I send you some remarks on the scriptural view of miracles, from which infidels and the defenders of Christianity seem to me to have alike wandered.
As to infidels, any moral apprehension of what miracles are, or anything else is, of the misery of man, or of the love of God, or of the power and value of the truth, is absent from their minds. Exalting man as he is, the false fancy that in these days of enlightenment the lancet and the microscope have found out everything, and exploded God's truth and love and man's ignorance both together, reducing everything to general laws without being able to tell us where they came from, and thus to a materialism which, as an able but honest materialist has said, leads them up to a blind wall, beyond which they cannot get—such is the true character of modern science; very interesting in the discovery of laws which govern matter, that is, the material world beneath us, but excluding from man every moral principle, every excellent affection, and all divine goodness and truth. They tell us that this is no part of science. I quite agree.
But are there no such things as love, and goodness, and morality, and right affections? no knowledge of God? When they come to “the blind wall,” can they assure us there is nothing behind it? or tell us something of what is? Neither. It is simply excluding man from everything beyond matter, even to openly denying all responsibility, degrading man and denying God. The first they do pretending to exalt him; the other is the stupid pretension to deny that of which they confess they are wholly ignorant (and they are quite right); though (thank God) it is a knowledge that is as open to them in God's love as to those who already enjoy its light.
There is an evidence of truth which one who has the Spirit of God cannot use to a mere natural man, though it often carries the strongest evidence with it, and in that way may tell upon him—the possession of the thing that the other is disputing. To him who has it, it is the strongest of all evidences, different in its nature from external proofs. Take even natural things—I am in pain. No surgical evidence is required for him who is in pain in order to make him know it; there is no deception as to it for the man who suffers. The surgeon may show the physical cause, a stone in the bladder, or what produced it; or inflammation of the blood, or of some mucous membrane; but with all his science he cannot tell me why it gives me pain, nor what pain is. Yet who that suffers it does not know what it is? He may talk to me about ganglions, or sensitive nerves distinguished from motor nerves. But this does not tell me one atom of what or why pain is; though he may talk, and in a surgical sense rightly, of what its cause, its material cause, is; but this is not what, pain in me is. Does anyone doubt what it is when he suffers it? That is, the most certain knowledge even in the lower creation is entirely out of the reach of science. I do not blame science for this; it is not its sphere. Science—it arranges phenomena, learns by experience their sequence, and often with great sagacity. Nobody denies it. But it cannot go farther. I can say I suffer; I am so made, constituted, that under certain circumstances I suffer. But no one can tell me what makes me suffer. He can tell me, very likely better than I can, the circumstances through which I suffer, and perhaps relieve them; he can relieve an animal that knows where and what it is suffering; he can trace the material part, bring in electricity or any other biological power; but what makes me sensible and suffer pain, he cannot tell me. Let him trace it to nerves and electricity and whatever you please; yet electricity does not make a true or a stone suffer, though it may make a dead frog leap perhaps (that is, produce material effects), but it cannot make dead matter feel. I feel, and hence have no doubt of it; I have absolute certainty of it, much greater than any of his science, however extensive and accurate it may be. You will tell me a dog knows it. Just so, but the scientific man does not; and that is the point I am upon just now—that there are kinds of knowledge which are the most certain of all, which science knows nothing of, and has nothing to say to, which the boor is just ascertain of as the philosopher.
