The Lost Gospel and Its Contents Part 20

In the next chapter, after the account of the healing of the sick of the palsy, it is said:--

"They were all amazed and glorified G.o.d, saying, We never saw it on this fas.h.i.+on." (ii. 12.)

Again (St. Luke v. 26), after the casting out of a devil: "They were all amazed." Again, Luke ix. 43 (also after the casting out of a devil), "They were all amazed at the mighty power of G.o.d." [170:1]

From the account in St. John, the miracle of the opening of the eyes of the man born blind seems to have excited unbounded astonishment:--

"Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind." "Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?" (John ix. 32, x. 21.)

But more than this. If there be any truth whatsoever in the Gospel narrative, the disciples themselves, instead of exhibiting anything approaching to the credulity with which the author of "Supernatural Religion" taxes the contemporaries of Christ, exhibited rather a spirit of unbelief. If they had transmitted to us "cunningly devised fables,"

they never would have recorded such instances of their own slowness of belief as is evinced by their conduct respecting the feeding of the four thousand following upon the feeding of the five thousand, when they ask the same question in the face of the same difficulty respecting the supply of food.

Above all, their slowness of belief in the Resurrection of Christ after their Master's direct a.s.sertion that He would rise again, is directly opposed to the idea suggested by the author of "Supernatural Religion,"

that they were ready to believe anything which seemed to favour His pretensions.

Now, it may be alleged that these instances of the slowness of belief on the part of our Lord's immediate followers, and the conduct of the mult.i.tudes who expressed such wonder at His miracles, are contrary to one another, but, they are not; for the astonishment of the mult.i.tudes did not arise from credulity in the least, but was the expression of that state of mind which must exist (no matter how carefully it is concealed), when some unlooked-for occurrence, totally inexplicable on any natural principles, presents itself. I cite it to show how utterly unfamiliar that age was with even the pretence of the exhibition of miraculous powers. If there be any substratum of truth whatsoever in the accounts of the slowness of belief on the part of the Apostles, it is a proof that our Lord's most familiar friends were anything but the superst.i.tious persons which certain writers a.s.sume them to have been.

SECTION XXIII.

DEMONIACAL POSSESSION.

The question of Demoniacal Possession now demands a pa.s.sing notice.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" ascribes all such phenomena to imposture or delusion; and, inasmuch as these supposed miracles of casting out of evil spirits are a.s.sociated with other miracles of Christ in the same narrative, he uses the odium with which this cla.s.s of miracles is in this day regarded, for the purpose of discrediting the miracles of healing and the Resurrection of Jesus.

I cannot help expressing my surprise at the difficulty which some writers, who desire fully and faithfully to uphold the supernatural, seem to have respecting Demoniacal Possession. The difficulty seems to me to be not in the action of evil spirits in this or in that way, but in their existence. And yet the whole a.n.a.logy of nature, and the state of man in this world, would lead us to believe, not only in the objective existence of a world of spirits, but in the separation of their characters into good and evil.

Those who deny the fact of an actually existing spiritual world of angels, if they are Atheists, must believe that man is the highest rational existence in the universe; but this is absurd, for the intellect of man in plainly very circ.u.mscribed, and he is slowly discovering laws which account for the phenomena which he sees, which laws were operative for ages before he discovered them, and imply infinitely more intellect in their invention, so to speak, and imposition and nice adjustment with one another, than he shows in their mere discovery. A student, for instance, has a problem put before him, say upon the adjustments of the forces of the heavenly bodies. The solution, if it evinces intelligence in him, must evince more and older intelligence in the man who sets him the problem; but if the conditions of the problem truly represent the acts of certain forces and their compensations, can we possibly deny that there is an intellect infinitely above ours who calculated beforehand their compensations and adjustments. All the laws of the universe must be a.s.sumed to be, even if they are not believed to be, the work of a personal intellect absolutely infinite, whose operations cannot be confined to this world, for it gives laws to all bodies, no matter how distant. The same reasoning, then, which shows that there is an intelligent will, because it can solve a problem, necessitates an infinitely higher Intelligence which can order the motions of distant worlds by laws of which our highest calculative processes are perhaps very clumsy representations.

