Once more I am compelled to digress: and, this time, it is in order to
meet what you must let me call a preconception of yours. You say that it
appears to you “impossible that Christ, if really divine, should have
been permitted by God to be worshipped as a worker of miracles for
eighteen centuries, although in reality he had no power to work them.”
Is this much more than a repetition of your former objection that my
views amount to “a new religion,” and that illusion, although it may
abound in the history of the thoughts of mankind, can never have been
permitted to connect itself with a really divine revelation? I have
already in part answered these prejudices—for they are nothing more—by
shewing that illusion permeates what is called “natural religion,” and
by subsequently shewing that the inspired books of the Old Testament
exhibit illusions in every page; not only the illusions of the chosen
people, but illusions also on the part of the authors of the several
books, who misinterpreted tradition so as to convert a non-miraculous
into a miraculous history. But now let us deal more particularly with
Christian illusions. Here I will try to show you, first, how natural and
(humanly speaking) how inevitable it was that illusions should gather
round the earliest Christian traditions, and how easily there might have
sprung up miraculous accounts in connection with them. Then, and not
till then, having done my best to dispel your natural prejudice, I will
take in detail the six or seven principal miracles attributed to Christ
by all the three Synoptic Evangelists, and will endeavour to show you
that these accounts did actually spring up in a natural and inevitable
way, after the manner of illusions, without any attempt to deceive on
the part of the compilers of the Gospels. It will appear, I think, that
the life and doctrine of Christ are independent of these miracles and
can easily be separated from them.
For the present then I am to speak of the naturalness or inevitability
of illusions gathering about Christ’s acts and words in the minds of His
disciples. Does any student of the Fourth Gospel need to be convinced of
this? Perhaps the author of that work discerned the illusions of the
early Church even too clearly, so that he slightly overshot the mark in
the frequency of the false inferences and misunderstandings with which
he delights to encompass the words and deeds of Jesus. Perhaps the
composer of “the Spiritual Gospel” has been led even too far by his
profound and true perception that this Incarnate Word—this Being from
another sphere who was and is in the bosom of the Father—could not move
on the earth, among earthly creatures, without being perpetually
misunderstood by them. But is there not manifest truth in his conception
of Jesus as of One having different thoughts from those of common men,
different ways of regarding all things small or great, a spiritual
dialect of His own, not at once to be comprehended by ordinary beings?
Certain it is that, in the Fourth Gospel, Christ’s discourses are one
string of metaphors which are literally and falsely interpreted by those
to whom they are addressed. “Flesh,” “blood,” “water,” “sleep,” “birth,”
“death,” “life,” “temple,” “bread,” “meat,” “night,” “way,”—these and I
know not how many more simple words present themselves, as we rapidly
turn over the pages of that Gospel, always metaphorically used, and
always misunderstood. Nor can it be said that they were misunderstood by
enemies and unbelievers alone; His disciples constantly misunderstood
them. The life of Christ in the Fourth Gospel is one continuous
misunderstanding. I will not say that this represents the exact fact;
but I doubt not that the inspired insight of the author, be he who he
may, took in the full meaning of all the hints that are given by the
Synoptists as to the misunderstanding of the disciples about their
Master, and led him to the deliberate conclusion that the life of Christ
in the flesh was one perpetual source of illusions to the
Twelve—illusions through which, by the guidance of the Spirit, they were
to be led to the truth: “What I do ye know not now, but ye shall know
hereafter.” I believe he went even further and perceived that Christ’s
life was in danger of becoming a total delusion to the earliest
Christians through their tendency to the materialistic and the
miraculous, and that the best means of preserving the Church from such a
danger was to accustom the faithful to attach value to the words and
deeds of Christ only so far as they could interpret them spiritually,
trusting to the Spirit for continual guidance into new truth.
