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A Word About Miracles
by
[Footntoe 3:
Hecker’s Epidemics of the Middle Ages, pp. 87-152.]
The incapacity to appreciate this frame of mind renders the current arguments in behalf of miracles utterly worthless. From the fact that Celsus and others never denied the reality of the Christian miracles, it is commonly inferred that those miracles must have actually happened. The same argument would, however, equally apply to the miracles of Apollonius and Simon Magus, for the Christians never denied the reality of these. What these facts really prove is that the state of human intelligence was as I have just described it: and the inference to be drawn from them is that no miraculous account emanating from an author of such a period is worthy of serious attention. When Mr. Rogers supposes that if the miracles had not really happened they would have been challenged, he is assuming that a state of mind existed in which it was possible for miracles to be challenged; and thus commits an anachronism as monstrous as if he had attributed the knowledge of some modern invention, such as steamboats, to those early ages.
Mr. Rogers seems to complain of M. Renan for “quietly assuming” that miracles are invariably to be rejected. Certainly a historian of the present day who should not make such an assumption would betray his lack of the proper qualifications for his profession. It is not considered necessary for every writer to begin his work by setting out to prove the first principles of historical criticism. They are taken for granted. And, as M. Renan justly says, a miracle is one of those things which must be disbelieved until it is proved. The onus probandi lies on the assertor of a fact which conflicts with universal experience. Nevertheless, the great number of intelligent persons who, even now, from dogmatic reasons, accept the New Testament miracles, forbids that they should be passed over in silence like similar phenomena elsewhere narrated. But, in the present state of historical science, the arguing against miracles is, as Colet remarked of his friend Erasmus’s warfare against the Thomists and Scotists of Cambridge, “a contest more necessary than glorious or difficult.” To be satisfactorily established, a miracle needs at least to be recorded by an eyewitness; and the mental attainments of the witness need to be thoroughly known besides. Unless he has a clear conception of the difference between the natural and the unnatural order of events, his testimony, however unimpeachable on the score of honesty, is still worthless. To say that this condition was fulfilled by those who described the New Testament miracles, would be absurd. And in the face of what German criticism has done for the early Christian documents, it would be an excess of temerity to assert that any one of the supernatural accounts contained in them rests on contemporary authority. Of all history, the miraculous part should be attested by the strongest testimony, whereas it is invariably attested by the weakest. And the paucity of miracles wherever we have contemporary records, as in the case of primitive Islamism, is a most significant fact.
In attempting to defend his principle of never accepting a miracle, M. Renan has indeed got into a sorry plight, and Mr. Rogers, in controverting him, has not greatly helped the matter. By stirring M. Renan’s bemuddled pool, Mr. Rogers has only bemuddled it the more. Neither of these excellent writers seems to suspect that transmutation of species, the geologic development of the earth, and other like phenomena do not present features conflicting with ordinary experience. Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Darwin would be greatly astonished to be told that their theories of inorganic and organic evolution involved any agencies not known to exist in the present course of nature. The great achievement of these writers has been to show that all past changes of the earth and its inhabitants are to be explained as resulting from the continuous action of causes like those now in operation, and that throughout there has been nothing even faintly resembling a miracle. M. Renan may feel perfectly safe in extending his principle back to the beginning of things; and Mr. Rogers’s argument, even if valid against M. Renan, does not help his own case in the least.
On some points, indeed, M. Renan has laid himself open to severe criticism, and on other points he has furnished good handles for his orthodox opponents. His views in regard to the authorship of the Fourth Gospel and the Acts are not likely to be endorsed by many scholars; and his revival of the rationalistic absurdities of Paulus merits in most instances all that Mr. Rogers has said about it. As was said at the outset, orthodox criticisms upon heterodox books are always welcome. They do excellent service. And with the feeling which impels their authors to defend their favourite dogmas with every available weapon of controversy I for one can heartily sympathize. Their zeal in upholding what they consider the truth is greatly to be respected and admired. But so much cannot always be said for the mode of argumentation they adopt, which too often justifies M. Renan’s description, when he says, “Raisonnements triomphants sur des choses que l’adversaire n’a pas dites, cris de victoire sur des erreurs qu’il n’a pas commises, rien ne parait deloyal a celui qui croft tenir en main les interets de la verite absolue.”
August, 1866.