EVIDENCES suppose either reluctance to receive or difficulties inherent in man as to the reception of truth. If man's mind met the truth as such at once, there would be no need of any evidences, no need of our new school investigating so much. But men do reason to prove the truth: that is, it is not intuitively known or necessarily received. The new school declares the human mind productive of truth, as being an intelligence which is the divine Word in finite action in man. Christianity declares the truth to be revealed in and by Christ and those sent by Him. And as to ordinary men, Christ has declared “because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” And, again, “He was in the world, and the world knew him not. He came to his own, and His own received him not.” “The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” That truth was found by man, is false; it was not: he arrived at “what is truth?” Christ came to bear witness to it. Now, assuming that there is such a thing as truth, (and there must be, or there is nothing; for if there is something, a true statement or knowledge of what it is, is the truth,) either man is omniscient, or be wants the truth to be made known to him. If he does, he needs evidences, unless he be so absolutely proper for its reception, that to state it is sufficient for its reception; that is, unless the truth be self-evident. If he be not so receptive of truth, and we are sure he is not, he needs evidences of it, because he has reluctance or difficulties.
But I go farther. Truth cannot really be self-evident to a creature, because let men be as proud as they will, in a creature the moral condition depends on the object he is occupied with. Is it gold, he is covetous; power, he is ambitious; and so on. Hence the moral condition is the fruit of the object. There may be lusts and tendencies dominant; but actual character is determined by an object. Now to know goodness as a creature without a revelation of it, I must be perfectly good. But I am not—far from it. When, therefore, it comes, it finds me not perfectly good. I do not know whether any one pretends to being perfect goodness; if not, he is something as a morally active being, he is selfish. A revelation of perfect goodness meets selfishness, which is incapable of receiving it. Besides, in fact, there is corruption, prejudice, superstition, into which selfishness has formed itself. And God, who is light as well as love, makes havoc with this. “No man, having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new, for he saith, The old is better.”
If your infidel says, man is innocent, and education has given him prejudices and connected his will with his lusts, so as to make passions; I say, be it so: I do not believe it; but be it so. But man is educated; he is a Jew, a Romanist, a Heathen, a Protestant. Pure truth comes; it meets his prejudices, and evidences are needed. If these are sent, it is the activity of grace. They are not simply to prove the truth, (to a mind which sees truth as truth, it needs no proof,) but to prove it to man, because man is prejudiced, and deeply prejudiced. But man has a conscience, and the truth does reach it, even when will is opposed; man has a heart, yea, selfishness, and is miserable; man can feel goodness, though opposed to the claim of God over his will as light. For if God reveals Himself, He must claim subjection, and, to bless, must make man give up his will, that own will, which is alienation from God and mixes in his lusts. Attraction is felt, the claim felt in conscience, the claim of goodness, the beauty of what is holy felt in conscience, what God is is felt; but there are deep obscurities, through prejudice and lusts, and reluctance through feeling how much it will cost. Ignorance of what God ought to be, prejudice against what He is. “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
What is to be done? Man ought to receive grace and truth, light and love. Yet he would not want it revealed, if he were not morally in contradiction of will with it. God gives adequate evidences to overtop the prejudices, to force on the mind that what is presented to it must be the revelation of God. Men have inquired as to receiving truth because of miracles, or miracles because of truth. Both and neither. Men ought to receive truth because it is truth—abstractedly ought; for, unfallen, he would not need a revelation; fallen puts the case that be is indisposed; but, abstractedly, a nature suited to truth would receive the truth. “If I tell you the truth, why do ye not believe me?” But this is not so. Man does not like to come to the light because his deeds are evil. God therefore in grace gives evidences, miracles if you please, when the revelation of the truth is there. Not when it has been admitted as truth, to speak historically, But this is great grace. “Believe me,” says Christ, “that I am in my Father, and my Father in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake.” There is the place of truth and of miracles, “which at first began to be spoken of the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard it, God bearing witness by signs and miracles,” &c.; so “confirming the word by signs following.”
