III.

The way is found. Man has the gift of believing not only the things he sees and knows by his own intellect, but also those he does not see and which he learns through tradition. He admits, he affirms with confidence the facts which are asserted by others, when the witnesses seem competent and reliable, even in cases where he cannot verify their truth or submit them to a rigid criticism. Thus in the authority of witnesses we have that which constitutes faith; faith properly so called, which is the belief in the divine truths, as well as purely human faith, which is confidence in the knowledge of another. Both require the same act of intelligence; but, if it concerns the affairs of this world, the authority of the witness is easily established, for he has only to prove his competence and his veracity; while for superhuman things it is necessary that he himself should be superhuman, that he should prove it to us, that we should feel by the way he speaks that he knows and has dwelt in the heaven of which he is speaking, and that he has descended from it. If he is only a man, he is without a claim upon us. Manifest signs of his mission and authority are necessary; such signs must be unusual and incomprehensible; they must command respect and force conviction; they must be miraculous facts entirely beyond mere human power.

Such is the supreme and necessary condition for every solution of these natural problems, or, what amounts to the same, for any great and true religion. The appearance of a being eminently divine is necessary, who will show the character of his mission and his right to claim obedience by miracles. Miracles and religion are, then, two correlative terms, two _inseparable_ expressions. Do not try to preserve one and get rid of the other; the attempt will fail. If you could effect this divorce, both would disappear. Religion without miracles is only a human doctrine; it is simply philosophy, which has no right to penetrate the mysteries of the infinite, and which can only speak in hypotheses, without force and without authority.

There is no way, then, to help it: miracles must be admitted. This is the great stumbling-block.

It is said: "That would be allowed when the world was young, and when man himself, ignorant and a novice, had not demonstrated for so many centuries the stability of nature's laws! {465} Then he could suppose that there was some hidden power, which at certain times and for certain ends played with these laws and suspended them at will; but to-day, in this advanced age, wise as we are, how can we be expected to bend our enlightened reason to these uncertainties? how can we give science these injurious contradictions?"

Yes, you believe yourselves to be extremely learned. You think that you thoroughly understand the laws of nature, because from time to time you have wrested some of her secrets from her; and these being always more or less marvellous, you immediately conclude that she has spoken her last word! Strange assumption! Look behind, and you are right, you have accomplished an immense distance. Look ahead, and the end is as far as in the days of your fathers, the distance to be overcome remains always the same, you have not advanced a single step. Far from adding to your presumption, the progress of your knowledge should rather make you feel more keenly your ignorance. The more conquests you make, the more your radical impotence is shown. Yet you presume to say that the laws of this world allow or do not allow this or that, as if you completely understood them, while at every moment new and unexpected facts, which are granted by yourselves, defeat your calculations, mock your predictions, and derogate from laws which you proclaim absolute and eternal!

No one doubts that a general and permanent order reigns in this world; but that this order is inexorably determined in its trifling details, that nothing can alter it, that it will remain the same for ever, you cannot say any more than can we; or rather, you, as well as we, are living witnesses that an unbending mechanism does not govern all things here below.

Indeed, what do you do, you, a feeble atom, an imperceptible creature, when you forbid the Sovereign Master the great ordainer of things, the least deviation, the slightest infraction, of the laws he has made? Do you not violate these laws so far as you are able every day, every hour, and in every way? The plant that the natural order would cause to bloom in summer, you cover with flowers in winter; you change the flavor and the form of the fruit, and the color of the flowers; you bend the twigs and branches, and make them grow against their nature. And it is not only over vegetation and inanimate objects that you exercise your caprices. How many living beings have you transformed, and completely altered their natural mode of life! What unexpected missions and what strange destinies has your fancy made them undergo!

It may be said that these are only little miracles; but after all, how do the greatest ones differ from them? They are both infractions upon the apparent order of nature. Is the real order subverted by this? Is the relation of cause and effect broken because our gardeners derive and propagate from a graft new and innumerable varieties? No; and since this is true, there can be no good reason for refusing to admit a series of deviations above these of every-day experience. The miraculous cures, the wonderful transitions from extreme feebleness to health, and the intuitive power of a saint, which enables him to read the very thoughts of men, can all be effected without compromising or menacing the universal order. Everything depends upon the degree of power you grant the Author of these acts, to him who, holding all things in his hand, can make the exception as easily as the rule.

