Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/603

Rh under the rigorous test of a searching examination, I ask whether we are not equally justified in the assumption that a similar scrutiny, if we had the power to apply it, would in like manner dispose of many of the narratives of old time, either as distortions of real occurrences or as altogether legendary.

In regard to the New Testament miracles generally, while failing to see in what respect the external testimony in their behalf is stronger than it is for the reality of the miracles attributed to St. Columba, I limit myself for the present to the following questions:

1. Whether the "miracles of healing" may not have had a foundation of reality in "natural" agencies perfectly well known to such as have scientifically studied the action of the mind upon the body. In regard to one form of these supposed miracles—the casting out of devils—I suppose that I need not in these days adduce any argument to disprove the old notion of "demoniacal possession," in the face of the fact that the belief in such "possession" in the case of lunatics, epileptics, etc., and the belief in the powers of "exorcists" to get rid of it, are still as prevalent among Eastern nations as they were in the time of Christ. And I suppose, too, that, since travelers have found that the pool of Bethesda is fed by an intermittent spring, few now seriously believe in the occasional appearance of an "angel" who moved its water; or in the cure of the first among the expectant sick who got himself placed in it, by any other agency than his "faith" in the efficacy of the means. I simply claim the right to a more extended application of the same critical method.

2. Whether we have not a similar right to bring to bear on the study of the Gospel narratives the same principles of criticism as guided the early fathers in their construction of the canon, with all the enlightenment which we derive from the subsequent history of Christianity, aided by that of other forms of religious belief. The early Christian fathers were troubled with no doubts as to the reality of miracles in themselves; and they testified to the healing of the sick, the casting out of devils, and even the raising of the dead, as well-known facts of their own time. But they rejected some current narratives of the miraculous which they did not regard as adequately authenticated, and others as considering them puerile. Looking at it not only as our right, but as our duty, to bring the higher critical enlightenment of the present day to bear upon the study of the Gospel records, I ask whether both past and contemporary history do not afford such a body of evidence of a prevalent tendency to exaggeration and distortion, in the representation of actual occurrences in which "supernatural" agencies are supposed to have been concerned, as entitles us, without attempting any detailed analysis, to believe that, if we could know what really did happen, it would often prove to be something very different from what is narrated.

By such a general admission, we may remove the serious