Albricus (Alberich?)--who, having been cured, not of his blindness, but of
another disease under which he laboured, took up his quarters at
Seligenstadt, and came out as a prophet, inspired by the Archangel Gabriel.
Eginhard intimates that his prophecies were fulfilled; but as he does not
state exactly what they were or how they were accomplished, the statement
must be accepted with much caution. It is obvious that he was not the man
to hesitate to "ease" a prophecy until it fitted, if the credit of the
shrine of his favourite saints could be increased by such a procedure.
There is no impeachment of his honour in the supposition. The logic of the
matter is quite simple, if somewhat sophistical. The holiness of the church
of the martyrs guarantees {400} the reality of the appearance of the
Archangel Gabriel there, and what the archangel says must be true.
Therefore, if anything seem to be wrong, that must be the mistake of the
transmitter; and, in justice to the archangel, it must be suppressed or set
right. This sort of "reconciliation" is not unknown in quite modern times,
and among people who would be very much shocked to be compared with a
"benighted papist" of the ninth century.
The readers of this essay are, I imagine, very largely composed of people
who would be shocked to be regarded as anything but enlightened
Protestants. It is not unlikely that those of them who have accompanied me
thus far may be disposed to say, "Well, this is all very amusing as a
story, but what is the practical interest of it? We are not likely to
believe in the miracles worked by the spolia of SS. Marcellinus and Petrus,
or by those of any other saints in the Roman Calendar."
The practical interest is this: if you do not believe in these miracles
recounted by a witness whose character and competency are firmly
established, whose sincerity cannot be doubted, and who appeals to his
sovereign and other contemporaries as witnesses of the truth of what he
says, in a document of which a MS. copy exists, probably dating within a
century of the author's death, why do you profess to believe in stories of
a like character, which are found in documents of the dates and of the
authorship of which nothing is certainly determined, and no known copies of
which come within two or three centuries of the {401} events they record.
If it be true that the four Gospels and the Acts were written by Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, all that we know of these persons comes to nothing in
comparison with our knowledge of Eginhard; and not only is there no proof
that the traditional authors of these works wrote them, but very strong
reasons to the contrary may be alleged. If, therefore, you refuse to
believe that "Wiggo" was cast out of the possessed girl on Eginhard's
authority, with what justice can you profess to believe that the legion of
devils were cast out of the man among the tombs of the Gadarenes? And if,
on the other hand, you accept Eginhard's evidence, why do you laugh at the
supposed efficacy of relics and the saint-worship of the modern Romanists?
It cannot be pretended, in the face of all evidence, that the Jews of the
year 30 A.D., or thereabouts, were less imbued with the belief in the
supernatural than were the Franks of the year 800 A.D. The same influences
were at work in each case, and it is only reasonable to suppose that the
results were the same. If the evidence of Eginhard is insufficient to lead
reasonable men to believe in the miracles he relates, _a fortiori_ the
evidence afforded by the Gospels and the Acts must be so.[103]
But it may be said that no serious critic denies the genuineness of the
four great Pauline Epistles--Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, and
{402} Romans--and that in three out of these four Paul lays claim to the
power of working miracles.[104] Must we suppose, therefore, that the
Apostle to the Gentiles has stated that which is false? But to how much
does this so-called claim amount? It may mean much or little. Paul nowhere
tells us what he did in this direction; and, in his sore need to justify
his assumption of apostleship against the sneers of his enemies, it is
hardly likely that if he had any very striking cases to bring forward he
would have neglected evidence so well calculated to put them to shame. And,
without the slightest impeachment of Paul's veracity, we must further
remember that his strongly-marked mental characteristics, displayed in
unmistakable fashion in these Epistles, are anything but those which would
justify us in regarding him as a critical witness respecting matters of
fact, or as a trustworthy interpreter of their significance. When a man
testifies to a miracle, he not only states a fact, but he adds an
interpretation of the fact. We may admit his evidence as to the former, and
yet think his opinion as to the latter worthless. If Eginhard's calm and
objective narrative of the historical events of his time is no guarantee
for the soundness of his judgment where the supernatural is concerned, the
heated rhetoric of the Apostle of the Gentiles, his absolute confidence in
the "inner light," and the extraordinary conceptions of the nature and
requirements of logical proof which he betrays, in page after page of his
Epistles, afford still less security.