Where faith was founded only on miracles, the Lord did not own it; there was nothing moral in it. But He did give miracles to help men to believe the holy truth of love. But men say, all is to be reduced to general laws; and if anything cannot, it cannot be believed. God would not disturb general laws. The most general law is, that God is love; and miracles, used as I have said, show this more than a physical law. I affirm that, compared with miracles, general laws are nothing as a revelation of God. There are general laws, I admit. An increasing number of phenomena may be reduced to them, perhaps, had we all the secrets of nature—all of them. I will suppose that, however irregular phenomena may appear, all can be reduced to general laws. But I do not know hereby a personal God; I do not know Him morally. All goes on admirably. I am so constituted—for this is the real fact—that, seeing a creature, I suppose a Creator. As has been often said, a design proves to the human mind a designer; rather it is inherent in the idea, that is, in the constitution of man. When I say design, I think of a person, a cause for what exists. Constituted as I am, I cannot help doing so. Now this proves I cannot know God. For I cannot think of a thing's existing without a cause. But He exists without a cause, as we have said—this is His very nature as God. And what makes me know there is one, proves I cannot, in the nature of things, know Him. But that is not my object now. The knowledge that there is a God is no personal revelation of God—no revelation at all. I conclude there must be. I am right. I conclude to immense power, and pretty surely to His unity—the apostle says, His eternal power and Godhead—a solemn truth, from which many an inquiry may arise. Where is He? Who is He? Is He good? Does He think now at present of men? Does He govern all things? I have only a conclusion of my own mind that there must be a God of power who made the universe; not that there is—no conclusion gives this, because my conclusion is only the sequence of an idea. But am I in any relationship with Him?
Am I part of a system governed by general laws and no more?—for the absoluteness of these is insisted upon. If I am not a part of these general laws, what relationship have I with God?
My new schoolman tells me I have a conscience and reason, am free, and so forth: that is, I am not governed like a planet by general laws. Ah, ah! Then, in all that is really important, (that is, what is moral,) I am not a mere machine, under a general law. And you would persuade me God is and cannot help Himself, nor act freely in respect of my freedom! I am free, and He is not. Then, certainly, I am God, not He. Now, general laws give me no revelation of God personally; and when I enter into detail, I am lost even as to my conclusions. My conscience tells me He must be good. But I look around and see misery, evil; men worshipping Jupiter, Venus, Pluto; men in every degradation that human nature is capable of; babes in torture, grown men in sin, oppression, and a groaning creation. Is this a general law? Where is the goodness?
There is another world, you say. Perhaps I hope so. Will the oppressor, the seducer, the corrupter, the tyrant, be there? What proof have you? Your instinct tells you so. Is that all you have to comfort me? Has the instinct of men given them any clear idea of it? Had the heathen such? Are life and incorruptibility brought to light anywhere?
In theory a God of mere general laws is a dead God for me as to present moral relationship; and when I turn to facts, I see it is false, or evil must be a general law too. Now, where there is One who reveals the truth and works miracles, I am brought into relationship with a God who acts personally, so that I know Him. I see what He is, what He is about. He is righteous, He is love. He thought it worthwhile to come down into a world full of misery, which man's free will had brought in, to show Himself good in it, more mighty than the evil, to reveal Himself as the resource; to make Himself known, on the one hand, and to make the moral revelation of Himself in the truth valid in the hearts of men paramount to all prejudices, on the other. If it be love, it cannot be a general law. Not that love is not the general law of God's nature, as I said; but love in exercise must have its occasion—suited occasion—must be free, or it is not love. But if God acts in the world to make Himself known, He thereby works miracles; for God's acting thus is a miracle. He does not contradict, does not suspend the general law, as a law. Men die as they died before, nay, they died again if He raised them; but He acted by a power which was not subject to the general law, because He is God and takes an individual out of it by His own power, without touching the law. The queen does not abrogate a law when she pardons. That power is a part of a more general law. The most general law of all is that God is always God, and cannot act contrary to Himself; but can always act as God when He pleases.
Thus I know God—His own mind, disposition, interest in man, goodness, love. I know what sin is thereby; for it is departure of will from Him. But unless this new school deny all the truth of Christianity, their theory of general laws is wholly false. Is the resurrection by God's power or not? Does man rise of himself by some common law of his nature, or is the resurrection the fruit of the intervention of God in power? If so, the system of general laws adduced against miraculous Christians is all nonsense. God does interfere by power, freely to bring the great result of moral dealings to an issue.
