The Historical Proofs of Christianity [pp. 223-247]

TlE HISTORICAL PROOFS OF CHRISTIANITY.
twelve attended Jesus through his public ministry from the
baptism in Jordan to the close. The occurrences which necessarily presuppose the exertion of miraculous power took place in
their presence. They were events in which they had a deep
concern. The apostles were not wanting in common sense.
And they were conscientious men. They were the men whom
Jesus Christ selected to be his companions. Unless, as the enemies of Jesus charged, he was "a deceiver," and most accomplished in the art, how could they mistake the character of these
works which, as they alleged, he performed before their eyes?
But as the miracles are the part of the Gospel history which,
in these days, chiefly provokes incredulity, it is well to consider
this topic further. No time need be spent on Hume's argument
to show that a miracle is, under no circumstances, capable of
being proved. As Mill observes, all that Hume has made out is
that no evidence can prove a miracle to all atheist, or to a deist
who supposes himself able to prove that God would not interfere to produce the miraculous event in question.' We assume
the being and moral attributes of God, and we have no call to
discuss the character, in other respects, of Hume's reasoning.
We are not called upon to confute the opinion that the first
three Gospels-the historical character of the fourth has already
been vindicated-were moulded by a doctrinal purpose or bias,
since that opinion finds no countenance now from judicious
critics of whatever theological creed. The First Gospel contains
numerous passages in which the catholic character of Christianity is emphatically set forth.2 "Our Matthew," says Mangold,
an unprejudiced critic, not at all wedded to traditional views,
"is, to be sure, written by a Jewish Christian for Jewish Christians," "but he has given us no writing with a Jewish Christian
doctrinal bias." "The words of Jesus, quoted in Matthew," says
Reuss, "which form the doctrinal kernel of the book, are not
selected in the slightest degree from that point of view,"-that
of the Palestinian Jewish Christianity,-" but go beyond it in a
hundred places, and bespeak so much the more the faithfulness
I J. S. Mill, "System of Logic," vol. ii. p. IIO.
2 Matt. xxiv. I4, xxviii. 19, Viii. 12, xx. I seq., xxi. 28, 33, xxii. 40, xxiii. 33,
ix. i6, seq., xii. 8, xiii. 3I. Cf. "Essays on the Supernat. Origin of Christianity,"
pp. 213-215; Reuss, "Gesch. d. heilig. Schriftt.," p. I95.
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