{403}
There is a comparatively modern man who shared to the full Paul's trust in
the "inner light," and who, though widely different from the fiery
evangelist of Tarsus in various obvious particulars, yet, if I am not
mistaken, shares his deepest characteristics. I speak of George Fox, who
separated himself from the current Protestantism of England, in the
seventeenth century, as Paul separated himself from the Judaism of the
first century, at the bidding of the "inner light"; who went through
persecutions as serious as those which Paul enumerates; who was beaten,
stoned, cast out for dead, imprisoned nine times, sometimes for long
periods; who was in perils on land and perils at sea. George Fox was an
even more widely travelled missionary; while his success in founding
congregations, and his energy in visiting them, not merely in Great Britain
and Ireland and the West India Islands, but on the continent of Europe and
that of North America, was no less remarkable. A few years after Fox began
to preach, there were reckoned to be a thousand Friends in prison in the
various gaols of England; at his death, less than fifty years after the
foundation of the sect, there were 70,000 Quakers in the United Kingdom.
The cheerfulness with which these people--women as well as men--underwent
martyrdom in this country and in the New England States is one of the most
remarkable facts in the history of religion.
No one who reads the voluminous autobiography of "Honest George" can doubt
the man's utter truthfulness; and though, in his multitudinous letters,
{404} he but rarely rises far above the incoherent commonplaces of a street
preacher, there can be no question of his power as a speaker, nor any doubt
as to the dignity and attractiveness of his personality, or of his
possession of a large amount of practical good sense and governing faculty.
But that George Fox had full faith in his own powers as a miracle-worker,
the following passage of his autobiography (to which others might be added)
demonstrates:--
Now after I was set at liberty from Nottingham gaol (where I had been
kept a prisoner a pretty long time) I travelled as before, in the work
of the Lord. And coming to Mansfield Woodhouse, there was a distracted
woman, under a doctor's hand, with her hair let loose all about her
ears; and he was about to let her blood, she being first bound, and
many people being about her, holding her by violence; but he could get
no blood from her. And I desired them to unbind her and let her alone;
for they could not touch the spirit in her by which she was tormented.
So they did unbind her, and I was moved to speak to her, and in the
name of the Lord to bid her be quiet and still. And she was so. And the
Lord's power settled her mind and she mended; and afterwards received
the truth and continued in it to her death. And the Lord's name was
honoured; to whom the glory of all his works belongs. Many great and
wonderful things were wrought by the heavenly power in those days. For
the Lord made bare his omnipotent arm and manifested his power to the
astonishment of many; by the healing virtue whereof many have been
delivered from great infirmities, and the devils were made subject
through his name: of which particular instances might be given beyond
what this unbelieving age is able to receive or bear.[105]
It needs no long study of Fox's writings, however, {405} to arrive at the
conviction that the distinction between subjective and objective verities
had not the same place in his mind as it has in that of ordinary mortals.
When an ordinary person would say "I thought so and so," or "I made up my
mind to do so and so," George Fox says, "It was opened to me," or "at the
command of God I did so and so." "Then at the command of God, on the ninth
day of the seventh month 1643 (Fox being just nineteen), I left my
relations and brake off all familiarity or friendship with young or old."
"About the beginning of the year 1647 I was moved of the Lord to go into
Darbyshire." Fox hears voices and he sees visions, some of which he brings
before the reader with apocalyptic power in the simple and strong English,
alike untutored and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his
contemporary, he was a master.
