Supernatural Religion (Vol. 1-3) - Walter Richard Cassels

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details they are as explicit as the mass of other cases reported. In every instance names and addresses are stated, and it will have been observed that all these miracles occurred in, or close to, Hippo, and in his own diocese. It is very certain that in every case the fact of the miracle is asserted in the most direct and positive terms. There can be no mistake either as to the meaning or intention of the narrative, and there is no symptom whatever of a thought on the part of Augustine to avoid the responsibility of his statements, or to give them as mere vague report. If wo compare these accounts with those of the Gospels, we do not find them deficient in any essential detail common to the latter. There is in the synoptic Gospels only one case in which Jesus is said to have raised the dead. The raising of Jairus' daughter(1) has long been abandoned, as a case of restoration to life, by all critics and theologians, except the few who still persist in ignoring the distinct and positive declaration of Jesus, "The damsel is not dead but sleepeth." The only case, therefore, in the Synoptics is the account in the third Gospel of the raising of the widow's son,(3) of which, strange to say, the other Gospels know nothing. Now, although, as might have been expected, this narrative is much more highly coloured and picturesque, the difference is chiefly literary, and, indeed, there are really fewer important details given than in the account by Augustine, for instance, of the restoration to life of the daughter of Bassus the Syrian, which took place at Hippo, of which he was bishop, and where he actually resided. Augustine's object in giving his list of miracles did not require him to write picturesque narratives. He merely desired to state bare facts, whilst the authors of the Gospels composed the Life of their Master, in which interesting details were everything. For many reasons we refrain here from alluding to the artistic narrative of the raising of Lazarus, the greatest miracle ascribed to Jesus, yet so singularly unknown to the other three Evangelists, who, so readily repeating the accounts of trifling cures, would most certainly not have neglected this had they ever heard of it.

      Dr. Mozley complains of the absence of verification and proof of actual death in these cases, or that they were more than mere suspension of the vital powers. We cordially agree with him in the desire for such evidence, not only in these, but in all miracles. We would ask, however, what verification of the death have we in the case of the widow's son which we have not here? If we apply such a test to the miracles of the Gospels, we must reject them as certainly as those of St. Augustine. In neither case have we more than a mere statement that the subjects of these miracles were dead or diseased. So far are we from having any competent medical evidence of the reality of the death, or of the disease, or of the permanence of the supposed cures in the Gospels, that we have little more than the barest reports of these miracles by writers who, even if their identity were established, were not, and do not pretend to have been, eye-witnesses of the occurrences which they relate. Take, for instance, this very raising of the widow's son in the third Gospel, which is unknown to the other Evangelists, and the narrative of which is given only in a Gospel which is not attributed to a personal follower of Jesus.

      Now we turn to the second statement of Dr. Mozley, "that with the preface which Augustine prefixes to his list, he cannot be said even to profess to guarantee the truth or accuracy of the different instances contained in it." This extraordinary assertion is supported by a quotation given above, which Dr. Mozley has separated from what precedes and follows it, so that its real meaning is scarcely apparent. We shall as briefly as possible state what is actually the "preface" of St. Augustine to his list of miracles, and his avowed object for giving it. In the preceding chapter, Augustine has been arguing that the world believed in Christ by virtue of divine influence and not by human persuasion. He contends that it is ridiculous to speak of the false divinity of Romulus when Christians speak of Christ. If, in the time of Romulus, some 600 years before Cicero, people were so enlightened that they refused to believe anything of which they had not experience, how much more, in the still more enlightened days of Cicero himself, and notably in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, would they have rejected belief in the resurrection and ascension of Christ, if divine truth and the testimony of miracles had not proved not only that such things could take place, but that they had actually done so. When the evidence of prophecy joined with that of miracles, and showed that the new doctrines were only contrary to experience and not contrary to reason, the world embraced the faith.(1) "Why, then, say they, do these miracles which you declare to have taken place formerly, not occur now-a-days?" Augustine, in replying, adopts a common rhetorical device: "I might, indeed, answer," he says, "that miracles were necessary before the world believed, in order that the world might believe. Any one who now requires miracles in order that he may believe, is himself a great miracle in not believing what all the world believes. But, really, they say this in order that even those miracles should not be believed either."

      And he reduces what he considers to be the position of the world in regard to miracles and to the supernatural dogmas of Christianity to the following dilemma: "Either things incredible which nevertheless occurred, and were seen, led to belief in something else incredible, which was not seen; or that thing was in itself so credible that no miracles were required to establish it, and so much more is the unbelief of those who deny confuted. This might I say to these most frivolous objectors." He then proceeds to affirm that it cannot be denied that many miracles attest the great miracle of the ascension in the flesh of the risen Christ, and he points out that the actual occurrence of all these things is not only recorded in the most truthful books, but the reasons also given why they took place. These things have become known that they might create belief; these things by the belief they have created have become much more clearly known. They are read to the people, indeed, that they may believe; yet, nevertheless, they would not be read to the people if they had not been believed. After thus stating the answer which he might give, Augustine now returns to answer the question directly:—"But, furthermore," he continues, "miracles are performed now in his name, either by means of his sacraments, or by the prayers or relics of his saints, but they are not brought under the same strong light as caused the former to be noised abroad with so much glory; inasmuch as the canon of sacred scriptures, which must be definite, causes those miracles to be everywhere publicly read, and become firmly fixed in the memory of all peoples;"(l) and then follows Dr. Mozley's quotation: "but these are scarcely known to the whole of a city itself in which they are performed, or to its neighbourhood. Indeed, for the most part, even there very few know of them, and the rest are ignorant, more especially if the city be large; and when they are related elsewhere and to others, the authority does not so commend them as to make them be believed without difficulty or doubt, albeit they are reported by faithful Christians to the faithful." He illustrates this by pointing out in immediate continuation, that the miracle in Milan by the bodies of the two martyrs, which took place when he himself was there, might reach the knowledge of many, because the city is large, and the Emperor and an immense crowd of people witnessed it, but who knows of the miracle performed at Carthage upon his friend Innocent, when he was there also, and saw it with his own eyes? Who knows of the miraculous cure of cancer, he continues, in a lady of rank in the same city? at the silence regarding which he is so indignant. Who knows of the next case he mentions in his list? the cure of a medical man of the same town, to which he adds: "We, nevertheless, do know it, and a few brethren to whose knowledge it may have come."(1) Who out of Curubus, besides the very few who may have heard of it, knows of the miraculous cure of the paralytic man, whose case Augustine personally investigated? and so on. Observe that there is merely a question of the comparative notoriety of the Gospel miracles and those of his own time, not a doubt as to the reality of the latter. Again, towards the end of his long list, immediately after the narrative of the restoration to life of the child of Eleusinus, which we have quoted, Augustine says:—"What can I do? The promise of the completion of this work is pressing, so that I cannot here recount all (the miracles) that I know; and without doubt many of our brethren when they read this work will be grieved that I have omitted so very much, which they know as well as I do. This I even now beg that they will pardon, and consider how long would be the task of doing that which, for the completion of the work, it is thought necessary not to do. For if I desired to record merely the miracles of healing, without speaking of others, which have been performed by this martyr, that is to say, the most glorious Stephen, in the district of Calama, and in ours of Hippo, many volumes must be composed, yet will it not be possible to make a complete collection of them, but only of such as have been published for public reading. For that was our object, since we saw repeated in our time signs of divine power similar to those of old, deeming that they ought

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