Psychic research and Gospel miracles : a study of the evidences of the Gospel's superphysical features in the light of the established results of modern psychical research

Front matter

Psychic Research and Gospel Miracles

Psychic Research and Gospel Miracles

A Study of the Evidences of the Gospel's Superphysical Features in the Light of the Established Results of Modern Psychical Research.

Preface

The following pages have been written and arranged to draw attention to what we believe to be new light upon the Gospel of Christ ; viz., the light thrown upon it by the superphysical phenomena brought out by modern psychical f

research. In this new light, as is our purpose to make plain, the Gospel's veracity is exhibited and the Nazarene's inerrancy as a Spiritual Teacher is shown.

"Why this is not now plain to all men is due, we think, to the fact that modern superphysical phenomena have not yet been popularly assimilated. At present these phenomena are indeed arousing intense popular interest. The people seem eager to read everything that is written about them ; but their full evidential significance has not been grasped.

Ten years hence a demonstrative work like ours will, we surmise, be superfluous. By that time religious thinkers will be looking upon superphysical phenomena as commonplaces in Christian evidence. But now it seems incumbent upon some one to step forward and say :

viii Preface.

" Look ! " Mr. Thomson J. Hudson, LL. D., in the closing chapters of his able work, " The Law of Psychic Phenomena," has already pointed to the way of entrance into this Promised Land of New Evidence. With gratitude to this author, we purpose entering and exploring. To Christian believers, be it said, we undertake this work in a spirit of reverence. To honest doubters, especially those who are disturbed by materialism, we announce our intention of assuming nothing as proved in advance. We are as anxious for legitimate proof as they are. We desire, as Christian believers, to give to those who ask us a reason for the hope that is in us : — to give to them an answer which is an answer and not a series of dogmatic assertions.

There is one necessary evil connected with this work, and this is the polysyllabic terminology thrust upon those who deal with the subject of psychic phenomena. The new psychology, we regret, has its full share of technical terms of Greek derivation. Many of these we have been compelled to use ; but we have endeavored to define or paraphrase them when we use them for the first time.

We acknowledge our indebtedness to Dr. Thomson J. Hudson for the helps which he has given us in his three works, " The Law of Psychic Phenomena," "A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life," and " The Divine Pedigree of Man," as well as for his kindness in

Preface. ix

reading and criticizing certain sections of this work ; a kindness the more conspicuous in that in many particulars we differ so essentially from his conclusions. We are also greatly indebted to the late Paul Gibier, M. D., for the thoughts which we have assimilated from his book, " Psychism " ; and to C. G. Raue, M. D., for the aids contained in his " Psychology," etc.

Edwaed Macomb Duff, Thomas Gilchrist Allen.

Buffalo, N. Y.

January, igo2.

PART IV.

Appendix A. Classified Table of Supernormal

Phenomena 360

Appendix B. Concerning Spirit - Communication

AND Demonic Possession 366

Introduction

If, after what we have said in the preface, anything further in the way of introduction is necessary, it is this : that there are many honest doubters in whose estimation the so-called miraculous element in the Gospel is an obstacle which no amount of historical attestation can overcome. To them faith is not " the substance of things hoped for " ; nor yet " the evidence of things not seen," They must see in order to believe. To them in the person of the Apostle Thomas the Master cheerfully and willingly offered the evidence of sight and touch. St. Thomas had lost his faith on Good Friday. Historical attestation, though only a few days old, affected him not.

Shall those who deal with Christian evidence to-day do less than the Master was willing to do ? If there is the evidence of sight at hand, shall we pass by on the other side scorning to make the most of it for those who demand it ?

That there is such evidence at hand it is our purpose to show in this book ; and we shall try to make the most of it without in the least degree disregarding the " Old Yerification of History,"

2 Introduction.

upon which our contemporaries seem to place their sole reliance.

In order to appreciate the value as well as the limitations of the historical argument we have devoted Part I of this work to its review.

