Theoretically, the duty of adequate inquiry into the truth of any statement of serious importance before believing it is universally admitted. Practically, no duty is more universally neglected. This is more especially the case in regard to Religion, in which our concern is so great, yet the credentials of which so few personally examine. The difficulty of such an investigation and the inability of most men to pursue it, whether from want of opportunity or want of knowledge, are no doubt the chief reasons for this neglect; but another, and scarcely less potent, obstacle has probably been the odium which has been attached to any doubt regarding the dominant religion, as well as the serious, though covert, discouragement of the Church to all critical examination of the title-deeds of Christianity. The spirit of doubt, if not of intelligent inquiry, has, however, of late years become too strong for repression, and, at the present day, the pertinency of the question of a German writer: "Are we still Christians?" receives unconscious illustration from many a popular pulpit, and many a social discussion.
The prevalent characteristic of popular theology in England, at this time, may be said to be a tendency to eliminate from Christianity, with thoughtless dexterity, every supernatural element which does not quite accord with current opinion, and yet to ignore the fact that, in so doing, ecclesiastical Christianity has practically been altogether abandoned. This tendency is fostered with profoundly illogical zeal by many distinguished men within the Church itself, who endeavour to arrest for a moment the pursuing wolves of doubt and unbelief which press upon it, by practically throwing to them, scrap by scrap, the very doctrines which constitute the claims of Christianity to be regarded as a Divine Revelation at all. The moral Christianity which they hope to preserve, noble though it be, has not one feature left to distinguish it as a miraculously communicated religion.
Christianity itself distinctly pretends to be a direct Divine Revelation of truths beyond the natural attainment of the human intellect. To submit the doctrines thus revealed, therefore, to criticism, and to clip and prune them down to the standard of human reason, whilst at the same time their supernatural character is maintained, is an obvious absurdity. Christianity must either be recognized to be a Divine Revelation beyond man's criticism, and in that case its doctrines must be received even though Reason cannot be satisfied, or the claims of Christianity to be such a Divine Revelation must be disallowed, in which case it becomes the legitimate subject of criticism like every other human system. One or other of these alternatives must be adopted, but to assert that Christianity is Divine, and yet to deal with it as human, is illogical and wrong.
When we consider the vast importance of the interests involved, therefore, it must be apparent that there can be no more urgent problem for humanity to solve than the question: Is Christianity a supernatural Divine Revelation or not? To this we may demand a clear and decisive answer. The evidence must be of no uncertain character which can warrant our abandoning the guidance of Reason, and blindly accepting doctrines which, if not supernatural truths, must be rejected by the human intellect as monstrous delusions. We propose in this work to seek a conclusive answer to this momentous question.
It appears to us that at no time has such an investigation been more requisite. The results of scientific inquiry and of Biblical criticism have created wide-spread doubt regarding the most material part of Christianity considered as a Divine Revelation. The mass of intelligent men in England are halting between two opinions, and standing in what seems to us the most unsatisfactory position conceivable: they abandon, before a kind of vague and indefinite, if irresistible, conviction, some of the most central supernatural doctrines of Christianity; they try to spiritualize or dilute the rest into a form which does not shock their reason; and yet they cling to the delusion, that they still retain the consolation and the hope of truths which, if not divinely revealed, are mere human speculation regarding matters beyond reason. They have, in fact, as little warrant to abandon the one part as they have to retain the other. They build their house upon the sand, and the waves which have already carried away so much may any day engulf the rest. At the same time, amid this general eclipse of faith, many an earnest mind, eagerly seeking for truth, endures much bitter pain—unable to believe—unable freely to reject—and yet without the means of securing any clear and intelligent reply to the inquiry: "What is truth?" Any distinct assurance, whatever its nature, based upon solid grounds, would be preferable to such a state of doubt and hesitation. Once persuaded that we have attained truth, there can be no permanent regret for vanished illusions.
We must, however, by careful and impartial investigation, acquire the right to our belief, whatever it may be, and not float like a mere waif into the nearest haven. Flippant unbelief is much worse than earnest credulity. The time is ripe for arriving at a definite conviction as to the character of Christianity. There is no lack of materials for a final decision, although hitherto they have been beyond the reach of most English readers, and a careful and honest examination of the subject, even if it be not final, cannot fail to contribute towards a result more satisfactory than the generally vague and illogical religious opinion of the present day. Even true conclusions which are arrived at either accidentally or by wrong methods are dangerous. The current which by good fortune led to-day to truth may to-morrow waft us to falsehood. That such an investigation cannot, even at the present time, be carried on in England without incurring much enmity and opposition need scarcely be remarked, however loudly the duty and liberty of inquiry be theoretically proclaimed, and the reason is obvious.
If we look at the singular diversity of views entertained, not only with regard to the doctrines, but also to the evidences, of Christianity, we cannot but be struck by the helpless position in which Divine Revelation is now placed.
Orthodox Christians at the present day may be divided into two broad classes, one of which professes to base the Church upon the Bible, and the other the Bible upon the Church. The one party assert that the Bible is fully and absolutely inspired, that it contains God's revelation to man, and that it is the only and sufficient ground for all religious belief; and they maintain that its authenticity is proved by the most ample and irrefragable external as well as internal evidence. What then must be the feeling of any ordinary mind on hearing, on the other hand, that men of undoubted piety and learning, as well as unquestioned orthodoxy, within the Church of England, admit that the Bible is totally without literary or historical evidence, and cannot for a moment be upheld upon any such grounds as the revealed word of God; that none of the great doctrines of ecclesiastical Christianity can be deduced from the Bible alone;(1) and that, "if it be impossible to accept the literary method of dealing with Holy Scripture, the usual mode of arguing the truth of Revelation, ab extra, merely from what are called 'Evidences'—whether of Miracles done or Prophecies uttered thousands of years ago—must also be insufficient."?(2) It cannot be much comfort to be assured by them that, notwithstanding this absence of external and internal evidence, this Revelation stands upon the sure basis of the inspiration of a Church, which has so little ground in history for any claim to infallibility. The unsupported testimony of a Church which in every age has vehemently maintained errors and denounced truths which are now universally recognized is no sufficient guarantee of Divine Revelation. Obviously, there is no ground for accepting from a fallible Church and fallacious tradition doctrines which, avowedly, are beyond the criterion of reason, and therefore require miraculous evidence.
With belief based upon such uncertain grounds, and with such vital difference of views regarding evidence, it is not surprising that ecclesiastical Christianity has felt its own weakness, and entrenched itself against the assaults of investigation. It is not strange that intellectual vigour in any direction should, almost unconsciously, have been regarded as dangerous to the repose and authority of the Church, and that, instead of being welcomed as a virtue, religious inquiry has almost been repelled as a crime. Such inquiry, however, cannot be suppressed. Mere scientific questions may be regarded with apathy by those who do not feel their personal bearing. It may possibly seem to some a matter of little practical importance to them to determine whether the earth revolves round the sun, or the sun round the earth; but no earnest mind can fail to perceive the immense personal importance of Truth in regard to Religion—the necessity of investigating, before accepting, dogmas, the right interpretation of which is represented as necessary to salvation—and the clear duty, before abandoning reason for faith, to exercise reason, in order that faith may not be mere credulity. As Bacon remarked, the injunction: "Hold fast that which is good," must always be preceded by the maxim: "Prove all things." Even Archbishop Trench has said: "Credulity is as real, if not so great, a sin as unbelief," applying the observation to the duty of demanding a "sign" from any one professing to be the utterer of a revelation: "Else might he lightly be persuaded to receive that as from God, which, indeed, was only the word of man."(1) The acceptance of any revelation or dogma, however apparently true in itself, without "sign"—without evidence satisfying the reason, is absolute credulity. Even the most thorough advocate of Faith must recognise that reason must be its basis, and that faith can only legitimately commence where reason fails. The appeal is first to reason if afterwards to faith, and no man pretending to intellectual conscience can overlook the primary claim of reason. If it is to be more than a mere question of priority of presentation whether we are to accept Buddhism, Christianity, or Mahometanism, we must strictly and fearlessly examine the evidence upon which they profess to stand. The neglect of examination can never advance truth, as the severest scrutiny can never retard it, but belief without discrimination can only foster ignorance and superstition.
It was in this conviction that the following inquiry into the reality of Divine Revelation was originally undertaken, and that others should enter upon it. An able writer, who will not be suspected of exaggeration on this subject, has said: "The majority of mankind, perhaps, owe their belief rather to the outward influence of custom and education, than to any strong principle of faith within; and it is to be feared that many if they came to perceive how wonderful what they believed was, would not find their belief so easy, and so matter-of-course a thing as they appear to find it."(2) To no earnest mind can such inquiry be otherwise than a serious and often a painful task, but, dismissing preconceived ideas and preferences derived from habit and education, and seeking only the Truth, holding it, whatever it may be, to be the only object worthy of desire, or capable of satisfying a rational mind, the quest cannot but end in peace and satisfaction. In such an investigation, however, to quote words of Archbishop Whately: "It makes all the difference in the world whether we place Truth in the first place or in the second place."—for if Truth acquired do not compensate for every pet illusion dispelled, the path is thorny indeed, although it must still be faithfully trodden.
The argument of those who assert the possibility and reality of miracles generally takes the shape of an attack, more or less direct, upon our knowledge of the order of nature. To establish an exception they contest the rule. Dr. Mozley, however, is not content with the ordinary objections advanced by apologists but, boldly entering into the mazes of a delicate philosophical problem, he adopts sceptical arguments and seeks to turn the flank of the enemy upon his own ground. He conducts his attack with unusual force and ability. "Whatever difficulty there is in believing in miracles in general," he says, "arises from the circumstance that they are in contradiction to or unlike the order of nature. To estimate the force of this difficulty, then, we must first understand what kind of belief it is which we have in the order of nature; for the weight of the objection to the miraculous must depend on the nature of the belief to which the miraculous is opposed."(1) Dr. Mozley defines the meaning of the phrase, "order of nature" as the connection of that part of the order of nature of which we are ignorant with that part of it which we know, the former being expected to be such and such, because the latter is. But how do we justify this expectation of likeness? We cannot do so, and all our arguments are mere statements of the belief itself, he affirms, and not reasons to account for it. It may be said, e.g., that when a fact of nature has gone on repeating itself a certain time, such repetition shows that there is a permanent cause at work, and that a permanent cause produces permanently recurring effects. But what is there to show the existence of a permanent cause? Nothing. The effects which have taken place show a cause at work to the extent of these effects, but not further. That this cause is of a more permanent nature we have no evidence. Why then do we expect the further continuance of these effects.(2) We can only say: because we believe the future will be like the past. After a physical phenomenon has even occurred every day for years we have nothing but the past repetition to justify our certain expectation of its future repetition.(3) Do we think it giving a reason for our confidence in the future to say that, though no man has had experience of what is future, every man has had experience of what was future? It is true that what is future becomes at every step of our advance what was future, but that which is now still future is not the least altered by that circumstance; it is as invisible, as unknown, and as unexplored as if it were the very beginning and the very starting-point of nature. At this starting-point of nature what would a man know of its future course? Nothing. At this moment he knows no more.(4) What ground of reason, then, can we assign for our expectation that any part of the course of nature will the next moment be like what it has been up to this moment, i.e., for our belief in the uniformity of nature? None. It is without a reason. It rests upon no rational ground, and can be traced to no rational principle.(1) The belief in the order of nature being thus an "unintelligent impulse" of which we cannot give any rational account, Dr. Mozley concludes, the ground is gone upon which it could be maintained that miracles, as opposed to the order of nature, were opposed to reason. A miracle in being opposed to our experience is not only not opposed to necessary reasoning, but to any reasoning.(2) We need not further follow the Bampton Lecturer, as with clearness and ability he applies this reasoning to the argument of "Experience," until he pauses triumphantly to exclaim: "Thus step by step has philosophy loosened the connection of the order of nature with the ground of reason, befriending, in exact proportion as it has done this, the principle of miracles."(3)
We need not here enter upon any abstract argument regarding the permanence or otherwise of cause: it will be sufficient to deal with these objections in a simpler and more direct way. Dr. Mozley, of course, acknowledges that the principle of the argument from experience is that "which makes human life practicable; which utilizes all our knowledge; which makes the past anything more than an irrelevant picture to us; for of what use is the experience of the past to us unless we believe the future will be like it?'(4) Our knowledge in all things is relative, and there are sharp and narrow limits to human thought. It is therefore evident that, in the absence of absolute knowledge, our belief must be accorded to that of which we have more full cognizance rather than to that which is contradicted by all that we do know. It may be "irrational" to feel entire confidence that the sun will "rise" tomorrow, or that the moon will continue to wax and wane as in the past, but we shall without doubt retain this belief, and reject any assertion, however positive, that the earth will stand still to-morrow, or that it did so some thousands of years ago. Evidence must take its relative place in the finite scale of knowledge and thought, and if we do not absolutely know anything whatever, so long as one thing is more fully established than another, we must hold to that which rests upon the more certain basis. Our belief in the invariability of the order of nature, therefore, being based upon more certain grounds than any other human opinion, we must of necessity refuse credence to a statement supported by infinitely less complete testimony, and contradicted by universal experience, that phenomena subversive of that order occurred many years ago, or we must cease to believe anything at all. If belief based upon unvarying experience be irrational, how much more irrational must belief be which is opposed to that experience. According to Dr. Mozley, it is quite irrational to believe that a stone dropped from the hand, for instance, will fall to the ground. It is true that all the stones we ourselves have ever dropped, or seen dropped, have so fallen, and equally true that all stones so dropped as far back as historic records, and those still more authentic and ancient records of earth's crust itself go, have done the same, but that does not justify our belief, upon any grounds of reason, that the next stone we drop will do so. If we be told, however, that upon one occasion a stone so dropped, instead of falling to the ground, rose up into the air and continued there, we have only two courses open to us: either to disbelieve the fact, and attribute the statement to error of observation, or to reduce the past to a mere irrelevant picture, and the mind to a blank page equally devoid of all belief and of all intelligent reasoning.
Dr. Mozley's argument, however, is fatal to his own cause. It is admitted that miracles, "or visible suspensions of the order of nature,"(1) cannot have any evidential force unless they be supernatural, and out of the natural sequence of ordinary phenomena. Now, unless there be an actual order of nature, how can there be any exception to it? If our belief in it be not based upon any ground of reason—as Dr. Mozley maintains, in order to assert that miracles or visible suspensions of that order are not contrary to reason—how can it be asserted that miracles are supernatural? If we have no rational ground for believing that the future will be like the past, what rational ground can we have for thinking that anything which happens is exceptional, and out of the common course of nature? Because it has not happened before? That is no reason whatever; because the fact that a thing has happened ten millions of times is no rational justification of our expectation that it will happen again. If the reverse of that which had happened previously took place on the ten million and first time we should have no rational ground for surprise, and no reason for affirming that it did not occur in the most natural manner. Because we cannot explain its cause? We cannot explain the cause of anything. Our belief that there is any permanent cause is a mere unintelligent impulse. We can only say that there is a cause sufficient to produce an isolated effect, but we do not know the nature of that cause, and it is a mere irrational instinct to suppose that any cause produces continuous effects, or is more than momentary. A miracle, consequently, becomes a mere isolated effect from an unknown cause, in the midst of other merely isolated phenomena from unknown causes, and it is as irrational to wonder at the occurrence of what is new, as to expect the recurrence of what is old. In fact, an order of nature is at once necessary, and fatal, to miracles. If there be no order of nature, miracles cannot be considered supernatural occurrences, and have no evidential value; if there be an order of nature, the evidence for its immutability must consequently exceed the evidence for these isolated deviations from it. If we are unable rationally to form expectations of the future from unvarying experience in the past, it is still more irrational to call that supernatural which is merely different from our past experience. Take, for instance, the case of supposed exemption from the action of the law of gravitation, which Archbishop Trench calls "a lost prerogative of our race:"(1) we cannot rationally affirm that next week we may not be able to walk on the sea, or ascend bodily into the air. To deny this because we have not hitherto been able to do so is unreasonable; for, as Dr. Mozley maintains, it is a mere irrational impulse which expects that which has hitherto happened, when we have made such attempts, to happen again next week. If we cannot rationally deny the possibility, however, that we may be able at some future time to walk on the sea or ascend into the air, the statement that these phenomena have already occurred loses all its force, and such occurrences cease to be in any way supernatural. If, on the other hand, it would be irrational to affirm that we may next week become exempt from the operation of the law of gravitation, it can only be so by the admission that unvarying experience forbids the entertainment of such a hypothesis, and in that case it equally forbids belief in the statement that such acts ever actually took place. If we deny the future possibility on any ground of reason, we admit that we have grounds of reason for expecting the future to be like the past, and therefore contradict Dr. Mozley's conclusion; and if we cannot deny it upon any ground of reason, we extinguish the claim of such occurrences in the past to any supernatural character. Any argument which could destroy faith in the order of nature would be equally destructive to miracles. If we have no right to believe in a rule, there can be no right to speak of exceptions. The result in any case is this, that whether the principle of the order of nature be established or refuted, the supernatural pretensions of miracles are disallowed.
More than this, however, must inevitably be deduced from Dr. Mozley's reasoning. In denying, as he does, the doctrine of a permanent cause, Dr. Mozley must equally renounce, as without foundation in reason, the assumption of a permanent agent working miracles. Not only do the supposed miracles, in the complete isolation of all effects, cease to be supernatural or even exceptional, but as it cannot be affirmed that there is any cause of a nature more permanent than its existing or known effects, it is obvious that miracles cannot be traced to an eternal Being of permanent omnipotence. If Dr. Mozley, therefore, be understood to adopt this reasoning as his own, he has involved himself, in the necessary abandonment both of miracles as supernatural occurrences, and of a permanent and unlimited cause of miracles. If, on the other hand, he has merely snatched the sword of an adversary to turn it against him, he has unfortunately impaled himself upon the borrowed weapon.
2.
Throughout the whole of his argument against the rationality of belief in the order of nature, the rigorous precision which Dr. Mozley unrelentingly demands from his antagonists is remarkable. They are not permitted to deviate by a hair's breadth from the line of strict logic, and the most absolute exactness of demonstration is required. Anything like an assumption or argument from analogy is excluded; induction is allowed to add no reason to bare and isolated facts; and the belief that the sun will rise to-morrow morning is, with pitiless severity, written down as mere unintelligent impulse. Belief in the return of day, based upon the unvarying experience of all past time, is declared to be without any ground of reason. We find anything but fault with strictness of argument; but it is fair that equal precision should be observed by those who assert miracles, and that assumption and inaccuracy should be excluded. Hitherto, as we have frequently pointed out, we have met with very little or nothing but assumption in support of miracles; but, encouraged by the inflexible spirit of Dr. Mozley's attack upon the argument from experience, we may look for similar precision from himself.
Proceeding, however, from his argument against the rationality of belief in the order of nature to his more direct argument for miracles, we are astonished to find a total abandonment of the rigorous exactness imposed upon his antagonists, and a complete relapse into assumptions. Dr. Mozley does not conceal the fact. "The peculiarity of the argument of miracles," he frankly admits, "is, that it begins and ends with an assumption; I mean relatively to that argument."(1) Such an argument is no argument at all; it is a mere petitio principii, incapable of proving anything. The nature of the assumptions obviously does not in the slightest degree affect this conclusion. It is true that the statement of the particular assumptions may constitute an appeal to belief otherwise derived, and evolve feelings which may render the calm exercise of judgment more difficult, but the fact remains absolute, that an argument which "begins and ends with an assumption" is totally impotent. It remains an assumption, and is not an argument at all.
Notwithstanding this unfortunate and disqualifying "peculiarity" we may examine the argument. It is as follows: "We assume the existence of a Personal Deity prior to the proof of miracles in the religious sense; but with this assumption the question of miracles is at an end; because such a Being has necessarily the power to suspend those laws of nature which He has Himself enacted."(1) The "question of miracles," which Dr. Mozley here asserts to be at an end on the assumption of a "Personal Deity," is of course merely that of the possibility of miracles; but it is obvious that, even with the precise definition of Deity which is assumed, instead of the real "question" being at an end, it only commences. The power to suspend the laws of nature being assumed, the will to suspend them has to be demonstrated, and the actual occurrence of any such suspension, which, it has already been shown, is contrary to reason. The subject is, moreover, complicated by the occurrence of Satanic as well as Divine suspensions of the order of nature, and by the necessity of assuming a Personal Devil as well as a Personal Deity, and his power to usurp that control over the laws of nature, which is assumed as the prerogative of the Deity, and to suspend them in direct opposition to God. The express ascription of miracles to the special intervention of a Personal God is also, as we have seen, excluded by the Scriptural admission that there are other supernatural beings capable of performing them. Even Dr. Newman has recognized this, and, in a passage already quoted, he says: "For the cogency of the argument from Miracles depends on the assumption, that interruptions in the course of nature must ultimately proceed from God; which is not true, if they may be effected by other beings without His sanction."(1) The first assumption, in fact, leads to nothing but assumptions connected with the unseen, unknown and supernatural, which are beyond the limits of reason.
Dr. Mozley is well aware that his assumption of a "Personal" Deity is not susceptible of proof;(2) indeed, this is admitted in the statement that the definition is an "assumption." He quotes the obvious reply which may be made regarding this assumption:—"Everybody must collect from the harmony of the physical universe the existence of a God, but in acknowledging a God, we do not thereby acknowledge this peculiar doctrinal conception of a God. We see in the structure of nature a mind—a universal mind—but still a mind which only operates and expresses itself by law. Nature only does and only can inform us of mind in nature, the partner and correlative of organized matter. Nature, therefore, can speak to the existence of a God in this sense, and can speak to the omnipotence of God in a sense coinciding with the actual facts of nature; but in no other sense does nature witness to the existence of an Omnipotent Supreme Being. Of a universal Mind out of nature, nature says nothing, and of an Omnipotence which does not possess an inherent limit in nature, she says nothing either. And, therefore, that conception of a Supreme Being which represents him as a Spirit independent of the physical universe, and able from a standing-place external to nature to interrupt its order, is a conception of God for which we must go elsewhere. That conception is obtained from revelation which is asserted to be proved by miracles. But that being the case, this doctrine of Theism rests itself upon miracles, and, therefore, miracles cannot rest upon this doctrine of Theism."(1) With his usual fairness, Dr. Mozley, while questioning the correctness of the premiss of this argument, admits that, if established, the consequence stated would follow, "and more, for miracles being thrown back upon the same ground on which Theism is, the whole evidence of revelation becomes a vicious circle, and the fabric is left suspended in space, revelation resting on miracles and miracles resting on revelation."(2) He not only recognizes, however, that the conception of a Person al" Deity cannot be proved, but he distinctly confesses that it was obtained from revelation,(3) and from nowhere else, and these necessary admissions obviously establish the correctness of the premiss, and involve the consequence pointed out, that the evidence of revelation is a mere vicious circle. Dr. Mozley attempts to argue that, although the idea was first obtained through this channel, "the truth once possessed is seen to rest upon grounds of natural reason."(4) Why, then, does he call it an assumption? The argument by which he seeks to show that the conception is seen to rest upon grounds of natural reason is: "We naturally attribute to the design of a Personal Being a contrivance which is directed to the existence of a Personal Being. … From personality at one end I infer personality at the other." Dr. Mozley's own sense of the weakness of his argument, however, and his natural honesty of mind oblige him continually to confess the absence of evidence. A few paragraphs further on he admits:—"Not, however, that the existence of a God is so clearly seen by reason as to dispense with faith;"(1) but he endeavours to convince us that faith is reason, only reason acting under peculiar circumstances: when reason draws conclusions which are not backed by experience, reason is then called faith.(2) The issue of the argument, he contends, is so amazing, that if we do not tremble for its safety it must be on account of a practical principle, which makes us confide and trust in reasons, and that principle is faith. We are not aware that conviction can be arrived at regarding any matter otherwise than by confidence in the correctness of the reasons, and what Dr. Mozley really means by faith, here, is confidence and trust in a conclusion for which there are no reasons.
It is almost incredible that the same person who had just been denying grounds of reason to conclusions from unvarying experience, and excluding from them the results of inductive reasoning—who had denounced as unintelligent impulse and irrational instinct the faith that the sun, which has risen without fail every morning since time began, will rise again to-morrow, could thus argue. In fact, from the very commencement of the direct plea for miracles, calm logical reasoning is abandoned, and the argument becomes entirely ad hominem. Mere feeling is substituted for thought, and in the inability to be precise and logical, the lecturer appeals to the generally prevailing inaccuracy of thought.(1) "Faith, then," he concludes, "is unverified reason; reason which has not yet received the verification of the final test, but is still expectant." In science this, at the best, would be called mere "hypothesis," but accuracy can scarcely be expected where the argument continues: "Indeed, does not our heart bear witness to the fact that to believe in a God"—i.e., a Personal God—"is an exercise of faith?" &c.(2)
It does not help Dr. Mozley that Butler, Paley, and all other divines have equally been obliged to commence with the same assumption; and, indeed, as we have already remarked, Dr. Mozley honestly admits the difficulty of the case, and while naturally making the most of his own views, he does not disguise the insecurity of the position. He deprecates that school which maintains that any average man, taken out of a crowd, who has sufficient common sense to manage his own affairs, is a fit judge, and such a judge as was originally contemplated, of the Christian evidences;(3) and he says: "It is not, indeed, consistent with truth, nor would it conduce to the real defence of Christianity, to underrate the difficulties of the Christian evidence; or to disguise this characteristic of it, that the very facts which constitute the evidence of revelation have to be accepted by an act of faith themselves, before they can operate as a proof of that further truth."(4) Such evidence is manifestly worthless. After all his assumptions, Dr. Mozley is reduced to the necessity of pleading: "A probable fact is a probable evidence. I may, therefore, use a miracle as evidence of a revelation, though
I have only probable evidence for the miracle."(1) The probability of the miracle, however, is precisely what is denied, as opposed to reason and experience, and incompatible with the order of nature. A cause is, indeed, weak when so able an advocate is reduced to such reasoning.
The deduction which is drawn from the assumption of a "Personal" Deity is, as we have seen, merely the possibility of miracles. "Paley's criticism," said the late Dean of St. Paul's, "is, after all, the true one—'once believe that there is a God, and miracles are not incredible.'"(2) The assumption, therefore, although of vital importance in the event of its rejection, does not very materially advance the cause of miracles if established. We have already seen that the assumption is avowedly incapable of proof, but it may be well to examine it a little more closely in connection with the inferences supposed to be derivable from it. We must, however, in doing so carefully avoid being led into a metaphysical argument, which would be foreign to the purpose of this inquiry.
In his Bampton Lectures on "The Limit of Religious Thought," delivered in 1858, Dr. Mansel, the very able editor and disciple of Sir William Hamilton, discussed this subject with great minuteness, and although we cannot pretend here to follow him through the whole of his singular argument—a theological application of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy—we must sufficiently represent it. Dr. Mansel argues: We are absolutely incapable of conceiving or proving the existence of God as he is; and so far is human reason from being able to construct a theology independent of revelation that it cannot even read the alphabet out of which that theology must be formed.(1) We are compelled, by the constitution of our minds, to believe in the existence of an Absolute and Infinite Being; but the instant we attempt to analyse, we are involved in inextricable confusion.(2) Our moral consciousness demands that we should conceive him as a Personality, but personality, as we conceive it, is essentially a limitation; to speak of an Absolute and Infinite Person is simply to use language to which no mode of human thought can possibly attach itself.(3) This amounts simply to an admission that our knowledge of God does not satisfy the conditions of speculative philosophy, and is incapable of reduction to an ultimate and absolute truth.(4) It is, therefore, reasonable that we should expect to find that the revealed manifestation of the Divine nature and attributes should likewise carry the marks of subordination to some higher truth, of which it indicates the existence, but does not make known the substance; and that our apprehension of the revealed Deity should involve mysteries inscrutable, and doubts insoluble by our present faculties, while at the same time it inculcates the true spirit in which doubt should be dealt with by warning us that our knowledge of God, though revealed by himself, is revealed in relation to human faculties, and subject to the limitations and imperfections inseparable from the constitution of the human mind.(1) We need not, of course, point out that the reality of revelation is here assumed. Elsewhere, Dr. Mansel maintains that philosophy, by its own incongruities, has no claim to be accepted as a competent witness; and, on the other hand, human personality cannot be assumed as an exact copy of the Divine, but only as that which is most nearly analogous to it among finite things.(2) As we are, therefore, incapable on the one hand of a clear conception of the Divine Being, and have only analogy to guide us in conceiving his attributes, we have no criterion of religious truth or falsehood, enabling us to judge of the ways of God, represented by revelation,(3) and have no right to judge of his justice, or mercy, or goodness, by the standard of human morality.
It is impossible to conceive an argument more vicious, or more obviously warped to favour already accepted conclusions of revelation:—As finite beings we are not only incapable of proving the existence of God, but even of conceiving him as he is; therefore we may conceive him as he is not. To attribute personality to him is a limitation totally incompatible with the idea of an Absolute and Infinite Being, in which "we are compelled by the constitution of our minds to believe;" and to speak of him as a personality is "to use language to which no mode of human thought can possibly attach itself;" but, nevertheless, to satisfy supposed demands of our moral consciousness, we are to conceive him as a personality. Although we must define the Supreme Being as a personality to satisfy our moral consciousness, we must not, we are told, make the same moral consciousness the criterion of the attributes of that personality. We must not suppose him to be endowed, for instance, with the perfection of morality according to our ideas of it; but, on the contrary, we must hold that his moral perfections are at best only analogous, and often contradictory, to our standard of morality.1 As soon as we conceive a Personal Deity to satisfy our moral consciousness, we have to abandon the personality which satisfies that consciousness, in order to accept the characteristics of a supposed Revelation, to reconcile certain statements of which we must admit that we have no criterion of truth or falsehood enabling us to judge of the ways of God.
Now, in reference to the assumption of a Personal Deity as a preliminary to the proof of miracles, it must be clearly remembered that the contents of the revelation which miracles are to authenticate cannot have any weight. Antecedently, then, it is admitted that personality is a limitation which is absolutely excluded by the ideas of the Deity, which, it is asserted, the constitution of our minds compete us to form. It cannot, therefore, be rationally assumed. To admit that such a conception is false, and then to base conclusions upon it, as though it were true, is absurd. It is child's play to satisfy our feeling and imagination by the conscious sacrifice of our reason. Moreover, Dr. Mansel admits that the conception of a Personal Deity is really derived from the revelation, which has to be rendered credible by miracles; therefore the consequence already pointed out ensues, that the assumption cannot be used to prove miracles. "It must be allowed that it is not through reasoning that men obtain the first intimation of their relation to the Deity; and that, had they been left to the guidance of their intellectual faculties alone, it is possible that no such intimation might have taken place; or at best, that it would have been but as one guess, out of many equally plausible and equally natural."(1) The vicious circle of the argument is here again apparent, and the singular reasoning by which the late Dean of St. Paul's seeks to drive us into an acceptance of Revelation is really the strongest argument against it. The impossibility of conceiving God as he is,(2) which is insisted upon, instead of being a reason for assuming his personality, or for accepting Jewish conceptions of him, totally excludes such an assumption.
This "great religious assumption"(1) is not suggested by any antecedent considerations, but is required to account for miracles, and is derived from the very Revelation which miracles are to attest. "In nature and from nature," to quote Words of Professor Baden Powell, "by science and by reason, we neither have nor can possibly have any evidence of a Deity working miracles;—for that we must go out of nature and beyond science. If we could have any such evidence from nature, it could only prove extraordinary natural effects, which would not be miracles in the old theological sense, as isolated, unrelated, and uncaused; whereas no physical fact can be conceived as unique, or without analogy and relation to others, and to the whole system of natural causes."(2) Being, therefore, limited to Reason for any feeble conception of a Divine Being of which we may be capable, and Reason being totally opposed to the idea of an order of nature so imperfect as to require or permit repeated interference, and rejecting the supposition of arbitrary suspensions of Law, such a conception of a Deity as is proposed by theologians must be pronounced irrational and derogatory. It is impossible for us to conceive a Supreme Being acting otherwise than we actually see in nature, and if we recognize in the universe the operation of infinite wisdom and power, it is in the immutable order and regularity of all phenomena, and in the eternal prevalence of Law, that we see their highest manifestation. This is no conception based merely upon observation of law and order in the material world, as Dr. Mansel insinuates,(1) but it is likewise the result of the highest exercise of mind. Dr. Mansel "does not hesitate to affirm with Sir William Hamilton "that the class of phenomena which requires that kind of cause we denominate a Deity is exclusively given in the phenomena of mind; that the phenomena of matter, taken by themselves, do not warrant any inference to the existence of a God."(2) After declaring a Supreme Being, from every point of view, inconceivable by our finite minds, it is singular to find him thrusting upon us, in consequence, a conception of that Being which almost makes us exclaim with Bacon: "It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely."(3) Dr. Mansel asks: "Is matter or mind the truer image of God?"(4) But both matter and mind unite in repudiating so unworthy a conception of a God, and in rejecting the idea of suspensions of Law. In the words of Spinoza: "From miracles we can neither infer the nature, the existence, nor the providence of God, but, on the contrary, these may be much better comprehended from the fixed and immutable order of nature;"(1) indeed, as he adds, miracles, as contrary to the order of nature, would rather lead us to doubt the existence of God.(2)
Six centuries before our era, a noble thinker, Xenophanes of Colophon, whose pure mind soared far above the base anthropomorphic mythologies of Homer and Hesiod, and anticipated some of the highest results of the Platonic philosophy, finely said:—
"There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals, Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten, With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members;'
So if oxen or lions had hands and could work iu man's fashion, And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead, Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, Each kind the Divine with its own form and nature endowing."(4)
He illustrates this profound observation by pointing out that the Ethiopians represent their deities as black with flat noses, while the Thracians make them blue-eyed with ruddy complexions, and, similarly, the Medes and the Persians and Egyptians portray their gods like themselves.(1) The Jewish idea of God was equally anthropomorphic; but their highest conception was certainly that which the least resembled themselves, and which described the Almighty as "without variableness or shadow of turning," and as giving a law to the universe which shall not be broken.(2)
3.
None of the arguments with which we have yet met have succeeded in making miracles in the least degree antecedently credible. On the contrary they have been based upon mere assumptions incapable of proof and devoid of probability. On the other hand there are the strongest reasons for affirming that such phenomena are antecedently incredible. Dr. Mozley's attack which we discussed in the first part of this chapter, and which of course was chiefly based upon Hume's celebrated argument, never seriously grappled the doctrine at all. The principle which opposes itself to belief in miracles is very simple. Whatever is contradictory to universal and invariable experience is antecedently incredible, and as that sequence of phenomena which is called the order of nature is established by and in accordance with universal experience, miracles or alleged violations of that order, by whatever name they may be called, or whatever definition may be given of their characteristics or object, are antecedently incredible. The preponderance of evidence for the invariability of the order of nature, in fact, is so enormous that it is impossible to credit the reality of such variations from it, and reason and experience concur in attributing the ascription of a miraculous character to any actual occurrences which may have been witnessed to imperfect observation, mistaken inference or some other of the numerous sources of error. Any allegation of the interference of a new and supernatural agent, upon such an occasion, to account for results, in contradiction of the known sequence of cause and effect, is excluded by the very same principle, for invariable experience being as opposed to the assertion that such interference ever takes place as it is to the occurrence of miraculous phenomena, the allegation is necessarily disbelieved.
Apologists find it much more convenient to evade the simple but effective arguments of Hume than to answer them, and where it is possible they dismiss them with a sneer, and hasten on to less dangerous ground. For instance, a recent Hulsean Lecturer, arguing the antecedent credibility of the miraculous, makes the following remarks: "Now, as regards the inadequacy of testimony to establish a miracle, modern scepticism has not advanced one single step beyond the blank assertion. And it is astonishing that this assertion should still be considered cogent, when its logical consistency has been shattered to pieces by a host of writers as well sceptical as Christian (Mill's Logic, ii., 157—160). For, as the greatest of our living logicians has remarked, the supposed recondite and dangerous formula of Hume—that it is more probable that testimony should be mistaken than that miracles should be true—reduces itself to the very harmless proposition that anything is incredible which is contrary to a complete induction. It is in fact a flagrant petitio principii, used to support a wholly unphilosophical assertion."(1) It is much more astonishing that so able a man as Dr. Farrar could so misunderstand Hume's argument and so misinterpret and mis-state Mr. Mill's remarks upon it. So far from shattering to pieces the logical consistency of Hume's reasoning, Mr. Mill substantially confirms it, and pertinently remarks that "it speaks ill for the state of philosophical speculation on such subjects" that so simple and evident a doctrine should have been accounted a dangerous heresy. It is, in fact, the statement of a truth which should have been universally recognized, and would have been so, but for its unwelcome and destructive bearing upon popular theology.
petitio principiiexperimentum crurispetitio principiipetitio principiiwithout any counteracting causeif present,