The Lord of Glory; Counterfeit Miracles; Revelation and Inspiration

that they are. Is it wrong suddenly to turn the tables and ask those who would compel us to explain Pierre de Rudder's case, how they explain Charlotte Laborde's case, which is certainly far more wonderful than Pierre de Rudder's? Charlotte Laborde was a Jansenist cripple who had no legs at all, as two surgeons duly testified; and yet she literally had two good legs pulled out for her — as anybody may read in Montgeron's veracious narrative. ^^^ No doubt it will be at once said that the thing never happened. Assuredly, it never did happen. But has everybody earned the right to take up that attitude toward it? We recognize, of course, that not all testimony to marvels can be trusted — at least not in all the details. It seems indeed rather difficult to report marvels precisely as they happened, and few there be who attain to it.^^^ We have seen that even an Augustine cannot be implicitly trusted when he reports marvels as occurring within his own knowledge. Perhaps Doctor Rouby is right in suggesting that some slight errors of detail have crept into the report of Pierre de Rudder's case; and that this marvel too is one of the things that never happened — precisely as it is reported. Our personal interest in such adjustments, however, is at best languid. In the nature of the case they are only conjectural. We are only beginning to learn the marvellous behavior of which Hving tissue is capable, and it may well be that, after a while, it may seem very natural that Pierre de Rudder's case happened just as it is said to have happened. We are afraid to alter the facts as witnessed even a little, in order to make them fit in better with the ignorance of to-day: and our guesses of to-day are sure to seem very foolish to-morrow. We do not busy ourselves, therefore, with conjecturing how Pierre de Rudder's cure may have happened. We are willing to believe that it happened just as it is said to have happened. We are content to know that, in no case, was it a miracle. We must endeavor to make clear the grounds on which this assertion is adventured. To do this we need to go back a little in the discussion. We take it up again at the point where we have said that bare inexplicableness cannot be accepted as the sufficient criterion of the miraculous. There are many things which we cannot explain, and yet which nobody supposes to be miraculous, ^^^ No doubt the appeal to "unknown laws," hidden forces of nature not yet discovered, may be made the mark of an easy ridicule. Yet we must not be stampeded into acknowledging as sheerly miraculous everything the laws of whose occurrence — the forces by which it is produced — are inscrutable to us. Even if absolute inscrutability be meant — inscrutability not to me (for my ignorance cannot be the measure of reality) but to any and every living man, or body of men, to any possible man — miracle cannot be inferred from this alone. Nature was made by God, not man, and there may be forces working in nature not only which have not yet been dreamed of in our philosophy, but which are beyond human comprehension altogether. Simple inexplicabiHty, therefore, is not an adequate ground on which to infer miracle. There must be something else about an occurrence besides its inexplicableness to justify us in looking upon it as a direct act of God's.

Clearly, when we are bidden to accept an event as miraculous merely on the ground of its inexplicableness, it is forgotten that no event is merely an inexpHcable event. It is always something else besides; and if we are to pass upon its origin we must consider not merely its abstract inexpKcableness but the whole concrete fact — not merely that it has happened inexplicably, but what it is that has happened inexpHcably — that is to say, not its bare occurrence, but its occurrence in all its circumstantials, the total thing which has occurred. The healing of Pierre de Rudder, for example, is not merely an inexplicable happening (if it be inexpHcable) of which we need know no more than just that. It is the healing of a particular individual,

Pierre de Rudder, in a complex of particular circumstances, the whole complicated mass of which constitutes the thing that has occurred. The cause assigned to the occurrence must satisfy not only its inexplicableness, but also all these other circumstances entering into the event as an occurrence in time and space. No event, occurring in time and space — in a complex, that is, of other occurrences — no matter how marvellous it may seem to be, how sheerly inexplicable on natural grounds — can possibly be interpreted as a divine act, if there is anything about it at all in its concrete wholeness which cannot be made consistent with that reference.

If, for instance, to take an example so extreme that it could not occur, but one that may serve all the better as our illustration on that account, there were buried somewhere in the concrete wholeness of the occurrence the implication that twice two are five. It would be more inexpHcable that God should not know His multiplication table than that any occurrence whatever, however inexplicable it may seem to us, should nevertheless be due to natural causation. God is not bare omnipotence; He is absolute omniscience as well. He cannot possibly be the immediate agent in an act in which a gross failure of "wisdom" is apparent, no matter how difficult it may be for us to explain that act without calling in omnipotence as its producing cause. Still less can He be supposed to be the immediate actor in occurrences in which immoraUties are implicated; or, in which, in their wholeness, as concrete facts, there are embodied implications of, say, irreligion or of superstition. Whether we can see how such occurrences are wrought, or not, we know from the outset that God did not work them. It would be more inexplicable that God should be directly active in them than that they should be the product of natural causation, though to suppose this to be the fact would be to confound all our previous conceptions of natural causation. Charles Hodge speaks

122 COUXTERFEIT inR-\CLES not a whit too strongly when he asserts^ ^ that '*'we are not only authorized but required to pronounce anathema an apostle or angel from heaven who should call upon us to receive as a revelation from God anj-thing absurd or wicked.''

