as inventing all that Paulus or Strauss rejects, or sincerely believing
their own delusions, or that their statements have been artfully
corrupted or unconsciously disguised, till Christ and his Apostles are
as effectually transformed and travestied as these dreamers are pleased
to imagine, with what consistency can we believe any thing certain
amidst so many acknowledged fictions inseparably incorporated with them?
If A has told B truth once and falsehood fifty times, (wittingly or
unwittingly,) what can induce B to believe that he has any reason to
believe A in that only time in which he does believe him, unless he
knows the same truth by evidence quite independent of A, and for
which he is not indebted to him at all? Should we not, then, at once
acknowledge the futility of attempting to educe any certain historic
fact, however meagre, or any doctrine, whether intelligible or obscure,
from documents nine tenths of which are to be rejected as a tissue of
absurd fictions? Or why should we not fairly confess that, for aught
we can tell, the whole is a fiction? For certainly, as to the amount of
historic fact which these men affect to leave, it is obviously a matter
of the most trivial importance whether we regard the whole Bible as
absolute fiction or not. Whether an obscure Galilean teacher, who taught
a moral system which may have been as good (we can never know from
such corrupt documents that it was as good) as that of Confucius, or
Zoroaster, ever lived or not; and whether we are to add another name to
those who have enunciated the elementary truths of ethics, is really of
very little moment. Upon their principles we can clearly know nothing
about him except that he is the centre of a vast mass of fictions, the
invisible nucleus of a huge conglomerate of myths. A thousand times
more, therefore, do we respect those, as both more honest and more
logical, who, on similar grounds, openly reject Christianity altogether;
and regard the New Testament, and speak of it, exactly as they would of
Homer's 'Iliad,' or Virgil's 'Aeneid.' Such men, consistently enough,
trouble themselves not at all in ascertaining what residuum of truth,
historical or critical, may remain in a book which certainly gives
ten falsehoods for one truth, and welds both together in inextricable
confusion. The German infidels, on the other hand, with infinite labour,
and amidst infinite uncertainties, extract either truth 'as old as the
creation,' and as universal as human reason,--or truth which, after
being hidden from the world for eighteen hundred years in mythical
obscurity, is unhappily lost again the moment it is discovered, in the
infinitely deeper darkness of the philosophy of Hegel and Strauss; who
in vain endeavour to gasp out, in articulate language, the still
latent mystery of the Gospel! Hegel, in his last hours, is said to have
said,--and if he did not say, he ought to have said,--'Alas! there is
but one man in all Germany who understands my doctrine,--and he does not
understand it!' And yet, by his account, Hegelianism and Christianity,
'in their highest results,' [language, as usual, felicitously obscure]
'are one.' Both, therefore, are, alas! now for ever lost.
That great problem--to account for the origin and establishment Of
Christianity in the world, with a denial at the same time of its
miraculous pretensions--a problem, the fair solution of which is
obviously incumbent on infidelity--has necessitated the most gratuitous
and even contradictory hypotheses, and may safely be said still to
present as hard a knot as ever. The favourite hypothesis, recently, has
been that of Strauss--frequently re-modified and re-adjusted indeed by
himself--that Christianity is a myth, or collection of myths--that is,
a conglomerate (as geologists would say) of a very slender portion
of facts and truth, with an enormous accretion of undesigned fiction,
fable, and superstitions; gradually framed and insensibly received, like
the mythologies of Greece and Rome, or the ancient systems of Hindoo
theology. It is true, indeed, that the particular critical arguments,
the alleged historic discrepancies and so forth, on which this author
founds his conclusion--are for the most part, not original; most of
them having been insisted on before, both in Germany, and especially
in our own country during the Deistical controversies of the preceding
century. His idea of myths, however, may be supposed original; and he
is very welcome to it. For of all the attempted solutions of the
great problem, this will be hereafter regarded as, perhaps, the most
untenable. Gibbon, in solving the same problem, and starting in fact
from the same axioms,--for he too endeavoured to account for the
