Phases of Faith Part 7

2. The prophecies of the New Testament are not many. First, we have that of Jesus in Matt xxiv. concerning the destruction of Jerusalem.

It is marvellously exact, down to the capture of the city and miserable enslavement of the population; but at this point it becomes clearly and hopelessly false: namely, it declares, that "_immediately after_ that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, &c. &c., and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect," &c. This is a manifest description of the Great Day of Judgment: and the prophecy goes on to add: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pa.s.s, till all these things be fulfilled." When we thus find a prediction to break down suddenly in the middle, we have the well-known mark of its earlier part being written after the event: and it becomes unreasonable to doubt that the detailed annunciations of this 24th chapter of Matthew, were first composed _very soon after_ the war of t.i.tus, and never came from the lips of Jesus at all. Next: we have the prophecies of the Apocalypse.

Not one of these can be interpreted certainly of any human affairs, except one in the 17th chapter, which the writer himself has explained to apply to the emperors of Rome: and that is proved false by the event.--Farther, we have Paul's prophecies concerning the apostacy of the Christian Church. These are very striking, as they indicate his deep insight into the moral tendencies of the community in which he moved. They are high testimonies to the prophetic soul of Paul; and as such, I cannot have any desire to weaken their force. But there is nothing in them that can establish the theory of supernaturalism, in the face of his great mistake as to the speedy return of Christ from heaven.

3. As for the Old Testament, if all its prophecies about Babylon and Tyre and Edom and Ishmael and the four Monarchies were both true and supernatural, what would this prove? That G.o.d had been pleased to reveal something of coming history to certain eminent men of Hebrew antiquity. That is all. We should receive this conclusion with an otiose faith. It could not order or authorize us to submit our souls and consciences to the obviously defective morality of the Mosaic system in which these prophets lived; and with Christianity it has nothing to do.

At the same time I had reached the conclusion that large deductions must be made from the credit of these old prophecies.

First, as to the Book of Daniel: the 11th chapter is closely historical down to Antiochus Epiphanes, after which it suddenly becomes false; and according to different modern expositors, leaps away to Mark Antony, or to Napoleon Buonaparte, or to the Papacy.

Hence we have a _prima facie_ presumption that the book was composed in the reign of that Antiochus; nor can it be proved to have existed earlier: nor is there in it one word of prophecy which can be shown to have been fulfilled in regard to any later era. Nay, the 7th chapter also is confuted by the event; for the great Day of Judgment has not followed upon the fourth[19] Monarchy.

Next, as to the prophecies of the Pentateuch. They abound, as to the times which precede the century of Hezekiah; higher than which we cannot trace the Pentateuch.[20] No prophecy of the Pentateuch can be proved to have been fulfilled, which had not been already fulfilled before Hezekiah's day.

Thirdly, as to the prophecies which concern various nations,--some of them are remarkably verified, as that against Babylon; others failed, as those of Ezekiel concerning Nebuchadnezzar's wars against Tyre and Egypt. The fate predicted against Babylon was delayed for five centuries, so as to lose all moral meaning as a divine infliction on the haughty city.--On the whole, it was clear to me, that it is a vain attempt to forge polemical weapons out of these old prophets, for the service of modern creeds.[21]

V. My study of John's gospel had not enabled me to sustain Dr.

Arnold's view, that it was an impregnable fortress of Christianity.

In discussing the Apocalypse, I had long before felt a doubt whether we ought not rather to a.s.sign that book to John the apostle in preference to the Gospel and Epistles: but this remained only as a doubt. The monotony also of the Gospel had often excited my _wonder_. But I was for the first time _offended_, on considering with a fresh mind an old fact,--the great similarity of the style and phraseology in the third chapter, in the testimony of the Baptist, as well as in Christ's address to Nicodemus, that of John's own epistle. As the three first gospels have their family likeness, which enables us on hearing a text to know that it comes out of one of the three, though we perhaps know not which; so is it with the Gospel and Epistles of John. When a verse is read, we know that it is either from an epistle of John, or else from the Jesus of John; but often we cannot tell which. On contemplating the marked character of this phenomenon, I saw it infallibly[22] to indicate that John has made both the Baptist and Jesus speak, as John himself would have spoken; and that we cannot trust the historical reality of the discourses in the fourth gospel.