This then is my first proposition, that Christ was sure to be
misunderstood by those around Him, owing to His manner of using the
language of metaphor. You must know very well that this conjecture is
confirmed by fact. Sometimes the Synoptists note the fact, as when He
spoke of “leaven” and the Twelve misunderstood Him literally; and
several other instances are on record. But it is of course possible that
on many other occasions the misunderstanding may have existed, but may
not have been noted by the Evangelists. Take one instance. In the
discourse of Jesus to the Seventy Disciples (Luke x. 19) Jesus makes the
following statement: “I have given you authority to tread upon _serpents
and scorpions_ and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in
any wise hurt (ἀδικήσει) you.” How are we to understand this “treading
upon _serpents and scorpions_”? Literally or metaphorically? Surely the
text itself makes it evident that Jesus used the words metaphorically to
refer to “the power of the Enemy,” _i.e._ “the Serpent,” or Satan,
probably with a special reference to the casting out of devils. Moreover
the passage is introduced by a statement that “the Seventy returned
_with joy_, saying, Lord, _even the devils are subject unto us in thy
name_. And he said, I beheld _Satan_ fall as lightning from Heaven.
Behold I have given you authority to tread _upon serpents_.... _Howbeit_
in this _rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you_; but rejoice
that your names are written in Heaven.” As for the other part of the
promise, “nothing shall hurt you,” it surely does not seem to you that
these words must imply literal “hurt”? If it does, let me direct your
attention to a much more striking instance of Christ’s extraordinary use
of metaphor in a passage where the Disciples are told, almost in a
breath, that _not a hair of their heads shall perish_ and yet that some
of them shall be “_put to death_” (Luke xxi. 16-18). I think then that
you will agree with me that the “authority to tread upon _serpents_”
mentioned in St. Luke contained not a literal, but a spiritual promise,
to tread upon the power of “the Serpent.” Nevertheless, that this
promise about “serpents” was very early misinterpreted literally can be
shewn, not indeed from a genuine passage of the Gospels, but from a very
early interpolation in St. Mark’s Gospel, xvi. 17, 18: “These signs
shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils;
they shall speak with new tongues; they _shall take up serpents_, and if
they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall
lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.”
Here then we have a clear instance of misunderstanding (not noted by the
Evangelists) arising in very early if not in the very earliest times
from the metaphorical language of Jesus. One more instance of probable
misunderstanding must suffice for the present. You know how often in the
Epistles of St. Paul the word “dead” is used to indicate spiritually
“dead” _i.e._ “dead in sin.” A similar use is attributed to Christ in
the Fourth Gospel: “He that believeth in me, though he were _dead_, yet
shall he live” (John xi. 25); but here the impending resurrection of
Lazarus gives the reader the impression that it is literally used.
However it is almost certainly metaphorical in John v. 24, 25, 28, “He
that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life,
and cometh not unto judgment, but _is passed from death into life_.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour cometh and now is, when the
_dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall
live_.... Marvel not at this, for the hour cometh in which all that are
in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth” &c. Here
apparently the meaning is that the hour has already come (“now is”) when
the spiritually dead shall hear the voice, and the hour is on the point
of coming when the literally dead (“all that are in the tombs”) shall
hear it. In any case, the metaphorical meaning is indisputable in the
striking saying of Jesus (Luke ix. 60) “Let the _dead_ bury their dead.”
Now if Jesus was in the habit of describing those who were lost in sin
as being “dead,” and of bidding His disciples “raise the dead”—meaning
that they were to restore sinners to spiritual life—we can easily see
how such language might be misunderstood. It is probable that Jesus
Himself had actually restored life to at least one person given over for
dead, the daughter of Jairus, though by natural means. Of such
revivification you may find an instance described in _Onesimus_ (pp.
77-81) which is taken almost verbatim from the account of his own
revivification given by the late Archbishop of Bordeaux to the late Dean
Stanley, and sent me by the Dean as being taken down from the
Archbishop’s lips. If that was so, how natural for some of the Disciples
to attach a literal meaning to the precept, “raise the dead”! They would
argue thus, “Our Master healed diseases at a word, so can we; He once
raised a child from the dead and bade us also raise the dead; some of
the Disciples therefore ought to be able to do this.” How natural, under
the circumstances, such a confusion of the material and the spiritual!
Yet I have little doubt that the diseases which were cured by the Twelve
were almost always “possession,” or paralysis, or nervous diseases.
