Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation: A Book for the Times. James B. Walker
people should be so united as to resist the power and contagious example of surrounding nations, while they were fitted to receive and preserve a peculiar national character, civil polity, and religious doctrines; of all which they were to be the conservators, amid surrounding and opposing heathenism, for many ages.
Other facts might be added to the induction, which would make the design, if possible, more apparent. If the Jews were to be the recipients of new instruction—to obey new laws, and to sustain new institutions, it would be desirable that their minds, so far as possible, should be in the condition of new material, occupied by little previous knowledge, and by no national prejudices against or in favour of governmental forms and systems. Now, in the case of the Jews, the habit of obedience had been acquired. They had no national predilections or prejudices arising from past experience. In relation to knowledge of any kind, their mind was almost a tabula rasa. They were as new material prepared to receive the moulding of a master hand, and the impress of a governing mind.
Now, as this discipline of the descendants of Abraham was the result of a long concatenation of events, and could not have been designed by themselves to accomplish the necessary end; and as the whole chain of events was connected together and perfectly adapted, in accordance with the nature of things, to produce the specific purpose which was accomplished by them, it follows, as the only rational conclusion, first that the overruling intelligence of God was employed in thus preparing material for a purer religious worship than the world then enjoyed; and, second, that a nation could have been so prepared by no other agent, and in no other way.
CHAPTER III.
CONCERNING MIRACLES—PARTICULARLY THE MIRACLES WHICH ACCOMPANIED THE DELIVERANCE OF THE ISRAELITES FROM BONDAGE IN EGYPT.
There has been so much false philosophy written concerning the subject of miracles, that it is difficult for those conversant with the speculations of writers upon this subject, to divest their minds sufficiently of preformed biases, to examine candidly the simple and natural principles upon which are based the evidence and necessity of miraculous interposition.
The following statement is true beyond controversy: Man cannot, in the present constitution of his mind, have sufficient reason for believing that religion has a Divine origin, unless it be accompanied with miracles. The natural inference of the mind is that, if an Infinite Being act, his acts will be superhuman in their character; because the effect, reason dictates, will be characterized by the nature of its cause. Man has the same reason to expect that God will perform acts above human power and knowledge, that he has to suppose the inferior orders of animals will, in their actions, sink below the power and wisdom which characterize human nature. For, as it is natural for man to perform acts superior to the power and knowledge of the animals beneath him, so reason affirms that it is natural for God to develop his power by means, and in ways, above the skill and ability of mortals. Hence, if God manifest himself at all—unless, in accommodation to the capacities of men, he should constrain his manifestations within the compass of human ability—every act of God’s immediate power would, to human capacity, be a miracle. But, if God were to constrain all his acts within the limits of human means and agencies, it would be impossible for man to discriminate between the acts of the Godhead and the acts of the manhood. And man, if he considered acts to be of a Divine origin, which were plainly within the compass of human ability, would violate his own reason.
Suppose, for illustration, that God desired to reveal a religion to men, and wished them to recognise his character and his benevolence in giving that revelation. Suppose, further, that God should give such a revelation, and that every appearance and every act connected with its introduction were characterized by nothing superior to human power; could any rational mind on earth believe that such a system of religion came from God? Impossible! A man could as easily be made to believe that his own child, who possessed his own lineaments, and his own nature, belonged to some other world, and some other order of the creation. It would not be possible for God to convince men that a religion was from heaven unless it was accompanied with the marks of Divine Power.
Suppose, again, that some individual were to appear either in the heathen or Christian world—he claimed to be a teacher sent from God, yet aspired to the performance of no miracles. He assumed to do nothing superior to the wisdom and ability of other men. Such an individual, although he might in gaining proselytes to some particular view of a religion already believed, yet could never make men believe that he had a special commission from God to establish a new religion, for the simple reason that he had no grounds more than his fellows to support his claims as an agent of the Almighty. But if he could convince a single individual that he had wrought a miracle, or that he had power to do so, that moment his claims would be established, in that mind, as a commissioned agent from heaven: so certainly, and so intuitively, do the minds of men revere and expect miracles as the credentials of the Divine presence.
This demand of the mind for miracles, as testimony of the Divine presence and power, is intuitive with all men; and those very individuals who have doubted the existence or necessity of miracles, should they examine their own convictions on this subject, would see that, by an absolute necessity, if they desired to give the world a system of religion, whether truth or imposture, in order to make men receive it as of Divine authority, they must work miracles to attest its truth, or make men believe that they did so. Men can produce doubt of a revelation in no way until they have destroyed the evidence of its miracles; nor can faith be produced in the Divine origin of a religion until the evidence of miracles is supplied.
The conviction that miracles are the true attestation of immediate Divine agency, is so constitutional (allow the expression) with the reason, that so soon as men persuade themselves they are the special agents of God, in propagating some particular truth in the world, they adopt likewise the belief that they have ability to work miracles. There have been many sincere enthusiasts, who believed that they were special agents of Heaven, and, in such cases, the conviction of their own miraculous powers arises as a necessary concomitant of the other opinion. Among such, in modern times, may be instanced Emanuel Swedenborg. Impostors also, perceiving that miracles were necessary in order that the human mind should receive a religion as Divine, have invariably claimed miraculous powers. Such instances recur constantly, from the days of Elymas down to the Mormon, Joseph Smith.
All the multitude of false religions that have been believed since the world began have been introduced by the power of this principle. Miracles believed, lie at the foundation of all religions which men have ever received as of Divine origin. No matter how degrading or repulsive to reason in other respects, the fact of its establishment and propagation grows out of the belief of men that supernatural agency lies at the bottom.[5] This belief will give currency to any system, however absurd: and without it, no system can be established in the minds of men, however high and holy may be its origin and its design.
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