Na former article on Miracles, we considered their nature and their validity as "signs" of revealed truth. The position taken and defended was, that if the miracles of the New Testament were genuine "the finger of God"-then the gospel is true; and that the physical facts were of such a character that they must have been known to be true or false. Deception would itself have been a miracle. We might from this point proceed at once to prove that the apostles did believe them genuine-the effects of the immediate energy of God. That is, that the apostles were honest, believing what they said. But there is often a vague suspicion that, plain as the facts of these miracles must have been, and however sincere the apostles were-as their sincerity is ordinarily conceded—yet there might have been something peculiar in their intellectual habits which predisposed them to deception. We are therefore compelled to delay a little at the outset, to put aside this suspicion. It seems almost needless, after what has been said as to the plainness and unmistakable character of these events; still we do not combat a shadow. It is a fact rarely considered, that a very low degree of talent is competent to testify as to physical facts. When doctrines, or questions of science, or of professional skill are concerned, a higher grade of qualifications is requisite. But physical facts are judged of by all (1) VOL. VIII.-No. 1. A men with nearly equal certainty. Whether a man is lying on a bier, dressed for burial, or not, is as certain to a peasant as to a philosopher. Whether such a one is literally dead or not, except in extraordinary cases, is as certain to one as to the other. But whether death had been caused by strychnine or by a "heart disease," could be satisfactorily known only by an expert, of adequate scientific acquirements. But not one of the miracles of the New Testament was of this last character. All that can be necessary, therefore, in this case, will be to show that the apostles were men of common sense. There can be no doubt as to the competency of those multitudes who witnessed the gospel miracles, and professed faith in them; but we shall, in this discussion, confine ourselves to the apostles. Mr. Hume has said that "ignorant enthusiasts can be made to believe any thing." This is false, and unworthy of Mr. Hume's intellect. He could never have analyzed the nature of enthusiasm, its elements, and how it deceives. We grant its deceiving influence is frequently experienced; but the belief of the apostles cannot be so accounted for. Enthusiasm leads men to believe to be true what is destitute of evidence-it may be, beyond the reach of it—but not contrary to evidence. It is a wellknown law of the mind that conceptions are believed to be perceptions, that is realities, till tested by other faculties and by surrounding circumstances. Hence, dreams are to the dreamer realities till he awakes, when they are seen to be not only unreal, but often absurd. The same is true of waking reveries. Between reveries and madness it is frequently difficult to distinguish. It is reported of Webster, the murderer of Dr. Parkman, that he repeatedly complained to the keeper of the prison that the other prisoners taunted him at night as a murderer. This was proved not to be a fact, and can be satisfactorily accounted for on the principle that his thoughts of what would not be unnatural, guilty or innocent, were to him perceptions-real facts, till corrected. We understood at the time that many deemed this evidence of guilt. It should not have been. It was evidence of a mind diseased either by a sense of guilt, or by a consciousness of innocency wrongly accused and liable to such insult. In this way judgment loses its authority, and belief in the reality of that which is purely imaginary is the result. In either case, Dr. Webster believed his conceptions to be perceptions. No one, certainly not Mr. Hume, believes the apostles to have been in this mental condition. It is nearer madness than enthusiasm, and yet they are somewhat analogous in their manifestations. The enthusiast does not mistake conceptions for perceptions, but conceptions for spiritual realities. The mistake is different, but not less incorrigible. The enthusiast thinks himself divinely inspired, without a shadow of evidence. It is a naked mental impression or conviction that it is a communication from God, as deeply fixed in the mind as if he had demonstration of its truth. In these cases conceptions are not mistaken for perceptions. It is a transcendental state; that is, the judgment transcends the laws of human belief. It passes into a terra incognita. The enthusiast does not believe he has seen or heard or felt what he has not. Such are madmen. He entertains certain ideas. As to this fact he is not mistaken. His consciousness is infallible. lieves these ideas come suggested to him by the Spirit of God, it is (unless attended by a miracle as an infallible sign) a conviction without evidence. This is transcendentalism. It would also have been the part of an enthusiast to have believed Jesus a divine messenger, had he performed no miracles as "signs." But it would not have been. the part of one, to have believed he witnessed those "signs" when none were given. The enthusiast asks for no signs. The impression on his mind is the only evidence he desires. The enthusiast makes no mistakes as to physical facts, but draws false conclusions from mental impressions. For the apostles to have believed the facts of miracles when none were wrought, would have shown an abnormal mental condition; which state of mind has never been attributed to them. That these men were ignorant enthusiasts, as Mr. Hume insinuates, we flatly deny. To say nothing now of many of the early Christians, as Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and the great company of priests who were obedient to the faith, the apostles were specially qualified to be witnesses of such facts. They were twelve in number, men of full age, of different ages-though not liberally learned, yet by no means ignorant, and differently learned; of different temperaments and intellectual endowments and pursuits in life. Our position is that these miracles were of such character that they could not deceive one of these men, though the least intellectual of all. We have here twelve men made up of all this variety of character, no one of whom had not respectable talents. If any doubt this judg ment, we will not refer them to Paul or Luke, confessedly men of education and of vigorous intellects, but to Peter, the Galilean fisherman. Let such, exercising a critical yet candid judgment, carefully read the first two chapters of this apostle's First Epistle. If practiced in rhetoric, and not under the influence of a dogmatizing prejudice, they must perceive here talents of a high order, a mind qualified to testify on any subject not requiring the skill of an expert. There is in these chapters not only a peculiar moral purity, on which we do not now dwell, but an elevated conceptive power, accompanied with a sharp apprehension of gospel truths, such as no fanatic or enthusiast ever had. While the style is by no means destitute of grace, passages being truly poetic, there is in the course of thought a straightforwardness, a perspicuity and strength, which coerce the reader's attention and inspire his admiration. It is true eloquence-replete with instruction, and felt by the Christian to be irresistibly persuasive. We respect the writer's mental vigor, his earnestness and his heart. Surely such a man is a competent witness, and if honest, trustworthy as to the reality of the miracles which he professes not only to have seen, but personally to have wrought. Had the events been more subtle, St. Peter was among the last to believe without evidence. But these were physical facts, plain, open, unmistakable. Should it be objected to the natural talents or the intellectual culture of these men that they were inspired, then the argument is closed; for if inspired, what they testify to is of course true. But if not inspired, though (with one or two exceptions) not men of learning, they must have been able men-abler by far than any civil tribunal requires in witnesses, on whose testimony depend life and death, and other grave interests. Their truthfulness is a separate consideration, hereafter to be examined.. But men who have established in the earth a new religion, which has commanded the confidence and respect of the wisest of the race, and from which the wisest have drawn knowledge as from a divine fountain, were not, they could not have been, "ignorant enthusiasts." We confess, such a defence of the intellectual qualifications of the apostles must to most minds be needless. But not to all. To the skeptic, truth is seen in a disguised form. The apostles believed these miracles to be true, and signs of the truth of the gospel; that is, they were honest witnesses. According to the foregoing reasoning, if the apostles, and we may add, the first converts generally, believed the miracles to be realities, they must have been so. We are reduced, therefore, to this alternative either the miracles were true, or those men testified to a known and deliberate falsehood, and so were base men. The question, therefore, is simple: Were they base men? We have effects, for which causes of sufficient strength and proper in kind are to be assigned. Not only the testimony, but the lives, labors and sacrifices of those disciples of Christ are to be accounted for. If they did not believe their own story, and so were bad men, can we assign any satisfactory reason-motives whose impulsive power could originate and sustain, year after year, such a life-a life replete with sacrifices, and not unrequently with perils? |