Compare the different accounts given by the Synoptists of the
instructions of Jesus to the Twelve when He sent them forth on their
first mission:
[Transcriber’s Note: The following three quotations were originally
printed side-by-side.]
Mark vi. 7.
And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by
two and two; and he gave them authority over the unclean spirits.
Matthew x. 1.
And he called unto him his twelve disciples and gave them authority
over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of
disease and all manner of sickness.
Luke ix. 1.
And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority
over all devils and to cure diseases.
Here you find that the first Gospel (St. Mark’s) makes mention only of
the “authority over unclean spirits,” and this probably represents the
fact. The third account is an amplification; and the second altogether
exaggerates. Hence, when we read, in the context of the second version
of these instructions, “Heal the sick, _raise the dead_, cleanse the
lepers, cast out devils; freely ye received freely give” (Matthew x. 8),
we cannot fail to see several arguments against the probability of the
italicized words being literally intended by Jesus. First, the language
of Christ habitually dealt in metaphor, and in metaphor habitually
misunderstood by His disciples; secondly, there is no instance in which
a single one of the Twelve carried out this precept during the life of
their Master, and only one in which one of the Twelve (Peter) is said to
have raised a woman from the dead (for St. Paul’s incident with Eutychus
can hardly be called a case in point); thirdly the precept is recorded
by only one Evangelist;[21] fourthly that same Evangelist records only
one case in which our Lord Himself raised any one from the dead, _i.e._
the revivified daughter of Jairus—and it seems absurd to represent
Christ as commanding all the Apostles to do that which most of them
probably never did, and He Himself (according to the First Gospel) only
did once.
We pass now to another cause that may have originated miraculous
narratives in the Gospels. Try to extricate yourself from our Western,
cold-blooded, analytical, and critical way of looking at things. Sit
down in the reign of Vespasian or Domitian in the midst of a
congregation of Jewish and Græco-Oriental brethren, assembled for a
sacred service, “singing a hymn” (as Pliny says, describing them a few
years afterwards) “to Christ as to a God.” What effect on the traditions
of Christ’s life and works would be produced by these “hymns and
spiritual songs” which St. Paul’s testimony (as well as Pliny’s) shows
to have been a common part of the earliest Christian ritual? Would they
not inevitably tend, by poetic hyperbole and metaphor, to build up fresh
traditions which, when literally interpreted, would—like the songs and
psalms of the Chosen People—give rise to miraculous narratives? Part of
the service indeed would not consist of hymns but of the reading of the
“Scriptures” _i.e._ the Old Testament; but this also would tend in the
same direction. For there you would hear, read out to the congregation,
marvellous prophecies how, in the day of the Lord the Redeemer, the eyes
of the blind should be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, and
the lame should leap as a hart; and the sole thought possessing you and
every man in the congregation would be, “How far did all these things
find fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ?” You would hear from the
“Scriptures” narratives of marvellous miracles, how Moses gave water
from the rock to Israel in the wilderness and fed them with food from
Heaven, how Elijah raised the widow’s child from death, and how Jonah
spent three days in the belly of the fish; and the sole thought
possessing you would be, “How far were like wonders wrought by Christ?”
Then would arise the hymn describing, in imagery borrowed from the Old
Testament, how Christ _had_ done all these things, and more besides, for
the spiritual Israel; how He had spread a table for His people in the
wilderness, and given to thousands to partake of His body and His blood;
how Moses had merely given water to the people, but Jesus had changed
the water of the Jews (_i.e._ the Law) into the wine which flowed from
His side; how Jesus had fulfilled the predictions of the prophets by
curing the halt, the maimed, the blind, the leper, the deaf; how He had
even raised the dead and bidden His disciples to raise the dead; how He,
like Jonah, had spent three days in the darkness of the grave. If you
look at the earliest Christian paintings you will find that they
represent Christ as the Fish (the emblem of food); others depict the
Mosaic miracles of the manna and the water from the rock. These shew
what a hold the notion of the miraculous food had taken on the mind of
the earliest believers. How easy it would be to amplify a metaphor
derived from the Eucharistic feeding on the Bread of Life and perhaps on
the “honey-sweet fish” (as Christ is actually called in a poem written
about the middle of the second century) into a miraculous account of the
feeding of many thousands upon material bread and material fish! It is
greatly to be regretted that we have not one left out of the many hymns
and psalms of which St. Paul and Pliny make mention. The only vestige of
one that I know is found in a verse of St. Paul’s Epistle to the
Ephesians. It is at all events printed by Westcott and Hort as poetry,
and it is thought by many commentators to be an extract from some
well-known hymn (Eph. v. 14):
“Wherefore (he) saith,
Awake thou that sleepest
And arise from the dead
And Christ shall shine upon thee.”