{466}

There is but one way to deny absolutely the possibility of miracles, which has been in all times by instinct and by nature affirmed by the human race, and that is to suppress God and profess atheism, either atheism simply in its gross crudity, or that more delicate and better disguised form which finds favor in our times, and which honors God by pronouncing his name, but gives him no other care than the servile protection and the dull supervision of the worlds he has created, but which he does not govern. If this is the way in which God must be considered, if fatalism is the law of the world, let us speak no more of miracles or of the supernatural; for this is already decided, and there can be no discussion about it. If, on the contrary, entering into yourselves, you feel that you are intelligent and free, ask yourself, Where did I get these wonderful gifts, liberty and intelligence? Do you get them from yourself? Are they born in you and only for you? Do you possess them completely? Do they not emanate from a higher, more perfect, and more abundant source, in a word, from God himself? Then, if God, if the Omnipotent, is also the sovereign intelligence and the sovereign freedom, how do you dare to forbid him to mingle with affairs here below, to follow with attention the beings he has created, to watch over their destiny, and to declare his wishes to them by striking manifestations of his power? He can most certainly do this, for he is free and all-powerful. With the idea of God thus presented to the mind, a complete and living God, the question is completely transformed. And it must be acknowledged that we have no longer to demonstrate the possibility of miracles: it is for our opponents to prove their impossibility.

But the great critics of to-day, at least those who have the most ability, have carefully refrained from attempting this task. They attack supernatural facts in a different way, not as being impossible in themselves, but as lacking proof: in the place of openly denying them, they try to weaken the authority of those who attest them. What testimony would then be destroyed by them? Let it be noted that in the historical statement of natural facts, even those which are extraordinary and more or less uncertain, the testimony of men, sustained and strengthened by constant tradition, is allowed to be sufficient; and, indeed, to what, in most cases, would our historical knowledge amount, if this sort of proof were not admissible? But for supernatural facts they are far less accommodating. Many other guarantees are demanded. They require ocular proof, which must be made in a proper way and duly announced by them to be certain. This is the condition upon which they offer to yield; without it, there is to be no belief. Whence it would follow, that, whenever the Divinity proposed to do anything beyond the ordinary laws of nature, it would be bound to give these opponents notice, so that they could produce their witnesses. The work would then proceed in their presence, and, when the miracle was accomplished, they would immediately begin their statement. Perhaps our readers may think that we are trying to excite a laugh at their expense, or, at least, that we are exaggerating. Such is not the case; we are only echoing their own words, and we could quote from the very page where this system is set forth as the sole method of establishing the truth of miracles. However, it is useless to dwell upon this way of asking for impossible proofs and proclaiming a readiness to believe, but placing one's belief upon unheard-of conditions. This is only a subterfuge, an attempt to evade what they dare not solve, and an effort to destroy in practice that which they seem theoretically to concede.

{467}

There are others more frank, less diplomatic, and perhaps also less learned, who call things by their right name, and who loudly declare a new dogma as the great principle of reformed criticism, and this is the complete denial of supernatural facts. The manner, the air, and the lofty disdain with which they look down upon those simple souls, who are credulous enough to believe that the Almighty is also intelligent and free, should be seen. They announce that all intercourse between them and us is broken, that we have nothing to do with their books; they do not care for our praise or for our censure, since they do not write for us. One is almost tempted to repay their disdain with interest; but there is something better to be done. We have just shown that man, with his limited power and liberty, can modify the laws of nature. Let us see, now, if God in his infinite sphere has not the same power, and if there is not some well-known and striking example of it.

