I have called myself one of those who admit the supernatural; and
I have stated my reasons. I might stop there and enter into no
special reflection as to the Gospel Miracles. The possibility of
miracles once accorded in principle, nothing remains but to weigh
the value of the testimony in their support. In the second series
of these _Meditations_, where I treat of the authenticity of
the localities specified in the Holy Scriptures, I shall occupy
myself with this examination. It is not, however, my wish to
elude, upon the subjects that lie at the bottom of this question,
any of the difficulties that it presents: for here we find the
point of attack sought by the adversaries of the Christian faith.
The image of Christ as it results from the Gospel would be
besides singularly unfaithful, did we not range in it his
miracles by the side of his precepts.
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I avow once more my belief in God, in God the Creator, the
Sovereign Master of the Universe, who orders it and governs it by
that independent and constant action of his providence and power
styled the Laws of Nature. To those who regard nature as having
existed from all eternity of itself, and governed by laws
immutable and proceeding from fate, I have nothing to say of
Jesus or his miracles; the question at issue between them and me
is more important than that which respects miracles; it involves
the very question of Pantheism or Christianity, of Fatalism or
Liberty, affecting both God and man. Upon these subjects I have
already expressed my general opinion and its grounds. I propose
to enter further upon it in the third series of these
_Meditations_, when I come to speak of the different systems
which are now in conflict throughout Christendom. But at this
moment I address myself to Deists and to men of wavering minds,
and to these alone.
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One thing is beyond all doubt: the perfect sincerity of the
apostles and of the primitive Christians as to their faith in the
miracles of Jesus. Sincerity still more striking that it is
united to every sort of hesitation in the mind and weakness in
the conduct, and that it only triumphs gradually and slowly when
Jesus has quitted his disciples and has left them alone charged
with his work. Whilst He was with them, St. Peter has failed, St.
Thomas has doubted; after several miracles have been performed by
Jesus, his disciples are astonished, put questions to Him, yet
still doubt of Him and of his power. Upon several occasions Jesus
addresses them as men "of little faith," and at the moment when
He is arrested, they abandon Him, they fly from Him. No
impassioned enthusiasm, no exaggeration in their trustfulness and
their devotedness; even with them Jesus sees himself confronted
by all the vacillations and pusillanimity of humanity; He
persuades them, He wins them, He preserves them only by great
exertion, and by dint, so to say, of divine power and divine
virtue.
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They only really believe in Him after having witnessed the
accomplishment of his sacrifice and his last miracle, when they
had seen his Crucifixion and his Resurrection. Only then they
believed; but from that moment their faith became absolute,
superior to all perils and all trials: full of the Holy Spirit,
and associated in a certain measure to their divine Master, they
pursue his work with unshaken confidence and firmness, without
pretending to any merit, without any impulse of personal pride.
Before "the gate of the Temple which is called Beautiful," St.
Peter has healed a lame man and made him to walk. "And as the
lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran
together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly
wondering. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye
men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly
on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this
man to walk? ... Ye killed the Prince of life, whom God hath
raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.
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And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong,
whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given
him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all." [Footnote
105]
[Footnote 105: Acts iii. 1-16.]
It was not the people only that felt astonishment, but "the
rulers and elders; the scribes, the high priest, and all those
who were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered
together at Jerusalem, and set in their midst "Peter and John,
and after a deliberation full of anxiety, they "commanded them
not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter
and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the
sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.
For we cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard."
[Footnote 106]
[Footnote 106: Acts iv. 5, 6, 18-20.]
What sincerity and what firmness ever showed themselves more
strikingly than those that grew out of the faith of St. Paul?
From such faith he had been originally farther removed than the
other apostles; he had done far more than merely err like Peter
or doubt like Thomas; he had hotly persecuted the first followers
of Christ.
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In his turn penetrated and subdued on the road to Damascus by the
voice of Jesus, he devotes himself to Him life and soul; he
recounts himself his miraculous conversion, [Footnote 107] and as
little doubt can be entertained of the authenticity of his
Epistles as of the sincerity that dictated them.
[Footnote 107: 1 Corinthians xv. 8. 2 Corinthians xi. 32, 33;
xii. 1-5. Galatians i. 1-4.]
The history of all religions abounds in miracles; but in all
religions except the Christian, the miracles recounted by their
historians are evidently either contrivances of the founder to
induce persuasion, or they spring from the play of the human
imagination, ever disposed to delight in the marvellous, ever
particularly prone to give way in the sphere of religion to its
fantastic suggestions. In the Gospel miracles, on the contrary,
we have nothing of the kind; no artifice in their Author; none of
the marvellous machinery of poetry, nor any hasty credulity in
the historians.
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The miraculous agency of Christ is essentially simple, practical,
and moral: He does not go in search of miracles; neither does He
make any vain display of them: they are wrought when a pressing
emergency or a natural occasion calls for them; and when they are
demanded in faith and in trust, He then works them without
ostentation and in right of his divine mission; whilst at the
very moment He makes the doubt and the coldness with which He is
received, the subject of complaint: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! wo
unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in
you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented
long ago in sackcloth and ashes." [Footnote 108] Jesus has full
confidence in himself, in the miracles that He effects, in the
doctrine that He inculcates. He feels no astonishment, but merely
sorrow, that His work, the work of light and of salvation,
pursued by Him in accordance with the will of God his Father,
should not obtain a more rapid, a more general success.
[Footnote 108: Matthew xi. 21.]
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As for us, remote spectators, the astonishment must be not the
slowness or limited nature of that success, but its rapidity and
its extent. All religions that have taken place in the world's
history, have been established by moral and by material agency;
all appealed from their very commencement as much to force as to
persuasion, as much to the arm as to the tongue. Christianity
alone lived and grew during three centuries by its own single
native virtue, without any other appeal than that made to Truth,
without any other aid than that of Faith. During those three
centuries the dogmas, the precepts, and the miracles of its
Author constituted its only weapons, and weapons which have
prevailed against all other arms. Those dogmas, those precepts,
and those miracles effected the conquest of man's mind and of
human society in spite of the resistance of Greek philosophy,
Roman power, and all the poetical or mystical mythologies of
antiquity marshalled against them.
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The victory has not, it is true, put an end to all struggle of
man's intelligence: neither has the light from Christ dissipated
all darkness, nor satisfied all minds; the explanation and
commentaries of man have obscured the doctrines of Christ; human
prejudices have mistaken his precepts; and legends have been
grafted upon his miracles. But the fact does not the less exist,
that the dogmas, the precepts, and the miracles of Christ,
without any aid from human sources, sufficed to found and ensure
the triumph of the Christian religion: this is a fact primitive
and supreme. And from this single result shines forth the divine
character of the Christian religion, for its triumph without the
miraculous agency of God, would be of all miracles the most
impossible to receive.