This perhaps is our only specimen of the earliest Christian hymnals.
Surely then it is noticeable that in three lines of this unique specimen
there are three metaphors, and in the second line a metaphorical use of
the word “dead” which—as I have pointed out above—has probably elsewhere
resulted in serious misunderstanding.
After the hymn would come the sermon. The preacher would stand up like
Apollos to “prove from the Scriptures,” that is, from the Old Testament,
that Jesus is the Christ. If you wish to know how some of the Christian
Preachers would probably discharge their task you should look at the
Dialogue with Trypho written (about a hundred years after Apollos) by
Justin Martyr—who, I take it, was very much superior in judgment,
learning, and ability, to the great mass of Christian Preachers in the
first and second centuries. There—among many other instances of the
adaptation of history to preconception—you will find Justin declaring
that Jesus was born in a cave, and that the ass on which He rode into
Jerusalem was tied to a vine, simply because certain prophecies of
Isaiah mention a cave and a vine, and because he is determined to find
fulfilments of them in the life of Christ. But in the early times of
Apollos, and during the next twenty or thirty years, before the Gospels
had been committed to writing, there must have been a far stronger
gravitation towards the Old Testament and a far more powerful tendency
to find something in the life of Christ to fulfil every prediction about
the Messiah and to correspond to every miracle wrought by Moses and the
prophets. Judged in the light of these considerations, our present
record of Christ’s life ought to surprise us not by the number, but by
the paucity, of the fulfilments of prophecy and the miracles contained
in them.
Against these arguments for the antecedent probability that miracles
would be baselessly imputed to Jesus (to be followed presently by a few
instances to shew that they have been so imputed) I know nothing that
has been recently urged except a consideration drawn from the life of
John the Baptist: “To the Baptist no miracle has been imputed by the
Gospels; to Christ miracles have been imputed; why not to both? What is
the reason for this distinction except that the former did not perform
miracles, while the latter did?” Two reasons can be given. In the first
place Christ worked “mighty works,” while John did not; and since many
of these “mighty works” could not in the first century be distinguished
from “miracles,” they served as a nucleus round which a miraculous
narrative might gather; in the history of the Baptist there would be no
such nucleus. The second and perhaps more important reason is, that, as
a counterpoise to the natural exaggerative tendency which might have led
men to attribute miracles to the Baptist, there would be also a tendency
to heighten the contrast between the Servant and the Master. This
tendency appears to me to increase in the later Gospels till at last in
the Fourth we come to the express statement, “John worked no miracle”
(John x. 41). But whether I am right or not in this conjecture, it is
quite certain that the attitude of the Christians towards the mere
forerunner of the Messiah—about whom the Prophets had simply predicted
that he would “turn the hearts of the children to the fathers”—would not
be such as to render likely any imputations of miracles to him. At
Ephesus, in the days of St. Paul, there were some quasi-Christians who
had received none but “John’s Baptism,” and had “not so much as heard
whether there is a Holy Ghost.” That gives us a much stronger impression
of the Prophet’s influence, and a much weaker impression of the
prevalence of the doctrine about the Holy Spirit in the earliest
Christian teaching, than we should have inferred from what we read in
the Fourth Gospel: was it likely, when the Baptist’s influence seemed to
the contemporaries of St. Paul still so powerful (perhaps too powerful)
that they would be tempted unconsciously to magnify it by casting round
him that halo of miraculous action which naturally gathered around the
life of Christ?