intractable phenomenon--on natural causes alone,--assigned, as one
cause, the reputation of working miracles, the reality of which he
denied; but he was far too cautious to decide whether the original
thunders of Christianity had pretended to work miracles, and had been
enabled to cheat the world into the belief of them, or whether the world
had been pleased universally to cheat itself into that belief. He was
far too wise to tie himself to the proof that in the most enlightened
period of the world's history--amidst the strongest contrarieties
of national and religious feeling--amidst the bitterest bigotry of
millions in behalf of what was old, and the bitterest contempt of
millions of all that was new--amidst the opposing forces of ignorance
and prejudice on the one hand and philosophy and scepticism on the
other--amidst all the persecutions which attested and proved those
hostile feelings on the part of the bulk of mankind--and above all, in
the short space of thirty years (which is all that Dr. Stauss allows
himself),--Christianity could be thus deposited, like the mythology
of Greece and Rome! These, he knew, were very gradual and silent
formations; originating in the midst of a remote antiquity and an
unhistoric age, during the very infancy and barbarism of the races which
adopted them, confined, be it remembered, to those races alone;
and displaying, instead of the exquisite and symmetrical beauty of
Christianity, those manifest signs of gradual accretion which were
fairly to be expected; in the varieties of the deposited or irrupted
substances--in the diffracted appearance of various parts--in the very
weather stains, so to speak, which mark the whole mass.
That the prodigious aggregate of miracles which the New Testament
asserts, would, if fabulous, pass unchallenged, elude all detection, and
baffle all scepticism.--collect in the course of a few years energetic
and zealous assertors of their reality, in the heart of every civilised
and almost every barbarous community, and in the course of three
centuries, change the face of the world and destroy every other myth
which fairly came in contact with it,--who but Dr. Strauss can believe?
Was there no Dr. Strauss in those days? None to question and detect, as
the process went on, the utter baselessness of these legends? Was
all the world doting--was even the persecuting world asleep? Were all
mankind resolved on befooling themselves? Are men wont thus quietly to
admit miraculous pretensions, whether they be prejudiced votaries of
another system or sceptics as to all? No: whether we consider the age,
the country, the men assigned for the origin of these myths, we see the
futility of the theory. It does not account even for their invention,
much less for their success. We see that if any mythology could in such
an age have germinated at all, it must have been one very different from
Christianity; whether we consider the sort of Messiah the Jews expected,
or the hatred of all Jewish Messiahs, which the Gentiles could not but
have felt. The Christ offered them so far from being welcome, was to
the one a 'stumbling block' and to the other 'foolishness'; and yet he
conquered the prejudices of both.
Let us suppose a parallel myth--if we may abuse the name. Let us suppose
the son of some Canadian carpenter aspiring to be a moral teacher, but
neither working nor pretending to work miracles; as much hated by
his countrymen as Jesus Christ was hated by his, and both he and his
countrymen as much hated by all the civilised world beside, as were
Jesus Christ and the Jews: let us further suppose him forbidding his
followers the use of all force in propagating his doctrine's, and then
let us calculate the probability of an unnoticed and accidental deposit,
in thirty short years, of a prodigious accumulation about these simple
facts. of supernatural but universally accredited fables, these legends
escaping detection or suspicion as they accumulated, and suddenly laying
hold in a few years of myriads of votaries in all parts of both worlds,
and in three centuries uprooting and destroying Christianity and all
opposing systems! How long will it be before the Swedenborgian, or the
Mormonite, or any such pretenders, will have similar success? Have there
not been a thousand such, and has any one of them had the slightest
chance against systems in possession,--against the strongly rooted
prejudices of ignorance and the Argus-eyed investigations of scepticism?
But all these were opposed to the pretensions of Christianity; nor can
any one example of at all similar sudden success be alleged, except in
the case of Mahomet; and to that the answer is brief. The history of
Mahomet is the history of a conqueror--and his logic was the logic of
the sword.
