From this depraved state it was surely not unworthy of the common Father of all to rescue his helpless creatures, to enlighten their understandings that they might perceive what is right, and to present to them motives of sufficient force to engage them in the practice of it. But the understandings of ignorant barbarians cannot be enlightened by arguments, because of the force of such arguments as regard moral science they are not qualified to judge. The philosophers of Athens and Rome inculcated, indeed, many excellent moral precepts, and they sometimes ventured to expose the absurdities of the reigning superstition; but their lectures had no influence upon the multitude; and they had themselves imbibed such erroneous notions respecting the attributes of the Supreme Being, and the nature of the human soul, and converted these notions into first principles, of which they would not permit an examination, that even amongst them a thorough reformation was not to be expected from the powers of reasoning. It is likewise to be observed, that there are many truths of the utmost importance to mankind which unassisted reason could never have discovered. Amongst these we may confidently reckon the immortality of the soul, the terms upon which God will be reconciled to sinners, and the manner in which that all-perfect Being may be acceptably worshipped; about all of which philosophers were in such uncertainty, that, according to Plato, "whatever is set right, and as it should be, in the present evil state of the world, can be so only by the particular interposition of God."
An immediate revelation from heaven seemed, therefore, the only method by which infinite wisdom and perfect goodness could reform a bewildered and vicious race. But this revelation, at whatever time we suppose it given, must have been made directly either to some chosen individuals commissioned to instruct others, or to every man and woman for whose benefit it was ultimately intended. Were every person instructed in the knowledge of his duty by immediate inspiration, and were the motives to practise it brought home to his mind by God himself, human nature would be wholly changed: Men would not be masters of their own actions; they would not be moral agents, nor by consequence be capable either of reward or of punishment. It remains, therefore, that if God has been graciously pleased to enlighten and reform mankind, without destroying that moral nature which is essential to virtue, he can have done it only by revealing his truth to certain chosen instruments, who were the immediate instructors of their contemporaries, and through them have been the instructors of succeeding ages.
Let us suppose this to have been actually the case, and consider how those inspired teachers could communicate to others every truth which had been revealed to themselves. They might easily, if it was part of their duty, deliver a sublime system of natural and moral science, and establish it upon the common basis of experiment and demonstration; but what foundation could they lay for those truths which unassisted reason cannot discover, and which, when they are revealed, appear to have no necessary relation to any thing previously known? To a bare affirmation that they had been immediately received from God, no rational being could be expected to assent. The teachers might be men of known veracity, whose simple assertion would be admitted as sufficient evidence for any fact in conformity with the laws of nature; but as every man has the evidence of his own consciousness and experience that revelations from heaven are deviations from these laws, an assertion so apparently extravagant would be rejected as false, unless supported by some better proof than the mere affirmation of the teacher. In this state of things, we cannot conceive any evidence sufficient to make such doctrines be received as the truths of God, except the
power of working miracles committed to him who taught them. This would, indeed, be fully adequate to the purpose. For if there were nothing in the doctrines themselves impious, immoral, or contrary to the truths already known, the only thing which could render the teacher's assertion incredible, would be its implying such an intimate communion with God as is contrary to the established course of things, by which men are left to acquire all their knowledge by the exercise of their own faculties. Let us now suppose one of those inspired teachers to tell his countrymen that he did not desire them, upon his ipse dixit, to believe that he had any preternatural communion with the Deity, but that for the truth of his assertion he would give them the evidence of their own senses; and after this declaration, let us suppose him immediately to raise a person from the dead in their presence, merely by calling upon him to come forth out of his grave. Would not the only possible objection to the man's veracity be removed by this miracle? and would not his assertions that he had received such and such doctrines from God be as fully credited as if it had related to the most common occurrence? Undoubtedly it would; for when so much preternatural power was visibly communicated to this person, no one could possibly have reason to question his having received an equal portion of preternatural knowledge. A palpable deviation from the known laws of nature in one instance, is a sensible proof that such a deviation is possible in another; and in such a case as this, it is the witness of God to the truth of a man.
Miracles, then, under which we also include prophecy, are the only direct evidence which can be given of divine inspiration. When a religion, or any religious truth, is to be revealed from heaven, they appear to be absolutely necessary to enforce its reception amongst men; and this is the only case in which we can suppose them necessary, or believe for a moment that they ever have been or will be performed.
The history of almost every religion abounds with relations of prodigies and wonders, and of the intercourse of men with the gods; but we know of no religious system, those of the Jews and the Christians excepted, which appealed to miracles as the sole evidence of its truth and divinity. The pretended miracles mentioned by Pagan historians and poets are not said to have been publicly wrought in order to enforce the truth of a new religion contrary to the reigning idolatry. Many of them may be clearly shown to have been mere natural events; others of them are represented as having been performed in secret, upon the most trivial occasions, and in obscure and fabulous ages long prior to the era of the writers by whom they are recorded; and such of them as at first view appear to be best attested, are evidently tricks contrived for interested purposes, to flatter power, or to promote the prevailing superstitions. For these reasons, as well as on account of the immoral character of the divinities by whom they are said to have been wrought, they are altogether unworthy of examination, and carry in the very nature of them the completest proofs of falsehood and imposture.
