THE BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S ON HISTORY AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
rilHE Bishop of St. David's has delivered and published a charge to his clergy which, though interspersed with other topics, forms an almost connected chain of thought on the relation between the Historical and the Supernatural in the Jewish and Christian revelation. It is a very able, scholarly charge, and, on all but one topic, we should say, even where we do not agree with it, it is in tone almost a model of what we should look for from a Chris- tian Bishop. The exception (to which we shall not at present further allude) is the few pages devoted to the question of clerical subscriptions, in which, we confess, the Bishop's mind seems to us warped from the straightforward view natural to so fine an intel- lect to the technical and somewhat unscrupulous mode of look- ing at these matters which is the certain result of imposing such complicated opinionative tests on the national clergy. Of the nine hundred theological refinements, or thereabouts, to which unconditional assent is demanded in every signature of the Articles alone, there are, we are sure, at least eight hundred which, if now presented to Dr. Thirlwall for the first time, would seem to him very questionable propositions indeed. And this being so, we cannot understand his wish to wait until it is. proved, first that this subscription doff; prevent heartfelt disciples of our Lord and sincere lay members of the English Church from taking orders—for if it does not it ought to do so,— and secondly, till it is proved that subscription fails to pro- duce a larger amount of unanimity than would be got without it,—which, if it be the case, only shows that men will try to believe afterwards all that they have once anticipated for themselves in their subscription. For the rest, there is not only high intellectual power, but also a manly spirit of faith and courage under that studious sobriety of tone which we naturally expect from the great historian. Of course, we do not look for " effusion " from any bishop, least of all the Bishop of St. David's. Still there is a clear, individual intellect and faith working beneath this mitre, which is a rare enough phenomenon in our Church, where mitres almost always seem to supersede personal convictions and substitute a "scheme," or what theologians call an "economy," in it place.
The most interesting part of the charge is occupied with a dis- cussion of the relation between history and the supernatural. With reference to the Bishop of Natal's book, Dr. Thirlwall discusses the relation between history and revelation ; and with relation to Mr. Baden Powell's essay in "Essays and Reviews," and Mr. Llewellyn Davies's essay in "Tracts for Priests and People," he discusses the relation between history and miracle. Between the two discussions we get a tolerably clear conception of the relation, as the bishop understands it, between history and the supernatural.
The genuine historian, we conceive, has always some tendency to look on history as the scientific man looks on science—as a sort of dead unbroken barrier shutting out man from God. Dealing with human actions and the actions of human societies as natural phenomena in an infinite chain of cause and effect,—never seeing them in the moment of their fresh creation out of free wills and stirred hearts, but only in the mass, as reactions from the errors, or as consequences of the efforts, of former generations, the historian can hardly help looking at the outward life of men and nations as a sort of second mechanical barrier against the super- natural world, even if he could somehow surmount that presented by the cruelly punctual wheel-work of physical law. And the fact that history deals with a higher and nobler order of life than physical science makes this seeming monotony of causation all the more oppressive, so that while the scientific man often genuinely adores his idol, one usually sees—as in the cynicism of Gibbon, or the revolutionary emphasis of Grote, or the wild divinations of Niebuhr—that there is something that either sours or frets the mind of a first-rate historian in the character of the facts with which he has to deal. We fancy that we see the same deep dissatisfaction in Dr. Thirlwall, though with him it takes the form of lodging an appeal from history to theology. He evi- dently holds that history is a chain of natural causes above which, in a quite different plane, the lightning cloud of the super- natural broods, occasionally flashing down into it, and melting at• one or two selected points its monotonous chainwork of pheno- mena. Little as he likes.the tone or sympathizes with the critical arrogance of the Bishop of Natal, Dr. Thirlwall has no wish to defend the mere secular history of the Jews as in any sense a part of the divine revelation. He looks upon it much as he looks upon all history—as a chain of natural, or, as he says, "secondary," causes. And so conceiving, he expresses freely and boldly his protest against incorporating any mere history with the substance of a divine revela- tion. "A great part of the events," he says, "related in the Old Testament has no more apparent connection with our religion than those of Greek or Roman history. , . . The numbers, migra- tions, wars, battles, conquests, and reverse; of Israel have nothing in common with the teaching of Christ, with the way of salvation,
with the fruits of the Spirit. They belong to a totally different order of subjects. They are not to be confounded with the spiritual revelation contained in the Old Testament, much less with that fulness of grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ. Whatever knowledge we may obtain of them, is, in a religious point of view, a matter of absolute indifference to us, and if they were placed on a level with the living truth of the Gospel, they would gain nothing in intrinsic dignity, but would only degrade that with which they are thus associated." And, in another page, he agrees expressly that the early history of the Jews is in- volved in just the same kind of difficulty as that of the Greeks and Romans. "But that which we have is not only sufficient, but more than sufficient, for the main end—theexhibition of the divinely appointed preparation for the coming of Christ." We think the Bishop overlooks the importance of that continuous view of reve- lation which Mr. Maurice has brought out with so much power, and which makes it part and parcel of God's purpose to exhibit the divine Will separating and governing first the family, next the tribe,
finally, the nation to live in His life and look directly to Him for guidance. But if this be so, it is obvious we must have some illustrative passages at least, preserved from each of these periods of the growth of Israel, since in this view of the matter the revelation and the history coalesce in one. What would Isaiah's prophecies be worth without some sketch of the home and foreign policy of Hezekiah, on which they were comments? Without this they would be spiritual principles launched in a vacuum, without meaning or application. The history seems to us the warp to which the unfold- ing revelation is the woof. You cannot tear them entirely asunder without destroying the true function of each. Hence, while we heartily agree with Dr. Thirlwall's principle that the minor his- torical details,—and such matters for instance as the scale of the Jewish migration from Egypt,—are wholly immaterial to faith, which we ought to judge exactly as we would judge the early records of Greece or Rome,—yet we do hold that successive illus- trations of the course and mode of God's government through the different stages of Hebrew society, from its germ to its dissolution, are of the very substance of the revelation itself.