In Part II we gather together the data at hand for the Gospel's new verification which the superphysical phenomena of modern times make possible.

In Part III we apply these new data to the statements in the IS'ew Testament which involve that which is popularly called " miraculous " ; and we find therein a new and impregnable verification. (Let us observe parenthetically that by "The Gospel" we mean the entire written message pertaining to Jesus Christ, i. e., the ]!iew Testament.)

In the appendices of Part lY we gather up fragments whose presence in the body of the book might serve to divert the reader's attention from its central purpose.

To those of our readers to whom the data of history and of modern psychic phenomena are matters of familiarity we would say that the threads of our argument might be taken up by them at the beginning of Chapter vi of Part II.

Part I. The Old Verification of History

" For we have not followed cunningly devised fables^ when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christy but were eye-witnesses of his majesty.''^ — 2 Peter 1 : 16.

Bibliography of Part I.

Annals, Tacitus, The Bohn Library

Antiquities, Josephus, Various Editions

ApostoKc Age of the Christian Church, The,

Carl Von Weizacker James Millar's Translation . . . . G. P. Putnam's Sons, NY. Commentaries on Hebrew and Christian Mythology,

Judge P. B, Ladd, Truthseeker, N.Y. Epistles, Pliny the Younger^ The Bohn Library

Fathees of the Chuech.

Clement of Rome

The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Edinburgh Edition.

Ignatius of Antioch

Irenseus of Lyons

Justin Martyr

Nero, Suetonius, The Bohn Library

Part I.

THE OLD VEBIFIGATION OF HISTORY.

A Brief Review of the Historical Argument for the Historic Existence of Jesus of Nazareth and the Authenticity of the New Testament.

I

1e what immediately follows we shall do no more than review the internal and external evidence for the authenticity of the E'ew Testament from the ordinary historical standpoint.

We shall be content if our review simply places us in a neutral position ; although we shall hope that it will carry us at least a little way on the positive side. Still, if we feel convinced that historical considerations for and against the New Testament's authenticity are about evenly balanced, this will suffice, so far as our work in Part I is concerned. The way will then have been prepared to appreciate the psychological considerations gathered together in the other parts of this work as definitely dismissing any doubts concerning the authenticity of the written Gospel,

II

"Was Jesus of IlTazareth a mythical character ? Whatever may have been the views of the German critic, Ferdinand C. Baur, upon this subject, his modern successors, Weizacker of Tubingen, and Harnack, of Berlin, raise no question of Christ's historic existence. There are, however, in this country to-day many educated people who are still discussing the question of Jesus' actual existence. It may therefore be just as well for us to remind them as well as ourselves of the non-Christian notices bearing upon the historicity of the Nazarene.

Our first witness is Josephus who wrote his " Antiquities " shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.

In two passages Josephus refers to Jesus Christ. One of these passages is conceded by all scholars to be interpolated ; i. e., to contain interpolated clauses. This passage by the general consensus of critics stands thus, the interpolated parts being indicated by brackets and italics: " At this time appeared a certain Jesus {a wise Tnan, if indeed He may he called a 7)ian,for He was a worker of miracles, a teacher of stick men as receive the truth with joy) and He drew to Himself many Jews {a7ul many also of the Greeks. This was the Ckrist). And when, at the instigation of our chief men, Pilate condemned Him to the cross, those who had first

The Old Verification of Hiatoi^y. t

loved Him did not fall away. {For He appeared to them alive again on the third day^ according as the holy prophets had declared this and many other marvels of Him.) To this day the sect of Christians, called after Him, still exists." (Antiq. xviii. 3, 2.)

Leave out the brackets and italicized sentences, and you have left statements cold and colorless in their tone, and as such perfectly consistent with the temper of a Jewish historian. In fact, most critics have regarded the words " a wise man" as genuine. We have bracketed them in order to extract every vestige of eulogy from Josephus' statement.

The other passage of Josephus referring to Jesus no critic disputes, namely, that in which he designates James the Just (whom he eulogizes in unstinted terms) as "the brother of Jesus, called the Christ," (Antiq. xx. 9, 1.)