But the miracles recorded of Moses and of Christ bear a very different character. None of them is represented as wrought upon trivial occasions. The writers who mention them were eye-witnesses of the facts, which they affirm to have been performed publicly, in attestation of the truth of their respective systems. They are, indeed, so incorporated with these systems, that the miracles cannot be separated from the doctrines; and if the miracles were not really performed, the doctrines cannot possibly be true. Besides all this, they were wrought in support of revelations which opposed all the religious systems, superstitions, and prejudices of the age in which they were given; a circumstance which of itself sets them, in point of authority,
miracle. infinitely above the Pagan prodigies, as well as the pretended miracles of the church of Rome.
It is indeed, we believe, universally admitted, that the miracles mentioned in the book of Exodus and in the four Gospels might, to those who saw them performed, be sufficient evidence of the divine inspiration of Moses and of Christ; but to us it may be thought that they are no evidence whatever, as we must believe in the miracles themselves, if we believe in them at all, upon the bare authority of human testimony. Why, it has been sometimes asked, are not miracles wrought in all ages and countries? If the religion of Christ was to be of perpetual duration, every generation of men ought to have complete evidence of its truth and divinity.
To the performance of miracles in every age and in every country, perhaps the same objections would lie as to the immediate inspiration of every individual. Were those miracles universally received as such, men would be so overwhelmed with the number rather than with the force of their authority, as hardly to remain masters of their own conduct; and in that case the very end of all miracles would be defeated by their frequency. The truth, however, seems to be, that miracles so frequently repeated would not be received as such, and of course would have no authority; because it would be difficult, and in many cases impossible, to distinguish them from natural events. If they recurred regularly at certain intervals, we could not prove them to be deviations from the known laws of nature, because we should have the same experience for the one series of events as we have for the other; for the regular succession of preternatural effects, as for the established constitution and course of things.
Be this, however, as it may, we shall take the liberty to affirm, that, for the reality of the Gospel miracles, we have evidence as convincing to the reflecting mind, though not so striking to vulgar apprehension, as those had who were contemporary with Christ and his apostles, and actually saw the mighty works which he performed. To the admirers of Mr Hume's philosophy this assertion will appear an extravagant paradox; but we hope to demonstrate its truth from principles which, consistently with himself, that author could not have denied. He has indeed endeavoured to prove,1 that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle;" and the reasoning employed for this purpose is, that "a miracle being a violation of the laws of nature which a firm and unalterable experience has established, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can be; whereas our experience of human veracity, which (according to him) is the sole foundation of the evidence of testimony, is far from being uniform, and can therefore never preponderate against that experience which admits of no exception." This boasted and plausible argument has been examined by Dr Campbell,2 who justly observes, that so far is experience from being the sole foundation of the evidence of testimony, that, on the contrary, testimony is the sole foundation of by far the greater part of what Mr Hume calls firm and unalterable experience; and that if in certain circumstances we did not give an implicit faith to testimony, our knowledge of events would be confined to those which had fallen under the immediate observation of our own senses.
But although Dr Campbell has exposed the sophistry of his opponent's reasoning, and overturned the principles from which he reasons, we are persuaded that he might safely have joined issue with him upon those very principles. To us, at least, it appears that the testimony upon which we receive the Gospel miracles is precisely of that
kind which Mr Hume has acknowledged sufficient to establish even a miracle. "No testimony," says he, "is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. When one tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle." In this passage every reader may remark, what did not escape the perspicacious eye of Dr Campbell, a strange confusion of terms; but as all miracles are equally easy to the Almighty, and as Mr Hume has elsewhere observed, that "the raising of a feather, when the wind wants ever so little of a force requisite for that purpose, is as real a miracle as the raising of a house or a ship into the air," candour obliges us to suppose, that by talking of greater and less miracles, and of always rejecting the greater, he meant nothing more but that, of two deviations from the known laws of nature, he always rejects that which in itself is least probable.
If, then, it can be shown that the testimony given by the apostles and other first preachers of Christianity to the miracles of their Master, would, upon their supposition that those miracles were not really performed, have been as great a deviation from the known laws of nature as the miracles themselves, the balance must be considered as equally poised by opposite miracles; and whilst it continues so, the judgment must remain in a state of suspense. But if it shall appear, that in this case the false testimony would have been a deviation from the laws of nature less probable in itself than the miracles recorded in the Gospels, the balance will instantly be destroyed; and, by Mr Hume's maxim, we shall be obliged to reject the supposition of falsehood in the testimony of the apostles, and admit the miracles of Christ to have been really performed.
In this argument we need not waste time in proving that those miracles, as they are represented in the writings of the New Testament, were of such a nature, and performed before so many witnesses, that no imposition could possibly be practised upon the senses of those who affirm that they were present. From every page of the Gospels this is so evident, that the philosophical adversaries of the Christian faith never suppose the apostles to have been themselves deceived, but boldly accuse them of bearing false witness. But if this accusation be well founded, their testimony itself is as great a miracle as any which they record of themselves or of their Master.
It has been shown elsewhere (see the article METAPHYSICS), that by the law of association, which is one of the laws of nature, mankind, in the very process of learning to speak, necessarily learn to speak the truth; that ideas and relations are in the mind of every man so closely associated with the words by which they are expressed in his native tongue, and in every other language of which he is master, that the one cannot be entirely separated from the other; that therefore no man can on any occasion speak falsehood without some effort; that by no effort can a man give consistency to an unpremeditated detail of falsehood, if it be of any length, and include a number of particulars; and that it is still less possible for several men to agree in such a detail, when at a distance from each other, and cross-questioned by their enemies.
This being the case, it follows, if the testimony of the apostles to their own and their Master's miracles be false,
1 Essay on Miracles.
2 Dissertation on Miracles.