time mentioned by St. Matthew in the 23d verse of this chapter: "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." This then is the primary, the fundamental evidence of his divine authority, which our Lord was pleased to give to his followers. His first application, as we have seen, was (like that of his precursor, John the Baptist) to their hearts, "repent ye," lay aside your vices and your prejudices. Till this was done, till these grand obstacles to the admission of truth were removed, he well knew that all he could say and all he could do would have no effect; they would not be moved either by his exhortations or his miracles, "they would not be persuaded though one rose from the dead."* And in fact we find that several of the pharisees, men abandoned to vice and wickedness, did actually resist the miracles of Christ, and the resurrection of a man from the grave; they ascribed his casting out devils to Beelzebub; they were not convinced by the cure of the blind man, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead, though they saw them both before their eyes, one restored to sight, the other to life. This plainly proves how far the power of sin and of prejudice will go in closing up all the avenues of the mind against conviction; and how wisely our Saviour acted in calling upon his hearers to repent, before he offered any evidence to their understandings. But the way being thus cleared, the evidence was then produced, and the effect it had was such as might be expected; for St. Matthew tells us, that his fame went throughout all Syria; and that there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan; that is, from every quarter of his own country and the adjoining nations. And indeed it can be no wonder that such multitudes were convinced and converted by what they saw. The wonder would have been if they had not. To those who were themselves eye-witnesses of his miracles, they must have been (except in a few instances of inveterate depravity of heart) irresistible proofs his divine mission. When they saw him give eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, health to the sick, and even life to the dead, by speaking only a few words, what other conclusion could they possibly draw than that which the centurian did, truly this was the Son of God. To us indeed who have not seen these mighty works, and who live at the distance Matt. xxvii. 54. * Luke, xvi. 31. + Matt, iv, 24, 25. of eighteen hundred years from the time when they were wrought, the force of this evidence is undoubtedly less than it was to an eye-witness. But if the reality of these miracles is proved to us by sufficient testimony, by testimony such as no ingenuous and unprejudiced mind can withstand, they ought still to produce in us the firmest belief of the divine power of him who wrought them.* It must be admitted at the same time, that these miracles, being facts of a very uncommon and very extraordinary nature, such as have never happened in our own times, and but very seldom even in former times, they require a much stronger degree of testimony to support them than common historical facts. And this degree of testimony they actually have. They are supported by a body of evidence fully adequate to the case; fully competent to outweigh all the disadvantages arising from the great distance and the astonishing nature of the events in question. 1. In the first place, these miracles are recorded in four different histories, written very near the time of their being performed, by four different men, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; two of whom saw these miracles with their own eyes'; the other two had their account from them who did the same; and affirin, that "they had a perfect knowledge of every thing they relate."+ They were plain artless men, without the least appearance of enthusiasm or credulity about them, and rather slow than forward to believe any thing extraordinary and out of the common course of nature. They were perfectly competent to judge of plain matters of fact, of things which passed before their eyes, and could certainly tell, without the least possibility of being mistaken, whether a person whom they knew to be blind was actually restored to sight, and a person whom they knew to be dead was raised to life again by a few words spoken by their master. They were men, who, from the simplicity of their manners, were not at all likely to invent and publish falsehoods of so extraordinary a nature; much less falsehoods by which they could gain nothing, and did in fact lose every thing. There is not therefore, from the peculiar character of these persons, the least ground for disbelieving the reality of any thing they relate. Nor is there any reason to doubt whe ther the writings we now have under their names are those * Mr. Hume's abstruse and sophistical argument against miracles, has been completely refuted by Drs. Adams, Campbell, and Paley. ↑ Luke, i. 3. which they actually wrote. They have been received as such ever since they were published; nor has any one argument been yet produced against their authenticity which has not been repeatedly and effectually confuted. 2. It is a very strong circumstance in favour of our Saviour's miracles, that they were related by contemporary historians, by those who were eye-witnesses of them, and were afterwards acknowledged to be true by those who lived nearest to the times in which they were wrought; and what is still more to the point, by many who were hostile to the Christian religion. Even the emperor Julian himself, that most bitter adversary of Christianity, who had openly apostatized from it, who professed the most implacable hatred to it, who employed all his ingenuity, all his acuteness and learning, which were considerable, in combating the truth of it, in displaying in the strongest colours every objection he could raise up against it; even he did not deny the reality of our Lord's miracles.* He admitted that Jesus wrought them, but contended that he wrought them by the power of magic. 