Origen, who is regarded by the critics as reliable, refers to this passage in his work, " Against Celsus " : " This writer (Josephus) . . . says that these disasters (the destruction of Jerusalem) hap|ened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, ' who was a brother of Jesus, called Christ.' " (Or. Ag. Celsus, Bk. 1, Chfip. xlvii.)

Here we have a non-Christian testimony to the historicity of Jesus, upon which we could well afford to re st our entire case. Furthermore, the fact that Josephus could eulogize Jesus'

brother makes it seem highly probable that he could with perfect consistency have at least referred to Jesus Himself as " a wise man."

We call as our next witness, the pagan Tacitus, whose book of " Annals " was written not far from the year 100 A. D.

This is what Tacitus has to say respecting Christ and the Christians : " This sect (the Christians) had its origin from Christus, who in the reign of Tiberius had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition, though suppressed for a time, broke out again and spread not only through Judea, which was the first to suffer from it, but through Rome also the resort which draws to it all that is hideous and shameful."

Thus from another non-Christian source we have Christ fixed still more definitely upon the chart of history ; namel}^, in Judea and in the reign of Tiberius, i. e., between 14 and 3Y A. d., and we have the further fact established that He was executed under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea.

There are certain statemenrs in this passage of Tacitus which open a rich v<m of historical inquiry. That writer stigmatizes Christianity as "a deadly superstition." N"ow Tacitus was a very broad-minded Roman, ai,'d Rome herself was exceedingly tolerant of all religions within her domain, even those whose tt eological tenets might differ widely from those of the j)opular

Graeco-Roman mythology. Even Judaism, whose adherents refused to honor Cjesar as a god, was tolerated not only in Palestine, but Jewish synagogues stood unmolested throughout the empire. It is true that the average Roman looked upon Judaism as a superstition, as witness the poet Horace :

" The Jew, Appella, may believe this ; " *

but no one arraigned Judaism as a deadly superstition.

Why did Tacitus, then, so stigmatize Christianity ? Evidently not because it denied the Grasco-Roman gods ; nor yet because of any wonder-working claims which it put forward, inasmuch as a multitude of sects and cults did the same thing. There is only one hypothesis that will adequately account for this stigmatization by Tacitus, and this is that there must have been something in the teachings of " Christus " that was deemed to be hostile to the constitution and well-being of the empire ; something that appealed to the Roman Imperialist as " vicious politics."

Tacitus thus throws us back upon the recorded claim of the Christians that their leader was the Supreme King and Lord, whose kingdom was to be made by their efforts coextensive not only with the empire, but with the world itself. That

* Horace : Satires, I, 5, 100.

the Christians looked to Jesus as " the King of Kings and Lord of Lords " alone explains why Tacitus should have stigmatized Christianity as a " deadly superstition."

But Tacitus also classifies Christ's religion among those things which are " hideous " and "shameful." He thereby intimates that the sect was morally vicious and debasing. So likewise does Suetonius, a contemporary of Tacitus, who in his "^N'ero" praised that Emperor for the tortures to which he subjected the Christians who were " a class of men of a strange and pestilent superstition." This is a charge which was taken up and reiterated by the Grseco-Roman masses persistently for two centuries. By the first quarter of the second century this charge took definite shape. Christians were persistently accused of practicing cannibalism and promiscuous intercourse in their religious assemblies.

Before offering any hypothesis by which to account for this charge, let us enquire as to whether it was well-grounded.

This inquiry is answered emphatically in the negative by none other than a sturdy Roman heathen, namely, the pro-consul Pliny in the reign of the Emperor Trajan, 110 a. d. At or near that date, Pliny wrote a letter to his Imperial Master concerning the Christians under his jurisdiction. The substance of Pliny's letter is that the Christians were exceedinglv numerous in his province ; that many had been brought by accusers before his court; that he had taken pains to investigate their manner of living and customs ; that he had found them to be people consecrated to uprightness and blamelessness of living. In view of these findings, the pro-consul enquired of the Emperor what his policy should be towards these people when accused. Trajan's wise and tolerant reply is well-known as a matter of history.

