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DISCOVERIES ILLUSTRATING THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 291--302 INDICES 303--324

SUPERNATURAL RELIGION.

And all the while there was absolutely nothing to recommend this identification of the unknown author. The intellectual characteristics of the work present a trenchant contrast to the refined scholarship and cautious logic of this accomplished prelate. Only one point of resemblance could be named. The author shows an acquaintance with the theological critics of the modern Dutch school; and a knowledge of Dutch writers was known, or believed, to have a place among the acquisitions of this omniscient scholar. Truly no reputation is safe, when such a reputation is traduced on these grounds.

Now, since the documents which our author has undertaken to discuss are written almost wholly in the Greek and Latin languages, it may safely be assumed that under the term 'scholarship' the reviewers included an adequate knowledge of these languages. Starting from this as an axiom which will not be disputed, I proceed to inquire what we find in the work itself, which will throw any light on this point.

The example, which I shall take first, relates to a highly important passage of Irenaeus , containing a reference in some earlier authority, whom this father quotes, to a saying of our Lord recorded only in St John's Gospel. The passage begins thus:--

'As the elders say, then also shall those deemed worthy of the abode in heaven depart thither; and others shall enjoy the delights of paradise; and others shall possess the splendour of the city; for everywhere the Saviour shall be seen according as they that see Him shall be worthy.'

Then follows the important paragraph which is translated differently by our author and by Dr Westcott . For reasons which will appear immediately, I place the two renderings side by side:--

The passage just discussed has a vital bearing on the main question at issue, the date of the Fourth Gospel. The second example which I shall take, though less important, is not without its value. As in the former instance our author showed his indifference to moods, so here he is equally regardless of tenses. He is discussing the heathen Celsus, who shows an acquaintance with the Evangelical narratives, and whose date therefore it is not a matter of indifference to ascertain. Origen, in the preface to his refutation of Celsus, distinctly states that this person had been long dead . In his first book again he confesses his ignorance who this Celsus was, but is disposed to identify him with a person of the name known to have flourished about a century before his own time . But at the close of the last book , addressing his friend Ambrosius who had sent him the work, and at whose instance he had undertaken the refutation, he writes as follows:--

'Know, however, that Celsus has promised to write another treatise after this one.... If, therefore, he has not fulfilled his promise to write a second book, we may well be satisfied with the eight books in reply to his Discourse. If however, he has commenced and finished this work also, seek it and send it in order that we may answer it also, and confute the false teaching in it etc.'

These two examples have been chosen, not because they are by any means the worst specimens of our author's Greek, but because in both cases an elaborate argument is wrecked on this rock of grammar. If any reader is curious to see how he can drive his ploughshare through a Greek sentence, he may refer for instance to the translations of Basilides , or of Valentinus , or of Philo . Or he may draw his inferences from such renderings as , 'Scripture declares,' or , 'to inflict a blow on one side'; or from such perversions of meaning as 'did no wrong,' twice repeated as a translation of in an important passage of Papias relating to St Mark, where this Father really means that the Evangelist, though his narrative was not complete, yet 'made no mistake' in what he did record.

Nor does our author's Latin fare any better than his Greek, as may be inferred from the fact that he can translate 'nihil tamen differt credentium fidei,' 'nothing nevertheless differs in the faith of believers,' instead of 'it makes no difference to the faith of believers,' thus sacrificing sense and grammar alike . Or it is still better illustrated by the following example:--

Here again tenses and moods are quite indifferent, an imperfect subjunctive being treated as a present indicative; while at the same time our author fails to perceive that the "commentatores" are the Evangelists themselves. His mind seems to be running on the Commentaries of De Wette and Alford, and he has forgotten the Commentaries of Caesar .

Having shown that the author does not possess the elementary knowledge which is indispensable in a critical scholar, I shall not stop to inquire how far he exhibits those higher qualifications of a critic, which are far more rare--whether for instance he has the discriminating tact and nice balance of judgment necessary for such a work, or whether again he realizes how men in actual life do speak and write now, and might be expected to speak and write sixteen or seventeen centuries ago--without which qualifications the most painful study and reproduction of German and Dutch criticism is valueless. These qualifications cannot be weighed or measured, and I must trust to my subsequent investigations to put the reader in possession of data for forming a judgment on these points. At present it will be sufficient to remark that a scholarly writer might at least be expected not to contradict himself on a highly important question of Biblical criticism. Yet this is what our author does. Speaking of the descent of the angel at the pool of Bethesda in his first part, he writes: 'The passage is not found in the older MSS of the Fourth Gospel, and it was probably a later interpolation.' But, having occasion towards the end of his work to refer again to this same passage, he entirely forgets his previously expressed opinion, and is very positive on the other side. 'We must believe,' he writes, 'that this passage did originally belong to the text, and has from an early period been omitted from the MSS on account of the difficulty it presents.' And, to make the contradiction more flagrant, he proceeds to give a reason why the disputed words must have formed part of the original text.

