Martin Farquhar Tupper - Probabilities
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Martin Farquhar Tupper >> Probabilities
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The opening scene to the book of Job has vexed the faith of many very
needlessly: to my mind, nothing was more likely to have literally and
really happened. It is one of those few places where we get an insight
into what is going on elsewhere: it is a lifting off the curtain of
eternity for once, revealing the magnificent simplicities constantly
presented in the halls of heaven. And I am moved to speak about it
here, because I think a plain statement of its sublime probabilities
will be acceptable to many: especially if they have been harassed by the
doubts of learned men respecting the authorship of that rare history. It
signifies nothing who recorded the circumstances and conversations, so
long as they were true, and really happened: given power, opportunity,
and honesty, a life of Dr. Johnson would be just as fair in fact, if
written by Smollett, as by Boswell, or himself. Whether then Job, the
wealthy prince of Uz, or Abraham, or Moses, or Elisha, or Eliphaz, or
whoever else, have placed the words on record, there they stand, true;
and the whole book in all its points was anteriorly likely to have been
decreed a component part of revelation. Without it, there would have
been wanting some evidence of a godly worship among men through the long
and dreary interval of several hundred years: there would never have
been given for man's help the example of a fortitude, and patience, and
trust in God most brilliant; of a faith in the resurrection and
redeemer, signal and definite beyond all other texts in Jewish
Scripture: as well as of a human knowledge of God in his works beyond
all modern instance. However, the excellences of that narrative are
scarcely our theme: we return to the starting-post of its probability,
especially with reference to its supernatural commencement. What we have
shown credible, many pages back, respecting good and evil and the
denizens of heaven, finds a remarkable after-proof in the two first
chapters of Job; and for some such reason, by reference, these two
chapters were themselves anteriorly to have been expected.
Let us see what happened:
"There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before
the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan,
whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going
to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the
Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is
none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that
feareth God and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said,
Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and
about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast
blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the
land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all he hath, and he will
curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that
he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So
Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord."--[Job 1. 6-13.]
It is a most stately drama: any paraphrase would spoil its dignity, its
quiet truth, its unpretending, yet gigantic lineaments. Note: in
allusion to our views of evil, that Satan also comes among the sons of
God: note, the generous dependence placed by a generous Master on his
servant well-upheld by that Master's own free grace: note, Satan's
constant imputation against piety when blessed of God with worldly
wealth, Doth he serve for naught? I can discern no cause wherefore all
this scene should not have truly happened; not as in vision of some holy
man, but as in fact. Let us read on, before further comment:
"Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself
before the Lord. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? And
Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth,
and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast
thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the
earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth
evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me
against him, to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered the Lord,
and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his
life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh,
and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto Satan,
Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life. So Satan went forth from
the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils, from the sole
of his foot unto his crown."
Some such scene, displaying the devil's malice, slandering sneers, and
permitted power, recommends itself to my mind as antecedently to have
been looked for: in order that we might know from what quarter many of
life's evils come; with what aims and ends they are directed; what
limits are opposed to our foe; and Who is on our side. We needed some
such insight into the heavenly places; some such hint of what is
continually going on before the Lord's tribunal; we wanted this plain
and simple setting forth of good and evil in personal encounter, of
innocence awhile given up to malice for its chastening and its triumph.
Lo, all this so probable scene is here laid open to us, and many,
against reason, disbelieve it!
Note, in allusion to our after-theme, the _locus_ of heaven, that there
is some such usual place of periodical gathering. Note, the open
unchiding loveliness dwelling in the Good One's words, as contrasted
with the subtle, slanderous hatred of the Evil. And then the vulgar
proverb, Skin for skin: this pious Job is so intensely selfish, that let
him lose what he may, he heeds it not; he cares for nothing out of his
own skin. And there are many more such notabilities.
Why did I produce these passages at length? For their Doric simplicity;
for their plain and masculine features; for their obvious truthfulness;
for their manifest probability as to fact, and expectability previously
to it. Why on earth should they be doubted in their literal sense? and
were they not more likely to have happened than to have been invented?
