THROUGH NATURE TO CHRIST.*
TIM purport of this book, partly expressed in the title, is fully stated in the introduction. Dr. Abbott thinks that the young people of our day who reject the faith of Christ because this faith demands a belief in the supernatural, and therefore in- credible, may be won over to the truth by presenting the worship of Christ so that they shall be called upon to accept nothing that is unnatural or incredible. He observes that our Saviour worked by the laws that govern humanity, and "wrought signs, forgave, converted, manifested himself to his disciples after death, and bequeathed his Spirit to us, in accordance with the same laws by which common men perform corresponding acts." He undertakes to show that it has been God's plan to govern the world and to instruct his people by illusions, that in much of the Bible teaching truth is imparted by the aid of meta- phor, that what is necessary for the faith of one age is not re- quired in another, and that since Christ's true disciples have always believed in him on spiritual and not on material grounds, it is "quite possible to reject the miraculous as essentially non- historic, and yet to retain the worship of Christ." On this point Dr. Abbott writes, at the outset of his argument, with the utmost plainness :— " While I have no doubt," he says, "or misgiving at all as to the divine nature of Christ, I have grave doubts as to the historical ac- curacy or as to the correctness of the literal interpretation of the miraculous element in the narrative of the New Testament. Not that I deny the possibility of a miracle, or that I should decline to believe in a miracle upon sufficient evidence ; but the evidence usually accepted as sufficient appears to me quite insufficient (especially in the face of another probable explanation of the origin of the miraculous element in the New Testament), nor do I see any present probability of supple- menting it by fresh evidence. On the other hand,I recognise the clear distinction between the miracles of the New Testament, and the lies of the Apocryphal Gospels, and I at once admit that without a belief in the literal accuracy of these miraculous narratives, the faith in Christ might never have been preserved for us through the fall of the Empire and the middle-ages. Some of the miracles, therefore, I should recog- nise as being historically accurate, but supernatural only in degree, and not in kind ; the rest I should consider as subsequent accretions round the historical narrative, often containing same spiritual truth, and not implying in the narrators any intention to deceive, but not historically accurate. About some details of the Incarnation and the Resurrection I suspend my judgment, not knowing whether they are literally as well as spiritually true, and inclining to the belief that they are not literally, but only spiritually true."
The passage we have quoted is from the introduction to the volume, but it is scarcely necessary to say that what Dr. Abbott terms the "miraculous element " in the New Testament is referred to again and again. Ile does not doubt that Jesus had a power far beyond ordinary experience in curing diseases, but he hesitates to term that power "miraculous," and acts which, like the feeding of the multitude, walking upon the sea, and calling the dead to life, must, we should imagine, be either miracles or inventions, he regards as accretions that have grown round soine great spiritual truths. To attempt to explain the means by which a miracle is wrought is to subvert our notion of the miraculous, which is something inexplicable by the ordinary laws of nature. Dr. Abbott falls into an error of this character when he dwells on the difficulty of understanding how Jesus could have fed the four thousand and the five thousand on a few loaves and fishes. "If the literal theory is to be accepted," he writes, "it is in the highest degree difficult to conceive at what stage in the narrative the fishes and loaves were multiplied,—whether in the hands of our Lord, or in the hands of the Disciples, or in the hands of the multitude. Again, it is hard to see whether the number of fishes
* Through Nature to Christ; or, tlitt Ascent of 1Vorship through Illusion Co the Truth.
By Edwin A. Abbott, D.D. London : Macmillan and co. 1877.
remained the same, the bones and flesh of each being enormously magnified, or whether the fishes remained of the normal size, but fresh individual fishes, dead and prepared for eating, wera suddenly brought into existence."