"And one morning, as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me
and a temptation beset me; and I sate still. And it was said, _All things
come by Nature_. And the elements and stars came over me; so that I was in
a manner quite clouded with it.... And as I sate still under it, and let it
alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true voice arose in me which said,
_There is a living God who made all things_. And immediately the cloud and
the temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all, and my heart was
glad and I praised the living God" (p. 13).
If George Fox could speak, as he proves in this and some other passages he
could write, his {406} astounding influence on the contemporaries of Milton
and of Cromwell is no mystery. But this modern reproduction of the ancient
prophet, with his "Thus saith the Lord," "This is the work of the Lord,"
steeped in supernaturalism and glorying in blind faith, is the mental
antipodes of the philosopher, founded in naturalism and a fanatic for
evidence, to whom these affirmations inevitably suggest the previous
question: "How do you know that the Lord saith it:" "How do you know that
the Lord doeth it?" and who is compelled to demand that rational ground for
belief without which, to the man of science, assent is merely an immoral
pretence.
And it is this rational ground of belief which the writers of the Gospels,
no less than Paul, and Eginhard, and Fox, so little dream of offering that
they would regard the demand for it as a kind of blasphemy.
* * * * *
{407}
XI
AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER
Those who passed from Dr. Wace's article in the last number of this Review
to the anticipatory confutation of it which followed in "The New
Reformation," must have enjoyed the pleasure of a dramatic surprise--just
as when the fifth act of a new play proves unexpectedly bright and
interesting. Mrs. Ward will, I hope, pardon the comparison, if I say that
her effective clearing away of antiquated incumbrances from the lists of
the controversy, reminds me of nothing so much as of the action of some
neat-handed, but strong-wristed, Phyllis, who, gracefully wielding her
long-handled "Turk's head," sweeps away the accumulated results of the toil
of generations of spiders. I am the more indebted to this luminous sketch
of the results of critical investigation, as it is carried out among those
theologians who are men of science and not mere counsel for creeds, since
it has relieved me from the necessity of dealing with the greater part of
Dr. Wace's polemic, and enables me to devote more space to the really
important issues which have been raised.[106]
{408}
Perhaps, however, it may be well for me to observe that approbation of the
manner in which a great biblical scholar, for instance, Reuss, does his
work does not commit me to the adoption of all, or indeed any of his views;
and, further, that the disagreements of a series of investigators do not in
any way interfere with the fact that each of them has made important
contributions to the body of truth ultimately established. If I cite
Buffon, Linnaeus, Lamarck, and Cuvier, as having each and all taken a
leading share in building up modern biology, the statement that every one
of these great naturalists disagreed with, and even more or less
contradicted, all the rest is quite true; but the supposition that the
latter assertion is in any way inconsistent with the former, would betray a
strange ignorance of the manner in which all true science advances.
Dr. Wace takes a great deal of trouble to make it appear that I have
desired to evade the real questions raised by his attack upon me at the
Church Congress. I assure the reverend Principal that in this, as in some
other respects, he has entertained a very erroneous conception of my
intentions. Things would assume more accurate proportions in Dr. Wace's
mind if he would kindly remember that it is just thirty years since
ecclesiastical thunderbolts {409} began to fly about my ears. I have had
the "Lion and the Bear" to deal with, and it is long since I got quite used
to the threatenings of episcopal Goliaths, whose croziers were like unto a
weaver's beam. So that I almost think I might not have noticed Dr. Wace's
attack, personal as it was; and although, as he is good enough to tell us,
separate copies are to be had for the modest equivalent of twopence, as a
matter of fact, it did not come under my notice for a long time after it
was made. May I further venture to point out that (reckoning postage) the
expenditure of twopence-halfpenny, or, at the most, threepence, would have
enabled Dr. Wace so far to comply with ordinary conventions, as to direct
my attention to the fact that he had attacked me before a meeting at which
I was not present? I really am not responsible for the five months' neglect
of which Dr. Wace complains. Singularly enough, the Englishry who swarmed
about the Engadine, during the three months that I was being brought back
to life by the glorious air and perfect comfort of the Maloja, did not, in
my hearing, say anything about the important events which had taken place
at the Church Congress; and I think I can venture to affirm that there was
not a single copy of Dr. Wace's pamphlet in any of the hotel libraries
which I rummaged in search of something more edifying than dull English or
questionable French novels.
And now, having, as I hope, set myself right with the public as regards the
sins of commission and {410} omission with which I have been charged, I
feel free to deal with matters to which time and type may be more
profitably devoted.
I believe that there is not a solitary argument I have used, or that I am
about to use, which is original, or has anything to do with the fact that I
have been chiefly occupied with natural science. They are all, facts and
reasoning alike, either identical with, or consequential upon, propositions
which are to be found in the works of scholars and theologians of the
highest repute in the only two countries, Holland and Germany,[107] in
which, at the present time, professors of theology are to be found, whose
tenure of their posts does not depend upon the results to which their
inquiries lead them.[108] It is true that, to the best of my ability, I
have satisfied myself of the soundness of the foundations on which my
arguments are built, and I desire to be held fully {411} responsible for
everything I say. But, nevertheless, my position is really no more than
that of an expositor; and my justification for undertaking it is simply
that conviction of the supremacy of private judgment (indeed, of the
impossibility of escaping it) which is the foundation of the Protestant
Reformation, and which was the doctrine accepted by the vast majority of
the Anglicans of my youth, before that backsliding towards the "beggarly
rudiments" of an effete and idolatrous sacerdotalism which has, even now,
provided us with the saddest spectacle which has been offered to the eyes
of Englishmen in this generation. A high court of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, with a host of great lawyers in battle array, is and, for
Heaven knows how long, will be, occupied with these very questions of
"washing of cups and pots and brazen vessels," which the Master, whose
professed representatives are rending the Church over these squabbles, had
in his mind when, as we are told, he uttered the scathing rebuke:--
Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
This people honoureth me with their lips,
But their heart is far from me.
But in vain do they worship me,
Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men.
(Mark vii. 6-7.)
Men who can be absorbed in bickerings over miserable disputes of this kind
can have but little sympathy with the old evangelical doctrine of the "open
Bible," or anything but a grave misgiving of the results of diligent
reading of the Bible, without the {412} help of ecclesiastical spectacles,
by the mass of the people. Greatly to the surprise of many of my friends, I
have always advocated the reading of the Bible, and the diffusion of the
study of that most remarkable collection of books among the people. Its
teachings are so infinitely superior to those of the sects, who are just as
busy now as the Pharisees were eighteen hundred years ago, in smothering
them under "the precepts of men"; it is so certain, to my mind, that the
Bible contains within itself the refutation of nine-tenths of the mixture
of sophistical metaphysics and old-world superstition which has been piled
round it by the so-called Christians of later times; it is so clear that
the only immediate and ready antidote to the poison which has been mixed
with Christianity, to the intoxication and delusion of mankind, lies in
copious draughts from the undefiled spring, that I exercise the right and
duty of free judgment on the part of every man, mainly for the purpose of
inducing other laymen to follow my example. If the New Testament is
translated into Zulu by Protestant missionaries, it must be assumed that a
Zulu convert is competent to draw from its contents all the truths which it
is necessary for him to believe. I trust that I may, without immodesty,
claim to be put on the same footing as the Zulu.
The most constant reproach which is launched against persons of my way of
thinking is that it is all very well for us to talk about the deductions of
scientific thought, but what are the poor and the {413} uneducated to do?
Has it ever occurred to those who talk in this fashion, that their creeds
and the articles of their several confessions, their determination of the
exact nature and extent of the teachings of Jesus, their expositions of the
real meaning of that which is written in the Epistles (to leave aside all
questions concerning the Old Testament), are nothing more than deductions
which, at any rate, profess to be the result of strictly scientific
thinking, and which are not worth attending to unless they really possess
that character? If it is not historically true that such and such things
happened in Palestine eighteen centuries ago, what becomes of Christianity?