We have no such geniuses now as this writer must have been, who by the
pure force of imagination could have created that tableau. Milton had
Job to go to. Simplicity is proof presumptive in favour of the plain
inspiration of such passages: for the plastic mind which could conceive
so just a sketch, would never have rested satisfied, without having
painted and adorned it picturesquely. Such rare flights of fancy are
always made the most of.
One or two thoughts respecting Job's trial. That he should at last give
way, was only probable: he was, in short, another Adam, and had another
fall; albeit he wrestled nobly. Worthy was he to be named among God's
chosen three, "Noah, Daniel, and Job:" and worthy that the Lord should
bless his latter end. This word brings me to the point I wish to touch
on; the great compensation which God gave to Job.
Children can never be regarded as other than individualities: and
notwithstanding Eastern feelings about increase in quantity, its quality
is, after all, the question for the heart. I mean that many children to
be born, is but an inadequate return for many children dying. If a
father loses a well-beloved son, it is small recompense of that aching
void that he gets another. For this reason of the affections, and
because I suppose that thinkers have sympathized with me in the
difficulty, I wish to say a word about Job's children, lost and found.
It will clear away what is to some minds a moral and affectionate
objection. Now, this is the state of the case.
The patriarch is introduced to us as possessing so many camels, and
oxen, and so forth; and ten children. All these are represented to him
by witnesses, to all appearance credible, as dead; and he mourns for his
great loss accordingly. Would not a merchant feel to all intents and
purposes a ruined man, if he received a clear intelligence from
different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses
had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience
follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or
false. Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the
good man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by
the double of every thing once lost--his children remain the same in
number, ten. It seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., nor
children, really had been killed. Satan might have meant it so, and
schemed it; and the singly-coming messengers believed it all, as also
did the well-enduring Job. But the scriptural word does not go to say
that these things happened; but that certain emissaries said they
happened. I think the devil missed his mark: that the messengers were
scared by some abortive diabolic efforts; and that, (with a natural
increase of camels, &c., meanwhile,) the patriarch's paternal heart was
more than compensated at the last, by the restoration of his own dear
children. They were dead, and are alive again; they were lost, and are
found. Like Abraham returning from Mount Calvary with Isaac, it was the
Resurrection in a figure.
If to this view objection is made, that, because the boils of Job were
real, therefore, similarly real must be all his other evils; I reply,
that in the one temptation, the suffering was to be mental; in the
other, bodily. In the latter case, positive, personal pain, was the gist
of the matter: in the former, the heart might be pierced, and the mind
be overwhelmed, without the necessity of any such incurable affliction
as children's deaths amount to. God's mercy may well have allowed the
evil one to overreach himself; and when the restoration came, how double
was the joy of Job over those ten dear children.
Again, if any one will urge that, in the common view of the case, Job at
the last really has twice as many children as before, for that he has
ten old ones in heaven, and ten new ones on earth: I must, in answer,
think that explanation as unsatisfactory to us, as the verity of it
would have been to Job. Affection, human affection, is not so
numerically nor vicariously consoled: and it is, perhaps, worth while
here to have thrown out (what I suppose to be) a new view of the case,
if only to rescue such wealth as children from the infidel's sneer of
being confounded with such wealth as camels. Moreover, such a paternal
reward was anteriorly more probable.
JOSHUA.
How many of our superficial thinkers have been staggered at the great
miracle recorded of Joshua; and how few, even of the deeper sort,
comparatively, may have discerned its aptness, its science, and its
anterior likelihood: "Sun! stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, moon,
in the valley of Ajalon." Now, consider, for we hope to vindicate even
this stupendous event from the charge of improbability.
Baal and Ashtaroth, chief idols of the Canaanites, were names for sun
and moon. It would manifestly be the object of God and His ambassador to
cast utter scorn on such idolatry. And what could be more apt than that
Joshua, commissioned to extirpate the corrupted race, should
miraculously be enabled, as it were, to bind their own gods to aid in
the destruction of such votaries?
Again: what should Joshua want with the moon for daylight, to help him
to rout the foes of God more fiercely? Why not, according to the
astronomical ignorance of those days, let her sail away, unconsorted by
the sun, far beyond the valley of Ajalon? There was a reason, here, of
secret, unobtruded science: if the sun stopped, the moon must stop too;
that is to say, both apparently: the fact being that the earth must, for
the while, rest on its axis. This, I say, is a latent, scientific hint;
and so, likewise, is the accompanying mention as a fact, that the Lord
immediately "rained great stones out of heaven" upon the flying host.