There is one instance which both in time and by its evidence is the most convincing of all. It is not one of those facts which we have learned by narration or by testimony, whether written or traditional. All narratives can be contested and every witness can be suspected; but here the fact is its own witness, it is clear and irrefutable. It is the history of our first parents, of the commencement of the human race; for our race has had a commencement, of this there can be no question. No sophist would dare to say of man, as they have said of the universe, that he has existed from all eternity. On this point science confirms tradition, and determines by certain signs the _époque_ when this earth became habitable. Upon a certain day, then, man was born; and he was born, as it is hardly necessary for us to say, in an entirely different manner from that in which one is born to-day. He was the first of his kind: he was without father or mother. The laws of nature, on this occasion at least, did not have their effect. A superior power, working in his own way, has accomplished something beyond these laws, and in a more simple and prompt manner, and the world has seen an event take place which is evidently supernatural.

This is the reason why some _savants_ have taken so much pains to find a plausible way to explain scientifically, as a natural fact, this birth of the first man. Some would persuade us that this enigma is explained by the transformation of species-- a singular way of avoiding a miracle, only to fall into a chimera. Indeed, if anything is proved at all and becomes more certain as the world grows older, it is that the preservation of species is an essential principle of all living beings. You may try, but you cannot succeed in infringing upon this law. The crossings between closely allied species, and the varieties produced by them, are smitten after a certain time with sterility. Are not these impotent attempts, these phantoms of quickly disappearing creations, the manifest sign that the creation of a really new species is forbidden to man? Yet would they try to convince us that in the earliest ages, in times of ignorance, these kinds of transformations were accomplished without any effort; while to-day, notwithstanding the perfection of instruments and of methods, notwithstanding the aid of every sort that we draw from science, they are radically impossible! Try, then, to make a man. But, we are answered, this is a matter of time. It may be so. But only begin, let us see you at work, and you can have as much time as you please. {468} Take thousands of centuries, and yet you can never transform the most intelligent baboon into a man, even of the most ignorant and degraded type.

This dream having disappeared, another is invented. The absurdity of the transformation of species is admitted, and another theory is adopted, that of spontaneous generation. The intention is to establish that man can be born either with or without parents; that nature is induced by various circumstances to choose one of these two ways, and that one is not miraculous more than the other. It is well known what vigorous demonstrations and what irrefutable evidence science brings against this theory; yet, in spite of its absurdity, it has been often reproduced and considered worthy of refutation. But supposing that doubt was yet possible, and that we could believe in the birth of little beings, without a germ, without a Creator; now could this mode of production aid us in solving the question of the birth of the first man? What is the highest pretension of the defenders of spontaneous generation? In what state would they put man in the world? As an embryo, a foetus, or as one newly born? For no one is permitted to believe in the sudden birth of an adult, in possession of a body, of physical power, and of mental faculties. Yet this is exactly the way in which the new inhabitant of the earth must have been created. He must have been born a man, or else he could not have protected himself, he could not have found food to prolong his life, and he could not have perpetuated his race as the father of the human family. If he had been born in the state of infancy, without a mother to protect and nourish him, he would have perished in a single day of cold or hunger. If this theory, then, had been able to answer the tests to which it has succumbed, it would yet be of no service in clearing up the question we are discussing. The only way to solve it satisfactorily is to admit frankly that it must have been something superior and unknown to the laws of nature. In order to explain the appearance of the first man upon this earth, the man of Genesis is necessary, made by the hand of the Creator.

This is not a _jeu d'esprit_, an artifice, or a paradox. It is the undeniable truth. It must be admitted by every one who will reflect. Every sound mind, which is in good faith and which carefully considers this question, is invincibly compelled to solve it in the way that it is solved in the book of Genesis. There may be doubts about the complete exactness of certain words and details; but the principal fact, the supernatural fact, the intervention of a Creator, reason must accept as the best and most sensible explanation, or rather as the only possible explanation of that other necessary fact, the birth of an adolescent or an adult man.

