II.

THE Christian religion rests on miracles. There are no miracles in the

realm of science. The real philosopher does not seek to excite wonder,

but to make that plain which was wonderful. He does not endeavor to

astonish, but to enlighten. He is perfectly confident that there are

no miracles in nature. He knows that the mathematical expression of the

same relations, contents, areas, numbers and proportions must forever

remain the same. He knows that there are no miracles in chemistry; that

the attractions and repulsions, the loves and hatreds, of atoms are

constant. Under like conditions, he is certain that like will always

happen; that the product ever has been and forever will be the

same; that the atoms or particles unite in definite, unvarying

proportions,--so many of one kind mix, mingle, and harmonize with just

so many of another, and the surplus will be forever cast out. There are

no exceptions. Substances are always true to their natures. They have no

caprices, no prejudices, that can vary or control their action. They are

"the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."

In this fixedness, this constancy, this eternal integrity, the

intelligent man has absolute confidence. It is useless to tell him that

there was a time when fire would not consume the combustible, when water

would not flow in obedience to the attraction of gravitation, or that

there ever was a fragment of a moment during which substance had no

weight.

Credulity should be the servant of intelligence. The ignorant have not

credulity enough to believe the actual, because the actual appears to be

contrary to the evidence of their senses. To them it is plain that the

sun rises and sets, and they have not credulity enough to believe in the

rotary motion of the earth--that is to say, they have not intelligence

enough to comprehend the absurdities involved in their belief, and the

perfect harmony between the rotation of the earth and all known facts.

They trust their eyes, not their reason. Ignorance has always been

and always will be at the mercy of appearance. Credulity, as a rule,

believes everything except the truth. The semi-civilized believe in

astrology, but who could convince them of the vastness of astronomical

spaces, the speed of light, or the magnitude and number of suns and

constellations? If Hermann, the magician, and Humboldt, the philosopher,

could have appeared before savages, which would have been regarded as a

god?

When men knew nothing of mechanics, nothing of the correlation of force,

and of its indestructibility, they were believers in perpetual motion.

So when chemistry was a kind of sleight-of-hand, or necromancy,

something accomplished by the aid of the supernatural, people talked

about the transmutation of metals, the universal solvent, and the

philosopher's stone. Perpetual motion would be a mechanical miracle; and

the transmutation of metals would be a miracle in chemistry; and if we

could make the result of multiplying two by two five, that would be a

miracle in mathematics. No one expects to find a circle the diameter of

which is just one fourth of the circumference. If one could find such a

circle, then there would be a miracle in geometry.

In other words, there are no miracles in any science. The moment we

understand a question or subject, the miraculous necessarily disappears.

If anything actually happens in the chemical world, it will, under like

conditions, happen again.

No one need take an account of this result from the mouths of others:

all can try the experiment for themselves. There is no caprice, and no

accident.

It is admitted, at least by the Protestant world, that the age of

miracles has passed away, and, consequently, miracles cannot at present

be established by miracles; they must be substantiated by the testimony

of witnesses who are said by certain writers--or, rather, by uncertain

writers--to have lived several centuries ago; and this testimony is

given to us, not by the witnesses themselves, not by persons who say

that they talked with those witnesses, but by unknown persons who did

not give the sources of their information.

The question is: Can miracles be established except by miracles? We know

that the writers may have been mistaken. It is possible that they may

have manufactured these accounts themselves. The witnesses may have told

what they knew to be untrue, or they may have been honestly deceived,

or the stories may have been true as at first told. Imagination may have

added greatly to them, so that after several centuries of accretion a

very simple truth was changed to a miracle.

We must admit that all probabilities must be against miracles, for

the reason that that which is probable cannot by any possibility be

a miracle. Neither the probable nor the possible, so far as man is

concerned, can be miraculous. The probability therefore says that the

writers and witnesses were either mistaken or dishonest.

