scandal into a subject of edification. Our serious thoughts will suggest to us that the apostles themselves were chosen by Providence among the fishermen of Galilee, and that, the lower we depress the temporal condition of the first Christians, the more reason we shall find to admire their merit and success. It is incumbent on us diligently to remember, that the kingdom of heaven was promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of mankind, cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of reason and knowledge.

Rejected by eminent men

by some

of the first and second centuries.

We stand in need of such reflections to comfort us for the loss of some illustrious characters, which in our eyes might have seemed the most worthy of the heavenly present. The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of

Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their respective stations, either in active or in contemplative life; their excellent understandings were improved by study; philosophy had purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstition; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing sect, which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those among them who condescend to mention the Christians consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.""

191

191 Dr. Lardner, in his first and second volumes of Jewish and Christian testimonies, collects and illustrates those of Pliny the younger, of Tacitus, of Galen, of Marcus Antoninus, and perhaps of Epictetus (for it is doubtful whether that philosopher means to speak of the Christians). The new sect is totally unnoticed by Seneca, the elder Pliny, and Plutarch.

tastes instinctively repudiate this plebian origin. On page 131 we have quoted Luther and Feuerbach as authority on this subject. On page 125 a sketch is given of the eunuch Origen and his tutor, Ammonius Saccus, who taught that Christianity and paganism, when properly understood, were identical.-E.

THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGIES.

199

of prophecy.

It is at least doubtful whether any of these philosophers perused the apologies which the Their neglect primitive Christians repeatedly published in behalf of themselves and of their religion; but it is much to be lamented that such a cause was not defended by abler advocates. They expose with superfluous wit and eloquence the extravagance of Polytheism. They interest our compassion by displaying the innocence and sufferings of their injured brethren. But when they would demonstrate the divine origin of Christianity, they insist much. more strongly on the predictions which announced, than on the miracles which accompanied, the appearance of the Messiah. Their favorite argument might serve to edify a Christian or to convert a Jew, since both the one and the other acknowledge the authority of those prophecies, and both are obliged, with devout reverence, to search for their sense and their accomplishment. But this mode of persuasion loses much of its weight and influence, when it is addressed to those who neither understand nor respect the Mosaic dispensation and the prophetic style.' 192 In the

192 If the famous prophecy of the Seventy Weeks had been alleged to a Roman philosopher, would he not have replied in the words of Cicero," Quæ tandem ista auguratio est, annorum potius quam aut mensium aut dierum?" De Divinatione, ii. 30. Observe with what irreverence Lucian (in Alexandro, c. 13) and his friend Celsus ap.Origen (1.vii. p. 327) express themselves concerning the Hebrew prophets.

* The emperors Hadrian, Antoninus, &c., read with wonder the Apologies for their faith, which Justin Martyn, Aristides, Melito, and others addressed to them. (See Hieron, ad Mag. and Orosius, lib. 8, c. 13, p. 488.) Eusebius says expressly, that the cause of Christianity was defended in the presence of the senate, by Apollonius the martyr, in a very elegant oration. "Cum judex multis cum pre"cibus obsecrasset petiisset que ab illo, uti coram senatu rationem fidei suæ red"derit, elegantissima oratione pro defensione fidei pronuntiata, &c. (Euseb. Latine, lib. 5, c. 21, p. 154.)-GUIZOT.

Gibbon, in his severer spirit of criticism, may have questioned the authority of Jerome and Eusebius. There are some difficulties about Apollonius, which Heinichen (note in loc. Eusebii) would solve, by supposing him to have been, as Jerome states, a senator.-MILMAN.

It is not very clear, either from this Latin version, or the original Greek, or the context, when carefully considered, whether this oration was held before the senate or the judge. The latter seems the most probable, and would get rid of some doubts and difficulties. It ought not to excite any surprise, that the Apologies insisted so little on the miraculous evidence of the writers' faith, in an age when hostile disputants ascribed all such works to magic, and when the belief in this agency was so prevalent, that Apuleius was obliged to defend himself judicially against the charge of having employed it, to win the affections of a wealthy widow. All the early defenders of Christianity insist on its realization both of prophecy and philosophy. That which the emperor Hadrian received from Aristides is described by Jerome, as "contextum philosophorum sententiis." Gibbon estimated Christianity too low, and ancient philosophy too high, to take correct views of their mutual bearings and concurrent action.-ENGLISH CHURCHMAN.

