On the argument of Butler's Analogy^ see the article BuTLEU (vol. i, p. 937).
II. As to the comparative value of the different class- es of the Christian evidences there has been much dis- pute. Coleridge admitted the value of the testimony from miracles for the Jews at the beginning of Chris- tianity, but considered that argument as much less valuable now than the internal evidence. "It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses that the senses ■were miraculouslj'
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTLVNITY 380 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY
appealed to. lieason and religion are their men evi- dence. The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the spiritual. Ere he is fully risen, and while his glories are still under veil, he calls up the breeze to chase awa)' the usurping vapors of the night season, and thus converts the air itself into the minister of its own ])urification: not surely a proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, but to prevent its interception. "Wherever, therefore, similar circumstances coexist with the same moral causes, the principles revealed and the examples recorded in the inspired writings render miracles supsrduous ; and if we neglect to ap- ply truths in expectation of wonders, or under pretext of the cessation of the latter, we tempt God, and merit the same rei)ly which our Lord gave to the Pharisees on a lil^e occasion. I shall merely state here what my belief is concerning the true evidences of Christi- anitv. 1. Its consistency with right reason I consider as the outer court of the temple, the common area within which it stands. 2. The miracles, with and through which the religion was first revealed and at- tested, I regard as the steps, the vestibule, and the portal of the temple. 3. The sense, the inward feel- ing in the soul of each believer of its exceeding desi- rahlness, the experience that he needs something, joined with the strong foretokening that the redemp- tion and the graces propounded to us in Christ are tchat lie needs — this I hold to be the true foundation of the spiritual edifice. With the strong it jjriori probability that flows in from 1 and 3 on the corre- spondent historical evidence of 2, no man can refuse or neglect to make the experiment without guilt. But, 4, it is the experience derived from a practical conformit}^ to the conditions of the Gospel ; it is the opening eye, the dawning light, the terrors and the promises of spiritual growth, the blessedness of loving God as God, the nascent sense of sin hated as sin, and of the incapability of attaining to either without Christ ; it is the sorrow tliat still rises up from beneath, and the consolation that meets it from above ; the bosom treacheries of the principal in the warfare, and the exceeding fiiithfulness and long-suffering of the unin- terested ally ; in a word, it is tlie actual trial of the faith in Christ, with its accompaniments and results, that must form the arched roof, and faith itself is the completing key-stoxe. In order to an efficient be- lief in Christianity a man must liave been a Christian, and this is the seeming argumenlum in circulo incident to all si)iritual truths, to every subject not presentable under the forms of time and space, as long as we at- tempt to master by the reflex acts of the understand- ing wliat we can only knoio by the act of hecoming. ' Do tlie will of \wy father, and ye shall hnoio whether I am of God.' These four evidences I believe to have been, and still to be, for the world, for the whole Church, all necessary, all equally necessarj' ; but that at present, and for the majoritj- of Christians born in Christian countries, I believe the third and the fourth evidence to be the most operative ; not as superseding, but as involving a glad, undoubting faith in the two former" (Coleridge, Biograplua Literaria, ch. xxiv).
Ullmann (Sinlcssness oj" Jesus, § 1) remarks "that the nature of the case, and the necessities of their contemporaries, justified tlie apostles in proving the divine mission of Christ l)y the argument from mira- cles and prophecy. But the necessity of the times and of individuals may in this respect vary ; and al- thougli tlie Gospel in its essence remains the same, and contains eternal, unchangeable trutli, yet in a differ- ent age a different method of proof may load more ini- niediately to the acknowledgment of this truth. In our own time it seems proper to fix our eyes especially upon the spiritual character of Jesus in order to obtain satisfactory proof of the divinity of his mission and instructions, not t)ecausc the apostolical mode of proof has become untenable, but because tlie other mode has a more vital cfHcacy on account of the style of ed-
ucation prevalent at the present day. We do not find ourselves in immediate, conscious connection with the spirit and prophecies of the Old Testament, as the Jews were in the time of the apostles; we live among contemporaries to wliom miracles are more a ground of doubt than of faith ; we should not forget tiiat the proof from miracles exerts its full power, jjroperly speaking, on none but the eye-witnesses of them, and conducts us to tlie desired conclusion only by a cir- cuitous path. On the other hand, a vivid apprehen- sion of the inward character of Jesus brings us nearer to the operative centre of Christianity, and at the same time makes us feel the influence of the moral power which goes forth from that centre. Here faith in Je- sus rests inimediateh' on himself; it is free, spiritual confidence in his person. As with his contempora- ries everything depended on the j'ielding confidence \\ ith which thej' received the favors which he brought them, so likewise with us this confidence maj' be tlie element of a full belief in Christianity, and is, at all events, a condition of receiving benefit from our Re- deemer."