In the first part of the work the following topics are discussed by the author:—"Miracles in relation to Christianity and the order of nature—Reason in relation to the order of nature—The age of miracles—The permanent stream of miraculous pretension—Miracles in relation to ignorance and superstition."

In stating the main purpose of his inquiry, he says (p. 8):—"It is obvious that the reality of miracles is the vital point in the investigation which we have undertaken." "If the reality of miracles cannot be established, Christianity loses the only evidence by which its truth can be sufficiently attested."

He might have dispensed with his arguments against the views of those who endeavour to bring the miracles of the Bible within the scope of the laws of nature, and to modify them by explanatory interpretations so as to satisfy the demands of scientific and philosophical theologians.

Christianity admits of no such treatment. In its essence it is superhuman, abnormal, phenomenal, supernatural, though not unnatural. A series of facts divinely attested, a proclamation of mercy divinely commissioned, a system of means divinely blessed, is the true definition of the gospel.

Discussing the antecedent credibility of miracles, our author makes much of the references in the Bible to the working of miracles by Satanic as well as Divine agency. "If," says he, "miracles are superhuman they are not super-Satanic." The answer to this obviously is, that what was merely a superstitious notion of the Jews, and that which is taught by Divine authority, are two very different things. Where in the Bible do we find that God reveals His will by miracles which are not the manifestations of His own power? Christ points to the superhuman works that He was doing in His Father's name as evidence of His mission; and when the Jews suggested that He cast out devils by Beelzebub, He said, "If Satan cast out Satan he is divided against himself: how shall his kingdom stand?"[3] The man born blind, to whom sight was given, said, "If this man were not of God he could do nothing;"[4] and he said it was "a marvellous thing" that the Jews did not know he was from God who had wrought the miracle.

"Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, said to Jesus, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him."[5] "Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?"[6] "Some of the Jews said, Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?"[7]

Our author's statement is certainly not supported by the passage quoted from Deuteronomy xiii. 3, of which he says, "The false miracle is here attributed to God Himself." The words of that passage are: "If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them: thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee." I transcribe the whole passage, that its plain meaning may be seen, and you may understand how much reliance is to be placed on our author when he appears as a Bible commentator. Of course the prophet referred to is one "pretending to the Divine inspiration and authority of the prophetic office," and "the dreamer of dreams" one who pretends that some deity has spoken to him in a dream.

If our author be a Biblical scholar, his scholarship is greatly at fault in the passage he refers to in Ezekiel xiv. 9: "And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel." According to the Hebrew language, God is often said to do a thing which He only suffers or permits. How can God be understood to harden Pharaoh's heart in any other sense? The character of God is too plainly described in the Bible to leave any uncertainty on this point.

The passages quoted from the New Testament only apparently support his statement. He quotes Dr. Mansel in reference to them, and no doubt his words truly apply where he says, "The supposed miracles are not true miracles at all, i.e., are not the effects of Divine power, but of human deception or some other agency." The existence and powers of angels, good and bad, we know little about, because little is revealed; but it is not the Bible but superstition which teaches that the fallen spirits have more power than the faithful ones in the affairs of this world, that Satan is more potent than Gabriel. If we knew more about the origin of evil, this matter would probably be less mysterious to our finite intelligence.

Our author describes (vol. i. page 47) what he supposes orthodox Christianity includes; and among other strange assertions he says that man was tempted into sin by Satan, "an all-powerful and persistent enemy of God," thus making the fallen angel an Almighty being.

This matter has an important bearing on the proper exhibition of religious truth, for the more superstition is intermingled with it, the more will unbelief be likely to be prevalent. On the one hand, infidelity engenders superstition, and on the other, superstition creates aversion to religion. I cannot but think that there is something wrong in the way in which Christian men, in the pulpit and elsewhere, often allude to the spirit of evil. He is represented in Scripture as the "god of this world," but surely that is not to be understood literally.

