OBJECTIONS TO MIRACLES.
I will now briefly dispose of two or three of the collateral objections
against miracles.
1. The author of "Supernatural Religion" makes much of the fact that the
Scripture writers recognize that there may be, and have been, Satanic as
well as Divine Miracles, and he argues that this destroys all the
evidential value of a miracle. He writes:--
"Even taking the representation of miracles, therefore, which
Divines themselves give, they are utterly incompetent to perform
their contemplated functions. If they are super-human, they are not
super-Satanic, and there is no sense in which they can be considered
miraculously evidential of anything." (Vol. i. p. 25)
Now, this difficulty is the merest theoretical one,--a difficulty, as
the saying is, on paper; and never can be a practical one to any sincere
believer in the holiness of God and the reality of goodness. Take the
miracle of miracles, the seal of all that is supernatural in our
religion, the Resurrection of Christ. If there be a conflict now going
on between God and Satan, can there be a doubt as to the side to which
this miracle is to be assigned? It is given to prove the reality of a
Redemption which all those who accept it know to be a Redemption from
the power of Satan. It is given to confirm the sanctions of morality by
the assurance of a judgment to come. If Satan had performed it, he would
have been simply casting out himself. If this miracle of the
Resurrection be granted, all else goes along with it, and the children
of God are fortified against the influence, real or counterfeit, of any
diabolical miracle whatsoever.
The miracles of the New Testament are not performed, as far as I can
remember, in any single instance, to prove the truth of any one view of
doctrinal Christianity as against another, but to evidence the reality
of the Mission of the Divine Founder as the Son of God, and "the Son of
God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil."
2. With respect to what are called ecclesiastical miracles, _i.e._
miracles performed after the Apostolic age, the author of "Supernatural
Religion" recounts the notices of a considerable number, assumes that
they are all false, and uses this assumed falsehood as a means of
bringing odium on the accounts of the miracles of Christ.
More particularly he draws attention to certain miracles recorded in the
works of St. Augustine, of one at least of which he (Augustine) declares
he was an eye-witness.
Now, the difficulty raised upon these and similar accounts appears to me
to be as purely theoretical as the one respecting Satanic miracles. If
there be truth in the New Testament, it is evident that the Founder of
Christianity not only worked miracles Himself, but gave power to His
followers to do the same. When was this power of performing miracles
withdrawn from the Church? Our Lord, when He gave the power, gave no
intimation that it would ever be withdrawn, rather the contrary.
However, even in Apostolic times, the performance of them seems to have
become less frequent as the Church became a recognized power in the
world. For instance, in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul the exercise of
miraculous gifts seems to have been a recognized part of the Church's
system, and in the later ones (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) they are
scarcely noticed. [164:1] If we are to place any credence whatsoever in
ecclesiastical history, the performance of miracles seems never to have
ceased, though in later times very rare in comparison with what they
must have been in the first age.
Now, if the miracles recorded by Augustine, or any of them, were true
and real, the only inference is that the action of miraculous power
continued in the Church to a far later date than some modern writers
allow. If, on the contrary, they are false, then they take their place
among hosts of other counterfeits of what is good and true. They no more
go to prove the non-existence of the real miracles which they
caricature, than any other counterfeit proves the non-existence of the
thing of which it is the counterfeit. Nay, rather, the very fact that
they are counterfeits proves the existence of that of which they are
counterfeits. The Ecclesiastical miracles are clearly not independent
miracles; true or false, they depend upon the miraculous powers of the
early Church. If any of them are true, then these powers continued in
the Church to a late date; if they are false accounts (whether wilfully
or through mistake, makes no difference), their falsehood is one
testimony out of many to the miraculous origin of the dispensation.
Those recorded by Augustine are in no sense evidential. Nothing came of
them except the relief, real or supposed, granted to the sufferers. No
message from God was supposed to be accredited by them. No attempt was
made to spread the knowledge of them; indeed, so far from this, in one
case at least, Augustine is "indignant at the apathy of the friends of
one who had been miraculously cured of a cancer, that they allowed so
great a miracle to be so little known." (Vol. ii. p. 171.) In every
conceivable respect they stand in the greatest contrast to the
Resurrection of Christ.
Each case of an Ecclesiastical miracle must be examined (if one cares to
do so) apart, on its own merits. I can firmly believe in the reality of
some, whilst the greater part are doubtful, and many are wicked
impostures. These last, of course, give occasion to the enemy to
disparage the whole system of which they are assumed to be a part, but
they tell against Christianity only in the same sense in which all
tolerated falsehood or evil in the Church obscures its witness to those
eternal truths of which it is "the pillar and the ground."
Now, all this is equally applicable to Superstition generally in
relation to the supernatural. As the counterfeit miracles of the later
ages witness that there must have been true ones to account for the very
existence of the counterfeit, so the universal existence of Superstition
witnesses to the reality of those supernatural interpositions of which
it is the distorted image. If Hume's doctrine be true, that a miracle,
_i.e._ a supernatural interposition, is contrary to universal
experience and so incredible--if from the first beginning of things
there has been one continuous sequence of natural cause and effect,
unbroken by the interposition of any superior power, how is it that
mankind have ever formed a conception of a supernatural power? And yet
the conception, in the shape of superstition at least, is absolutely
universal. Tribes who have no idea of the existence of God, use charms
and incantations to propitiate unseen powers.
Now, the distortion witnesses to the reality of that of which it is the
distortion; the caricature to the existence of the feature caricatured.
And so the universality of the existence of Superstition witnesses to
the reality of these supernatural revelations and interpositions to
which alone such a thing can be referred as its origin.