1. Mind Discernible in Nature
George Park Fisher, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (1902), chapter 2, “The Arguments for the Being of God: Their Function in General and as Severally Considered”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.
What are the laws of Nature? They are a description of the observed and customary interaction of things. To hypostatize "Law," either in the singular or the plural, if more than a figure of speech is meant, is to set up a crude species of Nature-worship. Laws are the rules conformably to which the unitary power operative in Nature, or, if one pleases so to think, the multiple forces in Nature, act. We cannot think of them otherwise than as prescribed, as ordained to the end that they may work out their effects. In other words, the order of Nature is an arrangement of intelligence. This explains the joy that springs up in the mind on the discovery of some great law which gives simplicity to seemingly complex natural phenomena. Thought gains access to reality through their mutual affinity. The mind recognizes something akin to itself. It discovers a thought of God.
The norms according to which the knowing faculty discriminates, connects, and classifies the objects in Nature, imply that Nature herself has been prearranged according to the same norms, or is the product of mind. In conformity to the categories — time, space, quantity, quality, etc. — according to which the mind distinguishes natural objects, and thus comprehends Nature, Nature has been framed. That is to say, there is mind expressed in Nature. Science is the statement of the expressions of thought and purpose which are incorporated in Nature. A dog sees on a printed page only meaningless marks on a white ground. To us they contain and convey ideas, and bring us into communion with the mind of the author. So it is with Nature. Take a book of astronomy. If the stellar world were not an intellectual system, such a work would be impossible. The sky itself is the book which the astronomer reads, and the written treatise is merely a transcript of the thoughts which he finds there.
This truth is presented with much force and eloquence by one of the most eminent mathematicians of the age, the late Benjamin Pierce. He speaks of Nature as "imbued with intelligible thought," of "the amazing intellectuality inwrought into the unconscious material world," in which there is "no dark corner of hopeless obscurity," of the "dominion of intellectual order everywhere found," "of the vast intellectual conceptions in Nature." To ignore God as the author of Nature as well as of mind is as absurd as to make "the anthem the offspring of unconscious sound." "If the common origin of mind and matter is conceded to reside in the decree of a Creator, the identity ceases to be a mystery."
Science is the reflex of mind in Nature. Nature is made up of interacting objects which constitute together one complete system. Order reigns in Nature, and universal harmony. Hence all these separate objects must be so fashioned and managed that they shall conspire to sustain and promote, and not to convulse and subvert, the complex whole. It follows that the existence and preservation of the system are an end for the realizing of which the plurality of forces — if supposed to be plural — and their special activities are the means. That is, Nature in its totality exhibits design.
The belief in design has been at the root of scientific discovery. It has suggested the hypotheses which investigation has verified. Such was the source of Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation. Harvey was led to find out the true system of the circulation of the blood by observing that in the channels through which the blood flows, one set of valves opens toward the heart, while another set opens in the opposite direction. He had faith in the prudence of nature. Robert Boyle tells us: — "I remember that when I asked our famous Harvey what were the things that induced him to think of the circulation of the blood, he answered me, that when he took notice of the valves in many parts of the body, so placed that they gave free passage to the blood toward the heart, but opposed to the passage of the venous blood the contrary way, he was invited to think that so prudent a cause as nature had not placed so many valves without a design, and no design seemed more probable than that, since the blood could not well, because of the intervening valves, be sent by the veins to the limits, it should be sent through the arteries, and returned through the veins, whose valves did not oppose its course that way." Kepler was moved to his discoveries by "an exalted faith, anterior and superior to all science, in the existence of intimate relations between the constitution of man's mind and that of God's firmament." Such a faith is at the root of "the prophetic inspiration of the geometers," which the progress of observation verifies.
2. A New Ideal of Man and a Power to Realize It
George Park Fisher, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (1902), chapter 5, “The Divine Mission of Jesus Attested by the Transforming Agency of Christianity in Human Society”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.
Jesus Christ brought into the world a new ideal of man — man individual and man social. This was not all. Had this been all, the condition of men might not have been materially altered. He brought in at the same time a force adequate to effect — though not magically, but by slow degrees — the realization of this ideal. It is in its double character — in the perfection of the moral ideal, and in the wonderful stimulus to the practical realization of it — that the transcendent superiority of the Christian religion is manifest. The sages of antiquity presented high though always imperfect conceptions of what man and society should be; but those conceptions remained inoperative. They did not avail for the elevation of many individuals even. Their effect on social and political life was small. Culture was attained by the intellectual and versatile Greek, but the ideal of manhood was faulty. Truthfulness, "the gold of character," was not one of his characteristic virtues. There was no life-giving force to save the Greek from degeneracy and corruption. No more was there a saving power in the law and polity which Rome created. Neither Greek learning and philosophy, nor Roman politics and jurisprudence, could rescue mankind from degradation, or even keep up what power they had exerted. With Christ there came in a nobler ideal and a force to lift men up to it. That force resided in Jesus himself.