Jesus told the Jews that the devil was their father, as their deeds being evil indicated, who was "a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."[8] As, therefore, the devil is the father of lies, so are we to understand he is the God of this world. Not in any other sense. He is potent, but not omnipotent; knowing, but not omniscient; has his representatives distributed among the scenes of sin and death in our world, and himself goeth "to and fro in the earth,"[9] but he is not omnipresent. It is Oriental demonology which teaches that two equal principles—good and evil—are alike dominant, not "the truth as it is in Jesus;" Persian superstition, Gnostical heresy, not Divine revelation.

The frivolous use of words and matters connected with the spiritual world and our eternal interests is greatly to be disapproved and condemned; but surely the mention of Satan is not to be designated as profane, as if God's holy name were taken in vain. To comment on what are called profane oaths in such a way is not to enlighten the minds of the vulgar, but to mystify and conceal the truth of Christianity. It is one thing to believe that there is in existence the spiritual being whose evil doings our Saviour's coming into our world frustrates, whose power is great, whose emissaries are innumerable, and whose baneful suggestions and influence the Holy Spirit alone can withstand, and quite another thing to believe that Satan could give miraculous attestation to a lie, as God did to the truth. If there are some passages of Scripture that seem to favour this false view, it behoves us to suspect, having regard to the whole tenour of Scripture affecting the doctrine, that the correct interpretation has not been arrived at.

The existence of Satan, and his influence, personal, and by the legions who fell with him, are of course superhuman ideas, and in the category of the miraculous; but there is a wide difference between the most striking sign of his spiritual power and the Divine miracles wrought to attest the truth. It is God "who alone doeth great wonders."[10]

"If this man were not of God he could do nothing."[11] "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not."[12]

"A miracle is a sign for our faith, to be apprehended in its Divine intention, though it cannot be comprehended, because it is God's especial work." When the magicians in the Court of Pharaoh saw the miracles which Moses wrought, they said, "This is the finger of God,"[13] which is, and intended to be, the inevitable inference. They knew that all they could do was a sham, a pretence.

Counterfeits are as prominent in the history of our race as any feature that could be specified, and an imaginary devil is conspicuous in the category of the spurious. If there had been no real one, the counterfeit could scarcely have been conceived. He is the father of lies, and how numerous his progeny! While all else is misrepresented, parodied, travestied, burlesqued, falsified, belied, it would be strange if he had escaped. From the Eternal Himself down to the most insignificant thing that is worth a forgery, what a catalogue may in an instant be specified! The Divine law with its ceremonial rites, and the Church with its ordinances; prophets and apostles; gospels and epistles; science and philosophy; history and biography; and, assuredly, miracles; in short, all truth—stem, branch, twig, and leaf—is more or less, and at one time or another, got up artificially, and the spurious or adulterated article offered, in competition with the genuine one, to human credulity. This, if it makes absolute truth difficult to buy, renders the injunction to "sell it not," when bought, true wisdom. It seems to be, and of course is, absurd to doubt the genuineness of the currency of a nation because spurious coins are met with, but I believe that more scepticism is produced by the consideration of the many religious impostures in the world than by any other influence. The inference is childish in the ignorant and unphilosophical in the scholar, but it is often unconsciously arrived at in many minds as a plain and easy solution of the question which cannot be evaded—Is Divine revelation a reality?

Our author misrepresents Christianity, and uses the misrepresentation as an argument against it, as, alas! is only too common. John Stuart Mill actually says in his essay on Theism (p. 240) that "Christ is never said to have declared any evidence of His mission (unless His own interpretations of the prophecies be so considered) except internal conviction." If Mr. Mill ever read the New Testament through, he would have found where it is written, "Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever is not offended in me." And also the words, "But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me."[14] "The Jews came round about him and said, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Messiah, tell us plainly. Jesus answered, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me."[15] "Believe me for the very works' sake."[16]

How, in the face of such an authoritative statement why miracles were wrought by Jesus, can our author assume that they were not intended to be an appeal to reason, and to be tested by the intelligence and common sense they appealed to? The miracles were wrought to convince men that Jesus was the Messiah, and were adapted to that end. Our author's picture of Divine revelation is very much a conception of his own, fashioned from isolated portions of Scripture, pseudo-Judaism, and ecclesiastical representations of Christianity.