+"The most candid and learned even of Christian inquirers," says the Rev. Robert Taylor, "have admitted, that antiquity is most deficient just exactly " where it is most important; that there is absolutely nothing known of the church "history in those times on which a rational man could place any reliance; and "that the epocha when Christian truth first dawned upon the world is appropri 'ately designated as the Age of Fable."—E.

200

Neglect of

PIOUS FORGERIES.

193

were

unskillful hands of Justin and the succeeding apologists, the sublime meaning of the Hebrew oracles evaporates in distant types, affected conceits, and cold allegories; and even their authenticity was rendered suspicious to an unenlightened Gentile, by the mixture of pious forgeries, which, under the names of Orpheus, Hermes, and the Sibyls,' obtruded on him as of equal value with the genuine inspiration of Heaven. The adoption of fraud and sophistry in the defence of revelation too often reminds us of the injudicious conduct of those poets who load their invulnerable heroes with a useless weight of cumbersome and brittle armor. But how shall we excuse the supine inattenmiracles. tion of the Pagan and philosophic world, to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life lence concern and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire,' was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours.* Even this miraculous event,

General si

ing the darkness of the Passion.

194

195

193 The philosophers who derided the more ancient predictions of the Sibyls would easily have detected the Jewish and Christian forgeries, which have been so triumphantly quoted by the fathers, from Justin Martyr to Lactantius. When the Sibylline verses had performed their appointed task, they, like the system of the millennium, were quietly laid aside. The Christian Sibyl had unluckily fixed the ruin of Rome for the year 195, A. U. C. 948.

194 The fathers, as they are drawn out in battle array by Dom Calmet (Disser. tations sur la Bible, tom. iii. pp. 295-308), seem to cover the whole earth with darkness, in which they are followed by most of the moderns.

195 Origen ad Matth. c. 27, and a few modern critics, Beza, Le Clerc, Lardner, &c., are desirous of confining it to the land of Judea.

*As the "darkness of the Passion" produced, in an age of credulity, no effect upon the people who are supposed to have witnessed the occurrence, it seems strange that, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, it should be regarded as miraculous by those who claim to be illumined by the light of modern science and to have outgrown the errors and superstitions of the obsolete past.

The arrest and crucifixion of the carpenter's son, by the fanatical and intolerant people he endeavored to instruct, illustrates the fact that the benefactors of mankind are often the victims of religious frenzy and sectarian zeal. That Jesus, in the last moments of his troubled life, realized the fatal mistake he had made in his enthusiastic but mistaken belief in his own divinity, seems almost

INATTENTION TO CHRISTIAN MIRACLES.

201

which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history.196 It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experi

196 The celebrated passage of Phlegon is now wisely abandoned. When Tertullian assures the Pagans that the mention of the prodigy is found in Arcanis (not Archivis) vestris (see his Apology, c 21), he probably appeals to the Sibylline verses, which relate it exactly in the words of the Gospel.†

certain, if we may judge by his dying words of bitter and hopeless sorrow; but he could not have realized nor even imagined the ferocity-the horrible barbarity that during the dark ages of ecclesiastical supremacy inspired the sectarian massacres, wars and cruelties that were perpetrated in his name. Himself a victim of religious persecution-a martyr for the liberty of thoughtsuffering death for opinion's sake-a friend to the lowly and despisel -- who. in his sermon on the mount, blessed the poor in spirit, those that mourn, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted.- he never could have believed that his followers would in turn become persecutors would torture the noble and the brave- burn at the stake those who dared to think-imprison in dungeons the friends and benefactors of humanity - destroy both old and young-murder babes in their mother's arms-redden the earth with human blood, and do all this in his name, and for exercising the right of freethought for which he was crucified.

Socrates, the Pagan, "died like a philosopher," while Jesus, the reformer, expired in sorrow and in sadness. "He was oppressed and afflicted," says the prophet Isaiah, yet he opened not his mouth.' And yet, when hope and courage had fled, when death and despair confronted the victim on the cross, when the humane and loving Jesus realized the fallacy of his own cherished faith, and knew that he was but human and was not divine-that he was but a man and not a god, this consciousness of his own fatal deception wrung from his dying lips that most sad and mournful cry-the pathetic and hopeless wail of a deceived and despairing soul,-" Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why "hast thou forsaken me?"-E.

9, 10.

