THE BAMPTON LECTURES FOR 1865.

Eight Lectures on Miracles. Preached before the University of Oxford in the Year 1865, on the Foundation of the late Rev. John Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salisbury. By J. B. Mozley, B.D., Vicar of Old Shoreham, late Fellow of Magdalen College. London: Rivingtons. 1865.

THE subjects marked out by the Founder of the Oxford "Divinity Lecture Sermons" known by his name, are so many, and the range they include so comprehensive, that scarcely any Christian thesis which had specially engaged the thoughts of the appointed Lecturer, could be shut out from his choice. It was, on two accounts, very fitting that the field for the selection of subjects should have been left thus wide; first because, otherwise, the topics would, after many years, have become exhausted; and secondly, in order that an opportunity might be afforded for meeting fresh forms of error as they should spring up in the Church from time to time. "To confirm and establish the Christian faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics," (the words in the Will of the Founder,) opens as wide a door as could possibly be desired.

Mr. Mozley's Lectures deal with the subject of "Miracles," and are therefore to be regarded as falling in with the needs of the present time. To defend the "Supernatural" is the duty to which the Church is, at this moment, specially called, in opposition to Rationalism. A Treatise on the claims of Miracles to be believed, would properly and directly minister to that defence; since the arguments which have been recently revived against the credibility of supernatural intervention, in

itself, and independently considered, are levelled against the Christian miracles. If it should be decided that a disturbance of the normal course of Nature is an idea not to be entertained, the universal negative proposition, including particulars of every kind, shuts the door against the alleged miracles of the Lord Jesus, and gives no hearing to His argument, "If ye believe not Me, believe the works."

The subject of these Lectures being one on which so much has been written by minds of the greatest depth and acuteness, it will not be any disparagement of the author if we remark that his fundamental position, which occupies the First Lecture, is plainly not original. Not the less valuable, or necessary, as a basis, because borrowed, the statement that "miracles are necessary for a revelation," had been supplied to him (as, doubtless, he would readily acknowledge) from his early study of Paley, whose words are only expanded in the following paragraph, which briefly indicates the subject which forms the First Bampton Lecture:

"There is one great necessary purpose, then, which divines assign to miracles, viz., the proof of a revelation. And certainly, if it was the will of God to give a revelation, there are plain and obvious reasons for asserting that miracles are necessary as the guarantee and voucher for that revelation. A revelation is, properly speaking, such only by virtue of telling us something which we could not know without it. But, how do we know that that communication of what is undiscoverable by human reason is true? Our reason cannot prove the truth of it; for it is, by the very supposition, beyond our reason. There must be, then, some note or sign to certify to it, and distinguish it as a true communication from God, which note can be nothing else than a miracle."

A comparison is instituted, for the purpose of shewing the difference between the "wonderful in nature," and a "miracle." In the former it is possible to have a belief which is withheld from the latter; and many have actually given full credence to the one, and have not believed the other.

"A wonder of natural science is wonderful on its own account, and by reason of what is actually seen in it. . . . A miracle, on the other hand, excites our wonder, less as a visible fact, than as the sign of an invisible one: the wonderful really lies behind it; for, that which lies behind a miracle, the true reality of which the eccentric sign is but the veil and front, is the world supernatural. A miracle shews design and intention, i.e., is the act of a Personal Being. Some one there is who is moving behind it, with whom it brings us in relation, a spiritual agent of whose presence it speaks. A miracle is thus, if true, an indication of another world, and an unseen state of being, containing personality and will; of another world of moral being besides this visible one; and this is the overawing and impressing consideration in it."

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But this working of the mind in reference to that which offers itself as a miracle, is followed by two different, and nearly opposite, effects, according to the moral state of the person. The writer speaks of one of these effects. In some persons falls in with the "love of the supernatural," where that affection exists along with reverence. It draws them towards God, with whom they delight to find their spirits in communion, from whatever cause. But there is found the resistance of the supernatural, as well as the love of it; and, just for that very reason, because a miracle implies the existence of, and man's inevitable relations towards, "personal being in another world,' the reluctant heart tries to get far away from the idea: the will bribes the judgment; and after diligent search for arguments, the man persuades himself that he has, upon conclusive grounds, decided against the existence of the " natural."

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The writer seems to be rather in a maze, when he presently says, that while "it would, indeed, be a contradiction in terms to say that nature had anything in it supernatural," its "contents are, in some cases, "of types so much higher than others," that they are, by comparison, "supernatural." The same things cannot, in any point of view, be upon either side of the boundary-line.