We may confidently dismiss these charges against the Christians as untrue in view of such unprejudiced testimony ; but there is still demanded of us an adequate explanation of the continued persistence of these accusations. Was there a spark from which all this smoke of accusation proceeded ? The unbiassed testimony of Roman investigation answers ~^o. But Christianity itself answers Yes. We have only to point to the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist, celebrated every Sunday, to make plain to every one whence these charges of cannibalism and promiscuous intercourse derived their persistency. " The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ ? For we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread." (1 Cor. 10 : 16.) "Except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." (St. John 6 : 53.) The Christians' belief that in the eucharist they ate and drank Christ, and through this participation were brought into union with one another, would very easily lend itself to such distortion as that which appeared in the charges of cannibalism and promiscuous intercourse — those " shameful " and " hideous " things concerning which Tacitus seems to be hinting.

But now that we have found the adequate explanation of these charges, we have found along with it something else of great historic importance ; namely, that " Christus " must have taught His followers not only that He was to be their supreme King and Lord, but that He was to be also their ever-limng, ever-present King and Lord, on whose life they were to be continually fed and nourished, and united through it into one communion and fellowship. Thus from outside sources we are driven back to another of those claims of the Christ recorded in the Gospels.

One more enquiry now remains : Is there anything to be gleaned from outside sources concerning that moral character which is claimed for the Nazarene in the ]S"ew Testament ? The answer is apparent from the investigation carried out by Pliny and reported in his letter to Trajan, namely, the blamelessness and uprightness of the Christians in their daily lives ; — a phenomenon utterly inexplicable if the Founder of Christianity had been aught else but a man of exalted character. The spread of Christianitj^, which seems

Th^ Old Verification of History. 13

to have impressed. Tacitus so deeply, would have been perfectly consistent with moral viciousness on the part of its Founder. Religions which sanctify sensuality are always popular, as witness Mormonism while polygamy formed one of its tenets. But Pliny's report shows the aim of the Christians to have been a life of exalted righteousness. He states that at their religious assemblies they bound themselves with an oath {saoramento) to abstain from evil and to do good. This points unequivocally to the conclusion that Christianity's Founder must have been a teacher of righteousness ; and if a teacher of righteousness, presumably a righteous man. Hence, from outside sources, we find ourselves prepared to behold in the Christian Scriptures the picture of a righteous character.

We may now sum up what we have gleaned from sources outside of the ]^ew Testament concerning the central figure of the Christian Scriptures; (1) He was called Jesus, the Christ; (2) He lived in Judea during the reign of Tiberius, ^- (14-37 A. D.); (3) He was executed under the ' \ procurator Pontius Pilate ; (4) His followers revered Him because He had satisfactorily convinced them that He was their Supreme King and Lord, ever-present and living, from whose life they were fed and nourished, to the end that they might lead righteous lives like His own ; and, agreeably with His commands, establish His kingdom throughout the earth.

But if these things concerning Jesus have been fairly gleaned from sources outside of the New Testament and other Christian writings, then the myth-hypothesis must be relegated to the list of things exploded,

III

"With the myth-hypothesis disposed of, let us now turn to the main considerations bearing upon the New Testament writings themselves as historical documents ; and first of all to the internal evidences.

There are certain generalizations that seem self -evidently deducible from a mere cursory reading of the four Gospels ; and these generalizations ought to be entitled to some weight in establishing a presumption of authenticity. We offer them not as new matter, but by way of summary.

(1) The Gospel-narratives rank as peerless masterpieces of literary art, inasmuch as they portray a character who stands absolutely unequaled among all other characters whether of history or of fiction.

(2) Whoever the authors of the Gospels may have been, it is evident that they were men of limited education,

(3) They tell their story with simplicity and directness.

