"Miracles, Inspiration, Revelation."

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2554, 14 March 1877, Page 3

"Miracles, Inspiration, Revelation."

The "Bible : is in part a record of mira

cles ; but as from other histories we reject miracle? without hesitation, so of those in the Bible we insist on universal acceptancei; : the former are. all false, the latter are all true., It is-evident that, in forming conclusions so sweeping as these, we cannot even suppose that we are guided by what we call historical evidence. Were it admitted-.that, as a whole, the miracles of the Bible are better authenticated than the miracles of the saints, we should be far remove 1 d still from any large inference, that in, the one set there is no room for falsehood, in the other no room for

truthi ./. ''. ..'■•'.■■ . There is no point on which Protestant controversialists evade the real question more habitually, than on that of miracles. They accuse those who withhold that unreserved, and absolute belief .which they require for all which they themselves accept, of denying that miracles are possible. They assume this to be the position taken: up byethe ©bjector, and proceed easily to argue that man. is nq,y4"adge of -the power of God. Of coarse he is not. No sane man ever raised his narrow understanding to a measure of the possibilities of the universe ; nor does any person with any pretensions to religion disbelieve in miracles of some kind. To pray is to expect a miracle. When we. pray for the recovery of a sick friend, for the gift of any blessing, or the removal of any calamity, we expect that God will do something by an act of _His personal vrill which 'otherwise would not have been done—that he will suspend the ordinary relations of natural cause and effect; and this is the very idea of a miracle. The thing we prayfforr r may be given us, and no miracle may^ havOstaken place. It majr be given us by . natural'causes, and would have occurred whether we had prayed or not. But prayer itself in if s very essence implies a . belief in the possible intervention of a power that is above nature. The question about miracles is'simply one of evidence — more evidence is required to establish a fact antecedently improbable than is sufficient for a common occurrence. Nothing less than a miraculous history can sustain the credibility of miracles, . and nothing could be more likely, if revo lation be a reality and not a dream, than that the history containing it should be savedinits composition from the intermixture of human infirmity. This is the position in which instinct long ago taught Protestants to entrench themselves. Once established in these lines they,were safe and unassailable, unless it could be demonstrated that any fact or facts related in the Bible were certainly untrue, nor would it be necessary to say any more upon the subject. Those who believed Christianity would admit the assumption; those who disbelieved would repudiate it. The argument would be narrowed to that plain and single issue, and the elaborate treatises upon external . evidence would 5 cease to bring discredit upon -the cause by their feebleness. Unfortunately—and this is the true secret of our present distractionsit seems certain' that in some way- or other this belief in inspiration itself requires to be revised. „We are compelled to examine more precisely what we mean by the word. The account of the creation of man and the world which is given, in Genesis, ' and which is made by St. Paul the basis of his theology, has not been reconciled with the facts which science knows to be true. Death was in the world before Adam's sin, and unless Adam's age be thrust back to a distance which no ingenuity can torture the letter of scripture into recognising, men and women lived and died upon the earth whole millenniums before the Eve of sacred history listened to the temptation of the snake. Neither has any such deluge as that from which, according to the received interpretation, the ark saved Noah, swept over the globe . within the human s period. We are told that it was not God's purpose to anticipate the natural course of discovery: as the story of the was written in human language, so the details of it may have been adapted to the existing state of human knowledge. The Bible, it is said, was not intended to teach man science, but to teach what was necessary for the moral training of their souls. It may be this is true. Spiritual grace affects, the moral character of men, but leaves the intellect unimproved. The most religious' men are as liable as atheists to ignorance of ordinary facts, and inspiration may be only infallible when it touches on truths necessary to salvation. But if .it be so, there are many things in the Bible which, must become as uncertain as its geology or its astronomy.. "There is the long secular - history 6f the Jewish people. Let "it "be -once established that there.-is room for error- anywhere, and we, have no security for the accuracy of this history. The-inspiration of the Bible is the foundation of our whole belief j and it is a grave matter if we are uncertain to whafc+extent it reaches, or liow much and what it guarantees to us as true. We cannot live on probabilities. >Efee faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace . must be a certainty so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing. It may be that all intellectual efforts to arrive at it* are in vain; that it is given to those to whom it is given, and withheld from those from.whom it is withheld. It may be that the' existing belief is undergoing' a silent modification ; or it may be that to the creed as it is already established there is nothing to be added, and nothing anymore to be taken from it. At this moment, however, the most vigorous minds appear least to see their way to a conclusion; and not withstanding all the school and church buildings, and the religious newspapers, a generul doubt is coming up like a thunder-storm against the wind, and blackening the sky. Those who cling most tenaciously to the faith in which they were educated, yet confess themselves perplexed. They know what they . believe; but why they believe it, or why they should require others to believe it, they cannot tell or cannot agree.' Between the authority of the Church and the authority, of the Bible; the testimony of history and the testimony; of the spirit; the ascertained facts of science and the contradictory facts which seem to be revealed, the minds of men are.tossed to and fro, harassed by the changing attitude in which scientific investigation has placed us towards accounts of supernatural occurrences