We must admit that we have never seen a miracle ourselves, and we must

admit that, according to our experience, there are no miracles. If we

have mingled with the world, we are compelled to say that we have known

a vast number of persons--including ourselves--to be mistaken, and many

others who have failed to tell the exact truth. The probabilities are on

the side of our experience, and, consequently, against the miraculous;

and it is a necessity that the free mind moves along the path of least

resistance.

The effect of testimony depends on the intelligence and honesty of

the witness and the intelligence of him who weighs. A man living in a

community where the supernatural is expected, where the miraculous is

supposed to be of almost daily occurrence, will, as a rule, believe that

all wonderful things are the result of supernatural agencies. He will

expect providential interference, and, as a consequence, his mind will

pursue the path of least resistance, and will account for all phenomena

by what to him is the easiest method. Such people, with the best

intentions, honestly bear false witness. They have been imposed upon by

appearances, and are victims of delusion and illusion.

In an age when reading and writing were substantially unknown, and when

history itself was but the vaguest hearsay handed down from dotage to

infancy, nothing was rescued from oblivion except the wonderful, the

miraculous. The more marvelous the story, the greater the interest

excited. Narrators and hearers were alike ignorant and alike honest. At

that time nothing was known, nothing suspected, of the orderly course of

nature--of the unbroken and unbreakable chain of causes and effects. The

world was governed by caprice. Everything was at the mercy of a being,

or beings, who were themselves controlled by the same passions that

dominated man. Fragments of facts were taken for the whole, and the

deductions drawn were honest and monstrous.

It is probably certain that all of the religions of the world have been

believed, and that all the miracles have found credence in countless

brains; otherwise they could not have been perpetuated. They were not

all born of cunning. Those who told were as honest as those who heard.

This being so, nothing has been too absurd for human credence.

All religions, so far as I know, claim to have been miraculously

founded, miraculously preserved, and miraculously propagated. The

priests of all claimed to have messages from God, and claimed to have

a certain authority, and the miraculous has always been appealed to for

the purpose of substantiating the message and the authority.

If men believe in the supernatural, they will account for all phenomena

by an appeal to supernatural means or power. We know that formerly

everything was accounted for in this way except some few simple things

with which man thought he was perfectly acquainted. After a time men

found that under like conditions like would happen, and as to those

things the supposition of supernatural interference was abandoned; but

that interference was still active as to all the unknown world. In other

words, as the circle of man's knowledge grew, supernatural interference

withdrew and was active only just beyond the horizon of the known.

Now, there are some believers in universal special providence--that is,

men who believe in perpetual interference by a supernatural power,

this interference being for the purpose of punishing or rewarding, of

destroying or preserving, individuals and nations.

Others have abandoned the idea of providence in ordinary matters, but

still believe that God interferes on great occasions and at critical

moments, especially in the affairs of nations, and that his presence

is manifest in great disasters. This is the compromise position. These

people believe that an infinite being made the universe and impressed

upon it what they are pleased to call "laws," and then left it to run in

accordance with those laws and forces; that as a rule it works well,

and that the divine maker interferes only in cases of accident, or at

moments when the machine fails to accomplish the original design.

There are others who take the ground that all is natural; that there

never has been, never will be, never can be any interference from

without, for the reason that nature embraces all, and that there can be

no without or beyond.

The first class are Theists pure and simple; the second are Theists

as to the unknown, Naturalists as to the known; and the third are

Naturalists without a touch or taint of superstition.

What can the evidence of the first class be worth? This question

is answered by reading the history of those nations that believed

thoroughly and implicitly in the supernatural. There is no conceivable

absurdity that was not established by their testimony. Every law or

every fact in nature was violated. Children were bom without parents;

men lived for thousands of years; others subsisted without food,

without sleep; thousands and thousands were possessed with evil spirits

controlled by ghosts and ghouls; thousands confessed themselves guilty

of impossible offences, and in courts, with the most solemn forms,

impossibilities were substantiated by the oaths, affirmations, and

confessions of men, women, and children.