He quotes Archbishop Trench, who, in defining the function of a miracle, says,—"A miracle does not prove the truth of a doctrine or the divine mission of him that brings it to pass;" and Dr. Arnold, who says,—"It has always seemed to me that its substance is a most essential part of its evidence, and that miracles wrought in favour of what was foolish or wicked would only prove Manicheism:" which passages of fallible commentators fail to express the distinction between real miracles and spurious ones. But I ask, Why does he appeal to what Dr. Trench and Dr. Arnold, or any other commentator says, when he has before him our Saviour's own words? In arguing against miracles, it is not competent for him to put his own construction upon them in violation of the highest authority as to their purpose and design. I understand his conclusions to be against Christianity—not against what he is pleased to put in its place. It is in the Fourth Gospel we find Christ's words, but that book is too important a part of Divine revelation for any apologist to remain in the field of discussion and continue the argument if his opponent,—whether he be Mr. Mill or our author,—insists on assuming that on the Christian side the question is an open one whether the Fourth Gospel is to be accepted. The whole of the four Gospels as we have them were read in all the Christian Churches on the three continents in the middle of the second century, as our author well knows. He acknowledges that IrenÆus, who wrote about A.D. 180, compared the four Gospels to the "four columns of the Church over the whole world;" and that in writings of his which we have, and the genuineness of which no one questions, there are hundreds of references to the Gospels, the fourth included. There is no question as to this being the fact at that date. It is the earlier date that the argument bears upon. The four Gospels are held together by an inseparable bond in the archives of the Church, and believers in them assert they will all four stand or fall together. I can only suppose that it was because Mr. Mill ignored the Fourth Gospel that he ignored the verses I have quoted.

If an advocate has a weak case in hand, to damage the character of the witnesses is a well-known mode of proceeding; so our author asks who are the men who, it is asserted, saw these amazing performances? What were the intellectual conditions of the age when they occurred? "Did the Jews at the time of Jesus possess such calmness of judgment and sobriety of imagination as to inspire us with any confidence in accounts of marvellous occurrences unwitnessed except by them, and limited to their time, which contradict all knowledge and all experience? Were their minds sufficiently enlightened and free from superstition to warrant our attaching weight to their report of events of such an astounding nature?" (Vol. i. p. 98.)

The reading of this sentence suggests a comparison between the age he refers to and the century succeeding Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, during which our Royal College of Physicians repudiated the discovery, some of the most eminent of the faculty writing against it, and creating a prejudice against Harvey by which his practice suffered considerably; and the scientific period when the French Academy for a long time rejected the use of quinine, vaccination, lightning-conductors, the steam-engine, &c.

