Religion and miracle

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RELIGION AND MIRACLE. Crown 8vo, gilt top,

Preface

When a teacher and preacher of the Christian religion moves from the circumference toward the heart of faith, miracles fall out of the sphere of his vision. He may not deny the reality of miracles, but more and more miracles cease to be significant for him. He is dealing with the Eternal as it shines by its own light, and in that case outward witness of any kind for the things of the soul becomes superfluous. For many years I have lived in this mood. Slowly miracles have ceased to serve me in the evolution of my belief, in the moral campaign of my spirit. For me the heart of the universe is God, the Eternal Spirit; the permanent force in man is the soul that answers to the Infinite soul; the incomparable genius of Christianity is in the way in which it enables human beings to live in the consciousness of our Father in Heaven. Christianity is, in my judgment, incomparable as the x PREFACE

religion of revelation and reconciliation; it brings spirit to light, the Divine and the human ; it brings peace. The words of the great prophet of the exile describe with rare felicity the privilege of the Christian preacher : " How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation ; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth I'' 1 It is said of Christ : " He came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh : for through him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father." 2 For the great apostle to the nations the gospel became essentially one thing, the gospel of reconciliation. Into these divine depths in Christianity, the supreme religion of the spirit, all devout and happy disciples of the Master and preachers of his message at length come.

Sharing in this universal discipline of honest and advancing souls, it never occurred to me to write anything upon the subject of re-

1 Isaiah lii, 7. 2 Epbesians ii, 17-18.

PREFACE xi

ligion and miracle. I had for many years dwelt in a sphere far removed from outward signs and wonders; I had, therefore, quietly ceased to regard the tradition of signs and wonders that accompanied the Lord. One day, however, I fell into conversation with a company of young ministers ; I found them greatly troubled. They felt that as honest men they could not say that they believed in miracles ; and that incapacity created suspicion as to how much of the gospel remains when the miracles are set aside.

This question I was invited to discuss at our Boston Ministers' Meeting two or three years ago, and the response which I then received, alike from men of conservative opinions and from men of radical views, led me to reconsider the whole subject. At the same time there came the invitation to lecture on the Nathaniel W. Taylor Foundation in Yale University. In this way the little volume now published came into existence.

I am unwilling that any one who may look into this volume should fail to grasp my purxii PREFACE

pose in writing it. I have no interest in the destruction of the belief in miracle. I am concerned to show that where miracle has ceased to be regarded as true, Christianity remains in its essence entire; that the fortune of religion is not to be identified with the fortune of miracle; that the message of Jesus Christ to the world is independent of miracle, lives by its own reality and worth, self -evidencing and self-attesting. If it shall be allowed by fairminded men that I have made even a slight contribution toward the final emancipation of the fundamental beliefs of Christian men from the cycle of signs and wonders, and from the fate that with the advance of science seems to threaten the entire tradition of miracle, I shall be satisfied. I conceive myself to be a genuine conservative ; I am conscious that I work for the preservation of essential historic Christianity; I consider myself to be, to the extent of my power, a defender of the eternal gospel. 1 regard the vision of God and of human existence, embodied in the message and person of Jesus Christ, as the most precious posses-

PREFACE xiii

sion of mankind ; and I should be glad to make it impossible for those who are unable to agree with me in the discussion that follows to misunderstand me here.

George A. Gordon.

Contents

Introduction: Things Worth While . . . xvii

I. The Issue Defined . 1

II. Belief in God and Miracle . . . ,81

Introduction

THINGS WORTH WHILE

I

I here renew the expression of my unshaken confidence in the truth of the main contention of this book : that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is essentially independent of miracle ; that however miracle may fare under the growing sense of natural law, Christianity in its essence is as lasting as the spirit of man and the moral being of God. While God lives in man and in the cosmos, it remains true that the supernatural pervades the natural as its superior and sovereign ; for the supernatural in the natural means that God is in the established sequences of his world, and that he is supreme. While few men of Christian faith care to deny the reality of miracle, while many recognize its logical possibility in the strict sense of the violation of natural law, while multitudes of good people sincerely believe in the xviii INTRODUCTION