3. Unless we admit that the founder of our religion did actually work the miracles ascribed to him by his historians, it is utterly impossible to account for the success and establishment of his religion. It could not, in short, to all appearance, have been established by any other means. Consider only for a moment what the apparent condition of our Lord was, when he first announced his mission among the Jews, what his pretensions and what his doctrines were, and then judge what kind of a reception he must have met with among the Jews, had his preaching been accompanied by no miracles. A young man of no education, born in an obscure village, of obscure parents, without any of those very brilliant talents or exterior accomplishments which usually captivate the hearts of men; without having previously written or done any thing that should excite the expectation, or attract the attention and admiration of the world, offers himself at once to the Jewish nation, not merely as a preacher of morality, but as a teacher sent from heaven; nay what is more as the Son of God himself, and as that great deliverer, the Messiah, who had been so long predicted by the prophets, and was then so anxiously expected, and eagerly looked for by the Jewish peo * Julian apud Cyrillum, L. vi. viii. x. Celsus also acknowledged the truth of the gospel miracles in general, but ascribed them to the assistance of demons. "The Christians," says he, "seem to prevail, daimonon tinon onomasi kai kataklesesi, by virtue of the names and the invocation of certain demons." Orig. contra Celsum, ed. Cantab. I. i. p. 7. ple. He called upon this people to renounce at once a great part of the religion of their forefathers, and to adopt that which he proposed to them; to relinquish all their fond ideas of a splendid, a victorious, a triumphant Messiah, and to accept in his room a despised, a persecuted, and a crucified master: he required them to give up all their former prejudices, superstitions, and traditions, all their favourite rites and ceremonies, and what was perhaps still dearer to them, their favourite vices and propensities, their hypocrisy, their rapaciousness, their voluptuousness. Instead of exterior forms he prescribed sanctity of manners; instead of washing their hands, and making clean their platters, he commanded them to purify their hearts and reform the lives. Instead of indulging in ease and luxury, he called upon them to take up their cross and follow him through sorrows and sufferings; to pluck out a right eye, and to cut off a right arm; to leave father, mother, brethren, and sisters, for his name's sake, and the gospel. What now shall we say to doctrines such as these delivered by such a person as our Lord appeared to be? Is it probable, is it possible that the reputed son of a poor mechanic could, by the mere force of argument or persuasion, induce vast numbers of his countrymen to embrace opinions and practices so directly opposite to every propensity of their hearts, to every sentiment they had imbibed, every principle they had acted upon from their earliest years; Yet the fact is, that he did prevail on multitudes to do so; and therefore he must have had means of conviction superior to all human eloquence or reasoning; that is, he must have convinced his hearers by the miracles he wrought, that all power in heaven and in earth was given to him, and that every precept he delivered, and every doctrine he taught, was the voice of God himself. Without this it is utterly impossible to give any rational account of his success. In order to set this argument in a still stronger point of view, let us consider what the effect actually was in a case where a new religion was proposed without any support from miracles. That same impostor Mahomet, to whom I before alluded, began his mission with every advantage that could arise from personal figure, from insinuating manners, from a commanding eloquence, from an ardent enterprising spirit, from considerable wealth, and from powerful connections? Yet with all these advantages, and with every artifice and every dexterous contrivance to recommend his new religion to his countrymen, in the space of three years he made only about six converts, and those principally of his own family, rela tions, and most intimate friends. And his progress was but very slow for nine years after this, till he began to make use of force; and then his victorious arms, not his arguments, carried his religion triumphantly over almost all the eastern world. It appears therefore, that without the assistance either of miracles or of the sword, no religion can be propagated with such rapidity, and to such an extent, as the Christian was, both during our Saviour's life time, and after his death. For there is, I believe, no instance in the history of mankind of such an effect being produced, without either the one or the other. Now of force we know that Jesus never did make use; the unavoidable consequence is, that the miracles ascribed to him were actually wrought by him. 4. These miracles being wrought not in the midst of friends, who were disposed to favour them, but of most bitter and determined enemies, whose passions and whose prejudices were all up in arms, all vigorous and active against them and their author, we may rest assured that no false pretence to a supernatural power, no frauds, no collusions, no impositions, would be suffered to pass undetected and unexposed, that every single miracle would be most critically and most rigorously sifted and enquired into, and no art left unemployed to destroy their credit and counteract their effect. And this in fact we find to be the case.-Look into the ninth chapter of St. John, and you will see with what extreme care and diligence, with what anxiety and solicitude the pharisees examined, and re-examined, the blind man that was restored to sight by our Saviour, and what pains they took to persuade him, and to make him say, that he was not restored to sight by Jesus. "They brought," says St. John, "to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind; and the pharisees asked him how he had received his sight. And he said unto them, Jesus put clay upon mine eyes and I washed, and did see. A plain and simple and honest relation of the fact. But the Jews, not content with this, called for his parents, and asked them, saying, Is this your son who ye say was born blind? How then doth he now see? His parents, afraid of bringing themselves into danger, very discreetly answered, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but by what means he now seeth we know not, or who hath opened his eyes we know not; he is of age, ask him, he shall speak for himself. They then called the man again, and said to him, Give God the praise, we know that this man (meaning Jesus) is a sinner. The man's answer is, admirable: Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not; but this I know, that whereas I was blind, now I |