Dr. Mozley, however, meets such a difficulty by asserting that there
would be no disadvantage to the Gospel miracles, and no doubt regarding
them involved, if for some later miracles there was evidence as strong
as for those of the Gospel. "All the result would be," he says,
{192}
"that we should admit these miracles over and above the Gospel ones."(1)
He denies the equality of the evidence, however, in any case. "Between
the evidence, then, upon which the Gospel miracles stand, and that for
later miracles we see a broad distinction arising, not to mention
again the nature and type of the Gospel miracles themselves--from the
contemporaneous date of the testimony to them, the character of the
witnesses, the probation of the testimony; especially when we contrast
with these points the false doctrine and audacious fraud which rose up
in later ages, and in connection with which so large a portion of the
later miracles of Christianity made their appearance."(2) We consider
the point touching the type of the Gospel miracles disposed of, and we
may, therefore, confine ourselves to the rest of this argument. If we
look for any external evidence of the miracles of Jesus in any marked
effect produced by them at the time they are said to have occurred, we
find anything but confirmation of the statements of the Gospels. It is
a notorious fact that, in spite of these miracles, very few of the
Jews amongst whom they were performed believed in Jesus, and that
Christianity made its chief converts not where the supposed miracles
took place, but where an account of them was alone given by enthusiastic
missionaries. Such astounding exhibitions of power as raising the dead,
giving sight to the blind, walking on the sea, changing water into wine,
and indefinitely multiplying a few loaves and fishes, not only did not
make any impression on the Jews themselves, but were never heard of out
of Palestine until long after the events are said to have occurred, when
the narrative of them was slowly disseminated by Christian teachers and
writers.
{193}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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