That narrative introduces an entirely new phraseology, with a perpetual discoursing about the Father and the Son; of which there is barely the germ in Matthew:--and herewith a new doctrine concerning the heaven-descended personality of Jesus. That the divinity of Christ cannot be proved from the three first gospels, was confessed by the early Church, and is proved by the labouring arguments of the modern Trinitarians. What then can be dearer, than that John has put into the mouth of Jesus the doctrines of half a century later, which he desired to recommend?

When this conclusion pressed itself first on my mind, the name of Strauss was only beginning to be known in England, and I did not read his great work until years after I had come to a final opinion on this whole subject. The contemptuous reprobation of Strauss in which it is fas.h.i.+onable for English writers to indulge, makes it a duty to express my high sense of the lucid force with which he unanswerably shows that the fourth gospel (whoever the author was) is no faithful exhibition of the discourses of Jesus. Before I had discerned this so vividly in all its parts, it had become quite certain to me that the secret colloquy with Nicodemus, and the splendid testimony of the Baptist to the Father and the Son, were wholly modelled out of John's own imagination. And no sooner had I felt how severe was the shock to John's general veracity, than a new and even graver difficulty rose upon me.

The stupendous and public event of Lazarus's resurrection,--the circ.u.mstantial cross-examination of the man born blind and healed by Jesus,--made those two miracles, in Dr. Arnold's view, grand and una.s.sailable bulwarks of Christianity. The more I considered them, the mightier their superiority seemed to those of the other gospels. They were wrought at Jerusalem, under the eyes of the rulers, who did their utmost to detect them, and could not; but in frenzied despair, plotted to kill Lazarus. How different from the frequently vague and wholesale statements of the other gospels concerning events which happened where no enemy was watching to expose delusion! many of them in distant and uncertain localities.

But it became the more needful to ask; How was it that the other writers omitted to tell of such decisive exhibitions? Were they so dull in logic, as not to discern the superiority of these? Can they possibly have known of such miracles, wrought under the eyes of the Pharisees, and defying all their malice, and yet have told in preference other less convincing marvels? The question could not be long dwelt on, without eliciting the reply: "It is necessary to believe, at least until the contrary shall be proved, that the three first writers either had never heard of these two miracles, or disbelieved them." Thus the account rests on the unsupported evidence of John, with a weighty presumption against its truth.

When, where, and in what circ.u.mstances did John write? It is agreed, that he wrote half a century after the events; when the other disciples were all dead; when Jerusalem was destroyed, her priests and learned men dispersed, her nationality dissolved, her coherence annihilated;--he wrote in a tongue foreign to the Jews of Palestine, and for a foreign people, in a distant country, and in the bosom of an admiring and confiding church, which was likely to venerate him the more, the greater marvels he a.s.serted concerning their Master. He told them miracles of firstrate magnitude, which no one before had recorded. Is it possible for me to receive them _on his word_, under circ.u.mstances so conducive to delusion, and without a single check to ensure his accuracy? Quite impossible; when I have already seen how little to be trusted is his report of the discourses and doctrine of Jesus.

But was it necessary to impute to John conscious and wilful deception?

By no means absolutely necessary;--as appeared by the following train[23] of thought. John tells us that Jesus promised the Comforter, _to bring to their memory_ things that concerned him; oh that one could have the satisfaction of cross-examining John on this subject!

Let me suppose him put into the witness-box; and I will speak to him thus: "O aged Sir, we understand that you have two memories, a natural and a miraculous one: with the former you retain events as other men; with the latter you recall what had been totally forgotten. Be pleased to tell us now. Is it from your natural or from your supernatural memory that you derive your knowledge of the miracle wrought on Lazarus and the long discourses which you narrate?" If to this question John were frankly to reply, "It is solely from my supernatural memory,--from the special action of the Comforter on my mind:" then should I discern that he was perfectly truehearted. Yet I should also see, that he was liable to mistake a reverie, a meditation, a day-dream, for a resuscitation of his memory by the Spirit. In short, a writer who believes such a doctrine, and does not think it requisite to warn us how much of his tale comes from his natural, and how much from his supernatural memory, forfeits all claim to be received as an historian, witnessing by the common senses to external fact. His work may have religious value, but it is that of a novel or romance, not of a history. It is therefore superfluous to name the many other difficulties in detail which it contains.

Thus was I flung back to the three first gospels, as, with all their defects,--their genealogies, dreams, visions, devil-miracles, and prophecies written after the event,--yet on the whole, more faithful as a picture of the true Jesus, than that which is exhibited in John.