Those who, like the author of "Supernatural Religion," are good enough to admit (with limitations) the existence of a Supreme Being, and yet deny the existence of a spiritual world above ours, seem to me to act still more absurdly. For the whole a.n.a.logy of the world of nature would lead as to infer that, as there is a descending scale of animated beings below man reaching down to the lowest forms of life, so there is an ascending scale above him, between him and G.o.d. The deniers of the existence of such beings as angels undertake to a.s.sert that there are no beings between ourselves and the Supreme Being, because nature (meaning by nature certain lower brute forces, such as gravitation and electricity), "knows nothing" of them.

The Scriptures, on the contrary, would lead us to believe that just as in the natural world there are gradations of beings between ourselves and the lowest forms of life, so in the spiritual world (and we belong to both worlds) there are gradations of beings between ourselves and G.o.d Who created all things.

The Scriptures would lead us to believe that these beings are intelligent free agents, and, as such, have had their time of probation--that some fell under their trial, and are now the enemies of G.o.d as wicked men are, and that others stood in the time of trial and continue the willing servants of G.o.d.

The Scriptures reveal that good angels act as good men do; they endeavour, as far as lies in their power, to confirm others in goodness and in the service of G.o.d; and that evil angels act as evil men act, they endeavour to seduce others and to involve them in their own condemnation.

The Scriptures say nothing to satisfy our curiosity about these beings, as Apocryphal books do. They simply describe the one as sent on errands of mercy, and the other as delighting in tempting men and inflicting pain. The mystery of the fall of some of these angels, and their consequent opposition to G.o.d, is no difficulty in itself. It is simply the oldest form of that which is to those who believe in the reality of the holiness and goodness of G.o.d the great problem of the universe--the origin and continuance of evil. It is simply the counterpart amongst a world of free agents above us of what takes place according to the [so-called] natural order of things amongst ourselves.

That evil angels can tempt the souls of men, and in some cases injure their bodies, is not a whit more difficult than that evil men can do the same under the government of a G.o.d who exerts so universal a providence as is described in the Bible, and allowed to some extent by the author of "Supernatural Religion."

I confess that I cannot understand the difficulty which some Christian writers evidently feel respecting the existence of such a thing as Demoniacal _possession_, whilst they seem to feel, or at least they _express_ no difficulty, respecting Demoniacal _temptation_. Demoniacal possession is the infliction of a physical evil for which the man is not accountable, but demoniacal temptation is an attempt to deprive a man of that for the keeping of which he is accountable, viz. his own innocence.

Demoniacal possession is a temporal evil. The yielding to demoniacal temptation may cast a man for ever out of the favour of G.o.d. And yet demoniacal temptation is perfectly a.n.a.logous to human temptation. A human seducer has it in his power, if his suggestions are received, to corrupt innocence, render life miserable, undermine faith in G.o.d and in Christ, and destroy the hopes of eternity--and a diabolical seducer can do no more.

Again, the Scriptures seem to teach us that these wicked spirits are the authors of certain temporal evils, and I do not see that there is anything unreasonable in the fact, if it be granted, that there are spirits who exist independent of bodily frames--that these spirits are free agents, and have different characters, and act according to their characters, and also that, according to the laws (_i.e._ within the limitations) of their nature, they have power to act upon those below them in the scale of being, just as we can act upon creatures below us according to the limitations, _i.e._ the laws, of our nature. We are in our way able to inflict evil or to ward off evil from our fellow creatures, under the limitations, or laws which a higher Power has set over us; and the Scriptures teach us that there are other beings in the great spiritual kingdom of G.o.d who are able to do us good or mischief under the conditions which the same Supreme Power has imposed on their action. So that the one thing which the Scriptures reveal to us is, that there is a far vaster spiritual kingdom of G.o.d than the human race.