Here, then, we have a miracle well and duly proved. If this were the only one, it would be sufficient to justify belief in the supernatural, to destroy every system of absolute fatalism, to demonstrate the freedom of the Divinity, and to assert his true position. But it may be well for us to say, if since the existence of the human race it had received no proof of the care of its Creator other than this miraculous act in which it was created, if no intelligence, no help, or no light had come from above, what would it know now of the mysteries of its destiny, of all these great problems which beset it and occupy its attention? The creation of man does not give us the reason why he was created. {469} This is not one of those miracles from which the light bursts forth to flood the world. It is a manifestation of divine power: it does not teach us the divine will. We shall see another fact, on the contrary, which, though not less mysterious, will speak far more clearly. This did not happen amid the fleeting shadows of chaos upon the scarcely hardened earth; but in a completely civilized world, and at a historical period which can be fully investigated, this new miracle took place. The clouds will disappear, and the broad day will gladden all hearts. Blessed Light! Long promised and awaited, the complement of man's creation, or, rather, a true and new creation, bringing to humanity, with love and heavenly pardon, the solution of every question, the answer to every doubt!

During the long series of centuries which separates these two great mysteries, these two great supernatural facts, the creation and the redemption of man, the human race, guided by its own light, has not for a moment ceased to search after divine truths and the secret of its destiny. But it has sought ignorantly, it has groped in the dark, and it has wandered astray. In every part of the world the people solved the enigma in their own fashion, each making its own idol. It is a sad, an incoherent spectacle; and of all these curious and imperfect forms of worship, which sometimes become impure and disgusting, there is not one which gives a complete and satisfactory answer to the moral problems with which one is harassed. Their pretended answers really answer nothing, and are but a collection of errors and contradictions.

Has man been created for such ends as these? Has not his Creator, in forming him with his hands, in teaching him by an intimate communication the use of his faculties, made him to see, to love, and to follow the truth? Yes; and this explains the instinctive gleams of truth that are found in every portion of the race; but man has received liberty at the same time that he received intelligence, and it is this supreme gift which assimilates him to his Author, and imposes, together with the honor of personality, the burden of responsibility. He was tried, he had the power to choose, and he chose the bad; he has failed, he has fallen. Clearly the fault was followed by the greatest disorder and distress, and the offended Father withdrew his grace from the disobedient son. They are separated: the erring one, because he fears his Judge; the Judge, from his horror of the sin; but the father lies hid beneath the judge. Will the exile, then, be eternal? No; for the promise is made to the very ones whose fault is punished, and the time of mercy is announced in advance, even at the moment of chastisement.

Every tie is not yet broken between the Creator and this unfaithful race. A single bond is maintained, a handful of worthy servants preserve the benefit of his paternal intercourse. Who can doubt this? For several thousand years the entire human race, in all places and in every zone, bows before the works of nature, deifies them, and adores them. How, then, can it be explained that one little group of men, and only one, remained faithful to the idea of a single God? It may be answered that this is something peculiar to one race; that it embraces more people than is generally supposed; that it is true of all the Semitic tribes as well as of the Hebrews. A truly impartial and exceedingly learned philology, recently published, affirms the contrary. It is demonstrated that the Jews alone were monotheists. {470} Reason certainly cannot forbid us to believe that this unique and isolated fact was providential, since it was at least most extraordinary and marvellous. Thus, while the ancient alliance between man and his Creator continued in a single part of the globe, a part scarcely perceptible in the immense human family, while the divine truth, as yet veiled and incomplete, though without any impure mixture, is revealed as in confidence, and, so to speak, _privately_ to the modest settlement chosen for the designs of God, all the rest of the world is abandoned to chance and wanders at random in religious matters.

Why, then, only in religious matters? Because it was in this that the fault took place. Man has foolishly wished to make himself equal to God in the knowledge of the divine, of the infinite, of those mysteries which no mind can fathom without God's assistance. It is another thing in regard to the knowledge of the finite, to purely human science. God is not jealous of this. What does he say in exiling and chastising the rebel? Work, that is to say, use not only your arms, but your mind; become skilful, powerful, ingenious; make masterpieces; become Homer, Pindar, AEschylus, or Phidias, Ictinus, or Plato. I allow you to do all, save attaining to divine things without my aid. There thou wilt stumble, until I send thee the help I have promised to show thee the way. Thy reason, thy science, and even thy good sense will not prevent thee from becoming an idolater.