In spite of the theory of Strauss, therefore, not less than that of
Gibbon, the old and ever recurring difficulty of giving a rational
account of the origin and establishment of Christianity still presents
itself for solution to the infidel, as it always has done, and, we
venture to say, always will do. It is an insoluble phenomenon, except by
the admission of the facts of the--New Testament. 'The miracles,' says
Butler, 'are a satisfactory account of the events, of which no other
satisfactory account can be given; nor any account at all, but what is
imaginary merely and invented.'
In the meantime, the different theories of unbelief mutually refute one
another; and we may plead the authority of one against the authority of
another. Those who believe Strauss believe both the theory of imposture
and the theory of illusion improbable; and those who believe in the
theory of imposture believe the theory of myths improbable. And both
parties, we are glad to think, are quite right in the judgment they form
of one another.
But what must strike every one who reflects as the most surprising thing
in Dr. Strauss, is, that with the postulatum with which he sets out,
and which he modestly takes for granted as too evident to need proof, he
should have thought it worth while to write two bulky volumes of minute
criticism on the subject. A miracle he declares to be an absurdity, an
contradiction, an impossibility. If we believed this, we should deem a
very concise enthymene (after having proved that postulatum though) all
that it was necessary to construct on the subject. A miracle cannot be
true; ergo, Christianity, which in the only records by which we know
anything about it, avows its absolute dependence upon miracles, must be
false.
It is a modification of one or other of these monstrous forms of
unbelieving belief and Christian infidelity, that Mr. Foxton, late of
Oxford, has adopted in his 'Popular Christianity;' as perhaps also Mr.
Froude in his 'Nemesis.' It is not very easy, indeed, to say what
Mr. Foxton positively believes; having, like his German prototypes, a
greater facility of telling what he does believe, and of wrapping up
what he does believe in a most impregnable mysticism. He certainly
rejects, however, all that which, when rejected a century ago, left,
in the estimate of every one, an infidel in puris naturalibus. Like his
German acquaintances, he accepts the infidel paradoxes--only, like them,
he will still be a Christian. He believes, with Strauss, that a miracle
is an impossibility and contradiction--'incredible per se.' As to the
inspiration of Christ--he regards it as, in its nature, the same as that
of Zoraster, Confucius, Mahomet, Plato, Luther, and Wickliffe--a curious
assortment of 'heroic souls.'(Pp. 62, 63.) With a happy art of confusing
the 'gifts of genius' no matter whether displayed in intellectual or
moral power, and of forgetting that other men are not likely to overlook
the difference, he complacently declares 'the wisdom of Solomon and the
poetry of Isaiah the fruit of the same inspiration which is popularly
attributed to Milton or Shakspeare, or even to the homely wisdom of
Benjamin Franklin' (P. 72.) in the same pleasant confusion of mind, he
thinks that the 'pens of Plato, of Paul and of Dante, the pencils of
Raphael and of Claude, the Chisels of Canova and of Chantrey, no less
than the voices of Knox of Wickliffe, and of Luther are ministering
instruments, in different degrees, of the same spirit.' (P. 77.) He
thinks that 'we find, both in the writers and the records of Scripture,
every evidence of human infirmity that can possibly be conceived; and
yet we are to believe that God himself specially inspired them with
false philosophy, vicious logic, and bad grammar.'(P. 74.) He denies
the originality both of the Christian ethic (which he says are a gross
plagiarism from Plato) as also in great part of the system of Christian
doctrine.* Nevertheless, it would be quite a mistake, it seems, to
suppose that Mr. Foxton is no Christian! He is, on the contrary, of
the very few who can tell us what Christianity really is; and who can
separate the falsehoods and the myths which have so long disguised it.
He even talks most spiritually and with an edifying onction. He tells us
"God was," indeed, "in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." And
but little deduction need be made from the rapturous language of Paul,
who tells us that "in him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily"
(P. 65); I concede to Christ' (generous admission!) 'the highest
inspiration hitherto granted to the prophets of God' (P. 143),--Mahomet,
it appears, and Zoroaster and Confucius, having also statues in his
truly Catholic Pantheon. 'The position of Christ,' he tells us in
another place, is 'simply that of the foremost man in all the world,'
though he 'soars far above "all principalities and powers"--above all
philosophies hitherto known--above all creeds hitherto propagated in his
name'--the true Christian doctrine, after having been hid from ages and
generations, being reserved to be disclosed, we presume, by Mr. Foxton.