And now my small root of supernaturalism clung the tighter to Paul, whose conversion still appeared to me a guarantee, that there was at least some nucleus of miracle in Christianity, although it had not pleased G.o.d to give us any very definite and trustworthy account.

Clearly it was an error, to make miracles our _foundation_; but might we not hold them as a result? Doctrine must be our foundation; but perhaps we might believe the miracles for the sake of it.--And in the epistles of Paul I thought I saw various indications that he took this view. The practical soundness of his eminently sober understanding had appeared to me the more signal, the more I discerned the atmosphere of erroneous philosophy which he necessarily breathed. But he also proved a broken reed, when I tried really to lean upon him as a main support.

1. The first thing that broke on me concerning Paul, was, that his moral sobriety of mind was no guarantee against his mistaking extravagances for miracle. This was manifest to me in his treatment of _the gift of tongues_.

So long ago as in 1830, when the Irving "miracles" commenced in Scotland, my particular attention had been turned to this subject, and the Irvingite exposition of the Pauline phenomena appeared to me so correct, that I was vehemently predisposed to believe the miraculous tongues. But my friend "the Irish clergyman" wrote me a full account of what he heard with his own ears; which was to the effect--that none of the sounds, vowels or consonants, were foreign;--that the strange words were moulded after the Latin grammar, ending in -abus, -obus, -ebat, -avi, &c., so as to denote poverty of invention rather than spiritual agency;--and _that there was no interpretation_. The last point decided me, that any belief which I had in it must be for the present unpractical. Soon after, a friend of mine applied by letter for information as to the facts to a very acute and pious Scotchman, who had become a believer in these miracles. The first reply gave us no facts whatever, but was a declamatory exhortation to believe.

The second was nothing but a lamentation over my friend's unbelief, because he asked again for the facts. This showed me, that there was excitement and delusion: yet the general phenomena appeared so similar to those of the church of Corinth, that I supposed the persons must unawares have copied the exterior manifestations, if, after all, there was no reality at bottom.

Three years sufficed to explode these tongues; and from time to time I had an uneasy sense, how much discredit they cast on the Corinthian miracles. Meander's discussion on the 2nd Chapter of the Acts first opened to me the certainty, that Luke (or the authority whom he followed) has exaggerated into a gift of languages what cannot have been essentially different from the Corinthian, and in short from the Irvingite, tongues. Thus Luke's narrative has transformed into a splendid miracle, what in Paul is no miracle at all. It is true that Paul speaks of _interpretation of tongues_ as possible, but without a hint that any verification was to be used. Besides, why should a Greek not speak Greek in an a.s.sembly of his own countrymen? Is it credible, that the Spirit should inspire one man to utter unintelligible sounds, and a second to interpret these, and then give the a.s.sembly endless trouble to find out whether the interpretation was pretence or reality, when the whole difficulty was gratuitous? We grant that there _may_ be good reasons for what is paradoxical, but we need the stronger proof that it is a reality. Yet what in fact is there? and why should the gift of tongues in Corinth, as described by Paul, be treated with more respect than in Newman Street, London? I could find no other reply, than that Paul was too sober-minded: yet his own description of the tongues is that of a barbaric jargon, which makes the church appear as if it "were mad," and which is only redeemed from contempt by miraculous interpretation. In the Acts we see that this phenomenon pervaded all the Churches; from the day of Pentecost onward it was looked on as the standard mark of "the descent of the Holy Spirit;" and in the conversion of Cornelius it was the justification of Peter for admitting uncirc.u.mcised Gentiles: yet not once is "interpretation" alluded to, except in Paul's epistle. Paul could not go against the whole Church. He held a logic too much in common with the rest, to denounce the tongues as _mere_ carnal excitement; but he does anxiously degrade them as of lowest spiritual value, and wholly prohibits them where there is "no interpreter." To carry out this rule, would perhaps have suppressed them entirely.

This however showed me, that I could not rest on Paul's practical wisdom, as securing him against speculative hallucinations in the matter of miracles; for indeed he says: "I thank my G.o.d, that I speak with tongues _more than ye all_."

2. To another broad fact I had been astonis.h.i.+ngly blind, though the truth of it flashed upon me as soon as I heard it named;--that Paul shows total unconcern to the human history and earthly teaching of Jesus, never quoting his doctrine or any detail of his actions. The Christ with whom Paul held communion was a risen, ascended, exalted Lord, a heavenly being, who reigned over arch-angels, and was about to appear as Judge of the world: but of Jesus in the flesh Paul seems to know nothing beyond the bare fact that he _did_[24] "humble himself"

to become man, and "pleased not himself." Even in the very critical controversy about meat and drink, Paul omits to quote Christ's doctrine, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth the man," &c.