Indeed, is it not remarkable that religion in the world of antiquity should be so inferior to the other branches of human understanding? Think of the arts, literature, philosophy; humanity cannot excel them. They were at the summit of civilization. All that youth and experience combined could bring forth of the perfect and the beautiful, you see here. These first attempts are the works of a master, and will live to the latest ages, always inimitable. But return for a moment, consider the various religions, question the priests. What an astonishing disparity! You would believe yourself to be among uncultivated people. Never were such dissimilar productions seen to spring from the same evil at the same time and in the same society. On one side, reason, prudence, justice, and the love of truth; on the other, a degrading excess of falsehood and credulity. It is true that, here and there, under these puerile fables, great truths shine forth; these are the remnants of the primitive alliance between God and his creature; but they are only scattered, and are lost in a torrent of errors. The great fault, the infirmity of these ancient religions, was not the symbolism which surrounded them, but their essential obscurity and sterility. These were not capable of saying a single clear and definite word in regard to the problems of our destiny. Far from making them clear to the great mass of men, they seemed rather to try to conceal them under a thick cloud of enigmas and superstitions.

This was, however, the only moral culture that the human race, evidently punished and separated from God, received for thousands of years. In the place of his priests it had philosophical sects, schools, and books to tell man his duty. But how many profited by this help? Who understood the best, the purest, and the greatest philosophers? How far could their warnings reach? Outside the limits of Athens, the words of Socrates himself could not penetrate to relieve a soul, to break a chain, or to make a virtue take root. Do we say his words? Why, even his death, a wonderful death, the death of a just man, remained unfruitful and ignored!

{471}

The time became critical; pagan society was entering upon its last phase and made its last effort; the empire was just born, and, although it may be said that it could boast, during its long career, of many days of repose and even of greatness, it was not without its revolting scenes; and one can say, without any exaggeration or partisan feeling, that from the reign of Tiberius it was shown by experience that all purely human means to elevate the race were visibly at an end. Then it was that, not far from the region where primitive traditions located the creation of man, under this sky of the Orient which witnessed the first miracle, a second was to be accomplished. A sweet, humble, modest, and at the same time sovereign voice speaks to the people of Judea in language before unknown; speaks words of peace, of love, of sacrifice, and of merciful pardon. Whence does this voice come? Who is this man who says to the unhappy, "Come to me, I will relieve you, I will carry your burdens with you"? He touches the sick with his hand, and they are cured; he gives speech to the mute; he makes the blind see and the deaf hear. As yet there is nothing excepting these things; but this man knows the enigma of this world completely; he knows the real end of life and the true means of attaining it. All these natural problems, the vexation of human reason, he resolves, he explains without an effort and without hesitation. He tells us of the invisible world; he has not imagined it, his eyes have seen it, and he speaks of it as a witness who had but lately left it. What he tells us is unassuming, intelligible to every one, to women, to children, as well as to the learned. How does he come by this marvellous knowledge? Who were his masters and what were his lessons? In his early childhood, before lessons and masters, he knew already more than the synagogue. Studies he never made. He worked with his hands, gaining his daily bread. Do not seek for his master upon this earth: his Master is in the highest of the heavens.

Is not this the witness of whom we have spoken above, the superhuman, the necessary witness for the solution of natural problems and the establishment of true religious dogmas? To say that such a man is more than a man, that he is a being apart from and superior to humanity, is not saying enough. We must learn what he really is. Let us open the candid narratives which preserve the story of his public mission, of his preaching though Judea; open the gospels, where the least incident of his acts, his words, his works, his sufferings, and his bitter agony are written. Let us see what he says of himself. Does he declare himself simply a prophet? Does he believe himself to be only inspired? No; he calls himself the Son of God, not as every other man, remembering Adam, could have been able to say it. No; he meant the Son of God in the exact and literal interpretation of the word, son born directly of the father, the son begotten of the same substance.

Try to force the meaning and distort the texts to make them say less than this, but you cannot succeed. The texts are plain, they are numerous, and without ambiguity. There are only two ways in which the divinity of this man can be denied: either his own testimony must be attacked, if the gospels are admitted to be true; or the gospels themselves must be rejected.