There is a difference of the same kind between the Bishop's view of the relation of miracle to nature and that to which, as we think, the widest view of supernatural agency points. As he re- garded revelation as a sort of abrupt descent of God into history, breaking through the natural chain of causes and effects rather than flowing into and working through them, so Dr. Thirlwall seems to regard miracle as "the introduction of a new element into the series of historical events, not linked by a natural dependence with those which preceded it,"—that is, he thinks miracle a cleavage of the providential series of causes and effects, not the highest growth and most perfect fruit, as it were, of such a series. He would say that God the Revealer purposely severs the links of His own natural Providence, in order to forge, before the face of men, a supernatural link that may draw their attention to His creative freedom. We do not think this the highest view of a revealing supernatural power. We think the Bishop himself suggests a higher view. He says, very subtly and most truly, after maintaining " the possibty " (why does he not say, "the reality" P) 4‘ of a direct communication between the Father of Spirits and the soul of man,"—" since the recipient of such a communication is not a disembodied spirit, but one dwelling in a human frame, and so united with it that any successive idea and emotion involves a corresponding change in the bodily organization, it is clear that a divine inward revelation is as much a miracle, and, therefore, according to the Essayist's view, as truly impossible, as any related in the Bible." The more this subtle sentence is considered the more will it help to show the deficiency in that view of miracle which regards it as necessarily a break in the sequence of natural causes and effects. It is unquestionable that if a change in the physical nerves, not due to antecedently existing natural causes, be miracle, any new spiritual influence poured direct upon the mind will affect the physical series of causes and effects. But, under the same defini- tion, any act of genuine free-will, even of the human will acting alone, is miracle, since it does not spring out of antecedently existing causes. Yet no one would call it a breach of the physical laws, simply because it does not in any way suspend, but only engrafts a new element on the causes previously in existence, and the new cause works on in vital co-operation with the old. It is not the graft of a new spiritual cause, but the apparent violation or defeat of the old which so offends the naturalists, and makes them scoff at miracle. To our minds all that is essential to miracle is the clear communication by it of a divine purpose, and, instead of requiring an infraction of the old physical laws to make this purpose visible, we think it would be more visible if we regard nature as shading off, almost imperceptibly, into the supernatural. Dr. Thirlwall seems to think that if ever any generalization could be found for the Christian miracles which withdrew from them their exceptional character, then that in becoming natural they would cease to be witnesses to the supernatural. But suppose they become natural exactly because they are the natural phenomena in which closer intercourse with the spiritual world always tends to manifest it- self. Suppose, for a moment,—what though it may be visionary is far from impossible—that the clouds of miracle which seem to appear
and re-appear in intervals of religious enthusiasm along the course of the centuries from the birth of Christianity to the miracles of
Port Royal, which last are, perhaps, individually better attested than any in history—were to be reduced to some law of connection between the invisible world and the visible—so that the mighty
miracles of our Lord raising the dead and stilling the tempest became only the burning focus of a host of periodic phenomena—would this in any way invalidate the worth of miracle ? On the con- trary, would it not, by removing that character of frag-
mentary and interrupting volition which so offends the mind of science, set at rest one great difficulty and introduce no now one? Grant as a mere hypothesis that the growth of a certain spiritual temperament in society should be found to foster a peculiar class of powers hitherto supposed supernatural, would not that give the highest possible testimony to the Christian miracles, as demonstrating that those mighty deeds were done by the fulness of the power which then took flesh and dwelt amongst us? Would not the existence (if admitted) of far fainter phenomena of the same kind on unquestionable evidence in generations close to our own sap the obstinate a priori incredulity with which the physical- science men look on? We hold most earnestly with the Bishop of St. David's, in this remarkable charge, that faith in the real and immanent influence of God and Christ through all the ages is of the very essence of our Christian creed; but we think the distinction which he draws between the two planes of history and revelation, of Providence and miracle, is mistaken and may be dangerous. "When the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken," we shall, perhaps, dream no more of the broad chasm between secular history and revelation, or of miracles as thunderclaps which demonstrate God because they supersede Providence and confound science.
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