He surely, therefore, must have been wholly and contentedly ignorant of the oral teachings of Jesus.

3. This threw a new light on the _independent_ position of Paul. That he anxiously refused to learn from the other apostles, and "conferred not with flesh and blood,"--not having received his gospel of many but by the revelation of Jesus Christ--had seemed to me quite suitable to his high pretensions. Any novelties which might be in his doctrine, I had regarded as mere developments, growing out of the common stem, and guaranteed by the same Spirit. But I now saw that this independence invalidated his testimony. He may be to us a supernatural, but he certainly is not a natural, witness to the truth of Christ's miracles and personality. It avails not to talk of the _opportunities_ which he had of searching into the truth of the resurrection of Christ, for we see that he did not choose to avail himself of the common methods of investigation. He learned his gospel _by an internal revelation_.[25]

He even recounts the appearance of Christ to him, years after his ascension, as evidence co-ordinate to his appearance to Peter and to James, and to 500 brethren at once. 1 Cor. xv. Again the thought is forced on us,--how different was his logic from ours!

To see the full force of the last remark, we ought to conceive how many questions a Paley would have wished to ask of Paul; and how many details Paley himself, if _he_ had had the sight, would have felt it his duty to impart to his readers. Had Paul ever seen Jesus when alive? How did he recognize the miraculous apparition to be the person whom Pilate had crucified? Did he see him as a man in a fleshly body, or as a glorified heavenly form? Was it in waking, or sleeping, and if the latter, how did he distinguish his divine vision from a common dream? Did he see only, or did he also handle? If it was a palpable man of flesh, how did he a.s.sure himself that it was a person risen from the dead, and not an ordinary living man?

Now as Paul _is writing specially[26] to convince the incredulous or to confirm the wavering_, it is certain that he would have dwelt on these details, if he had thought them of value to the argument. As he wholly suppresses them, we must infer that he held them to be immaterial; and therefore that the evidence with which he was satisfied, in proof that a man was risen from the dead, was either totally different in kind from that which we should now exact, or exceedingly inferior in rigour. It appears, that he believed in the resurrection of Christ, first, on the ground of prophecy:[27]

secondly, (I feel it is not harsh or bold to add,) on very loose and wholly unsifted testimony. For since he does not afford to us the means of sifting and a.n.a.lyzing his testimony, he cannot have judged it our duty so to do; and therefore is not likely himself to have sifted very narrowly the testimony of others.

Conceive farther how a Paley would have dealt with so astounding a fact, so crus.h.i.+ng an argument as the appearance of the risen Jesus _to 500 brethren at once_. How would he have extravagated and revelled in proof! How would he have worked the topic, that "this could have been no dream, no internal impression, no vain fancy, but a solid indubitable fact!" How he would have quoted his authorities, detailed their testimonies, and given their names and characters! Yet Paul dispatches the affair in one line, gives no details and no special declarations, and seems to see no greater weight in this decisive appearance, than in the vision to his single self. He expects us to take his very vague announcement of the 500 brethren as enough, and it does not seem to occur to him that his readers (if they need to be convinced) are ent.i.tled to expect fuller information. Thus if Paul does not intentionally supersede human testimony, he reduces it to its minimum of importance.

How can I believe _at second hand_, from the word of one whom I discern to hold so lax notions of evidence? Yet _who_ of the Christian teachers was superior to Paul? He is regarded as almost the only educated man of the leaders. Of his activity of mind, his moral sobriety, his practical talents, his profound sincerity, his enthusiastic self-devotion, his spiritual insight, there is no question: but when his notions of evidence are infected with the errors of his age, what else can we expect of the eleven, and of the mult.i.tude?

4. Paul's neglect of the earthly teaching of Jesus might in part be imputed to the nonexistence of written doc.u.ments and the great difficulty of learning with certainty what he really had taught.--This agreed perfectly well with what I already saw of the untrustworthiness of our gospels; but it opened a chasm between the doctrine of Jesus and that of Paul, and showed that Paulinism, however good in itself, is not a.s.suredly to be identified with primitive Christianity.

Moreover, it became clear, why James and Paul are so contrasted. James retains with little change the traditionary doctrine of the Jerusalem Christians; Paul has superadded or subst.i.tuted a gospel of his own.