Now this is not the characteristic of the book before me. The author does indeed single out from time to time the weaker arguments of 'apologetic' writers, and on these he dwells at great length; but their weightier facts and lines of reasoning are altogether ignored by him, though they often occur in the same books and even in the same contexts which he quotes. This charge will, I believe, be abundantly substantiated as I proceed. At present I shall do no more than give a few samples.

But indeed, when he does stoop to notice the arguments of 'apologetic' writers, he is not always successful in apprehending their meaning.

Thus he writes of the unnamed disciple, the assumed author of the Fourth Gospel:--

'The assumption that the disciple thus indicated is John, rests principally on the fact that whilst the author mentions the other Apostles, he seems studiously to avoid directly naming John, and also that he only once distinguishes John the Baptist by the appellation , whilst he carefully distinguishes the two disciples of the name of Judas, and always speaks of the Apostle Peter as 'Simon Peter,' or 'Peter,' or but rarely as 'Simon' only. Without pausing to consider the slightness of this evidence, etc.'

Now the fact is, that the Fourth Evangelist never once distinguishes this John as 'the Baptist,' though such is his common designation in the other Gospels; and the only person, in whom the omission would be natural, is his namesake John the son of Zebedee. Hence 'apologists' lay great stress on this fact, as an evidence all the more valuable, because it lies below the surface, and they urge with force, that this subtle indication of authorship is inconceivable as the literary device of a forger in the second century. We cannot wonder, however, if our author considers this evidence so slight that he will not even pause upon it, when he has altogether distorted it by a mis-statement of fact. But it is instructive to trace his error to its source. Turning to Credner, to whom the author gives a reference in a footnote, I find this writer stating that the Fourth Evangelist

So then our author has stumbled over that little word 'nur,' and his German has gone the way of his Greek and his Latin . But the error is instructive from another point of view. This argument happens to be a commonplace of 'apologists.' How comes it then, that he was not set right by one or other of these many writers, even if he could not construe Credner's German? Clearly this cannot be the work which the reviewers credit with an 'exhaustive' knowledge of the literature of the subject. I may be asked indeed to explain how, on this theory of mistaken identity which I here put forward, the work reviewed by the critics came to be displaced by the work before me, so that no traces of the original remain. But this I altogether decline to do, and I plead authority for refusing. 'The merely negative evidence that our actual is not the work described by is sufficient for our purpose.'

'At the same time, he appealed to the authority of Glaucias, who, as well as St Mark, was "an interpreter of St. Peter."'

The inverted commas are given here as they appear in Dr Westcott's book. It need hardly be said that Dr Westcott is simply illustrating the statement of Basilides that Glaucias was an interpreter of St Peter by the similar statement of Papias and others that St Mark was an interpreter of the same apostle--a very innocent piece of information, one would suppose. On this passage however our author remarks:--

Dr Westcott's honour may safely be left to take care of itself. It stands far too high to be touched by insinuations like these. I only call attention to the fact that our author has removed Dr Westcott's inverted commas , and then founded on the passage so manipulated a charge of unfair dealing, which could only be sustained in their absence, and which even then no one but himself would have thought of. I will not retort upon our author the charge of 'deliberate falsification,' which he so freely levels at others, for I do not believe that he had any such intention. The lesson suggested by this highly characteristic passage is of another kind. It exemplifies the elaborate looseness which pervades the critical portion of this book. It illustrates the author's inability to look at things in a straightforward way. It emphasizes more especially the suspicious temper of the work, which makes it, as even a favourable reviewer has said, 'painfully sceptical'--a temper which must necessarily vitiate all the processes of criticism, and which, if freely humoured elsewhere, would render life intolerable and history impossible .

There is however another more subtle mode of intimidation which plays an important part in these volumes. Long lists of references are given in the notes, to modern critics who support the views mentioned or adopted by the author in the text. I have verified these references in one or two cases, and have found that several writers, at all events, do not hold the opinions to which their names are attached . But, under any circumstances, these lists will not fetter the judgment of any thoughtful mind. It is strange indeed, that a writer who denounces so strongly the influence of authority as represented by tradition, should be anxious to impose on his readers another less honourable yoke. There is at least a presumption that the historical sense of seventeen or eighteen centuries is larger and truer than the critical insight of a section of men in one late half century. The idols of our cave never present themselves in a more alluring form than when they appear as the 'spirit of the age.' It is comparatively easy to resist the fallacies of past times, but it is most difficult to escape the infection of the intellectual atmosphere in which we live. I ask myself, for instance, whether one who lived in the age of the rabbis would have been altogether right in resigning himself to the immediate current of intellectual thought, because he saw, or seemed to see, that it was setting strongly in one direction.

This comparison is not without its use. Here were men eminently learned, painstaking, minute; eminently ingenious also, and in a certain sense, eminently critical. In accumulating and assorting facts--such facts as lay within their reach--and in the general thoroughness of their work, the rabbis of Jewish exegesis might well bear comparison with the rabbis of neologian criticism. They reigned supreme in their own circles for a time; their work has not been without its fruits; many useful suggestions have gone to swell the intellectual and moral inheritance of later ages; but their characteristic teaching, which they themselves would have regarded as their chief claim to immortality, has long since been consigned to oblivion. It might be minute and searching, but it was conceived in a false vein; it was essentially unhistorical, and therefore it could not live. The modern negative school of criticism seems to me to be equally perverse and unreal, though in a different way; and therefore I anticipate for it the same fate.

Mr Matthew Arnold, alluding to an eccentric work of rationalizing tendencies written by an English scholar, and using M. Renan as his mouthpiece, expresses the opinion that 'an extravagance of this sort could never have come from Germany where there is a great force of critical opinion controlling a learned man's vagaries, and keeping him straight.' I confess that my experiences of the critical literature of Germany have not been so fortunate. It would be difficult, I think, to find among English scholars any parallel to the mass of absurdities, which several intelligent and very learned German critics have conspired to heap upon two simple names in the Philippian Epistle, Euodia and Syntyche; first, Baur suggesting that the pivot of the Epistle, which has a conciliatory tendency, is the mention of Clement, a mythical or almost mythical person, who represents the union of the Petrine and Pauline parties in the Church ; then Schwegler, carrying the theory a step further, and declaring that the two names, Euodia and Syntyche, actually represent these two parties, while the true yoke-fellow is St Peter himself ; then Volkmar, improving the occasion, and showing that this fact is indicated in their very names, Euodia, or 'Rightway,' and Syntyche or 'Consort,' denoting respectively the orthodoxy of the one party and the incorporation of the other ; lastly, Hitzig lamenting that interpreters of the New Testament are not more thoroughly imbued with the language and spirit of the Old, and maintaining that these two names are reproductions of the patriarchs Asher and Gad--their sex having been changed in the transition from one language to another--and represent the Greek and Roman elements in the Church, while the Epistle to the Philippians itself is a plagiarism from the Agricola of Tacitus . When therefore I find our author supporting some of his more important judgments by the authority of 'Hitzig, Volkmar and others,' or of 'Volkmar and others,' I have my own opinion of the weight which such names should carry with them .