The central thought of Jesus was religion — man's relation to God. Take out this idea of man's true life as consisting in that filial relation to the heavenly Father, and the vital principle is lost from the system of Jesus. The sources of its power are dried up: the root is dead, and the branches wither away. For with this idea is inseparably connected his estimate of the worth of the soul. Every individual, according to the teaching of Christ, has an incalculable worth. This does not depend on his outward condition. Lazarus, the beggar at the gate, was on a footing of equality with Dives at his luxurious table. To the surprise of the disciples, Jesus conversed with a peasant woman at a well. What was a woman, and a poor woman, even a depraved woman, that the Master should waste time in order to enlighten her? Little children he took in his arms when the disciples "forbade them." It was not the will of the Father that one of these little ones should perish. The transgressor of human and divine law, the male or female outcast — he saw in each something of imperishable value.
With this idea of the worth of man, there is associated the recognition of every individual as an end in himself. No man is made merely to enhance the interests, or minister to the gratification, of another man. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." He is the greatest who has most of the spirit of self-sacrifice. For one man to use another man or a woman as an instrument of his own pleasure or advancement, is an act of inconceivable cruelty and baseness. The equality of men as regards worth or value, be their talents, property, station, power, or condition in any particular what they may, is a cardinal truth. It is a deduction from their common relation, as creatures and children, to God, and from the common benefit of redemption, in which all alike share. In the community of God's children there was no distinction of bondman or freeman, rich or poor, male or female, Greek or barbarian. All — be their nationality that of the strong and intellectual branches of mankind, or of those little esteemed; be their lot among the prosperous or the unfortunate — are on a level. They are "brethren."
The Christian ideal embraced the sanctification of the entire life. It did not subvert established relations between man and man, as far as they were conformed to nature and right. It infused into them a new spirit. It set to work not to pull down, but to purify, the family and the state, and to raise each of these institutions to the ideal standard. Each was to be led to fulfil its true function, and to become a fountain of the highest possible beneficence.
3. The Sinlessness of Jesus
George Park Fisher, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (1902), chapter 7, “The Consciousness in Jesus of a Supernatural Calling Rendered Credible by His Sinless Character”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.
There is not room here to dwell on that marvellous unison of virtues in the character of Jesus, — virtues often apparently contrasted. It was not piety without philanthropy, or philanthropy without piety, but both in the closest union. It was love to God and love to man, each in perfection, and both forming one spirit. It was not compassion alone, not disunited from the sentiment of justice; nor was it rectitude, austere, unpitying. It was compassion and justice, the spirit of love and the spirit of truth, neither clashing with the other. There was a deep concern for the soul and the life to come, but no cynical indifference to human suffering and well-being now. There was courage that quailed before no adversary, but without the least ingredient of reckless daring, and observant of the limits of prudence. There was a dignity which needed no insignia to uphold it, yet was mixed with a sweet humility. There was rebuke for the proudest, a relentless unmasking of sanctimonious oppressors of the poor, and the gentlest words for the child, the suffering invalid, the penitent evil-doer. There was a deep concern for the good of large bodies of men, for the nation, for the race of mankind, yet a heartfelt affection for the single family, a tender interest in the humblest individual, even when unworthy.
There is one fact which ought to dispel every shadow of doubt as to the absolute sinlessness of Jesus. Let this fact be seriously pondered. He was utterly free from self-accusation, from the consciousness of fault; whereas, had there been a failure in duty, his sense of guilt would have been intense and overwhelming. This must have been the case had there been only a single lapse, — one instance, even in thought, of infidelity to God and conscience. But no such offence could have existed by itself; it would have tainted the character. Sin does not come and disappear, like a passing cloud. Sin is never a microscopic taint. Sin is self-propagating. Its first step is a fall and the beginning of a habit. We reiterate that a consciousness of moral defect in such an one as we know that Jesus was, and as he is universally conceded to have been, must infallibly have betrayed itself in the clearest manifestations of conscious guilt, of penitence, or of remorse.
