stance, the miracles which our Lord performed, and the prophecies which were accomplished in him. These credentials remain in substance the same in every age. They have, however, been enlarged by the lapse of time. To the miracles of our Lord are now added those of the apostles; and to the prophecies accomplished in himself, all the series of predictions which have been since fulfilled, and are now fulfilling, in the world. We now also adjoin the proofs arising from the propagation of the gospel, and the obvious benefits it has conferred on mankind. These topics will form the subject of the present and the four succeeding Lectures.* Our Lord's doctrines and character, as well as the divine effects of his religion, will form branches of the internal evidences to be considered in a further division of our Course.t Thus we shall come to the grounds of a divine faith, arising from a divine testimony. The authenticity and credibility of our books place them on the footing of other undoubted histories; the supernatural credentials will give to the subject matter of them a divine authority. We begin with the MIRACLES of our Lord and his apostles. What, then, is a miracle? It is a visible suspension of those laws of nature, on the general constancy of which the order and preservation of the whole universe rest. These laws God alone, as the Author of nature, fixed; and these laws God alone, as the Governor and Preserver of nature, can alter or suspend. A miracle supposes an established and generally unaltered course of things. Effects that are produced in the regular order of that course we call natural; and those which clearly and palpably depart from that order we call miraculous. Both are equally easy to God; and equally incomprehensible, in the mode of them, to us. That grains of corn sown in the earth should turn into abundant harvests, which nourish whole nations, is an astonishing act of that goodness which continually supplies our wants. it is constantly exerted; it is common, and therefore excites no extraordinary notice. That five barley loaves and a few small fishes should be multiplied instantaneously, so as to feed five thousand men, and that twelve baskets of fragments should be collected from them, is an astonishing act also. But it is rare and unexpected. It strikes us with surprise. It excites inquiry into the cause of the occurrence. It is, * Lect, viii.—xi. + Lect. xiv.-xviii, But therefore, an act of God, fit to confirm a revelation to mankind. The usual deeds of God's power prove his being and providence; the unusual and miraculous prove the divine commission of the person at whose word they are performed. The extraordinary phenomena which we call miracles, awaken, therefore, from their infrequency, the attention of mankind; and afford, by their evident connection with supernatural agency, the best conceivable proof of an immediate indication of the divine will. Now the question is, Did these facts take place? For instance, our Lord is represented in the text as having healed a man sick of the palsy. At the marriage in Cana, he turned water into wine. At the same place, he healed the son of a nobleman who was sick at Capernaum. On another occasion, when watched by the Pharisees, he ordered the man who had a withered hand to stretch it forth, and it became whole as the other. Again, he restored sight to blind Bartimeus; and he raised Lazarus, and the only son of a widowed mother at Nain, to life. In each of these, and the like examples of our Lord's wonderful works, there are two distinct and palpable facts, which are said to be submitted to the observation of all the people, and of which they were competent judges. The man was sick of the palsy-the man was cured, and carried away his bed. The water-pots of stone were filled with water-when the servants presented the same to the governor of the feast, it was wine. The nobleman left his son at Capernaum dying he received, on his return from our Lord, the certain tidings of his recovery. The man had indisputably a withered hand-it was afterwards whole as the other. Bartimeus was blind his sight was restored. Lazarus and the youth at Nain were dead; the one had been interred, the other was carried out on the bier as our Lord met him-both lived again. So of all the other works which were performed by our Lord and his apostles, and which we consider to be miracles. The question is, Did these plain, intelligible facts take place? All who were present are affirmed to have witnessed and known the previous state of the sufferers-and their subsequent altered condition. Whether a miracle was performed in each case, is another question. We now merely put the previous inquiry, Did certain facts occur? Does the testimony to the facts of the state previous to the interference of our Lord and his apostles, and to the facts of the state subsequent to it-does this testimony deserve belief? Were the events themselves such as are recorded? These remarks may be applied to the greatest of all miracles-the resurrection of our Lord. It resolves itself likewise into two facts. Did the apostles see and know the death and burial of their Master? This is one fact. Did they see and know the same Jesus their Master alive again-did they converse with him for forty days—and behold him ascending into heaven? Thus the whole question of the truth of the gospel miracles falls back on the credibility. A few remarks will show that that credibility embraces them, and that they are indissolubly connected with the general credit due to the evangelical history. Three questions, therefore, on the whole, may be proposed: Did the wonderful actions ascribed to Christ and the apostles really take place?