With respect to demoniacal possession, our difficulties arise from two things--from our utter ignorance of the nature and real causes of mental diseases, and from our ignorance of the way in which purely spiritual beings can act upon beings such as ourselves, who ordinarily receive impressions only through our bodily organs. We know not, for instance, how G.o.d Himself acts upon our spirits, and yet, if He cannot, He has less power over us than we have over one another.

Respecting the fact of G.o.d permitting such a thing as possession, there is no more real difficulty than is involved in His permitting such a thing as madness. The symptoms of possession seem generally to have resembled mania, and ascribing certain sorts of mania to evil spirits is only a.s.signing one cause rather than another to a disease of whose nature we are profoundly ignorant. [178:1]

Again, if we take into consideration the fact that in not a few cases madness is produced by moral causes, by yielding to certain temptations, as, for instance, to drunkenness, there will be still less difficulty in believing that madness, arising from the action of an evil being, may be the punishment of yielding to the seductions of that evil being.

The miraculous cure of demoniacal possession presents, I need hardly say, less physical difficulty than any other cure performed by our Lord.

a.s.suming the presence of an evil spiritual existence in the possessed person coming face to face with the most exalted spiritual Power and Goodness, the natural result is that the one quails before the other.

But, in truth, all the difficulties respecting possession arise not so much from our ignorance, as from our dogmatism. We a.s.sert the dogma, or at least we quietly a.s.sume the dogma, that there are no spiritual or intellectual beings between ourselves and G.o.d; or, if we shrink from an a.s.sertion which so nearly implies our own omniscience, we lay down that these superior beings, of whose laws we know nothing, can only act upon us in ways precisely similar to those on which we act upon one another.

SECTION XXIV.

COMPETENT WITNESSES.

Another objection which the author of "Supernatural Religion" urges against the credibility of our Lord's miracles, is that they were not performed before what he considers competent witnesses.

"Their occurrence [he writes] is limited to ages which were totally ignorant of physical laws." (Vol. i. p. 201.)

Again, he speaks of the age as one

"in which not only the grossest superst.i.tion and credulity prevailed, but in which there was such total ignorance of natural laws that men were incapable of judging of that reality [_i.e._ of miracles]." (P. 204.)

Again:--

"The discussion of miracles, then, is not one regarding miracles actually performed within our own knowledge, but merely regarding miracles said to have been performed eighteen hundred years ago, the reality of which was not verified at the time by any scientific examination." (P. 208.)

From this we gather that the author of "Supernatural Religion" considers that the miracles of Christ should have been tested by scientific men; but we ask, By what scientific men? It is clear that if the testing was to have been satisfactory to those who think like the author of "Supernatural Religion," they must have been scientific men who approached the whole matter in a spirit of scepticism. Our Blessed Lord (I speak it with all reverence), if He cared to satisfy such men, should have delayed His coming to the present time, or should have called up out of the future, or created for this purpose, men who had doubts respecting the personality of G.o.d, who held Him to be fitly described as the Unknown and the Unknowable; who, to say the least, were in a state of suspense as to whether, if there be a Supreme Being, He can reveal Himself or make His will known. In fact, He must have called up, or created for the purpose, some individuals of a school of physicists which had no existence till 1,800 years after His time. For, if He had called into existence such witnesses as Sir Isaac Newton, or Sir Humphrey Davy, or Cuvier, or Faraday, they would have fallen down and wors.h.i.+pped.