And what is historical truth but that of which the evidence bears strict
scientific investigation? I do not call to mind any problem of natural
science which has come under my notice which is more difficult, or more
curiously interesting as a mere problem, than that of the origin of the
Synoptic Gospels and that of the historical value of the narratives which
they contain. The Christianity of the Churches stands or falls by the
results of the purely scientific investigation of these questions. They
were first taken up in a purely scientific spirit just about a century ago;
they have been studied over and over again by men of vast knowledge and
critical acumen; but he would be a rash man who should assert that any
solution of these problems, as yet formulated, is exhaustive. The most that
can be said is that certain prevalent solutions are certainly false, while
others are more or less probably true. {414}
If I am doing my best to rouse my countrymen out of their dogmatic
slumbers, it is not that they may be amused by seeing who gets the best of
it in a contest between a "scientist" and a theologian. The serious
question is whether theological men of science, or theological special
pleaders, are to have the confidence of the general public; it is the
question whether a country in which it is possible for a body of excellent
clerical and lay gentlemen to discuss, in public meeting assembled, how
much it is desirable to let the congregations of the faithful know of the
results of biblical criticism, is likely to wake up with anything short of
the grasp of a rough lay hand upon its shoulder; it is the question whether
the New Testament books, being, as I believe they were, written and
compiled by people who, according to their lights, were perfectly sincere,
will not, when properly studied as ordinary historical documents, afford us
the means of self-criticism. And it must be remembered that the New
Testament books are not responsible for the doctrine invented by the
Churches that they are anything but ordinary historical documents. The
author of the third gospel tells us, as straightforwardly as a man can,
that he has no claim to any other character than that of an ordinary
compiler and editor, who had before him the works of many and variously
qualified predecessors.
In my former papers, according to Dr. Wace, I have evaded giving an answer
to his main proposition, which he states as follows-- {415}
Apart from all disputed points of criticism, no one practically doubts
that our Lord lived, and that He died on the cross, in the most intense
sense of filial relation to His Father in Heaven, and that He bore
testimony to that Father's providence, love, and grace towards mankind.
The Lord's Prayer affords a sufficient evidence on these points. If the
Sermon on the Mount alone be added, the whole unseen world, of which
the Agnostic refuses to know anything, stands unveiled before us.... If
Jesus Christ preached that Sermon, made those promises, and taught that
prayer, then any one who says that we know nothing of God, or of a
future life, or of an unseen world, says that he does not believe Jesus
Christ (pp. 354-355).
Again--
The main question at issue, in a word, is one which Professor Huxley
has chosen to leave entirely on one side--whether, namely, allowing for
the utmost uncertainty on other points of the criticism to which he
appeals, there is any reasonable doubt that the Lord's Prayer and the
Sermon on the Mount afford a true account of our Lord's essential
belief and cardinal teaching (p. 355).
I certainly was not aware that I had evaded the questions here stated;
indeed I should say that I have indicated my reply to them pretty clearly;
but, as Dr. Wace wants a plainer answer, he shall certainly be gratified.
If, as Dr. Wace declares it is, his "whole case is involved in" the
argument as stated in the latter of these two extracts, so much the worse
for his whole case. For I am of opinion that there is the gravest reason
for doubting whether the "Sermon on the Mount" was ever preached, and
whether the so-called "Lord's Prayer" was ever prayed, by Jesus of
Nazareth. My reasons for this opinion are, among others, these:--There is
now no doubt that the three Synoptic Gospels, so far from being the work of
three {416} independent writers, are closely interdependent,[109] and that
in one of two ways. Either all three contain, as their foundation,
versions, to a large extent verbally identical, of one and the same
tradition; or two of them are thus closely dependent on the third; and the
opinion of the majority of the best critics has of late years more and more
converged towards the conviction that our canonical second gospel (the
so-called "Mark's" Gospel) is that which most closely represents the
primitive groundwork of the three.[110] That I take to be one of the most
valid results of New Testament criticism, of immeasurably greater
importance than the discussion about dates and authorship.