evangelical miracle, all wise thinkers are agreed that the miracle is relatively unimportant. This is my position. The miracle is relatively unimportant; as such, in all essential disputes it may be counted out or considered as incidental. The world of Christian faith does not stand or fall with miracle ; therefore, whoever believes in miracle must hold it as the mere fringe of the garment of faith, and whoever ignores miracle or sets it aside may still be a profound believer in Christ and his gospel. Whoever reads with an open mind the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of First Corinthians will see that the distinction here made was of fundamental moment for Paul. Even among the higher forces of faith the apostle recognizes differing degrees of importance. "But desire earnestly the greater gifts. And moreover a most excellent way show I unto you." 1 Then follows that tremendous judgment contained in the thirteenth chapter, upon all the forms of faith. Love is sovereign ; it alone "never faileth"; it gives worth to all

1 1 Corinthians xii, 31.

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the other forces in the world of faith ; without love, that world is worthless.

This principle seems to me of such moment for the Christian mind of to-day in its confusion of issues great and small, in its dependence upon sense and its feebleness in the august sphere of the soul, in its general condition of panic and superficiality, that I have determined to strengthen the argument of my book by an essay on the things that are really worth while in the world of religious belief.

The first step into clearness in the bewildering total of the subjects of theological science would seem to be an agreement concerning the true perspective of faith. In some way or other the world of religious thought needs to be ordered in different degrees of worth. Some scheme involving a gradation of rank, valid for the religious human being, should be imposed upon the objects of religious concern. Relativity is the law of our being, — not the relativity which excludes, but that which xx INTRODUCTION

is contained in the absolute, as the planet in infinite space ; and a deep and sure grasp of this law would seem to be of the utmost moment in theology. The story is told that Francis W. Newman, the radical, made a journey from London to Birmingham to discuss the profounder issues of religious belief with his brother, John Henry Newman, the Catholic ; and when the question arose as to the axiom from which debate should begin, the Catholic proposed to the radical as the surest principle of faith the infallibility of the Pope. This story has, if not literal, at least symbolic truth. It serves admirably as an illustration of Cardinal Newman's sense of the perplexity and contradiction of his time, and his fine irony. It is almost needless to add that, while men are thus at variance concerning the relative security and value of the different interests of Christian faith, discussion can be nothing but a discipline in confusion.

Doubtless it would be worth while to know everything that exists, whether as fact or force or idea, if one had mind enough and time

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enough for the task. We figure that in the Divine intellect all being and all phases of being find perfect reflection. We cannot, however, bring ourselves to believe that even for the Divine intellect one thing is as important as another. It may be difficult, perhaps impossible, to make out the perspective of values in the vision of God, but it can hardly be doubted that for him there exists some perspective. Nothing is more impressive in the teaching of Jesus than his representation of the Eternal perspective : " Are not two sparrows sold for a penny ? And not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. . . . Fear not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." — " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin : and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, ye of little faith?" According to this teaching, while all xxii INTRODUCTION

things are known to God, all things have not the same worth for God ; for him there is substance and accident, essential and incidental, temporal and eternal.

As matter of fact, perspective rules the lives of men. The world is shaped for each man according to his dominant interest. The chief object in the human landscape with the barber is the hair of his fellow-men, with the bootblack it is the feet. The special scholar is a person with a special perspective of values ; it may be Greek, classic, Hellenistic, ecclesiastic ; it may be Hebrew or Aramaic or Syriac, or any one of a large number of antique tongues ; it may be research in any one of a score of different lines ; in each case the world is shaped into important and unimportant by the special interest. The elective system is grounded upon two necessities: first, upon the necessity for division of labor, and second upon the necessity for freedom in determining this division. The world of knowledge is too big for the individual scholar or scientist. Bacon's boast that he took all knowledge for his province

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was vain even in his day; it would be a sign of insanity in ours. Bacon did nothing for his province in ethics, in political theory, in metaphysics, or in the philosophy of religion. He stands simply as a great prophet of the coming glory of natural science ; as such he has a definite and limited outlook upon reality.

The mere fact of perspective does not help us much. Nor do we gain very much in clearness when we note that perspective is determined partly by capacity and partly by environment. The ideal physician has an outlook upon life that has arisen from native force and opportunity. Capacity and call, in a way, fix the perspective of mankind ; and the capacities being many and the calls different, the perspective becomes a vast aggregate of contrasts. So far relativity would seem to reduce all value to mere like and dislike working through the call and the prohibition of society. It would appear to be impossible to escape this issue unless we are willing to go deeper and stand upon the universal capacity xxiv INTRODUCTION

of man as a human being, and upon the universal call of duty. Below all special capacities is the universal humanity ; below all the separate callings is the undivided summons to quit ourselves like men.