The extreme delicacy of his moral sense is perfectly obvious. His moral criticism goes down to the secret recesses of the heart. He demands, be it observed, self-judgment: "First cast the beam out of thine own eye;" "Judge not." His condemnation of moral evil is utterly unsparing; the very roots of it in illicit desire are to be extirpated. He knows how sinful men are. He teaches them all to pray, "Forgive us our debts"; yet there is not a scintilla of evidence that he ever felt the need of offering that prayer for himself. From beginning to end there is not a lisp of self-blame. He prays often, he needs help from above; but there is no confession of personal unworthiness. Men generally are reminded of their sins when they are overtaken by calamity. The ejaculations of Jesus in the presence of his intimate associates, when he was sinking under the burden of mental sorrow, are transmitted, — and there is no sign whatever of a disposition on the part of disciples to cloak his mental experiences, or misrepresent them, — but not the slightest consciousness of error is betrayed in these spontaneous outpourings of feeling. "His was a piety with no consciousness of sin, and no expression of repentance."
Let the reader contrast this unbroken peace of conscience with the self-chastisement of an upright spirit which has become alive to the obligations of divine law, — the same law that Jesus inculcated. "Oh, wretched man that I am!" No language short of this outcry will avail to express the abject distress of Paul. There are no bounds to his self-abasement; he is "the chief of sinners." The burden of self-condemnation is too heavy for such conscientious minds to carry. Had the will of Jesus ever succumbed to the tempter, had moral evil ever found entrance into his heart, is it possible that his humiliation would have been less, or less manifest? That serene self-approbation would have fled from his soul. He would have partaken of the spirit which he depicted in the penitent Publican. Had the Great Teacher, whose words are a kind of audible conscience ever attending us, and are more powerful than anything else to quicken the sense of obligation — had he so little moral sensibility as falsely to acquit himself of blame before God? It is psychologically impossible that he should have been blameworthy without knowing it, without feeling it vividly, and without exhibiting compunction, or remorse and shame, in the plainest manner. There was no such consciousness, there was no such expression of guilt. Therefore he was without sin.
4. Miracles, Natural Law, and Hume’s Objection
George Park Fisher, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (1902), chapter 8, “Miracles: Their Nature, Credibility, and Place in Christian Evidences”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.
What are "natural laws"? They are not causes. They exert no power. They are not a code superimposed upon natural objects. They are simply a generalized statement of the way in which the objects of Nature are observed to act and interact. Thus the miracle does not clash with natural laws. It is a modification in the effect due to unusual exertion of the voluntary agency which is its cause. If there is a new phenomenon, it is the natural consequence of this variation. There is no violation of the law of gravitation when a stone is thrown into the air. Nature is, within limits, subject to the human will. The intervention of man's will gives being to phenomena which no qualities of matter, independently of the human agent, would ever produce. Yet such effects following upon volition are not said to be violations of law. Law describes the action of things in nature when that action is not modified and controlled by the voluntary agency back of it. If the efficiency of the divine will infinitely outstrips that of the will of man, still miracles are as really consistent with natural laws as the lifting of a man's hand under the impulse of a volition. This obvious fact, it may be added, disproves the statement sometimes heard, that a miracle in any one place would destroy the order of Nature everywhere.
If the possibility of miracles is discerned, the next point to be settled is that of their credibility. The question whether the miracles described in the New Testament, by which it is alleged that Christianity was ushered into the world, actually occurred, is to be settled by an examination of the evidence. It is an historical question, and is to be determined by an application of the canons applicable to historical inquiry.
The great sceptical philosopher of the last century displayed his ingenuity in an attempt to show that a miracle is from its very nature, and therefore under all circumstances, incapable of proof. Hume founds our belief in testimony solely on experience. "The reason," he says, "why we place any credit in witnesses and historians is not derived from any connection which we perceive a priori between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them." This is far from being a full account of the origin of our belief in testimony. Custom is not the primary source of credence. The truth is, that we instinctively give credit to what is told us; that is, we assume that the facts accord with testimony. Experience, to be sure, serves to modify this natural expectation, and we learn to give or withhold credence according to circumstances. The circumstance which determines us to believe or disbelieve is our conviction respecting the capacity of the witness for ascertaining the truth on the subject of his narration and respecting his honesty. If we are convinced that he could not have been deceived, and that he is truthful, we believe his story. No doubt one thing which helps to determine his title to credit is the probability or improbability of the occurrences related. The circumstance that such occurrences have never taken place before, or are "contrary to experience" in Hume's sense of the phrase, does not of necessity destroy the credibility of testimony to them. An event is not rendered incapable of proof because it occurs, if it occurs at all, for the first time. Unless it can be shown to be impossible, or incredible on some other account than because it is an unexampled event, it may be capable of being proved by witnesses. Hume is not justified in assuming that miracles are "contrary to experience," as he defines this term. This is the very question in dispute. The evidence for the affirmative, as J. S. Mill has correctly stated, is diminished in force by whatever weight belongs to the evidence that certain miracles have taken place.