Now I say distinctly there is the same kind of knowledge in the things of God; its effects may show to others that it is there, but it is not to be explained to or by men. A man groans or writhes, and a dog howls, if he is in pain. That is not the pain, but a testimony to it. So where God dwells in man, where His Spirit dwells in him, there is no uncertainty in himself; the effect is one of which he is perfectly conscious in himself. It cannot be in itself a proof for another, because it is in himself, and another cannot be a partaker of that any more than he is of another's pain; but it is absolute certainty for him who has it, and its effects make themselves known to others as pain and illness do to those who are not suffering. It has another effect which can hardly be communicated to another. It confirms, by its inward effects, the truth and authority of the word of God; because—if the love of God is shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Ghost given to me, if I enjoy that love inwardly as a deep source of happiness; if I can look up and cry, Abba, Father, in the unquestioning consciousness of what He is for me; if my soul is at liberty before Him in unfeigned confidence, and at liberty from sin that beset me before, and from a sense of guilt which I had; if I am conscious of my connection with Christ and His presence with me—I find all these things which I have in my heart recognized and taught fully in that word. I find what is there said connected with the glorifying of the man Jesus when He had accomplished the work of redemption; this, with a life here wholly without parallel in holiness and love, absolutely unselfish—meekness and self-denial and patience, understood of none—a life which condemns me in spite of me by its perfectness, and which is yet not what men admire in their heroes, though more heroic in reality than all. This, with a statement that this man that none was like—save indeed in a distant measure as following Him—was the Word, that is, God made flesh. I find, that is, my own every-day new but actual and known happiness (proved to others by the change they see in me) connected with an immense system of truth unfolded in the word, but which I find experimentally verified in my own soul (though the source of it be hidden from sense and science, and science can go no farther than inference from sense); but what the word declares to be the effect in me, by which the unseen is known and the revelation of what is divine is made to my soul—is in fact produced there, so that what is unseen is known, and what is divine revealed; not a history, but what God is now, though revealed in that history in its outward facts; and I know the truth of it by what I possess, and the inseparable connection with all the revelation made, which is but the divine development of that of which the effect is in me.
And so scripture speaks. “He that believeth in the Son of God hath the witness in himself; and he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar, because he hath not believed the record that God hath given concerning His Son.” The infidel will say, That is no proof for me. In effect it may be; in itself I recognize that it is not. He has not, and of course cannot have, the proof that having it gives. But this does not weaken it for those that have. No more does the doctor's not having pain alter my knowledge of having it; and if he were to tell me “I was perfectly in health: all the tissues right, and there was no cause for pain, it was imagination,” I should know better; it would only prove his science did not reach to the knowledge of the cause. He will despise, too, my enjoyment of divine things because he does not know what is enjoyed. He will tell me it is imagination but imagination does not produce holiness and godly affections, but poetry. There is nothing permanent. It may take me out of self and sorrow for a moment, but never delivers from either—leaves the man what he was, or worse. No man can stay the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast. Imagination deals with things outside us which are not real; this is what is actually and abidingly in us, a present reality. It is based on what is in its perfectness objective as a source outside us, just as my friend is though I am conscious of my affection and of his. But, when human imagination seeks to make a scene with which it can be occupied, it fails entirely, bringing cannon into heaven, and making Satan the most interesting person in the dramatis personae!
Proofs may and do leave responsibility without excuse, but enjoyment of the thing itself within takes the need of proof away. “Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not; but one thing I know: whereas I was blind, now I see.” Where was the proof that Christ could open the eyes of one born blind for him who was so? And note here, we are not speaking of the truth of that history, but of the nature of the proof.
Let it be remembered that of love, obligation to God or man, to a father, or a wife, science can know nothing. It is not its business. But man's happiness or unhappiness even as man here, and everything right and comely, depends upon this. Science knows material phenomena and their laws and connections, and no more. Up to a certain point they may prove a connection of thought and organic structure; but of one single moral idea it is incapable. I do not blame science for this. Phenomena and their laws are its sphere. It is degrading man's moral nature I denounce. There is no love in geology or chemistry; and if, as they have done, they deny responsibility, the best answer is they are not be trusted with my keys. Who would trust his child to them, if he had any love or sense of obligation?
They have assumed that science has left all witchcraft, possession, and the like far behind in the dark, and in the light they have these things dare not show themselves. But they delude themselves. That if men are completely infidels, trusting their puny reason, there is no need of superstition to dazzle them with what is false, is true because they are stone-blind already. But what is all the spirit-rapping that is in the midst of their pretended light, and putting people to sleep, and taking their minds, in a certain sense, into possession, and the coming up of spirits of the departed, but the identical necromancy which we read of in scripture?
That there is a vast deal of deception I have, no doubt, but they have not explained and cannot explain half, of it. Witchcraft not gone. You may find half the housewives in parts of England stop hemorrhage instantly with a few muttered words; give them the number of your warts one day, and have none the next. To this day there are, un France stones with certain marks upon them, to which women who desire to have husbands or children go, and which they worship, and which have jovial celebrations attached to them. They are similar to others consecrated to Mahadeva (Siva) in India—Whose symbol is the lingo, and worshipped by women in the same way, a little more grossly. They come with a dead child in them to revive it. They are probably also connected with the worship of the dead or fairies.—See Materiaux pour l'Histoire de l'homme, 1878, 6e livraison.
It is very easy to sit in a drawing room or a lecture-hall and say, See how, with our wisdom and science, all these things have disappeared! They have not disappeared; it is mere pretentious ignorance to say they have. It is very possible that infidelity, if it had penetrated where superstition reigns, might make it disappear, though bringing up the dead or spiritism is no great proof of it. Our infidels may not believe that they are spirits of the dead (I do not), but their science cannot explain what happens now.
It is very easy to say, I do not believe the facts; but plenty of other people know they happen, and at any rate the superstition is there if the facts are not facts. There is no difficulty in distinguishing such things from real miracles; but the things to be accounted for are there. It is quite idle to say it is in dark places—I do not doubt or question that certain of them are—not spiritism. If a man finds to-day he has no warts when he had yesterday, and you tell him he is living in an ignorant condition, he may say, May be so, but I have no more warts; and it he has been among the more enlightened, he may reproach them with spiritism, a great deal of which none of them has explained yet. If you ask me I say a great deal of it is deceit, but there is that wherein there is power, not of man, and certainly not of God. Of what, then, but of Satan? In their infidelity all is of Satan to shut out God more completely in another way.
Nor is it in the country parts of England only that superstition wields its power. I suppose we have infidelity and scientific light enough, and philosophy of all sorts in France; yet superstition reigns there. Not only has the worship of the Virgin Mary taken largely-increased proportions in general, but La Salette (proved false by judicial investigation of the civil authorities, and condemned by the prelate of the diocese thereupon) is new approved and in full vigor, and the poor railroad that passes by Lourde makes a very good business with holy water and pilgrims—confessed to be false yet educated English pilgrims going there: And what has science done to hinder it? It leaves both the imagination and the higher wants of man's heart and conscience wholly unreached; it cannot satisfy heart and conscience, having none; it can explain the development of ova and protoplasm; but of what comes of me when all my ova, and what they tell me can alone rightly be called protoplasm—a living combination which chemistry cannot reach, are gone in death, not one word can they say; no gleam of hope, no cry of conscience met. A God unknown on earth makes all darker still beyond it: for God, or even for man, no love; for self, no conscience. What has science to do with them? Affection is at the utmost warmer blood, as to this world!
The whole moral world is wholly and absolutely outside their reach. Morality they have none: they will tell me it is the pursuit of the good of all. And what is that good, and who is to decide it? Their happiness; but for no two men is it the same, if I take man's thoughts. It may be scalping, or opium; for the existence of passions forms no part of their philosophy. Many good people are not aware where philosophy has got to Kant, in his treatise on morality,—a man not nearly so bad as the fruits of the philosophy he set going—declares in terms, that, if the will of God, or fear of God, be introduced, there can be none! It is a principle outside man. Morality is the principle of pure, reason applied to practical conduct. But he admits at the end that how the principle of pure reason can be so applied it is impossible to say. Mill tells me that justice is the animal desire for vengeance modified by utility to all. Kant's is merely natural conscience with the name changed, and shutting out relationships with God and man, on which all morality is based. Mill, remark, feeling a motive was needed as a rule, makes vengeance the motive. Animal vengeance the sole motive of morality—the rule! one which has been never settled yet, save by Christ.