His spiritualism, as usual with the whole school of our new Christian
infidels, is, of course, exquisitely refined,--but, unhappily, very
vague. He is full of talk of 'a deeep insight,'--of a 'faith not in dead
histories, but living realities--a revelation to our innermost nature.'
'The true seer,' he says, 'looking deep into causes, carries in his
heart the simple wisdom of God. The secret harmonies of Nature vibrate
on his ear, and her fair proportions reveal themselves to his eye. He
has a deep faith in the truth of God.' (P. 146.) 'The inspired man is
one whose outward life derives all its radiance from the light within
him. He walks through stony places by the light of his own soul, and
stumbles not. No human motive is present to such a mind in its highest
exultation--no love of praise--no desire of fame--no affection, no
passion mingles with the divine afflatus, which passes over without
ruffling the soul.' (P. 44.) And a great many fine phrases of the same
kind, equally innocent of all meaning.
____
* (Pp. 51--60.) We are hardly likely to yield to Mr. Foxton in our love
of Plato, for whom we have expressed, and that very recently, (April,
1848,) no stinted admiration: and what we have there affirmed we are by
no means disposed to retract,--that no ancient author has approached, in
the expression of ethical truth, so near to the maxims and sometimes the
very expressions, of the Gospel. Nevertheless, we as strongly affirm,
that he who contrasts (whatever the occasional sublimity of expression)
the faltering and often sceptical tone of Plato on religious subjects,
with the uniformity and decision of the Evangelical system,--his dark
notions in relation to God (candidly confessed) with the glorious
recognition of Him in the Gospel as 'our Father,'--his utterly absurd
application of his general principles of morals, in his most Utopian of
all Republics, with the broad, plain social ethics of Christianity,--the
tone of mournful familiarity (whatever his personal immunity) in
which he too often speaks of the saddest pollutions that ever degraded
humanity, with the spotless purity of the Christian rule of life,--the
hesitating, speculative tone of the Master of the Academy with the
decision and majesty of Him who 'spake with authority, and not as
the Scribes,' whether Greek or Jewish.--the metaphysical and abstract
character of Plato's reasonings with the severely practical character of
Christ's,--the feebleness of the motives supplied by the abstractions
of the one, and the intensity of those supplied by the other,--the
adaptation of the one to the intelligent only, and the adaptation of
the other to universal humanity,--the very manner of Plato, his
gorgeous style, with the still more impressive simplicity of the Great
Teacher,--must surely see in the contrast every indication, to say
nothing of the utter gratuitousness (historically) of the contrary
hypothesis, that the sublime ethics of the Gospel, whether we regard
substance, or manner, or, tone, or style, are no plagiarism from Plato.
As for the man who can hold such a notion, he must certainly be very
ignorant either of Plate or of Christ. As the best apology for Mr.
Foxton's offensive folly we may, perhaps, charitably hope that he is
nearly ignorant of both.--Equally absurd is the attempt to identify the
metaphysical dreams of Plato with the doctrinal system of the Gospel,
though it is quite true, that long subsequent to Christ the Platonising
Christians tried to accommodate the speculations of the sage they loved,
to the doctrines of a still greater master. But Plato never extorted
from his friends stronger eulogies than Christ has often extorted from
his enemies.
____
It is amazing and amusing to see with what case Mr. Foxton decides
points which have filled folios of controversy. 'In the teaching of
Christ himself, there is not the slightest allusion to the modern
evangelical notion of an atonement.' 'The diversities of "gifts" to
which Paul alludes, Cor. i. 12. are nothing more than those different
"gifts" which, in common parlance, we attribute to the various tempers
and talents of men.' (P. 67.) 'It is, however, after all, absurd to
suppose that the miracles of the Scriptures are subjects of actual
belief; either to the vulgar or the learned.' (P. 104.) What an easy
time of it must such an all-sufficient controvertist have!
