Читать книгу Pastor Pastorum; Or, The Schooling of the Apostles by Our Lord - Henry Latham - Страница 12
(7) Miracles as a means of proof.
ОглавлениеThe signs, worked by our Lord, whatever other functions they fulfilled, had one office which in the eyes of some apologists is so important as to drive all other functions into the back-ground. They are regarded as the main ground of conviction. The Apostles, it is true, make little appeal to the Signs worked by Christ: this may have been because they worked similar Signs themselves, and knew that their enemies ascribed them to magic. Their favourite arguments were the fulfilment of prophecy and the resurrection of the Lord. The earlier hearers were Jews, and the question with them was, “Did Jesus of Nazareth answer to the prophetic notices of the expected deliverer of their race?” The Jews we hear “were mightily convinced” [pg 100] by Apollos, not because he declared Christ's works but because he “shewed by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.”43
But in time the early preachers addressed themselves to the Gentiles. The Jewish notion of the Messiah was strange to hearers, who had never heard of the prophets; while the idea that God should love the world and reveal Himself to it commended itself to them, and they would expect that such a revelation would be accompanied by manifestations beyond human experience. The consequence was that, after a century or two, less was made of prophecy and more was made of miracles: and if the question “What makes you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God?” had then been put to all Christendom, the answer of an overwhelming majority would have been, “Because of the wondrous works which He performed.”
We shall see, however, that our Lord does not Himself put Signs in the very forefront of His claims to the allegiance of men. He only appeals to them as subsidiary proofs; on which He would rest His cause when, owing to the situation or the disposition of the hearer, no higher kind of proof was available.44
It will be asked, “If miracles were only a subsidiary ground on which our Lord claimed belief; What was the primary one?” We shall see that our [pg 101] Lord's first appeal was Personal; He claimed men's allegiance from what they had seen of Him and from what they knew.
There is a passage in St. John's Gospel which brings this very clearly before us. The naturalness of it and its fidelity to character and situation are such, that I am as sure that these words passed between Philip and our Lord, as if they were found in all four of the Gospels, though they only occur in the last. They occur in the final discourse of our Lord when He and the Apostles are on the way to the garden of Gethsemane. Our Lord has said,
“And whither I go, ye know the way. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; how know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also: from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.”45
[pg 102]
In Philip's words we perceive an assurance of the reasonableness of what he asks, which is most true to the life. He never doubts but that God could be brought before his eyes;—he supposed that the clouds might be rolled away, so as to reveal a form of awful majesty clothed with resplendent light, and with one glimpse of this he would be content. He thinks that he makes a most moderate request.
Our Lord shews a sort of surprise, that after having been so long with them, going in and out among them, they should have missed seeing that God was in Him. It was perhaps this constant companionship that stood in Philip's way; that what was Divine should have mingled with his daily life was beyond his conception. God, he supposed, could only shew Himself in some strange and appalling manner. That God's presence is reflected, in the least broken way, in that course of things which is most normal and most ordinary, was an idea that did not belong to Philip's race or time; but Christ drops a germ from which it should arise.
It is the concluding verse of the passage with which I am most concerned—
“Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.”46
The first appeal is to that belief, which ought [pg 103] to have grown up from personal knowledge; that failing, He points to the works. This belief was of the same order as that which we have in the rectitude of an honoured friend. In knowing a man, we get to a deeper kind of knowledge than we do in knowing an object: all we can tell about an object is what its properties are, we know nothing about what it is; but we do get nearer to knowing what a friend is, our souls interpenetrate, as it were, a little. So that if Philip had known our Lord as Peter did, he would, like him, have recognised the “Son of the living God.” Supposing, however, that he was not sufficiently “finely touched” for such a knowledge, that he judged mainly from his senses, and needed proofs of which they could take cognisance; then—as an alternative course though a very inferior one—He might believe for the mere Signs' sake. Signs were provided to suit the cases of those who could not believe without them.
But while many take it for granted that Christ rested His claims on miracles and worked His Signs to provide Himself with credentials; others have gone to the other extreme, and have urged that Christ disparaged the belief that was engendered by the sight of wonders. No doubt the principle—“Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed” runs through all our Lord's teaching, but it was better they should believe from the sight of such Signs as our Lord worked—Signs [pg 104] which were not coercive—than not believe at all. Signs, certainly, have led men to believe, when, either from inward or outward causes, they would not have believed without. This effect I regard as a good one, and all good that has ensued from what our Lord did, I believe that He intended to do.
The chief texts adduced in disparagement of miracles are:
“Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in no wise believe,”47
and
“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.”48
If signs and wonders were the appointed means of bringing men to believe, “Why,” ask the objectors, “are those blamed who cannot believe without seeing them?” “Our Lord,” they say, “here shews that He sets little value on the belief that comes of seeing signs.” This is, no doubt, quite true of the sort of belief that comes of the mere assent of a terrified man: but our Lord did not terrify men, and the belief that sprung from seeing His signs involved a will and a disposition to recognize God's hand.
I do not feel sure, however, that the first text really bears on the matter. I think it quite possible [pg 105] that the stress should be laid on the word see. The nobleman “besought him that he would come down, and heal his son; for he was at the point of death.”49 He thought that our Lord must go down to Capernaum with him and work the cure there; he cannot believe that it will be done unless it is wrought before his eyes. When he began to speak he had not the faith of the Roman centurion; he could not suppose that the power of healing could be exercised from afar; but he soon caught this confidence from looking on our Lord. If the text have this sense it does not touch the question before us.
The second text refers to a sign from Heaven. It is spoken of those who wanted an overwhelming miracle to be wrought, which should settle the question and compel assent in the unwilling. The generation is not called “evil and adulterous” for seeking after such Signs as our Lord wrought, for crowding to see the cures for instance, but, for challenging Him to produce a Sign of a very different character, a magical one, which, for reasons explained in the last chapter, He would not do.
Our Lord Himself on several occasions points [pg 106] to another result of His working of Signs. It rendered the rejection of Him a sin; this was because the will was called into operation to explain these Signs away. The leaders among those adverse to Him invented loopholes, such as referring the works to Beelzebub, and those who wanted to escape being convinced availed themselves of them. In this way, the acceptance or non-acceptance of Signs formed a touchstone for discriminating those who virtually said “We will not have this man to reign over us”—a section of people to whom I alluded in the earlier part of the chapter. Men were pardoned the unbelief of blindness and dulness, but not the wilful hatred which went out of its way to find grounds for rejection, and which would refer works of pure beneficence to the chief of the devils; this shewed innate aversion. The following are passages in point:
“Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”50
“He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.”51
Again, it is easier to convey to another by [pg 107] description an external fact than a personal impression: and thus the evidence from Signs is easier to transmit from man to man than that which arises from realising a Personality. Those who followed our Lord were subjugated by His influence; some of us too may extract from His memoirs a conception of His Personality: but it is only those possessing the gift of seeing the reality in the outline, who can lay hold of this source of belief; while in a miracle, all can perceive credentials given by God.
Our Lord's course of proceeding in a very important instance, the occasion on which John the Baptist sends his disciples to Him, is a most instructive instance of His use of Signs. These Signs furnished the kind of evidence most available in that particular case.
When the Baptist is in prison he sends two of his disciples to our Lord with the question, “Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?”52 Many months had passed since the baptism of our Lord, and it seemed that nothing had been done. He was himself in prison, removed from the presence, and personal influence of our Lord. His recollections of Him were perhaps fading, and his faith growing low. He was then in the position for which the argument from signs is especially suitable—nothing would help him like facts. He was in the situation in which tens [pg 108] of thousands of Christians are still—believing, and yet having misgivings now and then whether what they call their Faith may not be fancy—longing for something positive to cling to, some support outside themselves. Such support our Lord affords the Baptist; He puts him as nearly as possible in the position of a witness of the miracles.
We read:
“In that hour he cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits; and on many that were blind he bestowed sight. And he answered and said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me.”53
We have no other instance in which miracles are wrought in order to assist one who is in doubt. Our Lord does not give a direct answer to the words “Art thou He that cometh?” If He had said “I am He”—and yet had not restored the kingdom to Israel as the Baptist expected, He would only have led him into further bewilderment. So his disciples take back for sole reply, an account of “what they hear and see.” The works are such as our Lord continually performed; but John's disciples are given a special opportunity [pg 109] of witnessing them for their Master's sake. The Baptist is however certified of this; a great work of God was being carried on in the world, through Him on whom he had seen the Spirit descend when He rose from Jordan.54
Of the two grounds, then, on which our Lord claimed men's allegiance—His personal influence and the signs He worked—our Lord rests preferably on the first, but the second has its place and it is an important one.
Our Lord is the great physician who deals with all according as the case and the constitution require. In different ages men's minds require different kinds of proof. I believe that such different kinds are provided—that there is lying ready for each generation and each type of mind the degree of evidence which is good for it and of the kind which it is fitted to assimilate. Miracles are not the sort of evidence most wanted now; but it was the sort which for many centuries was looked on as the most incontrovertible. It spoke to those who could understand nothing else. It was for many ages what men especially wanted, and there it was to their hand. A future generation may find their main ground of belief in Christ in a realization of His Personality; and they may in this way arrive at that kind of knowledge of Him which our Lord had hoped that Philip might [pg 110] have gained. This we can scarcely obtain without a careful study of our Lord's ways of influencing men.
I have not yet spoken of our Lord's miraculous knowledge of events or of His insight into men's hearts. There have been a few persons in the course of the world's history who have, in a wondrous way, discerned the ends towards which events were working; and others who have divined the thoughts of other men. These gifts in the fullest degree our Lord possessed; and when He needed stronger illumination for the purpose of His work these faculties were exalted beyond human range. The superhuman supervened, proceeding along the lines of human action; and this, like the powers whereby His other works were wrought, came from the Father in answer to prayer. By displaying this divining power He converts Nathanael, and He forcibly impresses the woman of Samaria. But effective as the display of this superhuman penetration was for bringing about conviction, it was much more than an evidence of Divine power. The knowledge of this insight of their Master into their hearts played a large part in the Apostles' Schooling. They were habituated by means of it to feel that their hearts were known, and this habit became so much a part of themselves that when Christ had left the world they could realize to themselves that they were under His eye still. This condition of mind was [pg 111] required for their special work, and Christ's training was directed to develop it within them as I hope to show.
In the next Chapter I pass to the discussion of the Laws which our Lord appears to follow in His working of Signs.
[pg 112]