This was, I believe, pointedly maintained 25 years ago by the author of "Not Paul, but Jesus;" a book which I have never read.

VII. I had now to ask,--Where are _the twelve men_ of whom Paley talks, as testifying to the resurrection of Christ? Paul cannot be quoted as a witness, but only as a believer. Of the twelve we do not even know the names, much less have we their testimony. Of James and Jude there are two epistles, but it is doubtful whether either of these is of the twelve apostles; and neither of them declare themselves eyewitnesses to Christ's resurrection. In short, Peter and John are the only two. Of these however, Peter does not attest the _bodily_, but only the _spiritual_, resurrection of Jesus; for he says that Christ was[28] "put to death in flesh, but made alive in spirit,"

1 Pet iii. 18: yet if this verse had been lost, his opening address (i. 3) would have seduced me into the belief that Peter taught the bodily resurrection of Jesus. So dangerous is it to believe miracles, on the authority of words quoted from a man whom we cannot cross-examine! Thus, once more, John is left alone in his testimony; and how insufficient that is, has been said.

The question also arose, whether Peter's testimony to the transfiguration (2 Pet. i. 18), was an important support. A first objection might be drawn from the sleep ascribed to the three disciples in the gospels; if the narrative were at all trustworthy.

But a second and greater difficulty arises in the doubtful authenticity of the second Epistle of Peter.

Neander positively decides against that epistle. Among many reasons, the similarity of its second chapter to the Epistle of Jude is a cardinal fact. Jude is supposed to be original; yet his allusions show him to be post-apostolic. If so, the second Epistle of Peter is clearly spurious.--Whether this was certain, I could not make up my mind: but it was manifest that where such doubts may be honestly entertained, no basis exists to found a belief of a great and significant miracle.

On the other hand, both the Transfiguration itself, and the fiery destruction of Heaven and Earth prophesied in the third chapter of this epistle, are open to objections so serious, as mythical imaginations, that the name of Peter will hardly guarantee them to those with whom the general evidence for the miracles in the gospels has thoroughly broken down.

On the whole, one thing only was clear concerning Peter's faith;--that he, like Paul, was satisfied with a kind of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus which fell exceedingly short of the demands of modern logic: and that it is absurd in us to believe, barely _because_ they believed.

[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4.]

[Footnote 2: John xx. 29.]

[Footnote 3: John xiv, 11. In x. 37, 38, the same idea seems to be intended. So xv. 24.]

[Footnote 4: A reviewer erroneously treats this as inculcating a denial of the possibility of inward revelation. It merely says, that _some answer_ in needed to these questions; and _none in given_. We can make out (in my opinion) that dreams and inward impressions were the form of suggestion trusted to; but we do not learn what precautions were used against foolish credulity.]

[Footnote 5: If miracles were vouchsafed on the scale of a _new sense_, it is of course conceivable that they would reveal new ma.s.ses of fact, tending to modify our moral judgments of particular actions: but nothing of this can be made out in Judaism or Christianity.]

[Footnote 6: A friendly reviewer derides this pa.s.sage as a very feeble objection to the doctrine of the Absolute Moral perfections of Jesus.

It in here rather feebly _stated_, because at that period I had not fully worked out the thought. He seems to have forgotten that I am narrating.]

[Footnote 7: An ingenious gentleman, well versed in history, has put forth a volume called "The Restoration of Faith," in which he teaches that _I have no right to a conscience or to a G.o.d_, until I adopt his historical conclusions. I leave his co-religionists to confute his portentous heresy; but in fact it is already done more than enough in a splendid article of the "Westminster Review," July, 1852.]

[Footnote 8: I seem to have been understood now to say that a knowledge of the Bible was not a pre-requisite of the Protestant Reformation. What I say is, that at this period I learned the study of the Cla.s.sics to have caused and determined that it should then take place; moreover, I say that a free study of _other books than sacred ones_ is essential, and always was, to conquer superst.i.tion.]

[Footnote 9: I am asked why _Italy_ witnessed no improvement of spiritual doctrine. The reply is, that _she did_. The Evangelical movement there was quelled only by the Imperial arms and the Inquisition. I am also asked why Pagan Literature did not save the ancient church from superst.i.tion. I have always understood that the vast majority of Christian teachers during the decline were unacquainted with Pagan literature, and that the Church at an early period _forbade_ it.]