Walter Richard Cassels

“ Do we think it giving a reason for our confidence in the future to say that, though no man has had experience of what is future, every man has had experience of what was future? It is true that what is future becomes at every step of our advance what was future, but that which is now still future is not the least altered by that circumstance; it is as invisible, as unknown, and as unexplored as if it were the very beginning and the very starting-point of nature. At this starting-point of nature what would a man know of its future course? ”

“ The Christian lived in a supernatural world; the notion of the divine power, the perpetual interference of the Deity, the agency of the countless invisible beings which hovered over mankind, was so strongly impressed upon the belief, that every extraordinary, and almost every ordinary incident became a miracle, every inward emotion a suggestion either of a good or an evil spirit. A mythic period was thus gradually formed, in which reality melted into fable, and invention unconsciously trespassed on the province of history. ”

“ Do the Jews, who for centuries bore the fiercest contumelies of the world, and were persecuted, hunted, and done to death by every conceivable torture for persisting in their denial of the truth of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension, and in their rejection of Jesus Christ, do they thus furnish a convincing argument for the truth of their belief and the falsity of Christianity? ”

“ It is apparent that such an argument is vicious. Experience comes
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with its sober wisdom to check such reasoning. We believe in our power to walk because we habitually exercise it: we disbelieve in bodily ascensions because all experience excludes them. The step is part of the recognised order of nature, and has none of the elements in it of the miraculous. But if we leap into the air on the brink of a precipice, belief in an ascent to heaven is shattered to pieces at the bottom to which the law of gravitation infallibly drags us. ”

“ It is almost incredible that the same person who had just been denying grounds of reason to conclusions from unvarying experience, and excluding from them the results of inductive reasoning—who had denounced as unintelligent impulse and irrational instinct the faith that the sun, which has risen without fail every morning since time began, will rise again to-morrow, could thus argue. In fact, from the very commencement of the direct plea for miracles, calm logical reasoning is abandoned, and the argument becomes entirely ad hominem. ”

“ It is true that in several cases Augustine gives the account of miraculous cures at greater length than those of restoration to life. It seems to us that this is almost inevitable at all times, and that the reason is obvious. Where the miracle consists merely of the cure of disease, details are naturally given to show the nature and intensity of the sickness, and they are necessary not only for the comprehension of the cure but to show its importance. In the case of restoration to life, the mere statement of the death and assertion of the subsequent resurrection exclude all need of details. ”

“ On the one hand, we have no other testimony for the reality of miracles than that of ages in which not only the grossest superstition and credulity prevailed, but in which there was such total ignorance of natural laws that men were incapable of judging of that reality, even if they desired impartially to investigate such occurrences, which they did not; on the other hand, we have the sober testimony of science declaring such phenomena violations of the invariable laws of nature, and experience teaching us a perfectly simple and natural interpretation of the legends regarding them. ”

“ With belief based upon such uncertain grounds, and with such vital difference of views regarding evidence, it is not surprising that ecclesiastical Christianity has felt its own weakness, and entrenched itself against the assaults of investigation. It is not strange that intellectual vigour in any direction should, almost unconsciously, have been regarded as dangerous to the repose and authority of the Church, and that, instead of being welcomed as a virtue, religious inquiry has almost been repelled as a crime. ”

“ History is full of the records of men who have honestly believed every kind of error and heresy, and have been stedfast to the death, through persecution and torture, in their mistaken belief. There is nothing so inflexible as superstitious fanaticism, and persecution, instead of extinguishing it, has invariably been the most certain means of its propagation. The sufferings of the Apostles, therefore, cannot prove anything beyond their own belief, and the question what it was they really did believe and suffered for is by no means so simple as it appears. ”

“ It is perfectly clear that miracles being thus acknowledged to be common both to God and to other spirits they cannot be considered a distinctive attestation of divine intervention; and, as Spinoza finely argued, not even the mere existence of God can be inferred from them; for as a miracle is a limited act, and never expresses more than a certain and limited power, it is certain that we cannot from such an effect, conclude even the existence of a cause whose power is infinite. ”

“ It is impossible to secure absolute unanimity of opinion, and the only question in such a case is whether I refer to writers, in connection with the circumstances which I affirm to be demonstrated, who advance arguments and evidence bearing upon it. A critic is quite at liberty to say that the arguments are insufficient, but he is not at liberty to deny that there are any arguments at all when the elaborate reasoning of men like Volkmar, Baur and Hilgenfeld is referred to. ”

“ The acceptance of any revelation or dogma, however apparently true in itself, without "sign"—without evidence satisfying the reason, is absolute credulity. Even the most thorough advocate of Faith must recognise that reason must be its basis, and that faith can only legitimately commence where reason fails. The appeal is first to reason if afterwards to faith, and no man pretending to intellectual conscience can overlook the primary claim of reason. ”

“ If it is to be more than a mere question of priority of presentation whether we are to accept Buddhism, Christianity, or Mahometanism, we must strictly and fearlessly examine the evidence upon which they profess to stand. The neglect of examination can never advance truth, as the severest scrutiny can never retard it, but belief without discrimination can only foster ignorance and superstition. ”

“ The crucifixion of the incarnate God was the crowning guilt of a nation whom God himself had selected as his own peculiar people, and whom he had condescended to guide by constant direct revelations of his will, but who, from the first, had displayed the most persistent and remarkable proclivity to sin against him, and, in spite of the wonderful miracles wrought on their behalf, to forsake his service for the worship of other gods. ”