God. indeed, has Himself forewarned us here. He has saidr^^^ '"K there arise in the midst of thee a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he give thee a sign and a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saving. Let us go after other Gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or imto that dreamer of dreams."' Conformity- in their implications to what God has already revealed of HimseK, He Himself makes the test of all alleged miracles. It would be more inexplicable that God by His action should confuse the revelation which He has made of His Being, of men's relation to Him, and of the dut\' of service which they owe to Him and to Him alone, than that inexplicable things should yet be produced by natural causation. It is a primary principle, therefore, that no event can be really miraculous which has implications inconsistent with fundamental religious truth. Even though we should stand dumb before the wonders of Lourdes, and should be utterly incapable of suggesting a natural causation for them, we know right well they are not of God. The whole complex of circumstances of which they are a part; their origin in occurrences, the best that can be said of which is that they are silly; their intimate connection with a cult derogatory to the rights of God who alone is to be called upon in our distresses. — stamp them, prior to all examination of the mode of their occurrence, as not from God. We are far more sure that they are not from God than we e\-er can be sure, after whatever scrutiny, of precisely how they are wroughL It is doubtiess something like this that is expressed — it ought to be at least this that is meant

— ^by Emile Zola's crisp remark:^^® ''That two and two make four may have become trite — but nevertheless they do make four. It is less foolish and less mad to say so than to believe, for example, in the miracles of Lourdes." That God is one. and that He alone is to be sensed with religious veneration, is no doubt an old revelation. It is nevertheless a true revelation. And he who takes it as such can never believe that miracles are wrought at Lourdes. Of course, as R. H. Benson puts it,^^^ "those who beheve in God and His Son and the Mother of God on quite other grounds," may declare that ''Lourdes is enough." But this is not to make the miracles cany the doctrine, but the doctrine the miracles, in accordance with J. H. Xewman's proposition that it is all a matter of point of \-iew, of presuppositions.-^^^ To those, on the other hand, who believe in God and His Son, as they have revealed themselves in the pages of Holy Scripture, but not in a Mother of God, standing between us and God and His Son. and usurping their place in our hearts and worship, Lourdes ver}* distinctly is not enough. It would require something very different from what happens at Lourdes to make them see the express finger of God there. It is not He who rules there so much as that incoherent goddess who has announced herself to her worshippers with as fine a disregard of the ordinar}- laws of grammar and inteUigible speech as of the fundamental principles of Christianity-, in the remarkable words, **I am the Immaculate Conception," as if one should say, ''I am the procession of the equinoxes," or ''I am the middle of next week." "The whole place," says Benson,^=^ '"is ahve with Mar}-." That is the ver>- reason why we are sure that the man-els which occur there are not the direct acts of God, but are of the same order as the similar ones which have occurred at many j^imilar shrines, of many names, in many lands, ser\-ing many gods. How close all these lie to one another is singularly illustrated by what we are told of a daughter shrine of

Lourdes's own, in that Near East which is the meetingplace of peoples and religions. At least, we read:^^° "The

sanctuary of Feri Keui at Constantinople, dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, is a place of pilgrimage and a source of miraculous cures for Christians, Jews, and Mussulmans. Its silver-wedding was celebrated recently with an assemblage of people of the religions which live in the Turkish Empire." What Lourdes has to offer is the common prop-

erty of the whole world, and may be had by men of all religions, calling upon their several gods.^"

Pretensions by any class of men to the possession and use of miraculous powers as a permanent endowment are, within the limits of the Christian church, a specialty of Roman Catholicism. Denial of these pretensions is part of the protest by virtue of which we bear the name of Protestants. "In point of interpretation, the history of Protestantism," as an Edinburgh reviewer, writing in trying conditions in 183 1, justly puts it,^ "is a uniform disclaimer of any promise in the Scriptures that miraculous powers should be continued in the Church." In point of fact (we may slightly modify his next sentence to declare), the claim to the possession and exercise of powers of this description by individuals has always been received in Protestant circles with a suspicion which experience has only too completely justified.

