The Other World: Glimpses of the Supernatural. Various Authors

man’s duty is said to be “openly and avowedly to take service in one or the other of the opposing camps; to bring face to face the two beliefs; the belief in the Past, the belief in God, and the belief in the Future, the belief in Humanity; and to choose deliberately between them.” Furthermore, he avers: “We contemplate the Trinity of our religion, Humanity, the World, and Space.” A Christian critic has made the following terse comments on Mr. Congreve’s book:—

      “The chief feeling which possesses us in reading these Essays is one of sorrow for the writer. It is really sad that a man of education should lend himself to such a delusion. The ‘Religion’ itself is ridiculous; indeed it has not so much as a theory. Not even on paper can its doctrines be stated, for the simple reason that it has no doctrines whatever. But it is always melancholy to watch a naturally good intellect under the sway of a fantastic idea, or to see an educated gentleman writing 500 pages on the ‘Worship’ of what does not exist. The sensation of the reader, as he turns page after page, is expressed in such an inquiry as this: Since the writer himself believes in nothing whatever, how can he invite my conversion?”

THE MIRACULOUS IN CHURCH HISTORY.

       Table of Contents

      “And He said unto them, Go ye into all the World, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

      “And these signs shall follow them that believe: In My Name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.”—S. Mark xvi. 15–18.

      CHAPTER II.

      THE MIRACULOUS IN CHURCH HISTORY.

      he important subject of the Miraculous in Church History sufficiently well known to students of it, involves the existence of a religious principle of universal application. This will be apparent, in due course, from the following preliminary considerations:—“A miracle,” writes Hume, “is a violation of the laws of Nature; and, as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”[10] Further on, he declares “that a miracle supported by any human testimony is more properly a subject of derision than of argument.”[11] On these statements, definite and precise as they appear, and yet not sufficiently definite, it may be remarked in the first place that no human experience is unalterable: it may to a certain person or certain persons have been hitherto unaltered. But this is all. Are there then no facts beyond our experience—no natural positions or states with which we are unacquainted? When a man writes of “unalterable experience,” he obviously means so much of that experience, as either mediately or immediately has come to his knowledge; in other words his own past experience.[12] And this Hume declares sufficient to enable him to determine what are the unvarying laws of Nature, and, by consequence, what are miracles. But surely here is something akin to arrogance. For what modest person would venture to maintain his own experience to be altogether and absolutely firm and unalterable? Who would declare of a witness, who testified, for example, what was contrary to that experience, that such a man was worthy only of disbelief and derision? And yet many, in the present day, adopt and put into practice this unstable and imperfect theory of Hume.

      What has been set forth above in opposition to that theory is still more pointedly expressed in the following remarkable passage:

      “The natural philosopher when he imagines a physical impossibility which is not an inconceiveability, merely states that his phenomenon is against all that has been hitherto known of the course of Nature. Before he can compass an impossibility, he has a huge postulate to ask of his reader or hearer, a postulate which Nature never taught: it is that the Future is always to agree with the Past. How do you know that this sequence of phenomena always will be? Answer, Because it must be. But how do you know that it must be? Answer, Because it always has been. But then, even granting that it always has been, how do you know that what always has been always will be? Answer, I see my mind compelled to that conclusion. And how do you know that the leanings of your mind are always towards truth? Because I am infallible, the answer ought to be; but this answer is never given.”[13]

      Of course no Christian will deny the following elementary propositions here briefly stated, before the general subject is further discussed. First that man consists of body and soul, the nobler and more important part being the soul, which is spiritual, immortal, and eternal. God, the Creator of all things, is a Spirit; and, in this particular, man is made in the image of God. Destined to dwell on the earth for a while, during an appointed period of probation, man passes by death, which is a temporary separation of soul and body, to the life beyond the grave. Man’s duty here, therefore, ought to fit and prepare him for a future state, and teach him better the value of his soul and the reality of the Supernatural.

      Now the Almighty, in calling man into being here, and making him “lord of the whole earth,” giving him, in fact, dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, has established in connection with him a two-fold order, the natural, which relates to the visible world, and the Supernatural or miraculous, which concerns the spiritual and invisible. The natural order comprises the law of nature, by which the World created by God is governed, and concerns man in his dealings with nature. But the Supernatural concerns him in his relations with God and the world of spirits. Both orders are alike from God, and each has its appointed sphere. The Author of both is the controller of each. And, as if to indicate to man from time to time that God has something to say in His own creation, and will not be totally excluded from it by man’s forgetfulness, the Supernatural is wisely and mercifully interwoven with the natural, to remind man, by the Glimpses occasionally vouchsafed of the former, that, though the World has been made for his use and advantage, many things in it speak eloquently of a continued existence in the future, though now the same World’s fashion most surely passeth away. How prone man becomes, by constantly contemplating the natural, to thrust the Supernatural aside, is the experience of many. And this being so, how merciful is God to remind us of the next world, not only by the ordinary modes and channels appointed for so doing, by change, by revelation, by death; but occasionally by suddenly, strangely, and abruptly breaking in upon the usual order of events, and the ordinary course of nature, to let us see with our natural eyes, and hear with our ears, that He is. Thus the Supernatural indicates the tracing of the Finger of God. Freely, and for a lofty purpose, to set forth His glory, power, and mercy, He created the laws of nature; freely, and for a like lofty purpose, He sometimes suspends them. Such intervention on His part, such a suspension, is a miracle, which may be defined as “a record and evidence of the Supernatural manifesting itself in the midst of the natural order;” or, as S. Thomas Aquinas so clearly and ably defined it of old, “A miracle is an act performed by God out of the ordinary course of nature.” In accepting this, we do but maintain that God alone is the Author and Controller of all laws, whether natural or supernatural. Historical Christianity calls upon us to believe, firstly, the great principle that miracles are possible; and, secondly, that those recorded in Holy Scripture, ranging from the time of Moses to that of S. John the Divine, are true. Other miracles or miraculous interventions rest upon the value, purport, and character of the evidence and testimony forthcoming for their authenticity. They are all equally possible, because all are acts of the Almighty; but they are not all equally credible, because the evidence of their authenticity may be of a less precise, definite, and well-authenticated character.

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