For this reason I shall hereafter occupy myself solely with the two latter portions of the work, and more especially with the external evidences of the Gospels; but there is one point, affecting the main question at issue, which it is impossible to pass over in silence. Anyone who, with the arguments of the first part fresh in his memory, will turn to the final chapter, in which the author gives a confession of faith, must be struck with the startling dislocation between the principles from which the work starts and the manifesto with which it concludes. Our author has eliminated, as he believes, the miraculous or supernatural element from the Gospel. He will have nothing to say to 'Ecclesiastical Christianity,' by which strange phrase is meant the Christianity of the Apostles and Evangelists. He will not even hear of a future life with its hopes and fears . He will purge the Gospel of all 'dogmas,' and will present it as an ethical system alone. The extreme beauty, I might almost say the absolute perfection, of Christ's moral teaching he not only allows, but insists upon. 'Morality,' he adds, 'was the essence of his system; theology was an after-thought.' And yet almost in the same breath he adopts as his 'two fundamental principles, Love to God and love to man.' He commends a 'morality based upon the earnest and intelligent acceptance of Divine Law, and perfect recognition of the brotherhood of man,' as 'the highest conceivable by humanity.' He speaks of the 'purity of heart which alone "sees God.'" He enforces the necessity of 'rising to higher conceptions of an infinitely wise and beneficent Being ... whose laws of wondrous comprehensiveness and perfection we ever perceive in operation around us.' All this is well said, but is it consistent? This universal 'brotherhood of man,' what is it but a 'dogma' of the most comprehensive application? This 'Love to God' springing from the apprehension of a 'wondrous perfection,' and the recognition of an 'infinitely wise and beneficent Being,'--in short, this belief in a Heavenly Father, which on any showing was the fundamental axiom of our Lord's teaching, and which our author thus accepts as a cardinal article in his own creed,--what is it but a theological proposition of the most overwhelming import, before which all other 'dogmas' sink into insignificance?

And what room, we are forced to ask, has he left for such a dogma? In the first portion of the work our author has been careful not to define his position. He has studiously avoided committing himself to a belief in a universal Father or a moral Governor, or even in a Personal God. If he had done so, he would have tied his hands at once. Very much of the reasoning which he brings forward against the miraculous element in Christianity in answer to Dr Mozley and Dean Mansel falls to the ground when this proposition is assumed. His arguments prove nothing, because they prove too much: for they are equally efficacious, or equally inefficacious, against the doctrine of a Divine providence or of human responsibility, as they are against the resurrection of Christ. The truth is, that when our author closes his work, he cannot face the conclusions to which his premisses would inevitably lead him. They are too startling for himself, as well as for his readers, in their naked deformity; and with a noble inconsistency he clutches at these 'dogmas' to save himself from sinking into the abyss of moral scepticism.

Mr J.S. Mill's inexorable logic may not be without its use, as holding up the mirror to such inconsistency. On his own narrow premisses this eminent logician builds up his own narrow conclusions with remorseless rigour. Our author in his first part adopts this same narrow basis, and truly enough finds no resting-place for Christianity upon it, as indeed there is none for any theory of a providential government. But at the conclusion he tacitly and quite unconsciously assumes a much wider standing-ground. If he had not done so, he himself would have been edged off his footing, and hurled down the precipice. A whole pack of 'pursuing wolves' is upon him, far more ravenous than any which beset the path of the believers in revelation; and he has left himself no shelter. If he had commenced by defining what he meant by 'Nature' and 'Supernatural,' he might have avoided this inconsistency, though he must have sacrificed much of his argument to save his creed. As it is, he has unconsciously juggled with two senses of Nature. Nature in the first part, where he is arguing against miracles, is the aggregate of external phenomena--the same Nature against which Mr Mill prefers his terrible indictment for its cruelty and injustice. But Nature in the concluding chapter involves the idea of a moral Governor and a beneficent Father; and this idea can only be introduced by opening flood-gates of thought which refuse to be closed just at the moment when it is necessary to bar the admission of the miraculous. Our author has ranged himself unconsciously with the 'intuitive philosophers,' of whom Mr Mill speaks so scornfully. He has appealed, though he does not seem to be aware of it, to the inner consciousness of man, to the instincts and cravings of humanity, to interpret and supplement the teachings of external Nature; and he is altogether unaware how large a concession he has made to believers in revelation by so doing.

Even though we should close our eyes to all other considerations, it is vain to ignore the inevitable moral consequences which flow from this mode of reasoning; for they are becoming every day more apparent. The demand is made that we should abandon our Christianity on grounds which logically involve the abandonment of any belief in the providential government of the world and in the moral responsibility of man. Young men are apt to be far more logical than their elders. Older persons are taught by long experience to distrust the adequacy of their premisses: consciously or unconsciously they supplement the narrow conclusions of their logic by larger lessons learnt from human life or from their own heart. But generally speaking, the young man has no such distrust. His teacher has appealed to Nature, and to Nature he shall go. The teacher becomes frightened, struggles to retrace his steps, and speaks of 'an infinitely wise and beneficent Being'; but the pupil insolently points out how

Nature, red in tooth and claw, With ravin, shrieks against his creed.