Does it seem to you very hard, and almost cruelly unnatural, that the
life of the Baptist—in whom the world takes comparatively little
interest—should be handed down with historical accuracy (at least so far
as miracles are concerned) while the life of Christ, the centre of the
hopes and fears of the civilized world, has been permitted by Providence
to become a nucleus for illusion and superstition as well as for the
righteous faith and love of mankind? It is hard; it is not unnatural.
“When beggars die there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
What does Shakespeare mean by this except to exemplify the universal,
and natural, but illusive belief, that whatever affects the greatest man
must also affect material nature? Therefore in proportion to the
greatness of any man we must expect that the illusions about him will be
great in the minds of posterity. How indeed could it be otherwise?
Reflect for a moment. Jesus came into the world to be a spiritual
Saviour, a spiritual Judge; but how few there were in those days who
could fully appreciate even the meaning of these titles! Do you
yourself, even at this date, after the lapse of eighteen centuries,
grasp firmly this notion of spiritual judgment? Reverence can hardly
restrain you from smiling at the Apostles for their unspiritual dreams
of a “carnal” empire with twelve tangible thrones to be set up for their
twelve selves in Palestine; but you yourself, have you never, at all
events in younger days, dreamed sometimes of a visible white throne on
material clouds, of a visible and perhaps tangible trumpet, of an
audible verdict of “Guilty” or “Not guilty” externally pronounced on
each soul? perhaps also of palpable palm branches, and of I know not
what more sensuous apparatus, without which you can scarcely realize the
notion of the Day of Judgment? And yet all these are adventitious and
accidental accompaniments of the real and essential “judgment” which is
in Greek the “sifting” or “division” _i.e._ the division between good
and evil in the heart of each one of us. But I doubt even now whether
you understand the meaning of this spiritual “division” or judgment. Let
me try to explain it. Have you not at any time suddenly, in a flash,
been brought face to face with some revelation of goodness, some good
person, or action, or book, or word, or thoughts—which in a moment,
before you were aware, has lighted up all the black caverns of your
nature and made your mind’s eye realize them, and your conscience abhor
them, setting your higher nature against your lower nature, so that,
without your knowing it, this angelic visitant has taken hold of you,
carried away the better part of you along with itself into higher
regions of purer thought than yours, from whence your better nature is
forced to look down upon, and condemn, your lower and grosser self? This
“division” is the operation of the two-edged sword of the Spirit; and
when a man’s cheeks flush with shame, or his heart feels crushed with
remorse, under this “dividing” power, and he _feels_ the verdict “I am
guilty,” then he is being judged far more effectually than any earthly
law court could judge him. Now it is this kind of judgment that Jesus
had in mind when He spoke of the judgment of the world by the Son of
Man. In this sense He has been judging, is judging, and will judge, till
the Great Judgment consummates the story of such things as are to be
judged. But how little has the world realized this!
Probably some would have realized less of the spiritual if they had
imagined less of the material. You know how the English judges of our
times still insist on much of the old pomp and ceremony which in the
days of our forefathers was thought necessary in order to make justice
venerable. The trumpets, and the javelin-men, and the sheriffs in the
procession, the wig and gown and bands in court—they all seem a little
ridiculous to most of us now; yet possibly the judges are right in
retaining them. Possibly our brutal English nature will need for some
decades longer these antique and now meaningless trappings before they
will be able to respect the just judge for the sake of justice itself.
And in the same way, from the days of Clovis to those of Napoleon, many
a man who would have found it impossible to realize the righteous Judge
as the invisible wielder of the two-edged sword of the Spirit, has felt
a fear, which perhaps did more good than harm, at the thought of the
opening graves, the unclothed trembling dead, the thunder-pealing
verdict and the flames of a material hell. Who also can deny that the
illusion which has represented Jesus as having possessed and exerted the
power to cure every imaginable disease of the body, has led many to
realize Him as the Healer of something more than material disease, in a
manner otherwise impossible for masses of men living under an oppression
which often scarcely left them the consciousness that they possessed
anything but bodies wherewith to serve their masters?