Perhaps the most significant portion of the volume is to be found in the appendix, in which the endeavour to find a possible origin of the miraculous element in the New Testa- ment is made at some length. " I am writing," says Dr. Abbott, " for those who reject the whole of the Gospel narrative because they conceive that they are logically bound to reject the whole if they reject the miraculous element, and my object is to show them that it is possible to reject the miracles and still to retain one's faith in the honesty of the whole narrative of the New Testament, and in the historical accuracy (liable, of course, like the accuracy of other histories, to the deductions of criticism) of that part of it which is not miraculous." The italics in this quotation are the author's, who thus emphasises his belief in the possibility of freeing the New Testament from all traces of the Supernatural, and still main- taining the honesty of the whole story, as well as its historical ac- curacy. We venture to say that a more difficult task has not been attempted by any theological writer of our age, and that even Mr. Matthew Arnold's imaginative endeavour to substitute for a Per- sonal Deity an impersonal tendency, is scarcely a severer tax upon the Bible reader's credulity. The ordinary reader of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles is aware that the miraculous ele- ment is so welded, as it were, with the history of Christ and his disciples, not only with the facts recorded, but with the inferences deduced from th'em, that the record of the miracle seems, in a sense, as natural as the history. The one explains the other, snakes clear what would otherwise be unintelligible, and gives rise to many of our Saviour's most significant sayings. Eliminate from the Gospel story every trace of the supernatural, and what is left will have lost its cohesion, and very much of its meaning. Re- move it from the Acts of the Apostles, and the visible power exer- cised by the disciples, which in a short time turned the world upside down, becomes difficult to explain. And as we read on through the Pauline Epistles, our perplexity is likely to increase rather than to diminish, for St. Paul alludes in some of his Epistles to certain miracles in the incidental way in which a Member of Parliament might refer to facts known to every person in the House ; St. Peter does the same ; and in both cases these allusions are not thrust into the text, while apparently out of connection with it, but are closely woven with the arguments of the Apostles. There are, it is true, several epistles which make no reference to. miraculous gifts, but even in these the stupendous miracle of the Resurrection, upon which the faith of Christians is based, is accepted as a fact which does not call for evidence or argument. All this, be it observed, lies upon the surface, and is evident to, every intelligent reader of the New Testament. That miracles, are a trouble to acepties may readily be allowed, and those who, believe that the God of Nature cannot alter the course of nature, and who will not accept the suggestion that what seems to us an infringement of law may be in reality the fulfilment of a law at present beyond our apprehension, will of course reject miracles altogether. What cannot be, has not been, is their affirmation. With this, however, we are not concerned just now, for Dr. Abbott does not deny the possibility of a miracle ; his statement is that the evi- dence we possess is insufficient, and he proposes to remove the accretions of the historical narrative, so as to make it possible for the English people to accept "a natural or positive Christianity." We agree in large measure with Dr. Abbott, when he observes that the belief of Christians in our day is not dependent on miracles. They may still say, with the Apostle, that if Christ did not rise from the dead, their faith is vain ; but their belief in Christ as the Son of God is not based upon the wonders which he wrought while on earth, so much as upon the spiritual force by which he draws men to him, and on his matchless character, so human in its sympathy, so divine in its purity.
Dr. Abbott argues that Christ taught his disciples by the aid of metaphor, and that his metaphors were continually misunderstood
and interpreted literally. Misconception, indeed, was "the habitual state of mind of the disciples," and if we do not remem- ber this, much of the life of Jesus is scarcely intelligible. But if in the mere fragment of biography handed to us "there are ss. many cases of misunderstanding by the Apostles themselves, definitely noted by our narrators, is it very difficult—. is it not rather very natural ?—to suppose that in the generation succeeding the Apostles other cases of similar misunderstanding may have sprung up, based upon metaphorical expressions of Christ adopted by the Apostles in their preaching to the early Church ? " And the writer goes on to give meta-
phorical explanations of some of the most striking miracles. This theory, which is discussed at some length and with considerable skill, strikes us as eminently unsatisfactory. If it explains some difficulties in the Gospel narrative, it creates other and greater difficulties, and transforms a variety of facts related with every token of historical veracity into a series of illusions and meta- phorical enigmas. Moreover, this theory fails to explain the ex- traordinary influence exercised by Christ while on earth, and the influence, still more wonderful, exercised by him after his cruci- fixion. That this was ultimately and mainly spiritual may be readily acknowledged, but that in the first place he attracted the attention of the Jews by his mighty works seems to us evident, and the frequent incidental allusions to these works in the New Testament strengthens the conviction that the acts of Jesus are as accurately reported as his words. Unless we accept the absurd theory of verbal inspiration, it is of course reasonable to suppose that there may be discrepancies in both.
