RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Superintendent Superstition
struggle with Napoleon and into commercial expansion. When interest in history revived, it came in the form of the Oxford movement (see Tractarianism), so that the critical question was still further postponed. English orthodoxy stood entrenched and intact down to 1860. The assault was opened by Essays and Reviews (1860; cf. F Harrison's brilliant sketch in The Creed of a Layman, London, 1907), was continued by Ecce Homo in 1865, and in 1874 reached its climax in Supernatural Religion.
The title of the book places it in close connection with eighteenth-century deism. It is an assault upon " supernatural " religion. Since that religion connected itself inseparably with miracles, the purpose of the book is to bring the " supernatural " to the ground by knocking the miraculous underpinning from beneath it.
" I contend that the historical (argument against miracles) is the necessary complement of the philosophical argument. The preliminary affirmation is not that miracles are impossible, but that they are antecedently incredible. The counter-allegation is that, although miracles may be antecedently incredible, they nevertheless actually took place. It is, therefore, necessary, not only to establish the antecedent incredibility, but to examine the validity of the allegation that certain miracles occurred, and this involves the historical inquiry into the evidence for the Gospels " (preface to 6th ed., pp. v.-vi.).
The purpose is to show that the canonical Gospels are so far removed in time from the events they record that they lose all competence as witnesses to the reality of the miraculous. The author conceived that by thus lopping off the " supernatural " from the religion of Jesus, the spiritual majesty and the moral sublimity of Christ would shine forth with beauty and clarity.
" Destructive must precede constructive criticism. It is only when we clearly recognize that the Bible is not in any ecclesiastical sense the word of God, that we can worthily honor and enjoy it as the word of Man " (pref., p. Ixxxii.). " We gain infinitely more than we lose in abandoning belief in the reality of Divine Revelation. Whilst we retain pure and unimpaired the light of Christian Morality, we relinquish nothing but the debasing elements added to it by human superstition " (ii. 489).
Essays and Reviews had not touched the question of the supernatural in the life of Christ, but confined its specific criticism to the Old Testament. Supernatural Religion, on the contrary, touched the very vitals of Christianity by assaulting the supernatural in the life of Christ. English orthodoxy had learned nothing from deism, it was not willing to learn anything from Germany. So the attack caused profound emotion and alarm. The strength of the book was due first of all to the facts that its author carried the art of the popularizer to a high pitch of perfection, and that he used his art in the interest of a dogmatic thesis. As a historical critic he took his responsibility quite as lightly as the positive dogmatist on the other side took his. His art was not cramped or confined by original learning. He was fairly well read in German critical scholarship, — an accomplishment decidedly rare in the England of that day. His book is part of the German invasion of England. But, while he massed the conclusions of German scholarship in sweeping and undiscriminating ways, he was altogether lacking in the intellectual restraints of first-hand knowl-
edge. And he rode the argument from silence till its back was raw. Henry S. Nash.
Bibliography: M. H. Habershon, The Wave of Scepticism and the Rock of Truth: a Reply to "Supernatural Religion," London, 1875; J. Kennedy, A Brief Defence of Supernatural Christianity, being a Review of the Philosophical Principles . of " Supernatural Religion," ib. 1875; C. A. Row, The Supernatural in the New Testament Possible, Credible, and Historical, ib. 1875; M. F. Sadler, The Lost Gospel and its Contents; or, the Author of " Supernatural Religion " refuted by himself, ib. 1876; J. B. Lightfoot, Essays on . " Supernatural Religion," ib. 1889 (generally regarded as a complete rejoinder). Many of the later works on the criticism of the Gospels (see under Gospel and Gospels) remark on the subject of this article.
SUPERNATURALISM. See Rationalism and Sufernaturalism .