Showing Him a Miracle

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 27, 1865

Showing Him a Miracle.

EARNEST RENAN having said, in his "Life of Jesus," that the proper way of proving the reality of a miracle is to show one, a pamphleteer "shows" him one in a letter "Upon the Establishment of the Christian Religion," which we here translate.

SIR:—Permit me to-day to draw your attention again to the establishment of the Christian religion, a fact upon which we naturally differ in opinion. Like you, when I have striven to identify its cause with the mere forces of man, I have failed in my endeavor. The supernatural then has been the only conducting thread which has helped me to escape from the labyrinth where I see you continually seeking to rectify yourself without ever doing it, and condemned to escape therefrom only when you shall have proved that there is nothing miraculous in the establishment of Christianity. Pardon this little digression; I go straight to the work. There is a religion, called the Christian, whose founder was Jesus, named the Christ. This religion, which has lasted eighteen centuries, and which calls itself the natural development of that Judaism which ascends near to the cradle of the world, had the apostles for its first propagators. When these men wished to establish it, they had for adversaries: The national pride of the Jews; The implacable hatred of the Sanhedrim; The brutal despotism of the Roman Emperors; The raileries and attacks of the philosophers; The libertinism and caste-spirit of the pagan priest; The savage and cruel ignorance of the masses; The fagots and bloody games of the circus.

They had an enemy in Every miser; Every debauched man; Every drunkard; Every thief; Every murderer; Every proud man; Every slanderer; Every liar.

Not one of the vices, in fact, which abuse our poor humanity, which did not constitute itself their adversary.

To combat so many enemies and surmount so many obstacles they had only Their ignorance; Their poverty; Their obscurity; Their weakness; Their fewness; The Cross.

If you had been their cotemporary at the moment when they began their work, and Peter had said to you: "Join with us, for we are going to the conquest of the world; before our word, pagan temples shall crumble, and their idols shall fall upon their faces; the philosophers shall be convicted of folly; from the throne of Cæsar we shall hurl the Roman eagle, and in its place we shall plant the Cross; we shall be the teachers of the world; the ignorant and the learned will declare themselves our disciples!" Hearing him speak thus, you would have said: "Be silent, imbecile." And as you are tolerant from nature and principle, you would have defended him before the Sanhedrim, and have counseled it to shut up the fisherman of Bethsaida and his companions in a madhouse. And yet, sir, what you would have thought a notable madness, is to-day a startling reality with which I leave you face to face.