But my object now is to take up specially the question of miracles, and see how scripture presents them. There are those who are opposed to infidelity who take them as the basis of Christianity. Infidels tell us there cannot be miracles in the nature of things, that general laws cannot be infringed, that the vast mass of evil alleged to be removed by them is the effect of natural laws, and cannot be taken out of their uniform operation, that where they are such as cannot be so viewed, as demoniacal possession and the resurrection, they use proved to be mere superstition, or false. The first famous proof is, that they are contrary to experience; and we had not experience of miracles, but had of human falsity. But first it is to be remarked here that it is a question of induction (not deduction), which only affords probability; and this Mr. Hume admits. He weighs probabilities, the greater against the less. But inductions have nothing to do with facts. Hume says— “When at last he fixes his judgment, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability.” Now I conclude, for all practical purposes (and man as an earthly creature has to act on such induction), that, the sun having risen day after day, it will rise tomorrow. But do I believe it shines today by experience, or by induction? Clearly not by induction. That is induction, which calculates in the future from experience of the past, having nothing to do with facts at all. And note here, talking of concluding for along time hence how it will be is throwing dust in the eyes. For it is because it has always been the same, I conclude it will be. But the whole proof rests on its remaining the same. There is nothing to, foretell. One is the certainty of a fact, the other the probability of an induction. I may deceive myself, reasoning badly; my senses may deceive me. as to foots. But the nature of the proof is different. Induction has absolutely nothing to do with facts. Take even sunshine. I believe the fact that the sun has risen every day, not by any induction but as a fact on testimony, and hence conclude that it will; but the ground of my believing is distinct. I may question the evidence of a fact; but question it or not, it is not induction; and if I have to reason on experience of motives or circumstances, and bring in induction, it is then only a probability and not a fact. The scientific men say the course of the physical world is such that it must have had a beginning, and must come to an end. If they are right, the sun will cease to give its light as it has done, and the experience of the past would not be a sound induction in an absolute way. And, this leads me to another important principle, the character of the experience and the induction from it, and the whole hath s of reasoning from it. It is based on this, that the material phenomena in which we live are the limits of all man has to do with. Hence, in speaking of the good of all, the view of the object of man's life is confined entirely to the material system in which he lives. It is perfectly clear that phenomena and experience exist only in what is phenomenal; and that induction from experience, as to what may or must be, cannot go beyond the sphere to which the experience applies. It belongs to that: It may so far go beyond what is material, as that we have a certain experience of men's passions and motives; but the motives are too various and unknown, and the will and circumstances have too much to do with it to have any definite general laws. And this Mr. Mills admits, though he reasons as if it were not so, and declares that he was founding a new science, to which he gives the name of Ethology, as sure as any science referring to matter; for these men can pretend to anything.
But this system of general laws, which in ordinary material things no one denies, is assumed to be the only possible existing cause for anything. Yet no one can go one step beyond observed facts with which reason has nothing to do, save classifying and binding them by experience as cane and effect, from which man has an instinctive habit of thought that they will continue. But it is only what is observed and continuously observed. Take such a thing as death. It was only after centuries—if the patriarchal ages' are true—many long centuries—that death could be taken to be a law of nature. Seeing a man die, or a world destroyed, would not prove it, as Mill so illogically states. Man must have seen, what was practically, all die, to make it a general law. Till then life was the general state, and death might be casual. Thus the conclusion as to anything could be only after a regularly consecutive experience of facts not known by reason at all, but by sight or testimony, facts which (in its very nature, as I have said, and it is all-important to observe) reasoning never gives. It gives conclusions, or the natural tendency to think that what is as a general law, will go on as it has because it has hitherto, which, while sufficient to act and no doubt meant to be acted on, yet can only give probability, which is never a fact, but necessary if the principles are true. That is, reasoning never can, in any case, give us a fact or truth, but a conclusion by deduction, or by induction a mere probability. (To be continued.)