Religion generates this just perspective because religion founds it upon the universal capacity and the universal call. Religion lives in the heavenly vision and obedience thereto. In the courses of this obedience the perspective is purified and extended, as with this obedience the new perspective was introduced. When Paul said, " I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision," he there and then changed the perspective of his life ; Jesus of Nazareth, who had been the object of his enmity, then became his Master. We hear further of this perspective in these words : " What things were gain to me, these have I counted | loss for Christ " ; still again, " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; old things have passed away, all things have become new." Religion begins in the vision of the moral ideal as the image of God's will for

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man ; the resolve to become the servant of the moral ideal puts one on a new earth and under a new heaven; it does this with all religious souls. It therefore opens up one general perspective ; and the basis of this one general perspective is, as I have said, the aniversal capacity and call.

From the life of the soul in God there arises when unhindered the normal perspective of faith. The trouble is that this normal perspective in the ideas and beliefs of religious men is so often suppressed. Our attitude toward the Bible may serve as an example. The old theory of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures was an error in sound human perspective. It made of equal importance all parts of the Bible because all stood in an equal infallibility. The modern method of research is wanting in perspective. All parts of the Bible are equally questionable because all share in a common uncertainty. Besides, the truth of research has thrown into shadow the truth of religious intuition. The ensign of Scotland is a lion rampant on a field of blood. That enxxvi INTRODUCTION

sign hardly tells the truth about the heroic, but peace-loving, people of Scotland. Modern discussion about the Bible presents the historical scholar rampant on a field of waste and ruin; and thus it has come to pass that the Bible as the witness to the Eternal has suffered that last woe of greatness, it has been taken for granted.

Since the Bible has its chief value as a witness to the Eternal, the approach to what is central in that witness, whether historical or human, should be in the vision of sound perspective. The approach should be like that to Zermatt along the valley of the Visp. There is tumult and wild beauty all along the way. When, however, one gets to Zermatt, still more when one ascends to the Riffel Alp or the Gorner Grat, a new and grander perspective has replaced the old, and in the centre of the vista towers the mighty obelisk of the Matterhorn. It is useless to cry that this is not all; it is all the traveler thinks worth while; at all events, it is better worth while than anything else.

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There is a similar ascent in the Bible through historical research and through ideas of worth to that which is central and supreme. There is the rich humanity of Genesis, the stormy epic of the Exodus, the roll of great oratory in the Deuteronomy, the barbaric magnificence of Joshua and Judges, the sign of growing civilization in the records of the kingdom, the interior depth of the Psalms ; there are the piety, speculative daring, and world-sympathy of Job, the moral theism and the moral humanism of the prophets. All along the advance, the scenery is great. Still, when one comes to the elevation from which the sublime figure of Jesus is visible, it is seen to be central, and to call at once for a new perspective of values.

So we judge concerning the very numerous beliefs of Christian people. The apostle tells us that all flesh is not the same flesh, that one star differs from another star in glory. All faith is not the same faith ; there is a faith in the relatively unimportant and there is a faith in the central and supreme. The jumble of xxviii INTRODUCTION

interests and values that one so often sees, as if all were of equal moment and worth, is a sign of the uneducated intellect and the unenlightened conscience. The men who contend for apostolical succession with as much zeal as they do for the permanence of the prophetic mind, who fight for ritual as uncompromisingly as for the morality of the Sermon on the Mount, who are as sure of the miracles of the Lord as they are of his love, who are unable to discern between beliefs about Jesus and the reality of his Person working through conceptions clearly inadequate, who refuse to judge between the temporal and the eternal, who believe in the coming of the Holy Ghost and yet leave little or nothing for him to do beyond giving his sanction to the arrested intellect of the church, who will not subordinate the ends of the ecclesiastic and the traditionalist to the ideals of the Christian thinker and man, are not "walking in the light," to quote the negro melodv, but in the ni^ht of which Ile^el wrote, in which "all the cows are black."

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II

Next to just perspective in the values of faith, I should place insight into the society of persons in our world and in our universe. For the Christian thinker the last word about the nature of our human world would appear to be that it is a society of persons; the final thought about the eternal world would seem to be that it too is a society of persons or spirits. The ultimate wisdom concerning the universe is that its substance is in souls. All else is accident, mode, temporal form; the truth of our universe lies in what I have elsewhere called a republic of souls.

If we look into the Gospels, we shall find this statement confirmed in every part and in its full intention and scope. In the message of Jesus the first emphasis is on God the Eternal soul: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done as in heaven so in earth." " God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

xxx INTRODUCTION

This emphasis is final and sovereign in the teaching of Jesus. God the Father of men is the indispensable background of his life ; without the soul of the Eternal the soul of Jesus would be an enigma, and his career meaningless and vain. When we cease to put the sovereign emphasis where Jesus put that emphasis, however orthodox we may appear to be, we part company with him.

At this point the Unitarian and the Trinitarian traditions naturally correct and strengthen each other. Frederick Denison Maurice learned from his inheritance of faith that this emphasis upon the Fatherhood of God was the strength of the old Unitarianism ; he learned from the rich and sober Trinitarianism into which his inherited faith grew that the revealing, mediatorial, reconciling soul of Jesus Christ became the supreme single assurance of the Fatherhood of God. When Unitarianism and Trinitarianism are reduced to two great lines of testimony to the reality of souls, we see new possibilities of service in them, each to the other; how Unitarianism may plead

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for the aboriginal soul, and how Trinitarianism, as one of its merits, may renew the vision of God in the vision of Jesus Christ.

The second line of emphasis in the Gospels, and in the entire New Testament, is upon the soul of the Lord. He is at the heart of his religion. The significance of his soul is bound up on the one side with the character of God, and on the other with the moral being and value of Man. The immediate interest of the New Testament is as an introduction to the soul of Jesus Christ, as its ultimate interest is as an introduction to God the Father. It is a symbol of the soul of the Lord, a reflection thereof, a way of approach to him, an elevation from which he may be seen. Questions of criticism, textual or historical, the apparatus of the scholar and his entire achievement, are means to this end. If we are serious, and if we know what we are about, we seek through the purified and authentic record the vision of the soul of the Master.

The third line of emphasis in the message of Jesus is on the souls of men. For Jesus xxxii INTRODUCTION

these are the only ultimate realities : the soul of the Eternal Father, the soul of his Son and Prophet Christ, and the souls of men. These souls constitute the substance of all worlds, visible and invisible, so far as we are able to judge. All outside moral personality is accident, mode, temporal form, the mere field or camping-ground for the discipline of soul. For obvious reasons, the idealistic philosophy of the world must always appear to be the friend of Christianity. It divides the world and the universe into two parts ; it reduces them to the abiding and the fleeting; it describes the abiding as persons or under some aspect of personality ; it holds as fleeting all things that fall below moral being. The universe comes before the sense as material reality, beautiful to the eye, full of melody to the ear, substantial to touch, and at the farthest remove from soul, older than soul, underlying it, determining its fate. This same universe COmefl before reason in its analytic and constructive might, and at once its beauty and melody are seen to be forms of man's expe-

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rience ; its substance dissolves into force, force becomes spirit, and that which at first appeared to be the final antithesis of soul is now apprehended as the singular and impressive appeal to the soul of man from the soul of God. This is the idealistic analysis which no enemy can long resist. When moral personality is accentuated through a vast and precious experience, with all its misgivings, it knows itself as the worthiest and the most enduring force in our world ; thence it moves to a confident and compassionate view of all souls; thence to the sublime Master and Bishop of souls, and through him to the moral being of God, to the soul of our Father in heaven.

Prom this position the entire world of sense and time becomes the sacrament of soul. Berkeley is right about the world as it lives in the senses ; it is the incessant and ordered speech of the Infinite Spirit to the spirit in man. Trade, art, science, government, philosophy, religion, and all records of religion are but sacraments of the soul of man with the soul of his brother, or between the soul of xxxiv INTRODUCTION

man and the soul of God. Everywhere soul is the reality and the end ; everything else — church, creed, Bible — is means, the precious but passing servant of the sovereign and everlasting soul. Death awaits everything but soul ; in the transformations of being nothing is perdurable but soul. Soul and its works are the heart of all we know, and the relation between these two parts of the spiritual life of the world is defined with unsurpassable clearness and pathos in these ancient words of faith : —

Of old didst thou lay the foundations of the earth ; And the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure ; Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment ; As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they

shall be changed : But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end.

Such is the soul of God; according to Christian faith, such is the soul of the Lord and such the soul of man.

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III

Originality in theological thought is another of the things that are worth while, and never since the apostolic age has there been an opportunity for originality in the sane meaning of the word such as exists to-day. By originality I do not mean mere individuality, or brilliance, or charm of mind. There is a type of mind to which the word originality is applied because of its mode of operation, and not because of its achievement. Such a mind scintillates with wit and humor ; it moves by sudden turns and surprises ; it deals in hints and suggestions that are novel ; its chief value is in its strange, brilliant movement and not in its goal. Again, such a mind is artistic, original in device, but not in the substance of its thought, not in insight or command over its subject. This subjective originality is immensely interesting and in its way valuable, but it does not concern us here. The originality that seems to be priceless is objective ; it advances upon its subject in a great xxxvi INTRODUCTION

invasion, illuminates reality like the sun, and while it is itself hard to look at, makes the world that lives in its light visible and beautiful.

This objective originality is of several grades and is adjusted to the differing capacities of serious minds. It means, first of all, the new, either absolutely or relatively ; in the second place, it signifies greater depth in the apprehension of the old and the putting of the old thus apprehended in new relations ; finally, it stands for immediate contact with reality.

That there should be absolutely new insights in the sphere of religion has from time immemorial been regarded as something akin to madness or blasphemy. Such originality, it is generally believed, is possible only to ignorance. Only those who know little of what the great world has thought can live in the vain hope of this achievement. The Christian church has accepted the ancient insight as exhaustive and final, notwithstanding its belief in the infinitude of the sphere of the soul and the coming of the Holy Ghost. Even

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the relatively new has been expected only from minds of the rarest distinction, and this relatively new has been considered infinitesimal in amount and incidental in importance. The antinomies of the old categories of theology have vexed the intellect into dissatisfaction ; they have paralyzed it with despair of anything new and better. Under this load of humility, enough to sink a navy, it is not strange that so few new insights have freshened and enriched the weary way of theological science. It is a misfortune to acquiesce in the feeling that hereafter the sole possibility of originality in the sense of the relatively new, lies in the sphere of natural science ; it is likewise a mistake.

To-day we are the witness of at least one example of this kind of originality, in the universal emergence of a new category of theological thought. This new category may be expressed in the term humanism. This term has been sadly abused in the philosophical world ; it has been used now in a profound way and again in a shallow ; it has xxxviii INTRODUCTION

advanced by evil report and good report ; and whether they that are for it or they that are against it are the greater in number is not clear. Yet the word covers what is incontestably the profoundest insight of our time, and in a genuine and wholesome sense this insight is new.

Notwithstanding what old Xenophanes said of the crude anthropomorphism of his day, and his fine scorn thereof expressed in his famous words that "if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own, horses like horses, cattle like cattle," his remark is chiefly valuable as showing that he understood little of his essential nature as man, and little of the one Supreme Being whose existence he confessed. The same want of fundamental clearness and grasp confuses the theistic argument both in attack and defense through almost the entire history of thought. It is open to serious question Whether Plato knew that his Idea of the

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Good was a form of humanism, whether Aristotle perceived that his Eternal thinker was an Eternal man. It is hardly open to question that Hume and Mill, in their negative process, failed of fundamental clearness here. Indeed, it is perhaps not too much to say that for the first time in history men are now beginning to see clearly that theism is humanism applied to the interpretation of the universe; that humanism means the apprehension of the Infinite through man as the highest we know ; that man comes to his best in Jesus Christ, and therefore that Christianity is the sovereign form of humanism. That there is risk in this interpretation is clear ; it is, however, the risk of a great faith, and is therefore worth while. Besides, it is well to see that belief in God and its opposite mean the victory and the defeat of man. Further, we must make this choice of the Eternal humanity, or an inferior choice, with less reason for its truth, or we must stand dumb and helpless in the presence of the Infinite. It is not true to say that the human interpretation of the Infinite is all we xl INTRODUCTION