{472}

In order to attack his own evidence, it must be supposed that, by a lack of sagacity, he in good faith formed a wrong judgment about his own origin, or perhaps better, by a deceitful intention, he knowingly attributed to himself a false character. This being, whose incomparable intelligence forces you to place him above humanity, this is he who is not capable of discerning his father. And on the other side, this inimitable moralist, this chaste and beautiful model of all virtues, this is he whom you suspect of a disgraceful artifice. There is no middle course: either this mortal must be the Son of God, as he has declared, or you must put him in the last rank of humanity, among the innocent dupes or the cunning charlatans.

Or, on the contrary, do you wish to attack the gospels? Nothing is less difficult, if you remain at the surface. Arm yourself with irony, provoke the smile, treat everything in a superficial manner, and you will certainly gain the sympathy of the scoffers. But if you wish to investigate the things, and to take, in the name of science, an impartial view, you will be compelled to acknowledge that most of the facts in the gospels are historically established; that they are neither myths nor legends; that the place, the time, and the persons are absolutely put beyond all doubt. What right, then, has any one to refuse credence to this series of facts, where another series, which is admitted, is sustained by no better witnesses, nor more direct proofs, nor any other superiority, except a pretended probability which is determined by each for himself? Nothing can be more arbitrary and less scientific than this way of making a choice, deciding that this evangelist should be implicitly believed when he is mentioning such a speech, but that, when he tells us what he saw himself, he is no longer trustworthy; and that this one, on the contrary, falsifies the discourses that he reports, but that he announces certain facts with the certitude of an ocular witness. All this is only pure caprice. But it is certain that the gospels, however closely they may be examined, bear the criticism successfully, and ever remain imperishable. What book of Herodotus or of Titus Livius carries such an intrinsic evidence of good faith and veracity as the recitals of St. Matthew or of St. John? Are you not charmed with these two apostles, who frankly tell us what they have seen with their eyes and heard with their ears? If you, who were not there and who saw nothing of these things, believe that you can give them a lesson, and tell them, in virtue of your scientific laws, how all these things happened without their understanding them, and by what subterfuges their adorable Master deceived them, it will not be only the orthodox and faithful who will resent and controvert your boldness--voices that you dread more, from the midst of your own ranks, will openly proclaim your falsehoods. [Footnote 101]

[Footnote 101: "The human soul, as some one has said, is great enough to enclose every contrast. There is room in it for a Mohammed or a Cromwell, for fanaticism together with duplicity, for sincerity and hypocrisy. It remains for us to ascertain if this analogy should be extended to the Founder of Christianity. _I do not hesitate to deny it_. His character, when impartially considered, opposes every supposition of this kind. There is in the simplicity of Jesus, in his artlessness, in his candor, in the religious feeling which possessed him so completely, in the absence of all mere personal designs, of every egotistic end, and of all cunning; in a word, there is in all that we know concerning him something which entirely repels the historical comparisons by which M. Rénan has allowed himself to be governed."--M. Edmond Scherer, _Mélanges d'Histoire Réligieuse_, pp. 93, 94.]

After all, suppose they were deceived, that the hero of this great drama was only a skilful impostor, what do you really gain by it? The miracles cannot be thrown aside. On the contrary, you have one miracle more, and one which is more difficult than all the others to explain. It is necessary to account for this most wonderful fact, that cannot be suppressed by any critic, the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire. {473} Take every sentence of the gospels, accept these supernatural facts without reservation, the cures, the exorcisms, the elements stilled, the laws of nature violated or suspended: all these things are not too much, rather they had hardly enough to make us understand the triumphant progress of such a doctrine, in such a time, and among such a people. Nothing less than miracles could transform the world in this manner, changing all the opinions commonly received, completely altering the moral and social state of the people, and not only giving them purer and more enlightened views, but truths which were entirely unknown to them. If, then, you tell the truth, if this stupendous revolution rests upon a comedy, if we must consider the partial miracles false which surround and explain the principal miracle, which precede and seem to prepare and open the way for the great miracle, what will be the result? You have not destroyed, and cannot destroy, the principal miracle: it has become still more miraculous.