According to some learned theologians a misunderstanding of the text in the Gospel has given rise to this mistake, which has employed and wearied so many laborious commentators, though Origen had already taken the pains to preinform them. The expression σкÒTоÇ ¿YÉVETO does not mean, they assert, an eclipse, but any kind of obscurity occasioned in the atmosphere, whether by clouds or any other cause. As this obscuration of the sun rarely took place in Palestine, where in the middle of April the sky was unusually clear, it assumed, in the eyes of the Jews and Christians, an importance conformable to the received notion, that the sun concealed at midday was a sinister presage. See Amos viii. The word OKOTOç is often taken in this sense by contemporary writers; the Apocalypse says, kokотion & λoç the sun was concealed, when speaking of an obscuration caused by smoke and dust. (Revel. ix. 2.) Moreover, the Hebrew word opha!, which in the LXX. answers to the Greek σKOTOç, signifies any darkness; and the Evangelists, who have modeled the sense of their expressions by those of the LXX., must have taken it in the same latitude. This darkening of the sky usually precedes earthquakes. (Matt. xxvii, 51.) The Heathen authors furnish us a number of examples, of which a miraculous explanation was given at the time. See Ovid. ii. v. 33. l. xv. v. 785. Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. ii c. 30. Wetstein has collected all these examples in his edition of the New Testament.

We need not, then, be astonished at the silence of the Pagan authors concerning a phenomenon which did not extend beyond Jerusalem, and which might have nothing contrary to the laws of nature; although the Christians and the Jews may have regarded it as a sinister presage. See Michaelis, Notes on New Testament, v. i. p. 290. Paulus, Commentary on New Testament, iii. p. 760.-GUIZOT. *As the above explanation of M. F. Guizot, was copied by both Dean Milman and the English Churchman, it evidently met with their approval. It agrees with the views of the "most learned theologians." and is fortified by reference to the writings of the learned Michaelis and the devout Paulus. It is the best expianation that can be given, because it explains the event on purely natural principles, without resorting to supernatural aid. The "darkness of the Passion

"

was no miracle, as ignorant and superficial theologians sometimes assert, but merely a passing cloud; a rising mist; a column

202 MIRACLES NOT RECORDED BY PAGAN WRITERS.

197

enced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny 198 is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Cæsar, when, during the greatest part of a year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendor. This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age.200

199

197 Seneca, Quæst. Natur. 1. i. 15, vi. 1. vii. 17. Plin. Hist. Natur. 1. ii. 198 Plin. Hist. Natur. ii. 30.

199 Virgil. Georgic. i. 466. Tibullus, 1. i. Eleg. v. ver. 75. Ovid. Metamorph. xv. 782. Lucan. Pharsal. i. 540. The last of these poets places this prodigy before the civil war.

200 See a public epistle of M. Antony in Josephi. Antiquit, xiv. 12. Pluturch in Casar, p. 471. Appian. Bell. Civil. I. iv. Dion Cassius, 1. xlv. p. 431. Julius Obsequens, c. 128. His little treatise is an abstract of Livy's prodigies.

of smoke; an eruption of a distant volcano; a swarm of bees or locusts, that obscured the direct rays of the sun. There was nothing supernatural involved-it was purely a natural event. Matthew xxvii: 45, when properly translated, "does not mean an eclipse,"-does not mean a miracle. It is merely an interesting observation on the weather, and is no proof of the divinity of Christ, or of any thing else. How could the sages of Greece and Rome "-the eminent historians, Seneca and Pliny-be expected to record so trivial an event? To St. Matthew alone belongs the honor of chronicling the atmospheric illusions.

The same style of reasoning would explain, on natural principles, all the miracles that are quoted as a proof of the divinity of Jesus. "The lame walked," after they had been cured. The blind saw," after the proper remedies were applied. The sick were healed," by a skillful physician. "The dead were "raised," or rather those who had swooned or fallen in a trance were revived by stimulants. "Demons were expelled,"-that is, the priests so asserted. "The laws of nature were suspended for the benefit of the church," that is to say: the church was benefited by claiming dominion over nature's laws.-E.

*The credulous belief that the births and deaths of celebrated persons, as well as the occurrence of remarkable events, were accompanied by visible convulsions of nature, was admirably ridiculed by Shakespeare, who was too intelligent to reverence this ancient superstition. In King Henry IV. he represents Owen Glendower as boasting that:

"At my nativity

"The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes

Of burning cressets; know, that at my birth, "The frame and huge foundation of the earth "Shook like a coward!"

To which bombast the unbelieving Hotspur irreverently replies:

"

Why, so it would have done

At the same season, if your mother's cat

"Had kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born."-E.