That the christian miracles are not recited, or appealed to, by early christian writers themselves, so fully or frequently as INTRODUCTION. IT would be superfluous to expatiate on the excellences of a work so well known as Dr. Paley's Evidences. But it appeared to me desirable to republish it with some additions, in order to meet the new shapes (though without any substantial novelty) which opposition to the Gospel has of late years. assumed. As was observed by an able Writer in the Cautions for the Times (No. 28), Infidelity, or at least that approach to Infidelity, the absence of a well-grounded and firm belief,-is among the chief causes of the present evils under which we suffer. Men's faith was not fixed upon that foundation of rational evidence upon which Christ and his Apostles placed it. No proportionate care was taken to make men's knowledge of that evidence keep pace with the advance of their knowledge of other things; and then, when doubts began to spread, it was sought to restore or to confirm belief, by appealing to the imagination and the feelings, rather than to the reason. Those who hardly agreed in anything else, agreed in dreading to take the only safe course. While one party told men to trust the Church on its own word, and the other to trust the Scripture without one intelligible reason for believing it divine, what wonder is it that so many have made up their minds to trust neither, and so many more are vainly, struggling to maintain a firm faith without a firm foundation for it? 'The strength indeed of the Infidel is in our weakness and folly; and it is our groundless fears which make him formidable. For, the truth is, that against the substance of Christianity itself, as distinguished from human perversions of it, modern Infidelity-however it may boast of new discoveries E.C. B -has nothing more to say than has been said and refuted a thousand times. It may seem to present a terrible form in the obscurity which German metaphysics have thrown around it; but upon a nearer view, the spectre will resolve itself into the old worn-out clothes of Collins, and Toland, and Chubb, and Hume, which are now too soiled and threadbare to be exhibited openly in the daylight.' To Paley's Evidences, and his Hore Pauline, and to the little book of Introductory Lessons on Christian Evidences, published several years ago, no answer, as far as I know and believe, has ever been brought forward. The opponents of Christianity always chuse their own position; and the position they chuse is always that of the assailant. They bring forward objections; but never attempt to defend themselves against the objections to which they are exposed. Objections-not The cause of this it is easy to perceive. only plausible, but real, valid, and sometimes unanswerable objections-may be brought against what is nevertheless true, and capable of being fully established by a preponderance of probability;-by showing that there are more and weightier objections on the opposite side. If therefore any one can induce you to attend to the objections on one side only, wholly overlooking the (perhaps weightier) opposite ones, he may easily gain an apparent triumph. A barrister would have an easy task if he were allowed to bring forward all that could be said against the party he was opposed to, and to pass over in silence all that could be urged on the other side, as not worth answering. And many of the best-established and universally admitted historical facts, might in this way be assailed, by showing that they are in many respects very improbable. The history, for instance, of Napoleon Buonaparte has been shown to contain a much greater amount of. gross and glaring improbabilities than any equal portion of Scripture-history; or perhaps even than all the Scripture-Narratives together. And yet all believe it; because the improbability of its being an entire fabrication is incalculably greater. And practically, all reasonable men proceed on the maxim of an ancient Greek author, which is repeatedly cited by Aris totle; that it is probable that many improbable things will happen.' Indeed, were it not so, every intelligent and well-informed man would be a prophet. By an extensive study of History, and observation of Mankind, he would have learned to judge accurately what kind of events are probable. And if nothing ever happened at variance with probabilities,—if everything was sure to turn out conformably to reasonable expectations (which is just what is always assumed by anti-christian writers), then, such a person might sit down and write a prospective history of the next century; and do this as easily and as correctly as he could write a history of the last century: even as astronomers can calculate forwards the eclipses that are to come, as easily as they can calculate backwards those that are past. Let those objectors then, who are merely objectors, try the experiment of writing a conjectural prophetic history. Their histories, I conceive, would be found a good deal at variance with each other; and all of them, when the time arrived, at variance with the events. Of those who profess Christianity in a certain non-natural sense,' while disbelieving what is commonly understood by that word, there are two principal sects, usually called the Mythic and the Naturalist; both of which arose in Germany (where, however, they are now out of fashion), but which are patronized by some English and American writers. The Mythics represent the whole of the Scripture History as a series of Parables, never designed to be believed as literally true, any more than Æsop's Fables, though intended (like them) to convey some moral lessons. The Naturalists, on the contrary, maintain the general truth of the history, but explain the miraculous portions of it as natural events. A person, for instance, supposed to be dead, but in reality in a trance, happened to awake just when Jesus approached: a storm happened to abate at a critical moment: a fever-patient recovered health, and a blind man, sight, through the force of enthusiastic emotion: the five thousand, and the four thousand, were fed with bread which some of their number had brought with them: Jesus waded through a shallow part of the lake, and was supposed to be walking on the water: &c. |