To weaken the apostolic testimony, there is presented an elaborate exhibition of the wide-spread belief among the Jews in sorcery, dreams, portents, and numerous forms of superstition. In what age have not these been prevalent? Are we free from them in this? If the Divine communication had been postponed until now, and civilisation could have attained to its present stage without its influence, would its reception have been any different? Would the vested interests in established usages and beliefs have raised no opposition? If there are in this country, and in this day, thousands who believe, or pretend to believe, that the priests who are ordained to forgive sins can really do so, are we in a position to assume any great superiority over the Jews, Greeks, and Romans of eighteen centuries ago? If the most manifest and stupendous miracle were wrought to show men the folly of drunkenness, lying, and other sins, would not the results be just the same? Some would believe and testify, and others say that the sign, not being of the precise sort to suit them, was not conclusive. There must be a coming down from the cross, or something else, to satisfy them. "If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe though one rose from the dead." The testimony of the first disciples, it is said, is not satisfactory, because they were uneducated, unscientific, uncritical. Mr. Mill says Paul was the only exception in the first generation of Christians. I remark that Matthew, in the position of a receiver of taxes for the Roman government, though not learned, might be shrewd to detect imposture; that Thomas was not too credulous; and that as for Paul, if he could not judge of the value of the testimony of the hundreds of men and women who told him, or could have told him, what they were eye-witnesses of, what was his education worth, and what about the miracle in his own case? Why should it be doubted that the vision to which he refers in his unquestioned letter to the Galatians really occurred? He therein tells them (with an asseveration that, in the presence of God, he was not lying)[17] that he was taught the gospel he preached by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Whatever may be said about the authority of the Acts of the Apostles, which relates the particulars of Paul's miraculous conversion so minutely, we have the evidence of it in Paul's own letter. Of course he would compare what was revealed to him with what the eye-witnesses could tell him; and if he could mistake a sunstroke, a trance, or a state of ecstatic dreaming for a Divine revelation, his character, judged of by his own writings, is verily incomprehensible. There is no such other enigma in all history. In his equally unquestioned letter to the Corinthians he tells them that he received from the Lord the particulars of the institution of the Lord's Supper. Of this memorable event Paul had ample opportunities of comparing what was revealed to him with what the disciples who were present could tell him; and he was in such intercourse with them, that the circumstances were highly favourable for an educated man, such as he was, arriving at the exact and absolute truth of the matter.

Our author's view of the question is narrowed by his refusing to acknowledge that mankind is morally depraved by sin.

How a man, with the wickedness of such a city as London daily forced on his notice, and a knowledge of the history of the race in his memory, could have penned such a sentence as the following, it is difficult to conceive. "The whole theory of this abortive design of creation, with such important efforts to amend it, is emphatically contradicted by the glorious perfection and invariability of the order of nature." Can he not see that the degradation and wickedness of humanity are in striking contrast to the "glorious perfection and invariability of the order of nature"? He is bound to give some reason for this anomaly if he will not accept what revelation makes known to us as the cause.

The abstract question as to the credibility of miracles Paul discussed in the year 58 at CÆsarea, in the presence of Festus and Agrippa, when he said, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" and it has been dealt with so exhaustively by Newton, Locke, Butler, Paley, Whateley, Olinthus Gregory, Wardlaw, Alexander, and a host of other writers, that there is really little more to be said. The "Fortnightly Review" remarks that the arguments on both sides are so familiar, that it is not necessary to reproduce the present author's mode of dealing with this part of the subject. Matthew Arnold describes it as an attempt to refute Dr. Mozley's Bampton Lecture on Miracles—"a solid reply to a solid treatise;" but that to engage in an À priori argument to prove that miracles are impossible, against an adversary who argues, À priori, that they are possible, is the vainest labour in the world. Now, as Mr. Arnold is as much a disbeliever in miracles as our author, the worth of his abstract argument may be taken at Mr. Arnold's estimate, and he says: "The author of 'Supernatural Religion' asserts again and again that miracles are contrary to complete induction, but no such law of nature has been, or can be, established against the Christian miracles, therefore a complete induction there is not."

If the miracle-disbelieving Matthew Arnold does not accept our author's abstract argument, and since we find Mr. Mill designating "two points" in Hume's celebrated attack as "weak" and "vulnerable," I need not linger over this part of the work. I may assume that it is sufficiently neutralised by men on his own side of the question as able and learned as himself.

But it is not only Mr. Mill and Mr. Arnold who have recently shown that Hume's celebrated argument, which our author reproduces and defends, is not sound. It is satisfactory to know that from Germany, where so much sceptical criticism has been promulgated, comes now the most complete and conclusive exposure of the whole anti-Christian argument. For the proof of this assertion I refer to a work which has just been translated into English, and issued by Messrs. T. and T. Clark of Edinburgh, entitled "Modern Doubt and Christian Belief,"[18] by Theodore Christlieb, D.D., University Preacher and Professor of Theology at Bonn; a most able, learned, and exhaustive argument on the whole question, equal to the demands of those who desire to know all about it, and to whom I earnestly commend the book. He mentions that the great majority of the representatives of the present scientific German theology are considered to have essentially decided in favour of the faith, not only on dogmatical, but also on exegetical and speculative grounds (p. 289).

