this ground alone, to be peremptorily excluded from our list of authentic miracles. We may indeed, as I have said, rea *The student will find much valuable assistance, in a popular form, bearing on this and the preceding paragraphs, in Sir David Brewster's very interesting doudecimo on NATURAL MAGIC. An acquaintance with this would enable him to explain many extraordinary natural phenomena, and unravel many of the artifices which have been employed, sometimes harmlessly to amuse, and sometimes criminally to deceive. sonably expect that if a superior power interfere with the accustomed sequences of nature, in order to confirm a communication he is making to man, he will do so in some way that cannot be mistaken: but it might be too much to limit his interference to such miracles only, as no combination of existing natural causes can explain. We require some such; and these may serve to authenticate the rest. But in comparing reputed miracles which may be resolved into natural results, with the miracles of Christianity, the reasoning we employ is substantially the same with that made use of in the case of doubtful evidence. Admitting, for the purposes of our present argument, that the facts of the case, in either instance, are equally well authenticated, we have, on the one hand, a series of transactions which may or may not be miraculous; and on the other a like series which it is absolutely impossible to account for on any other supposition. The interference of any power superior to nature is in the former case doubtful; in the latter the proof of it is complete. Now it is clear that if I have a number of mathematical instruments of a similar kind, and to all outward appearance alike, and if the perfect correctness of one has been, by repeated trials, satisfactorily ascertained, while the accuracy of the rest is still a matter for investigation; I shall not test the first by the others; but these latter by the first. If then I have a religious system, authenticated by unequivocal miracles, I shall be only acting in a religious question on the same principle which ought to guide me in every other, if I institute a comparison between this and all other religious systems that come before me, on all points on which the nature of the case admits of a comparison, and judge of these latter systems, by their agreement or disagreement with the former. If the authenticating power of the system whose miracles are unequivocal, declare that there exists no other power that can exhibit an equal measure of control over created beings, I fairly conclude that the doubtful appearances alleged to emanate from a conflicting power, are not exceptions to, but unwonted examples of natural laws, it may be, not yet fully understood. I make my choice between the systems by the unequivocal reality of their reputed miracles; and having thus acquired a preponderance of evidence in favour of one, I am at liberty to use its authority in dealing with the rest. So many, then, of the re puted miracles scattered over the records of the past, as are of a doubtful nature, may be thus disposed of. Christianity has a host of real unquestionable miracles, and designates all others, in general terms, as "lying wonders," whose object is only to deceive. (Matt. xxiv. 24; 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10; Rev. xiii. 13, 14; xix. 20.) No other system, therefore, can compete with her by any appearances whose true nature is involved in uncertainty;-to attain an equal claim upon our regard a series of equally unquestionably miracles must be proved. (3) It is difficult to avoid the use of expressions anticipating considerations which have to be unfolded in a future paragraph, and I have already, in more than one instance, employed not only familiar words but more complex ideas, that have to be again taken up for further explanation as we proceed. I have many times spoken of miracles as an attestation of a divine revelation. I reserve for the ensuing section the fuller exposition of the process by which the mind associates the miracle with the truth of the doctrine; but the present is a convenient place to direct attention to the connection between the miracle and the doctrine itself, in virtue of its being appealed to as an attestation of truth. The reader will distinguish the act of appeal, from the admission of its conclusiveness. It is the former we are to consider now; the latter shall be disposed of by and bye. The use of miracles here referred to is a distinguishing feature, almost peculiar to the Christian story. I do not mean that the Christian miracles alone have subsequently been appealed to in attestation of doctrines that have become, in after ages, associated with the miracles; but they will be found, on investigation, to stand almost alone in this;that they are, in the narrative itself, associated with certain doctrines, in support of which they are openly alleged to have been exhibited, for the express purpose of producing conviction on the minds of men; whereas a large proportion of those sometimes put forward as of rival authority, or to counterbalance a weight which even the infidel feels, while he wishes to be thought unconscious of its pressure, are related as either having no definite object at all, or no such object in view. Most of the narratives we possess of supernatural occurrences appear, on the face of them, as if designed to excite astonishment rather than any other sentiment; an intention we can nowhere detect in the writers of the New Testament. The total absence of any thing like writing for effect is, indeed,, a marked characteristic of their style; and the marvel is how they have managed to deliver accounts so full of uncommon incidents, in the singularly unobtrusive manner that runs through all their compositions. But apart from the manner of telling, let us come to the matter told. Roman story recounts the succour brought to their fainting troops, in a hard fought struggle with the Latins, by Castor and Pollux, who are said to have been seen mounted on milk white steeds, and mingling in the thickest of the fray. I say nothing here of the fine scope for fiction presented by the maddening excitement of a lengthened and dubious combat; of the little likelihood that men occupied each in mortal conflict with a brave and stubborn enemy, could have an eye to spare for any thing more distant than their own immediate foe; or of the facility with which, at such a moment, imagination could even persuade the organs of vision that such appearances were actually presented to the eye. But, I ask, what purpose, beyond the immediate one of temporary relief, was accomplished by the miracle, admitting it true? These deities had already a place in the Roman fasti; their interposition might give an additional cause for gratitude; but nothing was added to the knowledge their votaries possessed already. No new truth, was proclaimed; at best there was but a confirmation of a former belief in their existence, a belief, which true or false, is not represented to have been wavering, or to have needed renewed support. As little of apparent design, beyond that of temporary protection, is there in the account of Chrishna's famous exploit of sustaining mount Goverdhen, as an umbrella, over the shepherds and shepherdesses, the companions of his boyhood, to shelter them from the storm with which the angry Indra was seeking to overwhelm them. There are, it is true, a few miracles, like those ascribed to Zoroaster, which are represented as having been wrought in support of some associated teaching, and there are some which we might allow to have been inferentially used for a similar end; but there are hundreds of others, heathen, Mahometan, and Romish, which must be classed among the mere wonders of history or romance. Perhaps they exalt some favoured deity or venerated saint, or depress his rival; perhaps they bring deliverance to a persecuted votary, or bestow success upon a steady devotee; but beyond this they do not go; and often not so far; and it is miracles of this class we are now contrasting with those of Christianity. There is a most important difference between the circumstances under which they are said to have been wrought, and those attending the Christian miracles; and in consequence of this difference I affirm that they are open to very serious drawbacks in our estimation of their intrinsic worth. They are open to two serious objections in point of evidence; and these properly come in here, rather than under our first head, because the objections arise not so much from any imperfection in the transmission of the evidence, as from considerations anterior to this, and found in the very subject of which the testimony treats. One large class of them, I allude to the prodigies related of the gods themselves, are in their own nature incapable of being made the subject of human testimony at all. Who, we may ask, beheld the churning of the ocean, or the wars of the gods, or hundreds of the other extravagancies that fill the legendary mythology of the Hindoos? Who was privy to the famous night journey of Mahomet to heaven; or witnessed the alleged delivery of the successive chapters of the Koran by the angel Gabriel? Who beheld the many visions monks and hermits are said to have been favoured with? I do not insist here on the many incongruities which an impartial examination could not fail to detect in the greater part of these wild stories, so prodigal in stupendous marvels, piled in careless profusion, apparently in mockery of consistency and reason: and I have now less room left me than I had ancitipated, when at an earlier stage of my progress I declined to enter on the question as to whether or no this, shall I say, wasteful expenditure of wonders be worthy the character of a high and holy God. These inviting topics might fill many a page; but I pass them by, and simply repeat my query: Who has come forward as a witness of these things? Will it be said that the authors of the puránas were spectators of what they relate? Will the seer proclaim himself a sufficient witness of the visionary CC |