Part 31

Very well. The Gospels teem with miracles. If we make the accounts of the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ "independent of miracles," we destroy those accounts completely. To make the Resurrection "independent of miracles" is to disprove the Resurrection, which is a miracle or nothing.

We must believe in miracles, or disbelieve in the Resurrection; and "miracles never happen."

We must believe miracles, or disbelieve them. If we disbelieve them, we shall lose confidence in the verity of any document in proportion to the element of the miraculous which that document contains. The fact that the Gospels teem with miracles destroys the claim of the Gospels to serious consideration as historic evidence.

Take, for example, the account of the Crucifixion in the Gospel according to Matthew. While Christ is on the cross "from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour," and when He dies, "behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent; and the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised; and coming forth out of the tombs after His Resurrection, they entered into the holy city, and appeared unto many."

Mark mentions the rending of the veil of the temple, but omits the darkness, the earthquake, and the rising of the dead saints from the tombs. Luke tells of the same phenomena as Mark; John says nothing about any of these things.

What conclusion can we come to, then, as to the story in the first Gospel? Here is an earthquake and the rising of dead saints, who quit their graves and enter the city, and three out of the four Gospel writers do not mention it. Neither do we hear another word from Matthew on the subject. The dead get up and walk into the city, and "are seen of many," and we are left to wonder what happened to the risen saints, and what effect their astounding apparition had upon the citizens who saw them. Did these dead saints go back to their tombs? Did the citizens receive them into their midst without fear, or horror, or doubt? Had this stupendous miracle no effect upon the Jewish priests who had crucified Christ as an impostor? The Gospels are silent.

History is as silent as the Gospels. From the fifteenth chapter of the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I take the following passage:

But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of His Apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of all mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. But the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which surely cannot be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age.

No Greek nor Roman historian nor scientist mentioned that strange eclipse. No Jewish historian nor scientist mentioned the rending of the veil of the temple, nor the rising of the saints from the dead. Nor do the Jewish priests appear to have been alarmed or converted by these marvels.

Confronted by this silence of all contemporary historians, and by the silence of Mark, Luke, and John, what are we to think of the testimony of Matthew on these points? Surely we can only endorse the opinion of Matthew Arnold:

And the more the miraculousness of the story deepens, as after the death of Jesus, the more does the texture of the incidents become loose and floating, the more does the very air and aspect of things seem to tell us we are in wonderland. Jesus after his resurrection not known by Mary Magdalene, taken by her for the gardener; appearing in another form, and not known by the two disciples going with him to Emmaus and at supper with him there; not known by His most intimate apostles on the borders of the Sea of Galilee; and presently, out of these vague beginnings, the recognitions getting asserted, then the ocular demonstrations, the final commissions, the ascension; one hardly knows which of the two to call the most evident here, the perfect simplicity and good faith of the narrators, or the plainness with which they themselves really say to us Behold a legend growing under your eyes!

Behold a legend growing under your eyes! Now, when we have to consider a miracle-story or a legend, it behoves us to look, if that be possible, into the times in which that legend is placed. What was the "time spirit" in the day when this legend arose? What was the attitude of the general mind towards the miraculous? To what stage of knowledge and science had those who created or accepted the myth attained? These are points that will help us signally in any attempt to understand such a story as the Gospel story of the Resurrection.

THE TIME SPIRIT IN THE FIRST CENTURY

A story emanating from a superstitious and unscientific people would be received with more doubt than a story emanating from people possessing a knowledge of science, and not prone to accept stories of the marvellous without strict and full investigation.

A miracle story from an Arab of the Soudan would be received with a smile; a statement of some occult mystery made by a Huxley or a Darwin would be accorded a respectful hearing and a serious criticism.

Now, the accounts of the Resurrection in the Gospels belong to the less credible form of statement. They emanated from a credulous and superstitious people in an unscientific age and country.

The Jews in the days of which the Gospels are supposed to tell, and the Jews of Old Testament times, were unscientific and superstitious people, who believed in sorcery, in witches, in demons and angels, and in all manner of miracles and supernatural agents. We have only to read the Scriptures to see that it was so. But I shall quote here, in support of my assertion, the opinions taken by the author of Supernatural Religion from the works of Dean Milman and Dr. Lightfoot. In his History of Christianity Dean Milman speaks of the Jews as follows:

The Jews of that period not only believed that the Supreme Being had the power of controlling the course of Nature, but that the same influence was possessed by multitudes of subordinate spirits, both good and evil. Where the pious Christian of the present day would behold the direct Agency of the Almighty, the Jews would invariably have interposed an angel as the author or ministerial agent in the wonderful transaction. Where the Christian moralist would condemn the fierce passion, the ungovernable lust, or the inhuman temper, the Jew discerned the workings of diabolical possession. Scarcely a malady was endured, or crime committed, which was not traced to the operation of one of these myriad demons, who watched every opportunity of exercising their malice in the sufferings and the sins of men.

Read next the opinion of John Lightfoot, D.D., Master of Catherine Hall, Cambridge:

... Let two things only be observed: (1) That the nation under the Second Temple was given to magical arts beyond measure; and (2) that it was given to an easiness of believing all manner of delusions beyond measure... It is a disputable case whether the Jewish nation were more mad with superstition in matters of religion, or with superstition in curious arts: (1) There was not a people upon earth that studied or attributed more to dreams than they; (2) there was hardly any people in the whole world that more used, or were more fond of amulets, charms, mutterings, exorcisms, and all kinds of enchantments.

It is from this people, "mad with superstition" in religion and in sorcery, the most credulous people in the whole world, a people destitute of the very rudiments of science, as science is understood to-day--it is from this people that the unreasonable and impossible stories of the Resurrection, coloured and distorted on every page with miracles, come down to us.

We do not believe that miracles happen now. Are we, on the evidence of such a people, to believe that miracles happened two thousand years ago?

We in England to-day do not believe that miracles happen now. Some of us believe, or persuade ourselves that we believe, that miracles did happen a few thousand years ago.

But amongst some peoples the belief in miracles still persists, and wherever the belief in miracles is strongest we shall find that the people who believe are ignorant of physical science, are steeped in superstition, or are abjectly subservient to the authority of priests or fakirs. Scientific knowledge and freedom of thought and speech are fatal to superstition. It is only in those times, or amongst those people, where ignorance is rampant, or the priest is dominant, or both, that miracles are believed.

It will be urged that many educated Englishmen still believe the Gospel miracles. That is true; but it will be found in nearly all such cases that the believers have been mentally marred by the baneful authority of the Church. Let a person once admit into his system the poisonous principle of "faith," and his judgment in religious matters will be injured for years, and probably for life.

But let me here make clear what I mean by the poisonous principle of "faith." I mean, then, the deadly principle that we are to believe any statement, historical or doctrinal, without evidence.

Thus we are to believe that Christ rose from the dead because the Gospels say so. When we ask why we are to accept the Gospels as true, we are told because they are inspired by God. When we ask who says that the Gospels are inspired by God, we are told that the Church says so. When we ask how the Church knows, we are told that we must have faith. That is what I call a poisonous principle. That is the poison which saps the judgment and perverts the human kindness of men.

The late Dr. Carpenter wrote as follows: