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October 2,1852.] T HE-LEADER. 951 — ¦ s=...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Tiim Kkstokation Ok Mvaakv. The Llestora...
, j ^ n- pnouffH if we meet our au thor's argument in a field lying parall el be doingenu ^ some future Mesmeric Church defending i ts ? % n Z against sceptics , and defending them in the style of the Bestora-A f Belief . To prevent all cavil , we will not prejudge the question of Krvovance . ' Be Clairvoyance possible or impossible , every one is aware rtiafc in some cases , at least , it has been the cloak of charlatans , and that Si " miracles" # re impostures . Now we ask , is it enough to establish the nrrvt & nce of these miracles , that among those who witnessed them were Arsons of high moral character , of public importance , of scientific reputation , above all suspicion , their interests decidedly against any implication in the cheat P And when History records these miracles in conjunction with other events , will the credibility of the events serve as a guarantee for the miracles ? In the following passage , read Mesmerism for Miracles , and see what can be made of it -.
—« There are three mental conditions , easily distinguishable from each other , in which I can imagine an indubitable miracle to be witnessed . The first is that of jnedieval credulity—or an incurious , unreasoning , inconsequential passiveness , to which all things , natural and supernatural , come alike , and pass away without leaving an impression . The second state is that of our modern , dry , cold , sophisticated , scientific temper;—scientific more than philosophical . Witnessed in this mood , a miracle would astound us—it would just curdle the brain , and produce no effect ; whatever upon the moral nature . " But I can form an idea of a mental condition as much unlike the first of these
two states as the second . I can imagine myself to have come into a discernment of those unchanging realities of the spiritual and moral system which indeed affect any welfare , present and future ; so that the witnessing of a miracle would produce a feeling entirely congruous with such perceptions , and would neithe r astound nor agitate the mind . I can imagine myself to have so profound a sense of primary moral truths as that miracles would be confluent with the deep movements of the soul , and would produce no surge . I can imagine myself to have such a prospect of the plains of immortality—a prospect moral , not fanciful , not sensuous , as that itself with
the spectacle of the raising of the dead should assort my feelings . So to see ' death swallowed up in victory / would excite no amazement . I read this very quietness in the apostolic epistles ; and it sheds the steady brightness of the morning upon St . Paul ' s discourse concerning the resurrection . This great fact , concerning the destiny of man , which he there expounds , I also hold to be a truth , undoubted . But if , beside thus believing it with modern logical persuasion , if instead of this belief I had St . PauFs sight and consciousness of it , then , like him , I could speak of miracles briefly , firmly , and without a note of wonder .
" The miracles of the evangelic history come to us with the force of Congettity , just so far as we can bring ourselves morally within the splendour of those eternal verities which are of the substance of the Gospel . While we stand remote from that illuminated field , they are to us only a galling perplexity ; for we can neither rid ourselves of the evidence that attests them , nor are prepared to yield ourselves to it . At this moment the Christian argument is an intolerable torment to hundreds of cultivated minds around us . " In the crowd of those who witnessed the miracles of Christ there were some who mocked ; there were some who gnashed their teeth ; there were many who marvelled jwuI arr-lam ^ , —<* — < -- »<>* ~ . u »* fctey lma seen . But there wore some into whose minds the doctrine—the moral purport—the spiritual reality of his discourses had so entered that , beside being conscious of the fitness of which
already I have spoken , they felt , with overwhelming force , a Congruity of another kind ; I mean that of these miracles with the rtjajestic bearing and style of Him who wrought them ; for he did these ' mig-hty works' wfth the spontaneous ease of one in whom this power , and much more , was inherent . " In fact , the miracles recorded may have been recorded by the very men who witnessed them ; these men may have been the most moral and enlightened of that age ; they may have been recorded in the most sincere conviction of their truth ; and yet , so little does Christianity gain by all these admissions , that the calm verdict of Keason is against the acceptance of the Miracles , precisely as it is against the acceptance of the Mesmeric marvels , and no amount of Congruity or Historic Cohesion will make fteason accept them . Let us examine one of the Miracles , and see how beautiful the " historic cohesion" is , and how little it helps credibility . We beg to quote the Cospel narrative in all its integrity . "And they came over unto the other side of the sea , into the country of the Gadarenes . And when ho was come out of the ship , immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit , who had his dwelling among the tombs ; and no man could bind him , no , not with chains ; because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains , and tho chains had been plucked asunder by him and tho fetters broken in . pieces : neither could any man tame him . And always , night and day , he was in the mountains , and in the tombs , crying , and cutting himself witk stones . And when lie saw Jesus afar oil ' , he ran and worshipped him , and cried with a loud voice , and said , What have I to do with thee , . TesiiH , thou Son of the most high ( Jiod P J ^ udjuro thee by Cod , that thou torment me not . For he said unto him , Come oui , of tho man , thou unclean spirit . And ho asked him , What is jh ynaniep And lie answered , My name is Legion ; for we are 111 : 1113 ' " . I Imlco i , s more precise in his language : "And ho said Legion : heeau . se many devils were entered into him . " | And they besought him much j uit he would not send them away out ; of the country . Now there was 1 < nere nigh unto tho mountains a , great herd of swine feeding . And all the devils besought him , Haying , Send us into the swine , ( hat we may enter into them . And forthwith Jesus gave them leave . And the unclean spirits went out , and entered into the swine ; and the herd run violently down a steep pluee into the sea , ( they were about two thousand ;) and worn <* 'Iiok «« l in the sea . " Now it is indisputable that the " cohesion" here in perfect . Matthew , ¦""¦ rk , and Luke record the fact , ( Matthew says there were two men pos-HesHed with devils ) . Tho " history" linn no haw ; but we ask , Can any ^' > e mini in this nineteenth century believe . itP Can he not sen that if ' «> re bo any truth whatever in this history , it is that of a . maniac cured l ' * HO <) . lllo < 1 ) by Jesus P The believer must believe— 1 ° , That there were <«<> viIh in tho luiin 2 , That the devils besought Jesus to send them into r > ' ° uio—a not very intelligible preference , and one which greatly dise # u-ded the feelings and tho " property" of tho awino owner . 3 ° , That
all present heard the devils ask this , and in very good Hebrew . 4 , Tkt they were made spectators of the transference of these numerous devils from the man to the swine . And if he believes all this—he has a very splendid capacity for belief . We foresee that there will be some " interpretation" resorted to . lhe devils will be called a " metaphorical expression" for insanity ; or some such loophole will be sought . But—not to complicate the question by reference to the swine—let us remind the reader that here we have a distinct bit of miraculous " history , " in which the " cohesion" is perfect j and that if once the latitude of " interpretation" be allowed , the whole history of Christianity is resolvable into a Myth . Apropos of miracles , we cannot resist the quotation of one passage , wherein our author , always bold in his assertions , seems to us to employ an audacity that approaches irony : —
" Among these miracles there are no portents—such as are related by classic writers ; there are no exhibitions of things monstrous;—there are no contrarieties to the order of nature ; there is nothing prodigious , there is nothing grotesque . Nor among them are there any of that kind that might be called theatric . There are no displays of supernatural power , made in the presence of thousands of the people , summoned to witness them . Although claiming to be sent of God into the world , with a sovereign authority , Christ did not , as Elijah had done , convene the people , and then challenge his enemies to dispute with him his mission by help of counter-attestations . " No contradictions to the " order of Nature !"—What , then , is a miracle ? No displays of power in the presence of thousands ! What was the miracle of the loaves and fishes P
Another specimen of the kind of easy , confident statement which imposes on acquiescent minds , is the following , on the first general Epistle of Peter : — " The apostolic antiquity of this Epistle is a fact out of question—I mean among those whose readings in German have not denuded them of their English common sense . Yet even here , though very unwilling to seem to concede anything to pedantry and affectation—I should be willing , as to its' bearing upon my argument , to take this Epistle as ( though not genuine ) so like to thesgenuine , as to secure for itself universal acceptance as such .