(4) They tell it not vaguely, albeit briefly and succinctly, but circumstantially ; i. 6,, they are not content to record, "Jesus said this," or " Jesus did that " ; but they minutely describe when, where and how He said it or did it, and in such a manner that the surroundings and circumstances, even in their smaller details, stand out with startling vividness.

The obvious conclusion seems to be this : If men of limited education can tell such a story so simply and directly and briefly, and yet with such minute regard for circumstantiality, and in the story itivent a character towering in its beauty and majesty above all other characters which experts in the art of literary fiction have dreamed of creating, they have worked the standing miracle of the ages. In other words, those who ask us to believe that the evangelists were fiction- writers, calmly invite us to accept a miracle as great as any of those other miracles whose possibility they so stoutly deny. We of course refuse to accept any such invitation ; we reject the imposition of any such tax upon our credulity ; but in so doing we accept the only other possible alternative which is the admission that the pages of the Gospel-narratives are stamped with truth.

lY.

But may not the Gospel-story after all be a compendium of legends? We may grant that Jesus of Nazareth v^^as a real character of history and as a character He may have been all that the Gospels represent Him to be. We maj^ grant the narrators or editors to have been sincerelyhonest men ; but they have obviously incorporated into their narratives a vast amount of legendary material which in a credulous age would inevitably grow up around such a superior teacher as Jesus.

The foregoing statements represent the attitude in which a large number of present-day skeptics stand towards the Gospels. Let us therefore look into this "Legendary-Compendium" hypothesis.

If the dates and authorship of the four Gospels may, for the time being, be regarded as doubtful, we naturally turn to those New Testament writings, if any can be found, which are accepted as genuine by a consensus of the most severely hostile critics. As a matter of fact there are just four such writings which destructive criticism has left undisputed. These are St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, to the Corinthians, 1 and 2, and to the Galatians. Their authorship has been conceded by the most hostile to be Pauline, and their dates are admitted to lie between the years 50 and 60 A. d. "We cannot here go into the processes of research by which this verdict has been reached. "We can only state the fact that it has been reached, as the reader may discover for himself if he will take the time and trouble to read the history of ISTew Testament criticism for the past fifty years ; and we may add that if the reader will undertake this task, he will feel fully satisfied as to the historical soundness of the verdict.

The first step, then, in the disproof of the legendary theory, is this fact, conceded by the most hostile scholars, that Romans^ 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians were written by St. Paul in the decade between 50 and 60 A. d.

This carries us back to within a quarter of a century of Jesus' departure. Still, we may concede that much legendary matter may have accumulated in that age and among Christ's followers in the space of a quarter of a century.

But we have St. Paul's writings — at least these four epistles of his — before us. Does this man tell us anything in these documents to lead us back towards the beginning of this critical twenty-five years' period ? Is there anything in these writings of an autobiographical or reminiscent nature ? Fortunately there is ; for instance, in the first part of the Galatian Epistle. Let us see where this leads us.

If we may trust the consensus of critics, this epistle dates from the year 58. In the first chapter of this letter, the apostle gives his readers a brief sketch of his first years as a Christian. He reviews the facts that for some time before his conversion he was a zealous Jew, and that as such he persecuted the Church and wasted it beyond measure (1 : 13, 14). Then he states that God revealed His Son in him (Paul) (1 : 15).

After that followed, so he tells us, a brief period of sojourning in Arabia whence he returned to Damascus (1 : lY). Three years later Paul went up to Jerusalem and abode with Peter for fifteen days ; seeing also James, but no one else. Then followed a period of missionary labors in Syria and Cilicia, probably not less than one year, more likely two or three years (1 : 17-21). Then fourteen years after that he repaired with Barnabas and Titus to the famous conference at Jerusalem (11 : 1). Some years after this he wrote to the Galatians and told them all these incidents just referred to.