This is in strong contrast to the assertion of our author (vol. i. p. 27), that "it may broadly be said that English divines alone, at the present day, maintain the reality and supernatural character of such phenomena;" and that "the great majority of modern German critics reject the miraculous altogether, and consider the question as no longer worthy of discussion."

For the benefit of those who may not have time to read Dr. Christlieb's work, I will transcribe a few passages bearing on the abstract argument we are discussing.

"Things moral and spiritual cannot be mathematically demonstrated. He who said, 'My thoughts are not as your thoughts,' has introduced in His words and actions a far higher logic than that whose principles Aristotle laid down." (Preface, p. xi.)

"However much, in other respects, our opponents may differ, they all agree in the denial of miracles, and unitedly storm this bulwark of the Christian faith; and in its defence we have to combat them all at once. But whence this unanimity? Because, with the truth of miracles, the entire citadel of Christianity stands or falls. For its beginning is a miracle, its Author is a miracle, its progress depends upon miracles, and miracles will hereafter be its consummation" (p. 285).

"If the principle of miracles be set aside, then all the heights of Christianity will be levelled with one stroke, and nought will remain but a heap of ruins. If we banish the supernatural from the Bible, there is nothing left us but the covers" (p. 286).

"The negation of miracles leads to the annihilation of all religion" (p. 286).

"Many are averse to the miraculous through fear of superstition, and they overlook the sharp discrimination of Scripture between belief and superstition, between miraculous power and witchcraft. Whereas the sorcerer pretends to make supernatural powers subservient to his person, the prophet or apostle accounts himself only the instrument of God. It is God who alone works. The Son Himself seeks through His works not His own honour, but that of His Father.[19] Notice the unobtrusiveness of miracles in the holy Scriptures, how Christ sharply repels the vain curiosity and vulgar thirst of His age for wonders, and His prohibition of their publication. Compare with these features the sensational miracles of the Roman and Oriental Churches—images of saints who sweat blood, nod the head, roll the eyes—or the Whitsuntide marvels among the Greeks and Armenians at Jerusalem, when the Holy Ghost lights up candles (but not hearts), and you will confess that such feats of legerdemain jugglery betray, in their external pomp and straining after effect, anything but a Divine origin. A glance at the internal evidences of the truth in miracles, at their moral and religious character, which reflects and serves not only the power of God, but also His truth and holiness, and must prove pre-eminently their Divine origin, will show that it is not a very difficult task for any one to defend his belief in the biblical miracles against the charge of superstition" (p. 297).

"Those foundation-stones for the denial of all miracles which were laid by Spinoza and Hume, and on which the critics of the present day still take a defiant stand, have crumbled away piecemeal before our eyes. Spinoza's axiom, that the 'laws of nature are the only realisation of the Divine will,' stands or falls with the pantheistic conception of the Deity—a conception which is not only unworthy of God and of man, but also contrary to reason. The Source of all freedom is supposed to have no freedom, but to be immured in His own laws! And to this Spinoza adds the conclusion: 'If anything could take place in nature contrary to its laws, God would thereby contradict Himself.' We have seen that just the converse is true, namely, that if God performed no miracles, and left the world to itself, He would contradict Himself; that He must perform miracles in order to maintain the end for which the world was created, and to bring it to the destiny which was originally intended. His miraculous action contradicts not nature and its laws, but the unnatural, which has entered the world through sin, and counteracts its destructive consequences in order to restore the life of the world to holy order. Only those who, like Spinoza, deny the reality of sin and its destructive power, can question the necessity of the miraculous. The present condition, not only of the human world, but also of nature, gives such opinions the lie at every step" (p. 327).

