The Churches and Modern Thought. Vivian Phelips
the shape of a vision. This converted the scientific inquirer into a supernatural prophet. He was now the mouthpiece of God. “The Lord Himself hath called me, who was graciously pleased to manifest Himself to me, His unworthy servant, in a personal experience in the year 1745.” “I have never,” he says in his work on True Christian Religion, “received anything appertaining to the doctrines of that Church from any angel, but from the Lord alone, while I was reading the Word.” Swedenborg was a man who won the respect, confidence, and love of all who came in contact with him. He had a peculiarly abstract metaphysical character of mind, and was firmly convinced that he had “conversed with spirits” and “seen the Lord.” So was Martin Luther perfectly convinced that he had seen the Devil when he threw his ink-pot at him. So was the peasant girl of Lourdes convinced that she had seen the Virgin Mary. So is Evan Roberts convinced that he has seen his Saviour. So have many good Christians from time to time been convinced that they have seen Christ, the Virgin Mary, saints, and angels. Father Ignatius, the Evangelist monk, may be, as I have heard him called, an emotional wreck; but he is also a most earnest Christian, and he is quite sure that he has seen the Virgin Mary.47 John Wesley, whose followers throughout the world to-day number 30,000,000, was also a visionary. Thousands and thousands of heathens as well as Christians have had visions of their saviours; but such experiences could scarcely be brought forward seriously as a proof of the existence of the divinities believed to have been seen, or of their ascension after a life upon earth. Visual and auditory hallucinations are now the subject of a searching inquiry by the Society for Psychical Research, and, willing as some of its members are to explain metapsychical phenomena by the simple theory of the spiritists, the growing opinion is that these apparitions and voices are purely hallucinatory and due to causes which are not extra-human.
As Mr. Lowes Dickinson pertinently remarks when speaking of “Conversions” in his article on Revelations, in the Independent Review: “The important question is whether the belief of the recipient in the evidential value of the experience is justified; and I think that a little consideration will show that it is not so, for it is noticeable that the truth supposed to be revealed in the moment of conversion is commonly, if not invariably, the reflection of the doctrine or theory with which the subject, whether or no he has accepted it, has hitherto been most familiar. I have never heard, for example, of a case in which a Mohammedan or a Hindoo, without having ever heard of Christianity, has had a revelation of Christian truth. Conversion, in fact, it would seem, is not the communication of a new truth; it is the presentation of ideas already familiar in such a way that they are accompanied by an irresistible certainty that they are true.... A religious revelation cannot be distinguished from what would be admitted to be the hallucinations of disease. A man may be convinced, with equal assurance, that he is a poached egg or a saint; that he has a mission to assassinate the king or redeem the world; that he is eternally damned or eternally saved; that he has had a vision of the Virgin Mary or a vision of Nirvana.”
Another argument for considering the Resurrection as an historical fact is that brought forward by the Rev. D. S. Margoliouth. The learned Professor argues in the Expositor that the Gospel narrative is located within historic times. So are the narratives of King Arthur (the Celtic Messiah), or William Tell, or Robin Hood; but historians are silent about all these narratives, sacred and profane alike. There was probably a real Arthur, however different from the hero of the trouvères, and a real Robin Hood, however now enlarged and disguised by the accretion of legend. Similarly there was a real Jesus Christ; but the marvellous event of His resurrection is unrecorded by any of the celebrated historians of the period.
The final argument is that “the Resurrection is, so to speak, of a piece with the whole character and the claims of Christ.... Even had we no Testament at all, we should be obliged to postulate something very much like either the Resurrection or the belief in the Resurrection in order to account for Christianity.” No one disputes, I should think, this necessity for the Resurrection, if we are to remain Christians; but it is of the fact of the Resurrection that unfortunate doubters wish to be assured. The Bishop of Ripon argues that the miraculous accessories connected with the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ find a place only in the group of secondary witnesses, and adds significantly: “Our belief in Jesus Christ must be based upon moral conviction, not upon physical wonder.” The meaning of this, in plain English, is clear enough, and I leave it for the honest-minded reader to decide whether this is a satisfactory foundation for the Christian dogmas. Is this what he was taught, or what his children are now being taught? Will it suffice? Can he remain a Christian? Will his children, when they grow up and begin to think for themselves, remain Christians? The Dean of Westminster writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: “Students of natural science find themselves left with St. Luke as the strongest historical evidence within the New Testament.” Now, the author of St. Luke is also the author of the Acts, and his propensity for miraculous decoration is by no means reassuring. Besides, he was not an eye-witness. Then, too, we have Canon Henson, in the Hibbert Journal for April, 1904, informing us that “Any candid Christian reading through the accounts of the New Testament evidences … cannot escape the inference that the evidence for the quasi-historical statements of the Creed is of a highly complicated, dubious, and even contradictory character.” He then asks us: “Is an honest belief in the Resurrection really inconsistent with a reverent agnosticism as to the historical circumstances out of which in the first instance that belief arose?” The reply of an ordinary candid layman is, I think, sufficiently obvious. Similarly, Abbé Loisy, the champion of advanced theology in the Roman Catholic Church, considers the Resurrection to be a spiritual fact only, and not a fact of the historical order. “La Résurrection n’est pas proprement un fait d’ordre historique.” The powerful article in the Encyclopædia Biblica also leads us to the same conclusion.
Those who believe in the fact of the Resurrection, and have not Canon Henson’s reverent agnosticism concerning the event, must believe also in all the facts related in connection with it, including the account of Jesus having eaten and having been touched, and of his bodily ascent up into the clouds. If any one portion of the story be considered incredible or untrustworthy, the whole collapses. It may be useful, therefore, to put to ourselves some questions concerning any one of the many marvellous accessories of the Resurrection. How few of us have ever had our belief tested by searching questions such as a cultured heathen would put if we tried to convert him? For instance, what would you reply if you were asked by an intelligent native of India, China, or Japan: “Who were the saints of whom Matthew speaks as having risen from their graves? To whom did they appear? And how was it that their graves were opened as Jesus died, while their bodies did not come out till after His Resurrection? What also became of them afterwards?” To this the only candid reply possible would be: “I am unable to give you any information on this subject. Their not appearing till after Jesus rose from death would seem to have been introduced so as not to give them the precedence over Him in the exercise of the privilege of resurrection. He is said to be ‘the first that should rise from the dead’ (Acts xxvi. 23), ‘the first fruits of them that slept’ (1 Cor. xv. 20), ‘the first-born from the dead’ (Col. i. 18).” This, however, would hardly satisfy your questioner, who would reply: “Your inability to give me this information excites my suspicions, and your further statements seem to me to be very clumsy. To mark and enhance the death of the Messiah, nature is said to be convulsed, and graves thrown open; but the exit of the saints who were to come out of them is restrained till He should first have made His egress from the tomb three days later. And, after all, He had no such precedence in resurrection, for several persons are said to have been raised from the dead by the prophets of old and by Himself; two passed into heaven without ever being in their graves, and one of them—namely, Elias—appeared to Him with Moses in risen life at the time of His transfiguration. May I ask, Are the disturbances of nature which are said to have occurred at the crucifixion—namely, the preternatural darkness for three hours and the earthquake—mentioned by historians of the time?” You would have to confess, “They are not.” Thus you would fail to convert your heathen interlocutor, whose final fling at you would be: “That seems to demonstrate that nothing of the kind could really have occurred. Moreover, had there been such phenomena, the other evangelists would not have failed to support their position with these divine manifestations.”
If
Eight persons in all testify to the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the Abbot’s meadow at Llanthony on September 15th, 1880.