Great stress is laid upon the connexion of the alleged miracles of the New Testament with the facts and the doctrines they were designed to support. These were of so extraordinary a kind, that, unsupported by evidence alike extraordinary, they could not stand. Yet those facts and doctrines constituted the very essence of Christianity. It was to establish those facts, more particularly as embracing His own Divine original, His incarnation, His living work, His death, resurrection, and ascension, with the consequences inherent in, and springing from, them, that Christ wrought the miracles. There was no wasteful expenditure of wonder-working. "Eye" had "not seen, nor ear heard, nor" had "it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God" had "prepared for" man in the mediatorial work of His Son. These momentous realities were to be set upon a firm basis, in order to command the believing acceptance of the race for whose sake they were brought to pass. To secure the belief, without which they could not be personally availing, wonders, which should transcend the conceivable ability of man to effect the like, were to be wrought.

"Miracles are the necessary complement of the truth of such" marvellous " announcements" as Jesus "made about Himself. They are necessary to the justification of such announcements, which indeed, unless they are supernatural truths, are the wildest delusions. The matter and its guarantee

are the two parts of a revelation, the absence of either of which neutralises and undoes it. We cannot, therefore, dispense with this evidence," even though, at this later day, we have the "indirect proof of the results of Christianity. The standing phenomenon, that a certain number are seen in every age directing their lives upon religious principles and motives," is striking and important, because it exhibits, as matters real and open to the eyes of all, the effects which it was the announced design of the religion of Christ to bring about in the world: but still it does not "supersede the need of miraculous evidence; for a supernatural fact is the proper proof of a supernatural doctrine; while a supernatural doctrine, on the other hand, is certainly not the proper proof of a supernatural fact."

The dignity of the Christian miracles is pleaded for, as on other grounds, so because they "bear upon them the stamp of power." If they had been believed only by uncivilised men in a rude age, the credulity which always marks men found in such a state, might account for their acceptance.

But "Christianity is the religion of the civilised world, and it is believed upon its miraculous evidence. The Christian being the most intelligent, the civilised portion of the world, these miracles are accepted by the Christian body as a whole, by the thinking and educated, as well as the uneducated part of it, and the Gospel is believed upon that evidence."

A most striking peculiarity in connexion with the claims of Christianity is, that this is the only religion which challenges the evidence of miracles. For, to pass by "other religions whose pretensions to it are mockery," Mahometanism puts forth no such claim. This contrast is noticed towards the end of the First Lecture.

"Mahometanism, indeed, established itself in the world without even any pretence on the part of its founder to miraculous powers." Now, as "the belief of the Mahometan is in its very principle irrational, because he accepts Mahomet's" claim to be "the conductor of a new dispensation upon" his "own assertion simply, joined to his success," it is certain that his system must ultimately perish; forasmuch as it offends against that law of reason which must "work itself out in the history of human religion," the necessity of producing evidence. "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true;" that is, if I do no more than assert my own claims, I disentitle myself to be accepted by men. If Christ must abide such a test, shall not Mahomet? Our Lord's word was enough; but He did not expect that it should be so acknowledged. That Mahomet should have demanded to be received of men as God's prophet, upon lower grounds than those which were put forth by Him "whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world," "shows

an utterly barbarous idea of evidence, and a total miscalculation of the claims of reason, which unfits his religion for the acceptance of an enlightened age and people."

In the Second Lecture, the " Order of Nature" is the subject: a very necessary point to be understood, inasmuch as the position confidently taken up by the impugners of miracles is that Nature's order can never, by any possibility, suffer disturbance. If this dogma be admitted, then, of course, the question of the credibility of the Christian miracles is finally and fatally settled. Very properly, therefore, is it asked at the outset, "What is meant by the Order of Nature?" The enemies of miracles would understand by the phrase, a system of causes and effects operating with a regularity so fixed that it cannot be interrupted. They define it to be an arrangement resting upon principles so necessary, that a variation from them is inherently impossible. They make "Nature" to be, if not a personal being, yet a law to which the Supreme Being has so bound Himself, that He is deprived of the power of departing from it; whereas the true view of it is as being such a course of the world as, for wise and good reasons, whereby the Infinite Mind has adapted means to ends, we may, from experience, conclude will still go on from day to day, and from year to year; but not a course which its Author has surrendered the right to suspend, if, in the exercise of "Wisdom as infinite," as His government is irresponsible, He should see fit to deviate from it.

"Spinoza, indeed, upon this ground of order, that nothing that takes place in the universe, can be out of the order of the universe, denies the possibility of a miracle. The defect of his view is, that he will not look upon a miracle as an instrument, a means to an end; but will only look upon it as a marvel, beginning and ending with itself." (Lect. I.)

In the middle of this Lecture is a sentence incautiously expressed :-"Indeed, that this belief in uniformity is not a part of reason, is shown by the circumstance that even the brute animals are possessed with it, apparently quite as much as man is." There are two blunders here. If man "believes" any thing, with what faculty other than reason can he be said to believe? Belief is essentially rational: then brute animals cannot be spoken of as believing, if the old definition of man as "animal rationale" is to stand; and if the latter term declares the "difference," or "distinguishing part of the essence," which Mr. Mozley will recognise as Aldrich's account of the matter.

"Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus "

ubi plura nitent."