-Were these actions undoubtedly miraculous? Was there such a connection between them and the religion they attest, as to prove that that religion was from God? If these questions are satisfactorily answered, we shall have demonstrated all that the case requires; for we shall have shown that THE FACTS WERE DONE-that THE FACTS WERE MIRACULOUS-that THE FACTS PROVE THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN Religion. Let me beg the attention of every candid and sincere hearer, (for I address no other,) whilst I detail the proofs of these points, though they will necessarily have some reference to the last lecture. Repetition on so great a topic, if unavoidable, is a small evil. I. To ask whether the wonderful actions ascribed to our Saviour and his apostles REALLY TOOK PLACE, is to move again the question which we have already settled. For it is, in a good measure, the same thing as to ask whether the credibility of the gospel history includes the credibility of the works which are the most prominent part of it, and on which the whole rests. If the history be not true as to these, it is not true at all. The wonderful deeds are not subordinate and insulated parts of the account, mere appendages, but the main features. The trustworthiness of the historians is pledged to the particular events which we call miracles, as the foundation of the entire narrative. The question, then, with regard to them, is of the last moment. A few remarks will show that the credibility embraces the miracles, and that they are indissolubly connected with the general credit due to the evangelical history. 1. For all that we stated in our last lecture, as to the number and character of the witnesses to our Lord's history, as to their simplicity, uprightness, disinterestedness and purity of life, not only applies, but applies chiefly, and in the first place, to these very actions. It was not to doctrines, but to these specific facts, occurring under their own eyes, and submitted to their own examination, that they bear their testimony. It was for asserting, especially, the resurrection of their Master, the most astonishing of all the events in the evangelical history, that they endured suffering, reproach, persecution, death. By only not bearing testimony to this and the preceding miracles of their Lord, they might have avoided all suffering and reproach, and have lived in quiet, as we observed in the last lecture; nay, by detecting an imposture, if there had been any, they might have risen to reputation, honor, reward. And yet these plain, honest men, the purity of whose lives no one can impeach, persisted to the last, in a firm, consistent, unshaken testimony to this miraculous history. Not only so, they go about and preach these specific facts, and the doctrines springing out of them, and live a self-denying, beneficent, holy life; and thus living and bearing witness, they bring upon themselves gratuitously, and with a full knowledge of the consequences, enmity, hatred, peril and death. Such a testimony never can be disputed or disbelieved, except on principles which would destroy the validity of all testimony, and end in annihilating human intercourse. That such men should invent things entirely false; should then give them out as true at the peril of life; and should suffer themselves to be put to death, all of them, for attesting that they had seen with their eyes what they did not see, is contradictory to all the known principles of human nature. This is the first point; the number and character of our witnesses prove that, as they are credible in their narrative generally, so they are most of all credible in what is the main part of it-the extraordinary actions performed. 2. Again: what did the converts of the first century believe? and what did they attest to those of the second, but the facts of the gospel miracles, of the resurrection of their Lord especially, and of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, on which Christianity rested its claims? Their giving credit to a narrative founded on these wonderful operations, included, in the very first place, a belief in the account of those operations. If the works had not been performed, what would have availed all the fragments of the story? If Christ had not really wrought his miraculous works, really risen, really ascended into heaven, and by many infallible proofs assured his disciples of his divine mission; if he had not really poured out the gifts of the Holy Ghost according to his promise, Christians would have had nothing to believe in; the whole of Christianity would have been a lie. But these facts were universally admitted as true by the contemporaries of the apostles. They rest not only on their testimony, as immediate witnesses, but on the suffrage of the whole Jewish nation, to whom they appealed. This is a most important circumstance in considering the truth of the extraordinary works recorded in the gospel narrative. For the credibility of contemporary history, be it remarked, when uncontradicted, springs not only from the personal qualities of those who write, but also from the suffrage of all their countrymen, friends and enemies, to whom the writings are submitted. In reading the evangelical history, it is the nation, it is the whole age whom we hear. If the works said to be miraculous had not taken place, the cry of indignation raised in all the places where the false accounts came, would have resounded with a tremendous echo to posterity, and have left us in the present age no Christian religion to discuss.* 3. I observe, further, that monuments were set up in memory of the wonderful facts recorded in the Scriptures at the time when they took place, and have continued ever since. This is one of the marks laid down with such acuteness by Leslie.t We have already noticed that the institutions appointed by our Christian books, and still subsisting, prove their credibility generally; but we now apply the observation to the miraculous part of the history. For the mighty works of our Lord, his resurrection, his ascension, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the miraculous powers of the apostles, were accompanied with the propagation of a new religion, with the promulgation of divine laws; with all the institutions of a peculiar religious society, called the Christian church; with the celebration therein of the sacrament of baptism, as a * VOL. I. Frayssinous' Defense du Christianisme, i. 506. |