Do not suppose, because I am forced by evidence to reject the miracles,
that I am blind to the part that they once played in facilitating faith
in Christ. A whole essay, a volume of essays might be written on that
subject, without fear of exaggeration. The Miraculous Conception, the
Miraculous Resurrection and Ascension, the miracles of the feeding of
the four thousand and of the five thousand,—it would be quite possible
to shew from Christian literature and history, how in times gone by,
when laws of nature were unrecognized, these supposed incidents of
Christ’s life not only found their way into men’s minds without
hesitation and without a strain upon intellect or conscience, but also
conveyed to the human heart, each in its own way, some deep spiritual
truth satisfying some deep spiritual need. It is the old lesson once
more repeated: the eyes take in, as a picture, what the ears fail to
convey to the brain or heart, when expressed in mere words.
But now, there are abundant symptoms that the tempers and minds of men
are greatly changed. Men’s minds are more open than before to the need
of some spiritual bond to keep society together; and the character and
spiritual claims of Christ, and the marvellous results that have
followed from His life and death, are beginning (I think) to be
recognized with more spontaneousness and with less of superstitious
formalism. On the other hand, the vast regularity of Nature has so come
home to our hearts that some believe in it as if it had a divine
sanctity; the thought of praying that the sun or moon may stand still
shocks us as a profanity; and boys and girls, as they stand opposite to
some picture setting forth a Bible miracle, look puzzled and perplexed,
or, if they are a little older, say with a sententious smile that “the
age of miracles is past.” In a word, that very element of inexplicable
wonder which once strengthened the faith, now weakens it, by furnishing
weapons to its assailants, and by inducing rash believers to take up and
defend against sceptics a position that is indefensible.
In any case, it is the duty of each generation of Christians to put
aside, as far as it can, the illusions of the previous generation and to
rise higher to the fuller knowledge of Christ; for the outworn and
undiscarded illusions of one generation become the hypocrisies of the
next. The illusions of the permanence of the Mosaic Law, of the speedy
Consummation, of Transubstantiation, of the Infallible Church, of the
Infallible Book, have all been in due course put away. A candid and
modest Christian ought surely to argue that, where so many illusions
have already been discarded—and all without injury to the worship of
Christ—some may remain to be discarded still, and equally without injury
to the Eternal Truth.
What if miraculous Christianity is to natural Christianity as the
Ptolemaic astronomy is to the Newtonian? Both of these astronomical
systems were of practical utility; both could predict eclipses; both
revealed God as a God of order. But the former imputed to the unmoving
sun the terrestrial motion which the latter correctly imputed to the
earth; the former explained by a number of arbitrary, non-natural, and
quasi-miraculous suppositions—spheres, and spirals, and epicycles, and
the like—phenomena which the latter more simply explained by one
celestial curve traced out in accordance with one fixed law. I believe
that in religion also we have made a similar mistake and are being
prepared for a similar correction. We have imputed to Christ some
actions which have sprung from the promptings of our own
imaginations—imaging forth what _our_ ideal Deliverer would have
done—and which have represented, not His motions, but the motions of our
own hearts. By what we have euphemistically denominated “latent laws,”
that is to say by hypotheses as arbitrary and baseless as the old
epicycles, unsupported by sufficient evidence and inconsistent with all
that we see and hear and feel around us in God’s world, we have
endeavoured to explain a Redemption which no more needs such
explanations than forgiveness needs them—a Redemption which is as
natural (that is to say, as much in accordance with the laws of physical
nature and the ordinary processes of human nature) as that Law of Love,
or Spiritual gravitation, which may be illustrated in the microcosm of
every human household. Now we are to learn the new truth: and as the God
of Newton is greater (is He not?) than the God of Ptolemy, so let us not
doubt that the God revealed in spiritual Christianity will be greater
than the God revealed in material and miraculous Christianity. The new
heavens will not cease to declare the glory of God; the new firmament
will not fail to tell of His handiwork.
Footnote 21:
Of course its omission by the other Evangelists might indicate that
the words were not uttered by Jesus; but it might also indicate that
the precept, being generally misunderstood, was considered so strange
and at variance with facts that it had come to be discredited and
considered spurious.
XVIII
ARE THE MIRACLES INSEPARABLE FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST?