AN INQUIRY INTO THE REALITY OF DIVINE REVELATION.
PART I.
CHAPTER I. MIRACLES IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY
At the very outset of inquiry into the origin and true character of Christianity we are brought face to face with the Supernatural. Christianity professes to be a Divine Revelation of truths which the human intellect could not otherwise have discovered. It is not a form of religion developed by the wisdom of man and appealing to his reason, but a system miraculously communicated to the human race, the central doctrines of which are either superhuman or untenable. If the truths said to be revealed were either of an ordinary character or naturally attainable they would at once discredit the claim to a Divine origin. No one could maintain that a system discoverable by Reason would be supernaturally communicated. The whole argument for Christianity turns upon the necessity of such a Revelation and the consequent probability that it would be made.
There is nothing singular, it may be remarked, in the claim of Christianity to be a direct Revelation from God. With the exception of the religions of Greece and Rome, which, however, also had their subsidiary supposition of divine inspiration, there has scarcely been any system of Religion which has not been proclaimed to the world as a direct divine communication. Long before Christianity claimed this character, the religions of India had anticipated the idea. To quote the words of an accomplished scholar:—"According to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or other the work of the Deity; and even those who received it were not supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of common humanity, and less liable, therefore, to error in the reception of revealed truth."(1) The same origin is claimed for the religion of Zoroaster, whose doctrines, beyond doubt, exercised great influence at least upon later Jewish theology, and whose Magian followers are appropriately introduced beside the cradle of Jesus, as the first to do honour to the birth of Christianity. In the same way Mahomet announced his religion as directly communicated from heaven.
Christianity, however, as a religion professing to be divinely revealed, is not only supernatural in origin and doctrine, but its claim to acceptance is necessarily based upon supernatural evidence; for it is obvious that truths which require to be miraculously communicated do not come within the range of our intellect, and cannot, therefore, be intelligently received upon internal testimony. "And, certainly," says a recent able Bampton Lecturer, "if it was the will of God to give a revelation, there are plain and obvious reasons for asserting that miracles are necessary as the guarantee and voucher for that revelation. A revelation is, properly speaking, such only by virtue of telling us something which we could not know without it. But how do we know that that communication of what is undiscoverable by human reason is true? Our reason cannot prove the truth of it, for it is by the very supposition beyond our reason. There must be, then, some note or sign to certify to it and distinguish it as a true communication from God, which note can be nothing else than a miracle."(1) In another place the same Lecturer stigmatizes the belief of the Mahometan "as in its very principle irrational," because he accepts the account which Mahomet gave of himself, without supernatural evidence.(2) The belief of the Christian is contrasted with it as rational, "because the Christian believes in a supernatural dispensation upon the proper evidence of such a dispensation, viz., the miraculous."(3) Mahomet is reproached with having "an utterly barbarous idea of evidence, and a total miscalculation of the claims of reason," because he did not consider miraculous evidence necessary to attest a supernatural dispensation;" whereas the Gospel is adapted to perpetuity for this cause especially, with others, that it was founded upon a true calculation, and a foresight of the permanent need of evidence; our Lord admitting the inadequacy of His own mere word, and the necessity of a rational guarantee to His revelation of His own nature and commission."(4)
The spontaneous offer of miraculous evidence, indeed, has always been advanced as a special characteristic of Christianity, logically entitling it to acceptance in contradistinction to all other religions. "It is an acknowledged historical fact," says Bishop Butler, "that Christianity offered itself to the world, and demanded to be received, upon the allegation, i. e,, as unbelievers would speak, upon the pretence, of miracles, publicly wrought to attest the truth of it in such an age; … and Christianity, including the dispensation of the Old Testament, seems distinguished by this from all other religions."(1)
Most of the great English divines have clearly recognized and asserted the necessity of supernatural evidence to establish the reality of a supernatural revelation. Bishop Butler affirms miracles and the completion of prophecy to be the "direct and fundamental proofs" of Christianity.(2) Elsewhere he says: "The notion of a miracle, considered as a proof of a divine mission, has been stated with great exactness by divines, and is, I think, sufficiently understood by every one. There are also invisible miracles, the Incarnation of Christ, for instance, which, being secret, cannot be alleged as a proof of such a mission; but require themselves to be proved by visible miracles. Revelation itself, too, is miraculous; and miracles are the proof of it."(3) Paley states the case with equal clearness: "In what way can a revelation be made but by miracles? In none which we are able to conceive."(4) His argument in fact is founded upon the principle that: "nothing but miracles could decide the authority" of Christianity.(1) In another work he asserts that no man can prove a future retribution, but the teacher "who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God."(2) Bishop Atterbury, again, referring to the principal doctrines of ecclesiastical Christianity, says: "It is this kind of Truth that God is properly said to reveal; Truths, of which, unless revealed, we should have always continued ignorant; and 'tis in order only to prove these Truths to have been really revealed, that we affirm Miracles to be Necessary."(3)
Dr. Heurtley, the Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, after pointing out that the doctrines taught as the Christian Revelation are such as could not by any possibility have been attained by the unassisted human reason, and that, consequently, it is reasonable that they should be attested by miracles, continues: "Indeed, it seems inconceivable how without miracles—including prophecy in the notion of a miracle—it could sufficiently have commended itself to men's belief? Who would believe, or would be justified in believing, the great facts which constitute its substance on the ipse dixit of an unaccredited teacher? and how, except by miracles, could the first teacher be accredited? Paley, then, was fully warranted in the assertion … that 'we cannot conceive a revelation'—such a revelation of course as Christianity professes to be, a revelation of truths which transcend man's ability to discover—' to be substantiated without miracles.' Other credentials, it is true, might be exhibited in addition to miracles—and such it would be natural to look for—but it seems impossible that miracles could be dispensed with."(1) Dr. Mansel, the late Dean of St. Paul's, bears similar testimony: "A teacher who proclaims himself to be specially sent by God, and whose teaching is to be received on the authority of that mission, must, from the nature of the case, establish his claim by proofs of another kind than those which merely evince his human wisdom or goodness. A superhuman authority needs to be substantiated by superhuman evidence; and what is superhuman is miraculous."(2)
Dr. J. H. Newman, in discussing the idea and scope of miracles,