" The calm majesty , the fervour , the bright hopefulness , and the intense moral import of the Epistle , carry it home to every ingenuous mind as an embodiment of whatever is the most affecting in theology , and the most effective and salutary in ethics . With those—if there are any—who have no consciousness of these qualities in the writing before us , I should not court controversy . In any such insta ? ice nature must have dealt in a very parsimonious manner with the mind and heart , and sophistry must have greatly overdone her part . " The author , having taught us suspicion , induced us by these praises to turn to the epistle in question , and we earnestly beg our readers not to
content themselves with any general recollection , but at once to read over that Epistle , and be astounded at the audacity of such sentences as those just quoted . The first twelve verses contain a general assertion of Christ ' s mission : the " intense "moral import" of the remainder is the exhortation to live a sober , holy life , and to love each other fervently—very excellent doctrine , assuredly , but to be met with elsewhere besides in Peter ' s Epistle . The author , however , has his reasons for discerning this intense moral import ( which you are to see also under pain of having a bad heart ) , and thus he employs them : —
" But he affirms also the resurrection of Christ , in varied phrases , five times m this Epistle . These affirmations are all of them udjunctive to his proper subject , and inseparable from the context . They include not only the fact of the resurrection , but that also of Christ's assumption to the throne of celestial dominion ( iii . 22 ) . We have here in hand an instance of the Comes roN of the supernatural and the historic which is of a peculiar kind . " In any composition , if three , four , or i \ va subjects , of different classes , are brought together , tlmt one among them must be regarded as tin ; 0110 uppermost in the mind of the writer , in illustration of which the other subjects—two , three , or four— : irc introduced . That one is the leading subject ; the others the adjunctive and subdividing .
" According to this plain rule , the drift of this Epistle is ethical . The main intention of the writer , and his ruling impulse , was so to fortify the minds of the Christian people under hi . s care , as to secure the purity , rectitude , and religious consistency of their conduct . Ingoing about to make j ^ ood tin ' s , his main purpose , lie brings in those principal facts on which the Christian profession vested , and in behoof of which Christians were liable ; to suffer . Those lads stand in . series , commencing with a merely historic fact—namely , the crucifixion , and the death of Christ—going on to those that were wholly remote from human cognizance , and coming to a close , in the visible , yet supernatural fact , of Christ ' s ascent from earth to heaven .
" Now this instance of indissoluble Cohesion maybe dealt , with , and it has often been so dealt with , in a style of extenuation or apology , as thus : - —' Can we imagine , or ont / hl we to suppose , that a writer who is so careful to enforce moral principles , and who ko well understands them , should himself , through life , be the propagator of what he must always have known in be a falsehood ? ' Reasonably we can imagine no such thing ; hut just ; now 1 should state the ease in other terms , as thus " I bring this document into Court . In doing so I protest against any pleadings that take for granted tho very question which is now to be argued , and upon which the plaintiff and defendant have joined issue . That question involves the reality of a series of facts , including those that are miraculous .
"As to tho genuineness of this particular document , it has already panned under revision , in the proper Court ; and it lias been duly countersigned there , as authentic . It stands open to no exceptions that could be available for ( be plaintiff , except this one -that it hears upon tint verdict , in a sense unfavourable to himself . Hut this exception , of course , stands for nothing . " I read my document from beginning to end , and ( ben nsk•— ' Excluding lhe plaintiff ' s nugatory objection , which is grounded upon his apprehension of an adverse verdict , would 1 his Npistlo suggest , any other idea than this , that , tho writer ' * own mind was tranquil and well-ordered ; and ( bat , his intention in writing it was of that sort which is becoming to a wise and virtuous man ; especially to 0110 who is in a place of ant hority r " " The answer is nmnifost . Thin Epistle , if read apart from any rolbrcnco to tho
October 2,1852.] T He-Leader. 951 — ¦ S=...
October 2 , 1852 . ] T HE-LEADER . 951 — ¦ s = == - ^—— ' '
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 2, 1852, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_02101852/page/19/
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