Besides, the theory of judging by general laws is false in principle. It takes man's experience of the physical course of things (for that this world is an adequate witness of God's moral government, though there is one, is a horrible lie) as the sole and absolute measure of what God is and can do. What proof is there of this? I am told it is complete. It is not; morally, it is no such thing; and your experience of what God is in the laws of the universe is no adequate measure of what God is. But, I repeat, miracles are a far more real revelation of God Himself than general laws—moral revelation. I am not personally in relationship with God by general laws; I am by free miracles, not done necessarily on me or for me, but in which God's free action shows what God personally is in His actings. I ask if Christ's miracles did not do this—did not show the intervention of God in goodness in a world of misery? There are instances of judgment when it was to deliver others, and that is part of the character of God; there are permitted displays of Satan's power that we might know it. Why are any of them inherently incredible? Who is the judge? Man's experience? Nonsense! He cannot have an experience of miracles. It is merely saying, there cannot be because there cannot be; because I do not think God ought to do them. You do not! What is incredible? Was God not powerful to do them? You cannot say so. Was He not good enough? Ah! that is perhaps what is incredible for you: I thank God, it is not for me. But if in a world of misery God was winning the confidence of men's hearts to His goodness, what more credible than miracles? i. e., extraordinary displays of power, sufficient to show God's intervention, so that men might know not only that evil was not of Him, but that. He had come to man's help as good. This may be incredible for the new school: they may study the movements, of Jupiter, and speculate on the fall of empires, as based on general laws; but a personal God of goodness they do not like to know. It has inherent incredibility, for them. But there is no personal relationship with God without it. I delight in the thought of seeing God manifested here below, spending Himself to win the confidence of men's hearts who, as offenders, were afraid, and using the very wretchedness they were in by sin to draw their hearts to Him out of it. True, it was inherently incredible to Pharisees and Sadducees then. He could not be of God; He did not keep the Sabbath. They were grieved that the apostles taught the resurrection. But Jesus cared for the poor of the flock, and, in spite of Pharisees, would win by speaking “as never man spake,” and by doing so that “it was never seen on that fashion.” If power acting in goodness to win the hearts of the poor to God is inherently incredible, I know where the heart is to whom it is so.
Such, then, is the place of miracles. The abiding thing is the truth of the being of that personal objective God who is revealed by these means. Miracles are a means of knowledge as evidence. The truth, and the Son—who is the truth, revealing the Father, revealing God—is that which is evidenced. When unbelief ceases, miracles are useless as evidence; but as being the fruit and exhibition, of the power and love of God, they remain always the object of increased delight; and in Christ's miracles it is impossible to separate His ways and feelings and thoughts from them, when we have any detail.
Miracles, then, have a double character. They are confirmatory signs graciously given, and especially Christian miracles, a present witness of the intervention of power in grace. Where Christianity is believed and professed, so far as they are proofs, they lose their importance—are out of place. So far as they have the second character, the record of them, which is here supposed to be received, is a witness to the heart that God is come in to help, and how He is come in. The Word alone reveals this directly as revelation. At any time faith founded on miracles was nothing worth, because miracles do not quicken. We are begotten by the Word of truth, and so children by faith. When believed only by reason of miracles, the Lord did not trust Himself to them; He knew what was in man. As removing opposing hindrances in the mind, and strengthening man against unbelief, they are precious to our compound nature. There is much that removes unbelief, acts on our old nature—even solid reasoning does—that does not give faith nor a new nature, but removes the opposition of nature and silences it, and attracts the heart. This if alone is nothing. There must be something positively new which a man cannot give himself, and which no proof produces. A really new nature or life, which man receives, is a first principle, and one of the main vital questions of the day. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit: except we are so, we cannot enter the kingdom of God. Of His own will begat He us by the Word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. Infidelity seeks to set up man as he is—will accept Christ if He serves for that. The doctrine of Scripture is that there is a second man, a last Adam; and as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
When we meet with infidelity now, it has the character of apostasy and antagonism. It may be open as in the last century, or covert as in this; but it has essentially this character. Early opposition was not apostasy; nor did it, indeed, deny the miracles: they were too recent. They ascribed them, as Celsus, to magic, or cited Apollonius Tyaneus as having wrought such too; or the Jews talked of magic learned in Egypt and the theft of the Shem-hammaphoresh out of the temple. Still that was antagonism, and had to be so treated. Now it is more. It is apostasy in principle, and has to be treated as such—covert, I admit, using Christ's name, but only so much the worse. Christianity has been publicly admitted as the religion of God, its record accepted as the record of God, miracles and all; and then men begin to cavil, and oppose, and undermine, not being honest enough to throw it off, or sometimes happily kept back by spiritual instinct; but as a system, it is apostasy in principle. Hence there is less hope, and the record has to be proved, objections answered, miracles to be proved, not a proof. In this case we must show their folly as reasoners, and trust to the Word, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. For them I should look much more to the power of the Word in grace. If the record have power in them, they will see the miracles with ft, and the perfect beauty and suitableness of them in such a revelation of God. Proofs may show the absurdity of doubts, and so far are useful. They may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, but cannot give faith.