The teacher urges, 'All that is consistent with wise and omnipotent Law is prospered and brought to perfection:' and the pupil replies: 'You have limited my horizon to this life, and in this life the facts do not verify your statement.' The teacher says, Believe that you--you personally--'are eternally cared for and governed by an omnipresent immutable power for which nothing is too great, nothing too insignificant.' The pupil says: 'My Christianity did show me how this was possible; but with my Christianity I have cast it away as a delusion. I could not stop short at this point consistently with the principles you have laid down for my guidance. I have done as you told me to do; I have "ratified the fiat which maintains the order of Nature," and I find Nature wholly

Careless of the single life.

I will therefore please myself henceforth.' The teacher speaks of 'the purity which alone sees God;' and to him the expression has a real meaning, for his mind is unconsciously saturated with ideas which he has certainly not learnt from his adopted philosophy: but to the pupil it has lost its articulate utterance, and is no better than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Hence the pupil, having thrown off his Christianity, too often follows out the principles of his teacher to their logical conclusions, and divests himself also of moral restraints, except so far as it may be convenient or necessary for him to submit to them. Happily this has not been the case hitherto in the large majority of instances. The permanence of habits formed in a nobler school of teaching, the abiding presence of a loftier ideal not derived from this new philosophy, and the voice of an inward witness whose authority is denied, but whose warnings nevertheless compel a hearing, all tend to raise the level of men's conduct above their principles. The full moral consequences of the teaching would only then be seen, if ever a generation should grow up, moulded altogether under its influences.

Now, our author is eloquent on the silence of Eusebius. His fundamental assumption is that where Eusebius does not mention a reference to or quotation from any Canonical book in any writer of whom he may be speaking, there the writer in question was himself silent. This indeed is only the application of a general principle which seems to have taken possession of our author's mind. The argument from silence is courageously and extensively applied throughout these volumes. It is unnecessary to accumulate instances, where 'knows nothing' is substituted for 'says nothing,' as if the two were convertible terms; for such instances are countless. But in the case of Eusebius the application of the principle takes a wider sweep. Not only is it maintained that A knows nothing of B, because he says nothing of B; but it is further assumed that A knows nothing of B, because C does not say that A says anything of B. This is obviously an assumption which men would not adopt in common life or in ordinary history; still less is it one to which a competent jury would listen for a moment: and therefore a prudent man may well hesitate before adopting it.

With what unflinching boldness our author asserts his position, will appear from the following passages:--

Of Hegesippus he writes :--

'The care with which Eusebius searches for every trace of the use of the books of the New Testament in early writers, and his anxiety to produce any evidence concerning their authenticity, render his silence upon the subject almost as important as his distinct utterance when speaking of such a man as Hegesippus.'

And again :--

And again :--'As Hegesippus does not mention any Canonical work of the New Testament etc.' And in the second volume he returns to the subject :--

'It is certain that, had he mentioned our Gospels, and we may say particularly the Fourth, the fact would have been recorded by Eusebius.'

Similarly he says of Papias:--

'Eusebius, who never fails to enumerate the works of the New Testament to which the Fathers refer, does not pretend that Papias knew either the Third or Fourth Gospels.'

And again, in a later passage :--

'Had he expressed any recognition of the Fourth Gospel, Eusebius would certainly have mentioned the fact, and this silence of Papias is strong presumptive evidence against the Johannine Gospel.'

And a little lower down :--

'The presumption therefore naturally is that, as Eusebius did not mention the fact, he did not find any reference to the Fourth Gospel in the work of Papias.'

So again, our author writes of Dionysius of Corinth :--

'No quotation from, or allusion to, any writing of the New Testament occurs in any of the fragments of the Epistles still extant; nor does Eusebius make mention of any such reference in the Epistles which have perished , which he certainly would not have omitted to do had they contained any.'

And lower down :--

'It is certain that had Dionysius mentioned books of the New Testament, Eusebius would, as usual, have stated the fact.'

In the first place then, Eusebius himself tells us what method he intends to pursue respecting the Canon of Scripture. After enumerating the writings bearing the name of St Peter, as follows;-- The First Epistle, which is received by all, and was quoted by the ancients as beyond dispute; The Second Epistle, which tradition had not stamped in the same way as Canonical , but which nevertheless, appearing useful to many, had been studied with the other Scriptures; The Acts, Gospel, Preaching, and Apocalypse of Peter, which four works he rejects as altogether unauthenticated and discredited--he continues :--

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