But, in truth, such witnesses, whether believing or sceptical, would have found no place for their science, for the miracles of Christ were of such a kind that the most scientific doubter could have no more accounted for them than the most ignorant. The miracle of which, next to our Lord's own Resurrection, we have the fullest evidence, is that of the feeding of the 5,000; for it is recorded by each one of the four Evangelists. Now, if this miracle had been performed in the presence of the members of all the scientific societies now in existence, their knowledge of natural laws could have contributed nothing to its detection or explanation. They could have merely laid it down to trick or deception, just as any of the unscientific persons present could have done, and perhaps did. The miracle was performed in the open. Our Lord must have been on some elevated ground where His voice could have reached some considerable part of the mult.i.tude, and on which every act of His could be observed. More than a thousand loaves would have been necessary, requiring the a.s.sistance of, say a hundred men, to collect them and bring them from a distance. This, too, is not one of those miracles which can be explained by the convenient hypothesis of a "substratum of truth." It is either a direct exhibition of the creative power of G.o.d, or a fiction as unworthy of a moment's serious consideration as a story in the "Arabian Nights."

It is folly to imagine that such an act required scientific men to verify it. If the matter was either a reality, or presented that appearance of reality which the narrative implies, then the scientific person would have been stupefied, or in trembling and astonishment he would have fallen on his face like another opponent of the truth; or, may be, his very reason would have been shattered at the discovery that here before him was that very supernatural and divine Working in Whose existence he had been doing his best to persuade his fellow creatures to disbelieve.

The Scripture narratives, if they are not altogether devoid of truth, lead us to believe that our Lord performed His miracles in the face of three sects or parties of enemies, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians; each one rejecting His claims on grounds of its own. They were also performed in a populous city, of which all the rulers and the ma.s.s of the inhabitants were hostile to His pretensions. Such a place could never have been chosen as the scene of a miraculous event, known by those who promulgated it to have had no foundation in truth, and withal a.s.sumed to have been known throughout the city at the time, and to have been productive of a series of results, miraculous and ordinary, which were a.s.serted to have commenced at the moment of its occurrence.

The writer of "Supernatural Religion" would disparage the accounts of our Lord's supernatural works and Resurrection, because such accounts are to be found only in the writings of "enthusiastic followers," not in those of indifferent persons; but the nature of the case almost excludes all other testimony: for the miracles of our Lord were wrought for an evidential purpose,--to convince the Jews especially that He was the Christ, the hope of their fathers, and, as such, was not only to be believed in, but to be obeyed and followed. The only sign of real true belief was that the man who professed to believe joined that society which was inst.i.tuted for the purpose of propagating and keeping alive the truth of His Messiahs.h.i.+p. If any one who professed to believe stopped short of joining this society, his testimony to miracles would have been valueless, for the miracles were wrought to convince him of the truth of a matter in which, if he believed, he was bound to profess his belief, and, if he did not, he laid himself open to the charge of not really believing the testimony.

Now, of course, the reader is aware that we have a signal proof of the validity of this argument in the well-known pa.s.sage in Josephus which relates to our Lord. Josephus was the historian, and the only historian, of the period in which our Lord flourished. The eighteenth book of his "Antiquities of the Jews" covers the whole period of our Lord's life. If our Lord had merely attracted attention as a teacher of righteousness, which it is allowed on all hands that He did, it was likely that He would have been mentioned in this book along, with others whose teaching produced far less results. Mention appears to be made of Him in the following words:--

"Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for He was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to Him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ.

And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the princ.i.p.al men among us, had condemned Him to the cross, those that loved Him at the first did not forsake Him; for He appeared to them alive again the third day; as the Divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning Him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from Him, are not extinct at this day."

Now, on external grounds there seems little doubt of the genuineness of this pa.s.sage. It is in all copies of the historian's work, and is quoted in full by Eusebius, though not alluded to by fathers previous to his day. [183:1] If it is an interpolation, it must have been by the hand of a Christian; and yet it is absolutely inconceivable that any Christian should have noticed the Christian Church in such words as "the tribe of Christians, so named from Him, are not extinct at this day." It would have been absurd beyond measure to have described the Christians, so early as Justin's time even, as "not extinct," when they were filling the world with their doctrine, and their increase was a source of great perplexity and trouble to the Roman Government. It is just what a Jew of Josephus' time would have written who really believed that Jesus wrought miracles, but expected that nothing permanent would result from them.