Let us see, before closing a very inadequate notice of a re- markable book, how Dr. Abbott views the central miracle of Christianity,—the resurrection of our Lord. In a chapter on this subject, entitled, "The True Revelation of Death," he promises not to ask sceptics to believe in anything the least unnatural, and narrates, in the first place, the facts that must be admitted by all "who can bring to the study of the Greek Testament some little scholarship, but also some little knowledge of human nature." Then follows a concise summary of the Gospel story from the side that may appear reasonable to the Positivist. When he reaches the death of Christ, and the events that followed it, the writer, after observing that besides the spiritual resurrection, he believes there were also visible manifestations of Jesus, adds, "but it seems to me quite possible to believe in the objective reality of the spiri- tual resurrection, while rejecting the truth of every narra- tive of a substantial or visionary resurrection ;" and he main- tains that what is spiritual is not only real, but the only thing that is worth calling real. No doubt, spiritual truths are greater than the material facts with which they are associated, but it may be none the less certain that the latter are indispensable to the growth and development of the former. Christ was man as well God ; as man he suffered, and as man he rose from the dead, to teach, as we believe, a lesson that his disciples could never have learnt by any merely spiritual manifestation. "What," exclaims Dr. Abbott, "could the mere resurrection of Christ's bodily frame 'have done for the disciples, without the influx of his Spirit into their hearts ?" True, but how would his death upon the cross have availed apart from its spiritual signification ? and yet we do not question the reality of the crucifixion. Dr. Abbott, however, acknowledges the necessity for some outward and visible sign of the Resurrection, on the ground that "without some such mani- festation, the spiritual resurrection and subsequent conversion of the world is almost too great a miracle." And in this we agree with him, yet he argues as if Jesus in appearing to his disciples did not violate natural laws, and as if it were "equally natural" at last, when the disciples were roused to enthusiasm by their Master's Spirit, that they should see the form of Jesus ascending to heaven, not, indeed, in what our Prayer-book terms "his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertainieg to the perfection of Man's nature," but as an unsubstantial apparition. Elsewhere Dr. Abbott writes, " Christ does not vanish with the niiracles,—that is my contention. If every miracle in the Gospels (except the acts -of healing) be shown to have arisen from misconception, we still have Christ in the Gospels, in the Epistles, in the past history of the Church, and in facts around us, revealed as the Word of God taking flesh, living and suffering and dying for men, and finally rising again, and by his resurrection uplifting all/Iran- kind through his Spirit towards the rather in heaven." And he reiterates, with all the emphasis in his power, "that the real resurrection of Christ is spiritual, and not sensible." But why not both spiritual and sensible, which has been the belief of Christians in all ages, which is asserted again and again in our „sacred books, and which is assuredly not so difficult to credit as the metaphorical theory upon which the writer lays such stress? Dr. Abbott thinks that he removes difficulties out of the path of young men by his attempt to make Christianity appear more reasonable. We question whether his work, honest and earnest though it be, will prove of service in this way. That a divine religion should have a supernatural side, that Christ, if the Son of God, should have asserted his mission by signs and wonders, and especially by proving his mastery over death, seems to us eminently reasonable, and we do not think that the dif- ficulties of belief are lessened by bringing the miracles into harmony with natural laws. Young men are not so much tried by scientific difficulties as by moral difficulties, not so much by what is above reason as by what seems opposed to it. The assertions of the high Calvinist have probably done wider mischief than the arguments of the infidel, and it is by removing the heavy weights which some theologians have attached to our faith that we may hope to widen and strengthen the Christianity of the future. Dr. Abbott, it is but just to add, has not lost sight of this great object, and there is much in this volume which has our heartiest sympathy. If we have touched mainly upon points of disagreement, it is because we were attracted by them the most strongly.
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