These delusions were not confined to ascetics and peasants, but they

took possession of nobles and kings; of people who were at that time

called intelligent; of the then educated. No one denied these wonders,

for the reason that denial was a crime punishable generally with death.

Societies, nations, became insane--victims of ignorance, of dreams, and,

above all, of fears. Under these conditions human testimony is not and

cannot be of the slightest value. We now know that nearly all of the

history of the world is false, and we know this because we have arrived

at that phase or point of intellectual development where and when

we know that effects must have causes, that everything is naturally

produced, and that, consequently, no nation could ever have been great,

powerful, and rich unless it had the soil, the people, the intelligence,

and the commerce. Weighed in these scales, nearly all histories are

found to be fictions.

The same is true of religions. Every intelligent American is satisfied

that the religions of India, of Egypt, of Greece and Rome, of the

Aztecs, were and are false, and that all the miracles on which they rest

are mistakes. Our religion alone is excepted. Every intelligent Hindoo

discards all religions and all miracles except his own. The question

is: When will people see the defects in their own theology as clearly as

they perceive the same defects in every other?

All the so-called false religions were substantiated by miracles, by

signs and wonders, by prophets and martyrs, precisely as our own. Our

witnesses are no better than theirs, and our success is no greater. If

their miracles were false, ours cannot be true. Nature was the same in

India and in Palestine.

One of the corner-stones of Christianity is the miracle of inspiration,

and this same miracle lies at the foundation of all religions. How can

the fact of inspiration be established? How could even the inspired man

know that he was inspired? If he was influenced to write, and did write,

and did express thoughts and facts that to him were absolutely new, on

subjects about which he had previously known nothing, how could he know

that he had been influenced by an infinite being? And if he could know,

how could he convince others?

What is meant by inspiration? Did the one inspired set down only the

thoughts of a supernatural being? Was he simply an instrument, or did

his personality color the message received and given? Did he mix his

ignorance with the divine information, his prejudices and hatreds with

the love and justice of the Deity? If God told him not to eat the flesh

of any beast that dieth of itself, did the same infinite being also tell

him to sell this meat to the stranger within his gates?

A man says that he is inspired--that God appeared to him in a dream, and

told him certain things. Now, the things said to have been communicated

may have been good and wise; but will the fact that the communication

is good or wise establish the inspiration? If, on the other hand, the

communication is absurd or wicked, will that conclusively show that the

man was not inspired? Must we judge from the communication? In other

words, is our reason to be the final standard?

How could the inspired man know that the communication was received from

God? If God in reality should appear to a human being, how could this

human being know who had appeared? By what standard would he judge? Upon

this question man has no experience; he is not familiar enough with the

supernatural to know gods even if they exist. Although thousands have

pretended to receive messages, there has been no message in which there

was, or is, anything above the invention of man. There are just as

wonderful things in the uninspired as in the inspired books, and the

prophecies of the heathen have been fulfilled equally with those of the

Judean prophets. If, then, even the inspired man cannot certainly know

that he is inspired, how is it possible for him to demonstrate his

inspiration to others? The last solution of this question is that

inspiration is a miracle about which only the inspired can have the

least knowledge, or the least evidence, and this knowledge and this

evidence not of a character to absolutely convince even the inspired.

There is certainly nothing in the Old or the New Testament that could

not have been written by uninspired human beings. To me there is nothing

of any particular value in the Pentateuch. I do not know of a solitary

scientific truth contained in the five books commonly attributed to

Moses. There is not, as far as I know, a line in the book of Genesis

calculated to make a human being better. The laws contained in Exodus,

Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are for the most part puerile and

cruel. Surely there is nothing in any of these books that could not have

been produced by uninspired men. Certainly there is nothing calculated

to excite intellectual admiration in the book of Judges or in the wars

of Joshua; and the same may be said of Samuel, Chronicles, and Kings.

The history is extremely childish, full of repetitions of useless

details, without the slightest philosophy, without a generalization bom

of a wide survey. Nothing is known of other nations; nothing imparted of

the slightest value; nothing about education, discovery, or invention.