The gist of Hume's argumentation is contained in this remark, "Let us suppose that the fact which they [the witnesses] affirm, instead of being only marvellous, is really miraculous; and suppose, also, that the testimony, considered apart and in itself, amounts to an entire proof: in that case, there is proof against proof, of which the strongest must prevail," etc. At the best, according to Hume, in every instance where a miracle is alleged, proof balances proof. One flaw in this argument has just been pointed out. The fundamental fallacy of this reasoning is in the premises, which base belief on naked "experience" divorced from all rational expectations drawn from any other source. The argument proceeds on the assumption that a miracle is just as likely to occur in one place as in another; that a miracle whereby the marks of truthfulness are transformed into a mask of error and falsehood is as likely to occur as (for example) the healing of a blind man by a touch of the hand. This might be so if the Power that governs the world were destitute of moral attributes. "The question is whether the presumption against miracles as mere physical phenomena is rebutted by the presumption in favor of miracles as works of infinite benevolence." Hume's argument is valid only on the theory of Atheism.
5. The Resurrection and the Failure of the Vision Theory
George Park Fisher, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (1902), chapter 9, “Proof of the Miracles of Christ Independently of Special Inquiry into the Authorship of the Gospels”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.
There are criteria of hallucination. If there were not, we should on all occasions be at a loss to know when to credit witnesses, or even when to trust our own senses. We have to consider, in the first place, the state of mind into which the apostles were thrown by the crucifixion. It was a state of sorrow and dejection. Their hopes for the time were crushed. Whoever has seen the dead Christ in the famous painting of Rubens at Antwerp can imagine the feeling of the disciples when they looked on the terrible reality. How was it possible for them within a few days — within two days, in the case of some, if not of all — to recover from the shock? How was it possible that in so short a time joy took the place of grief and fear? Whence came the sudden rekindling of faith, and with it the courage to go forth and testify, at the risk of their own lives, that Jesus was indeed the Messiah? The glowing faith, rising to an ecstasy of peace and assurance, out of which hallucination might spring, did not exist. The necessary materials of illusion were absolutely wanting. The natural suggestion of the language of Paul is that the manifestation to Peter was on the third day, and this is confirmed by Luke (xxiv. 34). There was no long interval of silent brooding over the Master's words and worth. There was no gradual recall of predictions or intimations of a continued presence or another coming that had mingled in his conversations with them. The time was short — a few days. Even then there are no traces of any fever of enthusiasm. The interviews with the risen Christ are set down in the Gospels in a brief, calm way, without any marks of bewildering agitation. No, the revulsion of feeling must have been produced from without. The event that produced it was no creation of the apostles' minds. It took them by surprise.
Secondly, the number and variety of the persons — five hundred at once — who constitute the witnesses, heighten the difficulty in the way of the hallucination-theory. Under circumstances so gloomy and disheartening, how were so many persons — comprising, as they must have comprised, all varieties of temperament — transported by the same enthusiasm to such a pitch of bewilderment as to confound a mental image of Christ with the veritable, present reality?
But, thirdly, a greater difficulty lies in the limited number of the alleged appearances of Jesus, considering the state of mind which must be assumed to have existed if the hallucination-theory is adopted. Instead of a small number, there would have been a multitude of such "visions." This the analogy of religious delusions authorizes us to assert. If the five hundred collectively imagined themselves to see Christ, a great portion of them would individually, before and after, have imagined the same thing. The limited, carefully marked, distinctly recollected number of the appearances of Jesus to the apostles is a powerful argument against the theory of illusion.
Fourthly, connected with this last consideration is another most impressive fact. There was a limitation of time as well as of number. The appearances of Jesus, whatever they were, ceased in a short period. Why did they not continue longer? There were visions of one kind and another afterward. Disbelievers point to these as a proof of the apostles' credulity. Be this as it may, the question recurs. Why were there no more visions of the risen Jesus to be placed in the same category with those enumerated by Paul? Stephen's vision was of Christ in the heavenly world. In the persecutions recorded in Acts, when martyrs were perishing, why were there no Christophanies? There is not a solitary case of an alleged actual appearance of Jesus on the earth to disciples, after the brief period which is covered by the instances recorded by Paul and the Evangelists. There were those distinct occurrences, standing by themselves, definitely marked, beginning at a certain time, ending at a certain time.
We know what the mood of the apostles was from the time of these alleged interviews with the risen Christ. They set about the work of preaching the gospel of the resurrection, and of founding the Church. There was no more despondency, no more faltering. It is undeniable that they are characterized by sobriety of mind, and by a habit of reflection, without which, indeed, the whole movement would quickly have come to an end.