Now let ns begin with the year 58 and go back with St. Paul. To be extremely conservative, let us suppose that the conference at Jerusalem was held five years prior to the writing of Galatians. This would carry us back to 53 a. d. Subtract fourteen years from this, and we get back to 39. Subtract one from 39, — the period of his Syro-Cilician ministry — and we are back to 38. Three years from this brings us to 35. If, by the corrected calendar, Jesus died A. d. 29, we are now within six years of that momentous event, the time (a. d. 35) when God "revealed his Son " in Saul the persecutor. But a matter of six years is a short time for the development of legends. Yet if St. Paul is to be believed, the " legends " of Jesus' resurrection and His Divine Sonship were fully developed at the time of the persecutor's conversion ; for in the Corinthian letter (1:15:3 f) the Apostle states, " I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received^ how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he was seen," etc.

Now the latest theory of the Ttibingen School, as represented by Professor Weizacker in his " Apostolic Age of the Christian Church," is that Paul's " Fifth Gospel " (as these four undisputed epistles are frequently and aptly termed) is the very germ of primitive Christianity. Professor Weizacker, we repeat, regards this Pauline " Fifth Gospel " as the essence of historically primitive Christianity, — a fact which, among other things, shows the abandonment of the mythview of Jesus' personality by the most "advanced" critics. But Paul in this Fifth Gospel, as Weizacker tries to maintain, held a purely spiritual view of Jesus. For example, in Paul's view, Jesus' resurrection was in nowise corporeal ; nor does Paul, when he speaks of having seen the risen Lord, refer in any sense to an optical vision. The stories of a corporeal resurrection and of optical visions of the risen Jesus, so Weizacker contends, are later and Post-Pauline importations of legendary material. The difference between Paul and the evangelists, according to Weizacker, is that the former's conceptions of Jesus are spiritual and the latters' are material ; for the latter wrote after the development of materialistic legends, whereas Paul wrote while as yet Christianity was in its alleged purely spiritual stage.

^The primitive view of Jesus, as Weizacker puts it, was " The conviction that the resurrection of Jesus meant His departure to Heaven until He should return and complete the kingdom." ("Apostolic Age of the Christian Church," James Millar's translation, Yol. 1, p. 18.)

In plain words, this is equivalent to saying that Jesus' resurrection meant simply His immortality, the persistence of His soul after bodily dissolution. Mark well this point, for it involves an unequivocal position of the critic from which there is no retreat.

"With this statement of the critic fresh in mind, let us turn to those statements of St. Paul which bear directly upon Jesus' death and resurrection, viz.,

(a) "How that Christ died," etc.

(b) " And that He was buried ; "

(c) "And that He rose again the third day," etc.

Now the unanswerable question that confronts the critic (Weizacker) and scatters his hypothesis to the four winds, at this point comes to view : if St. Paul believed in Jesus' resurrection as

^ The few following paragraphs commenting upon Weiziicker's contention are reprodiiced in part from an article of ours in the "Church Eclectic" (then Milwaukee, now New York), for October, 1895. E. M. D.

nothing more than the persistence of His soul after death, what did he mean by teaching those Corinthians that the resurrection was deferred until the third day 9 If personal immortality means anything, it means that the soul enters upon its new life immediately, at the very instant of bodily dissolution. The critic (Weizacker) insists that St. Paul identifies Jesus' resurrection with the entrance of His soul into new and immortal life. Yery well then, if this is so, Jesus' resurrection must, in this view, have taken place at the instant of His death. But St. Paul conspicuously fails to state this as his view of the case ; for he says that " He rose again the third dayP

ISTow to press the matter home, since it plainly appears that in St. Paul's belief Christ's resurrection meant something more than the soul's entrance into immortality, let us ask what the apostle does appear to believe as to the manner of Christ's resurrection on the third day. He states that Christ died ; that His bodily functions ceased. He states that Christ was buried; meaning, of course, that His body was buried. He states that He rose again on the third day meaning, of course, — what ? There is but one meaning left open to consideration, and that is that the slain body was revived. . . . The point is as clear as the day that St. Paul's doctrine of Christ's resurrection was the revival^ of His