And these idle and stupid annals are interspersed with myth and miracle,

with flattery for kings who supported priests, and with curses and

denunciations for those who would not hearken to the voice of the

prophets. If all the historic books of the Bible were blotted from the

memory of mankind, nothing of value would be lost.

Is it possible that the writer or writers of First and Second Kings

were inspired, and that Gibbon wrote "The Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire" without supernatural assistance? Is it possible that the author

of Judges was simply the instrument of an infinite God, while John W.

Draper wrote "The Intellectual Development of Europe" without one ray

of light from the other world? Can we believe that the author of Genesis

had to be inspired, while Darwin experimented, ascertained, and reached

conclusions for himself.

Ought not the work of a God to be vastly superior to that of a man? And

if the writers of the Bible were in reality inspired, ought not that

book to be the greatest of books? For instance, if it were contended

that certain statues had been chiselled by inspired men, such statues

should be superior to any that uninspired man has made. As long as it is

admitted that the Venus de Milo is the work of man, no one will believe

in inspired sculptors--at least until a superior statue has been found.

So in the world of painting. We admit that Corot was uninspired. Nobody

claims that Angelo had supernatural assistance. Now, if some one should

claim that a certain painter was simply the instrumentality of God,

certainly the pictures produced by that painter should be superior to

all others.

I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to

conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the

tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man. We are all liable to

be mistaken, but the Iliad seems to me a greater work than the Book of

Esther, and I prefer it to the writings of Haggai and Hosea. AEschylus is

superior to Jeremiah, and Shakespeare rises immeasurably above all the

sacred books of the world.

It does not seem possible that any human being ever tried to establish a

truth--anything that really happened--by what is called a miracle. It

is easy to understand how that which was common became wonderful by

accretion,--by things added, and by things forgotten,--and it is easy

to conceive how that which was wonderful became by accretion what was

called supernatural. But it does not seem possible that any intelligent,

honest man ever endeavored to prove anything by a miracle.

As a matter of fact, miracles could only satisfy people who demanded no

evidence; else how could they have believed the miracle? It also appears

to be certain that, even if miracles had been performed, it would be

impossible to establish that fact by human testimony. In other words,

miracles can only be established by miracles, and in no event could

miracles be evidence except to those who were actually present; and in

order for miracles to be of any value, they would have to be perpetual.

It must also be remembered that a miracle actually performed could by

no possibility shed any light on any moral truth, or add to any human

obligation.

If any man has, ever been inspired, this is a secret miracle, known to

no person, and suspected only by the man claiming to be inspired. It

would not be in the power of the inspired to give satisfactory evidence

of that fact to anybody else.

The testimony of man is insufficient to establish the supernatural.

Neither the evidence of one man nor of twelve can stand when

contradicted by the experience of the intelligent world. If a book

sought to be proved by miracles is true, then it makes no difference

whether it was inspired or not; and if it is not true, inspiration

cannot add to its value.

The truth is that the church has always--unconsciously, perhaps--offered

rewards for falsehood. It was founded upon the supernatural, the

miraculous, and it welcomed all statements calculated to support

the foundation. It rewarded the traveller who found evidences of the

miraculous, who had seen the pillar of salt into which the wife of Lot

had been changed, and the tracks of Pharaoh's chariots on the sands of

the Red Sea. It heaped honors on the historian who filled his pages with

the absurd and impossible. It had geologists and astronomers of its own

who constructed the earth and the constellations in accordance with the

Bible. With sword and flame it destroyed the brave and thoughtful men

who told the truth. It was the enemy of investigation and of reason.

Faith and fiction were in partnership.

To-day the intelligence of the world denies the miraculous. Ignorance

is the soil of the supernatural. The foundation of Christianity has

crumbled, has disappeared, and the entire fabric must fall. The natural

is true. The miraculous is false.

North American Review, March, 1890.