He thinks it possible; too, that Christ, though nothing more than an
ordinary man, may really have 'thought himself Divine,' without being
liable to the charge of a visionary self-idolatry or of blasphemy,--as
supposed by every body, Trinitarian or Unitarian, except Mr. Foxton. He
accounts for it by the 'wild sublimity of human emotion, when the rapt
spirit first feels the throbbings of the divine afflatus,' &c. &c. A
singular afflatus which teaches a man to usurp the name and prerogatives
of Deity, and a strange 'inspiration' which inspires him with so
profound an ignorance of his own nature! This interpretation, we
believe, is peculiarly Mr. Foxton's owe.
The way in which he disposes of the miracles, is essentially that of a
vulgar, undiscriminating, unphilosophic mind. There have been, he tells
us in effect, so many false miracles, superstitious stories of witches,
conjurors, ghosts, hobgoblins, of cures by royal touch, and the
like,--and therefore the Scripture miracles are false! Why, who denies
that there have been plenty of false miracles? And there have been
as many false religions. Is there, therefore, none true? The proper
business in every such case is to examine fairly the evidence, and
not to generalise after this absurd fashion. Otherwise we shall never
believe any thing; for there is hardly one truth that has not its half
score of audacious counterfeits.
Still he is amusingly perplexed, like all the rest of the infidel world,
how to get rid of the miracles--whether on the principle of fraud, or
fiction, or illusion. He thinks there would be 'a great accession to
the ranks of reason and common sense by disproving the reality of the
miracles, without damaging the veracity or honestly of the simple,
earnest, and enthusiastic writers by whom they are recorded;' and
complains of the coarse and undiscriminating criticism of most of the
French and English Deists, who explain the miracles 'on the supposition
of the grossest fraud acting on the grossest credulity.' But he soon
finds that the materials for such a compromise are utterly intractable.
He thinks that the German Rationalists have depended too much on some
'single hypothesis, which often proves to be insufficient to meet the
great variety of conditions and circumstances with which the miracles
have been handed down to us.' Very true; but what remedy? 'We find one
German writer endeavouring to explain away the miracles on the mystical
(mythical) theory; and another riding into the arena of controversy
on the miserable hobby-horse of "clairvoyance" or "mesmerism"; each of
these, and a host of others of the same class, rejecting whatever light
is thrown on the question by all the theories together.' He therefore
proposes, with great and gratuitous liberality, to heap all these
theories together, and to take them as they are wanted; not withholding
any of the wonders of modern science--even, as would seem, the possible
knowledge of 'chloroform' (PP. 104.. 86, 87.)--from the propagators of
Christianity!
But, alas! the phenomena are still intractable. The stubborn 'Book' will
still baffle all such efforts to explain it away; it is willing to be
rejected, if it so pleases men, but it guards itself from being
thus made a fool of. For who can fail to see that neither all or any
considerable part of the multifarious miracles of the New Testament can
be explained by any such gratuitous extension of ingenious fancies;
and that if they could be so explained, it would be still impossible
to exculpate the men who need such explanations from the charge of
perpetuating the grossest frauds! Yet this logical ostrich, who
am digest all these stones, presumptuously declares a miracle an
impossibility and the very notion of it a contradiction.* But enough of
Mr. Foxton.
____
* Mr. Foxton denies that men, in Paley's 'single case in which he
tries the general theorem,' would believe the miracle; but he finds
it convenient to leave out the most significant circumstances on which
Paley makes the validity of the testimony to depend, instead of stating
them fairly in Paley's own words. Yet that the sceptics (if such there
could be) must be the merest fraction of the species, Mr. Foxton himself
immediately proceeds to prove by showing what is undeniably the case)
that almost all mankind readily receive miraculous occurrences on far
lower evidence than Paley's common sense would require them to demand.
Surely he must be related to the Irishman who placed his ladder against
the bough he was cutting off. I
____