Protestantism, to be sure, has happily been no stranger to enthusiasm; and enthusiasm with a lower-case "e" unfortunately easily runs into that Enthusiasm with a capital "E" which is the fertile seed-bed of fanaticism. Individuals have constantly arisen so filled with the sense of God in their own souls, and so overwhelmed by the wonders of grace which they have witnessed, that they see the immediate hand of God in every occurrence which strikes them as remarkable, and walk through the world clothed in a nimbus of miracle. To them it seems a small thing that the God who has so marvellously healed their sick souls should equally marvellously heal their sick bodies; that the God who speaks so unmistakably in their spirits should speak equally unmistakably through their lips. Especially in times of wide-spread oppression, when whole communities have, in their hopeless agony, been thrown back upon their God as their only refuge, and have found in Him solace and strength, it has over and over again happened that out of their distresses words and deeds have come to them which to their apprehension seemed manifestly divine. We may find an illustration of the former phenomenon in John Wesley, who, though he would have repelled the accusation of superstition, yet, as one of his biographers finely expresses it,^ "was always far more afraid of being ungodly than of being credulous." He would not admit that there was any scriptural ground for supposing that miracles had ceased. "I do not know," he declares,*

"that God hath any way precluded Himself from thus exerting His sovereign power, from working miracles in any kind or degree, in any age, to the end of the world. I do not recollect any Scripture where we are taught that miracles are to be confined within the limits either of the Apostolic or the Cyprianic age; or to any period of time, longer or shorter, even to the restoration of all things. I have not observed, either in the Old Testament or the New, any intimation at all of this kind." Feeling thus no pre-

conceived chariness with reference to miracles, he recognized their occurrence with great facility in the past and in the present.^ He twits Middleton with his readiness to believe, on the testimony of scientific observers, that it is possible to speak without a tongue, rather than to credit the miracle testified to as having been wrought in favor of the African confessors who had had their tongues cut out. "After avowing this belief," he cries,^ "do you gravely talk of other men's credulity? I wonder that such a volunteer in faith should stagger at anything. Doubtless, were it related as natural only, not miraculous, you could believe that a man could see without eyes." After himself recording a sheerly incredible instance of mirror-gazing, he solemnly affirms his belief in it, and stoutly declares that those who can believe it all fiction "may believe a man's getting into a bottle."^ William Warburton, who devotes the second book of his Doctrine of Grace almost entirely to criticisms of a series of extracts from Wesley's Journal, sums up his findings in the remark^ that "this extraordinary man hath, in fact, laid claim to almost every Apostolic gift and grace; and in as full and ample a measure as they were possessed of old"; that, in fact, "of all the Apostolic gifts and graces there is but one with which we find him not adorned — namely, the gift of tongues." To such apparent lengths is it possible to be carried by the mere enthusiasm of faith.

A very good example of the wide-spread prevalence of apparently supernatural experiences in conditions of deep religious excitement is afforded by the history of the Camisards during the long period of their brutal persecution; and, indeed, beyond — for the same class of manifestations continued among their English friends, apparently by a kind of spiritual infection, long after some of them had taken refuge from persecution in England. These manifestations included prophesying and predictions, miracleworking and speaking with tongues, and they were by no means done in a comer. A Mr. Dal ton, *'who did not know one Hebrew letter from another," nevertheless uttered "with great readiness and freedom complete discourses in Hebrew, for near a quarter of an hour together and sometimes much longer." Mr. Lacy spoke in Latin and Greek and French, although himself unable to construe his Latin and Greek, "of which," the historian slyly remarks, "the syntax is certainly inexplicable." Unfortunately for themselves, these "French Prophets" believed sufficiently in themselves to venture upon the luxury of specific predictions. They foretold that a certain Doctor Ernes, who died December 22, 1707, would rise again on March 25, 1708. He did not do so; and the prophets were reduced to pubUshing a paper giving '^Squire Lacfs reasons why Doctor Ernes was not raised.''^ They predicted that certain dreadful judgments would fall on London in three weeks, explained explicitly to mean three literal weeks. When the fulfilment did not take place, they re-explained that, after all, it was three prophetic weeks that were intended— which corrected dating also was, of course, stultified in the process of time. Above all, of course, they predicted the speedy coming of the Lord, and the setting up of His personal reign on earth, of which, they explained, the present diffusion of the spiritual gifts among them was the preparation and the sign. ''Christians," cries John

Lacy, "now only look upon Christ as dead and ascended into heaven. But where — where's the expectation taught of His coming again? A doctrine that has annexed to it the powers, the mighty gifts of the Holy Ghost engaged by promises. Is the state of Christianity now so perfect that the powers and gifts of the Holy Ghost extraordinary are not worthy expecting or regarding?... Therefore the extraordinary dispensation to prepare so extraordinary a revolution... sure there needs something extraordinary to prepare for so tremendous, useful, so joyous and blissful a state of the Church on earth. Nay, the wisest do need an extraordinary call for it."^

This case of the "French Prophets" has not been adduced because it is better fitted in itself than a number of similar movements to illustrate the general subject. It has commended itself to our notice because of its long history and its pathetic significance during its connection with the persecutions in the Cevennes; and particularly because of certain peculiarities of its EngHsh development which recall the Irvingite movement to which we wish to devote this lecture. Among these may be numbered its close connection with chiliastic vagaries and the expectation of the speedy coming of the Lord, and also the circumstance that it left behind it a new sect in Christendom, to preserve in some sort its memory. Out of the activities of some of the followers of the "French Prophets" originated the