CHAPTER III.

THE CREDENTIALS OF CHRISTIANITY-THE MIRACLES OF

CHRIST.

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THIRD leading evidence of the claims of the Lord Jesus is found in the miracles which He performed,-miracles which distinguished the whole course of His ministry. To these He Himself appealed. After referring to the testimony borne to Him by His forerunner, John the Baptist, He affirmed, 'But the witness which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father hath given Me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness of Me, that the Father hath sent Me' (John v. 36).

It is not necessary now to dwell at any length on the argument against miracles which was alleged by Hume, and which was dealt with so successfully by the Christian apologists of a former generation. That argument was, that it is contrary to experience that a miracle should be true, but not contrary to experience that testimony should be false. But, as Paley and others have pointed out, there lurks a fallacy in the word experience,' and in the phrase, 'contrary to experience.' 'Strictly speaking,' Dr. Paley says, 'the narrative of a fact is then only contrary to experience, when the fact is related to have existed at a time and place, at which time and place we, being present, did not perceive it to exist; as if it should be asserted that in a particular room, and at a particular hour of a certain day, a man was raised from the dead, in which room, and at the time specified, we, being present, and looking on, perceived no such event to have taken place. Here the ascer

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tion is contrary to experience properly so called; and this is a contrariety which no evidence can surmount. . . . And, short of this, I know no intelligible signification which can be affixed to the term, "contrary to experience," but one, viz., that of not having ourselves experienced anything similar to the thing related, or such things not being generally experienced by others. I say, "not generally;" for to state concerning the fact in question, that no such thing was ever experienced, or that universal experience is against it, is to assume the subject of the controversy.'*

The objection now referred to implies that no testimony can be sufficient to establish the fact of a miracle. But this surely cannot be maintained. The clear and vigorous writer, whose words we have just cited, puts the case in the following striking manner :—' When a theorem is proposed to a mathematician, the first thing he does with it is to try it upon a simple case, and if it produce a false result, he is sure that there must be some mistake in the demonstration. Now to proceed in this way with what may be called Mr. Hume's theorem. If twelve men whose probity and good sense I had long known, should seriously and circumstantially relate to me an account of a miracle wrought before their eyes, and in which it was impossible that they should be deceived; if the governor of the country, hearing a rumour of this account, should call these men into his presence, and offer them a short proposal, either to confess the imposture or submit to be tied up to a gibbet; if they should refuse with one voice to acknowledge that there existed any falsehood or imposture in the case; if this threat were communicated to them separately, yet with no different effect; if it was at last executed; if I myself saw them, one after another, consenting to be racked, burnt, or strangled, rather than give up the truth of their account;still, if Mr. Hume's rule be my guide, I am not to believe them. Now I undertake to say that there exists not a sceptic

* 'Evidences of Christianity. Preparatory Considerations.

in the world who would not believe them, or who would defend such incredulity.'*

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But in the present day the argument against miracles has assumed a different form. It is held that they are inconsistent with the grand conception, suggested by physical science, of the mutual relation of all material things, and a certain necessary and invariable succession of changes among them. quote the words of the late Baden Powell, in his contribution to Essays and Reviews, 'In an age of physical research like the present, all highly cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects have, at least, in some measure, learned to appreciate the grand foundation-conception of universal law; to recognise the impossibility even of any two material atoms subsisting together without a determinate relation,-of any action of the one or the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without reference to a physical cause,-of any modification whatever in the existing conditions of material agents, unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences, following in some chain of orderly connection, however imperfectly known to us.'

Now while we admit the regularity of the processes of nature, we yet hold that He who constituted nature can, and may, for great purposes connected with His moral administration, interpose to produce an effect beyond any which the operation of natural law could bring about. We ourselves are conscious of a power to influence the course of things around us. Our own will-force, put forth again and again, is one of the most certain facts with which we are acquainted; and if there is indeed an Almighty Creator and Ruler of this world, surely He can interpose, not to remedy the defects of the system of nature, or to set aside its laws, but to accomplish, by His own direct agency, that which natural law could not effect, but which He designs to subserve important moral ends. Mr. Conder has powerfully put the case thus:- Divested of verbal disguises, the question of the possibility of miracles Evidences of Christianity.' Preparatory Considerations.

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simply amounts to this:-Is God as free to act as man? He, if He sees fit, produce definite sensible effects in outward nature and in human minds, just as we can, but of course on a scale corresponding with omnipotence? '*

But we may go further, and after surveying, as we have done, the character, and teaching, and claims of the Lord Jesus, we may affirm that it was suited to Him,—that it was indeed to be expected, that He should perform miracles. When such a Prophet appeared among men, impressing by His whole character and bearing every thoughtful and earnest mind, and, while exhibiting lowliness and self-sacrifice, claiming a peculiar and unique relation to God, it might well be that He should evince a more than human power, and should control, by the putting forth of His will, even the mightiest elements of nature.

We turn, then, to the recorded miracles of our Lord; and we find them eminently worthy of Him. Generally speaking, they were miracles of mercy. He healed the sick; He gave sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf; He rescued from the tyranny of the powers of darkness those unhappy persons whom they had possessed. On some occasions, when the multitudes who had flocked to His ministry were ready to faint from exhaustion, He fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes. He stilled the raging of the sea, and hushed the tempestuous wind into a calm, so that they who were with Him were constrained to exclaim, 'What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?' In three instances He restored the dead to life, summoning back the spirit from the invisible world, and reanimating the frame which had succumbed to the stroke of mortality.

The manner of the Saviour, too, in the performance of His miracles is calculated to impress every thoughtful mind. When other prophets were made the instruments of working miracles, they distinctly avowed that they were but instruments; and the Apostles, in particular, ever made it prominent that they * The Basis of Faith,' Second Edition, Lecture VI., p. 261.

acted in the name of the Lord Jesus, and that the miracles were wrought by His unseen power. But our Lord claimed to be Himself the Agent in the performance of His mighty works; and in reference to one in particular, He affirmed, 'My Father worketh even until now, and I work' (John v. 17). While He referred the whole of his mediatorial ministry to the Father's counsel, He spoke and acted as Himself possessed of an inherent life, as the Sustainer and Ruler of universal nature.

Let us reflect, too, that many of our Lord's miracles shadowed forth the great spiritual blessings which He came to confer upon mankind; and some of them were distinctly connected with the assurance of forgiveness to troubled and anxious spirits, and were wrought to show that He, the Son of Man, had power on earth to forgive sins.

Now when we dwell on the mighty works of our Lord, bearing in mind His character and teaching, we find in them the seal of Divine authority affixed to His loftiest claims, and to the message which He delivered. We are not only constrained to say with Nicodemus, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher come from God; for no man can do these signs that Thou doest except God be with Him;' but we are led onward to adopt the confession of Peter, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.'