"Hume, in like manner, bases his attack against the miraculous on a series of false assumptions. First: 'Miracles are violations of the laws of nature.' This is false, since miracles, far from violating, serve to re-establish the already violated order of the world, and do not injure the laws of nature. Second: 'But we learn from experience that the laws of nature are never violated.' This is false, because we ourselves immediately interfere with our higher will in the laws of nature, and interrupt them without their being violated. Third: 'For miracles we have the questionable testimony of a few persons.' This is false, because the entire Scriptures are full of miracles, and the historical testimony for them is unquestionable, since the appearance of Israel and of the Christian Church is perfectly incomprehensible without miracles. 'But,' he goes on, 'against them we have universal experience; therefore this stronger testimony nullifies the weaker and more questionable.' The pith of Hume's argument, then, is simply this: Because, according to universal experience, no miracles now take place, therefore none can ever have occurred. This proposition, in the first place, involves a begging of the question, since it is not at all certain that no miracles are performed now-a-days; and, second, it ignores the fact that different periods are subject to different laws, and with their varied wants may demand varied kinds of revelatory action on the part of God. Certainly, the negro who should affirm that there is no snow, because in his country, according to 'universal experience,' it never snows, would be committing an absurdity. And no less illegitimate is it to measure all time by the universal (?) experience or non-experience of some particular period. Finally, Hume goes on to demand, as a condition for the credibility of miracles, that they must be attested by an adequate number of sufficiently educated and honest persons, who could not be suspected of intentional deception, and that they should be done in so frequented a spot that the detection of the illusion would be inevitable. We shall see further (in Lectures vi. and vii.) that these conditions were all essentially fulfilled in the case of the New Testament miracles. And yet, in spite of the evident weakness of Hume's argument, Strauss would have us believe that Hume's 'Essay on Miracles' is so universally convincing, that it may be said to have settled the question ('Leben Jesu,' page 148). The author of the 'Life of Christ' forgets to mention that Hume has long since been refuted in detail by the earlier and later English apologists (e. g., by Campbell, Adams, Hay, Price, Douglass, Paley, Whateley, Dwight, Alexander, Wardlaw, and Pearson), to say nothing of the Germans; but then he knows that only a very small proportion of his readers is aware of this fact" (p. 328).

"To these objections not even our most modern philosophers have been able to add really new ones; and as against them all we may confidently maintain the following truths as the result of our investigation:—

"The possibility of the miraculous rests upon the uninterrupted activity of a living God in the world.

"Its necessity arises, on the one hand, from the Divine end and aim of the world; and on the other, from the disturbance introduced into its development through sin.

"Therefore, although miracles are supernatural, they are not unnatural. Far from violating the conditions of life, of nature, or of humanity, they re-establish the life of the world which has already been deranged, and initiate the higher order of things for which the universe was created" (p. 328).

Of Baur, Dr. Christlieb writes:—

"Of all modern opponents of our old faith, the greatest is Dr. Ferdinand Christian von Baur, Professor of Theology at TÜbingen (died December 2, 1860), one of the greatest, if not the greatest theological scholar of this century; after Neander, the most notable historian of the Church, not only in Germany but in the world; the most indefatigable of investigators, especially as regards the history of Primitive Christianity, in the elucidation of which he has deserved well of theology. He stands a head and shoulders above all our modern opponents of the miraculous.... If human power, human diligence, and acuteness, could ever bring about the overthrow of our faith, this man would have accomplished it. But our present theology is daily becoming more convinced that he was incompetent to this task, and that, in spite of all his unutterable exertions, he did not succeed in proving the merely natural origin of Christianity. This is one of the surest signs that the rock upon which our faith is founded is absolutely indestructible"[20] (p. 505).

I must not attempt to give the points of Dr. Christlieb's critique and refutation of the TÜbingen theory, but refer the reader to his invaluable work.