“ A miracle, consequently, becomes a mere isolated effect from an unknown cause, in the midst of other merely isolated phenomena from unknown causes, and it is as irrational to wonder
at the occurrence of what is new, as to expect the recurrence of what is old. In fact, an order of nature is at once necessary, and fatal, to miracles. If there be no order of nature, miracles cannot be considered supernatural occurrences, and have no evidential value; if there be an order of nature, the evidence for its immutability must consequently exceed the evidence for these isolated deviations from it. ”

“ The criticism, therefore, which evidential miracles, or miracles which serve as evidence of a revelation, must come up to, if they are to accomplish the object for which they are designed, involves at the outset this condition,—that the evidence of such miracles must be distinguishable from the evidences of this permanent stream of miraculous pretension in the world; that such miracles must be separated by an interval not only from the facts of the order of nature, but also from the common running miraculous, which is the simple offshoot of human nature. ”

“ Eusebius, like all the Fathers, represents the gods of the Greeks and other heathen nations as merely wicked demons. Demons, he says, whether they circulate in the dark and heavy atmosphere which encircles our sphere, or inhabit the cavernous dwellings which exist within it, find charms only in tombs and in the sepulchres of the dead, and in impure and unclean places. They delight in the blood of animals, and in the putrid exhalations which rise from their bodies, as well as in earthly vapours. ”

“ Any distinct assurance, whatever its nature, based upon solid grounds, would be preferable to such a state of doubt and hesitation. Once persuaded that we have attained truth, there can be no permanent regret for vanished illusions.
We must, however, by careful and impartial investigation, acquire the right to our belief, whatever it may be, and not float like a mere waif into the nearest haven. Flippant unbelief is much worse than earnest credulity. The time is ripe for arriving at a definite conviction as to the character of Christianity. ”

“ Wherever there has existed even the comparatively accurate means of information which a person who himself performed a miracle might possess, the miraculous entirely fails, and it is found only where faith or credulity usurps the place of knowledge. Pious men were perfectly ready to believe the supposed miracles of others, and to report them as facts, who were too veracious to imagine any of their own. Even if Apostles and Saints had chronicled their own miraculous deeds, the argument for their reality would not have been much advanced ”

“ A revelation is, properly speaking, such only by virtue of telling us something which we could not know without it. But how do we know that that communication of what is undiscoverable by human reason is true? Our reason cannot prove the truth of it, for it is by the very supposition beyond our reason. There must be, then, some note or sign to certify to it and distinguish it as a true communication from God, which note can be nothing else than a miracle. ”

“ There is absolutely nothing in the constitution of nature, we may say, reversing Dr. Mozley's assertion, which does not prove the incredibility of a Divine suspension of physical laws, and does not create a presumption against it. There is no instance producible, or even logically conceivable, of any power whose effects are opposed to the ultimate ruling of the laws of nature. The occurrence of anything opposed to those laws is incredible. Dr. Mozley has himself shown that miracles cannot be explained either by unknown connection with known law, or by reference to unknown law ”

“ Theoretically, the duty of adequate inquiry into the truth of any statement of serious importance before believing it is universally admitted. Practically, no duty is more universally neglected. This is more especially the case in regard to Religion, in which our concern is so great, yet the credentials of which so few personally examine. The difficulty of such an investigation and the inability of most men to pursue it, whether from want of opportunity or want of knowledge, are no doubt the chief reasons for this neglect ”

“ We have repeatedly pointed out that the actual agreement of any saying of Jesus, quoted by one of the early Fathers from an unnamed source, with a passage in our Gospels is by no means conclusive evidence that the quotation was actually derived from that Gospel. It must be apparent that literal agreement in reporting short and important sayings is not in itself so surprising as to constitute proof that, occurring in two histories, the one must have copied from the other. The only thing which is surprising is that such frequent inaccuracy should occur. ”

“ The favourite hypothesis is that which ascribes miracles to the action of unknown law. Archbishop Trench naturally adopts it: "We should see in the miracle," he says, "not the infraction of a law, but the neutralizing of a lower law, the suspension of it for a time by a higher;" and he asks with indignation, whence we dare conclude that, because we know of no powers sufficient to produce miracles, none exist. "They exceed the laws of our nature; but it does not therefore follow that they exceed the laws of all nature." ”

“ It is true that all the stones we ourselves have ever dropped, or seen dropped, have so fallen, and equally true that all stones so dropped as far back as historic records, and those still more authentic and ancient records of earth's crust itself go, have done the same, but that does not justify our belief, upon any grounds of reason, that the next stone we drop will do so. ”

“ If, in the time of Romulus, some 600 years before Cicero, people were so enlightened that they refused to believe anything of which they had not experience, how much more, in the still more enlightened days of Cicero himself, and notably in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, would they have rejected belief in the resurrection and ascension of Christ, if divine truth and the testimony of miracles had not proved not only that such things could take place, but that they had actually done so. ”

“ Indeed, anticipating for a moment a part of our subject regarding which we shall have more to say hereafter, we may remark that, so far from being original either in its evidence or form, almost every religion which has been taught in the world has claimed the same divine character as Christianity, and has surrounded the person and origin of its central figure with the same supernatural mystery. ”

“ Christianity itself distinctly pretends to be a direct Divine Revelation of truths beyond the natural attainment of the human intellect. To submit the doctrines thus revealed, therefore, to criticism, and to clip and prune them down to the standard of human reason, whilst at the same time their supernatural character is maintained, is an obvious absurdity. ”

“ It is no miracle that a man seemingly in good health should die on a sudden; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be an uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as an uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle ”

“ We shall make no attempt to establish any theory as to the date at which any of the Gospels was actually written, but simply examine all the testimony which is extant with the view of ascertaining what is known of these works and their authors, certainly and distinctly, as distinguished from what is merely conjectured or inferred. Modern opinion, in an Inquiry like ours, must not be mistaken for ancient evidence. ”