For would it not be the case that, if the diurnal rotation of earth were
suddenly to stop, the impetus of motion would avail to raise high into
the air by centrifugal force, and fling down again by gravity, such
unanchored things as fragments of rock?
Once more: our objector will here perhaps inquire, Why not then command
the earth to stop--and not the sun and moon? if thus probably Joshua or
his Inspirer knew better? Answer. Only let a reasonable man consider
what would have been the moral lesson both to Israelite and to
Canaanite, if the great successor of Moses had called out,
incomprehensibly to all, "Earth, stand thou still on thine axis;"--and
lo! as if in utter defiance of such presumption, and to vindicate openly
the heathen gods against the Jewish, the very sun and moon in heaven
stopped, and glared on the offender. I question whether such a noon-day
miracle might not have perverted to idolatry the whole believing host:
and almost reasonably too. The strictly philosophical terms would have
entirely nullified the whole moral influence. God in his word never
suffers science to hinder the progress of truth: a worldly philosophy
does this almost in every instance, darkening knowledge with a cloud of
words: but the science of the Bible is usually concealed in some
neighbouring hint quite handy to the record of the phenomena expressed
in ordinary language. In fact, for all common purposes, no astronomer
finds fault with such phrases as the moon rising, or the sun setting: he
speaks according to the appearance, though he knows perfectly well that
the earth is the cause of it, and not the sun or moon. Carry this out in
Joshua's case.
On the whole, the miracle was very plain, very comprehensible, and very
probable. It had good cause: for Canaan felt more confidence in the
protection of his great and glorious Baal, than stiff-necked Judah in
his barely-seen divinity: and surely it was wise to vindicate the true
but invisible God by the humiliation of the false and far-seen idol.
This would constitute to all nations the quickly-rumoured proof that
Jehovah of the Israelites was God in heaven above as well as on the
earth beneath. And, considering the peculiar idolatries of Canaan, it
seems to me that no miracle could have been better placed and better
timed--in other words, anteriorly more probable--than the command of
obedience to the sun and to the moon. I suppose that few persons who
read this book will be unaware, that the circumstance is alluded to as
well in that honest heathen, old Herodotus, as in the learned Jew
Josephus. The volumes are not near me for reference to quotations: but
such is fact: it will be found in Herodotus, about the middle of
Euterpe, connected with an allusion to the analogous case of Hezekiah.
No miracles, on the whole (to take one after-view of the matter), could
have been better tested: for two armies (not to mention all surrounding
countries) must have seen it plainly and clearly: if then it had never
occurred, what a very needless exposure of the falsity of the Jewish
Scriptures! These were open, published writings, accessible to all:
Cyrus and Darius and Alexander read them, and Ethiopian eunuchs;
Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, with all other nations of the earth, had
free access to those records. Only imagine if some recent history of
England, Adolphus's, or Stebbing's, contained an account of a certain
day in George the Fourth's reign having had twenty-four hour's daylight
instead of the usual admixture; could the intolerable falsehood last a
minute? Such a placard would be torn away from the records of the land
the moment a rash hand had fixed it there. But, if the matter were
fact, how could any historian neglect it?--In one sense, the very
improbability of such a marvel being recorded, argues the probability of
it having actually occurred.
Much more might here be added: but our errand is accomplished, if any
stumbling-block had been thus easily removed from some erring thinker's
path. Surely, we have given him some reason for faith's due acceptance
of Joshua's miracle.
THE INCARNATION.
In touching some of the probabilities of our blessed Lord's career, it
would be difficult to introduce and illustrate the subject better, than
by the following anecdote. Whence it is derived, has escaped my memory;
but I have a floating notion that it is told of Socrates in Xenophon or
Plato. At any rate, by way of giving fixity thereto and picturesqueness,
let us here report the story as of the Athenian Solomon:
Surrounded by his pupils, the great heathen Reasoner was being
questioned and answering questions: in particular respecting the
probability that the universal God would be revealed to his creatures.
"What a glorious King would he appear!" said one, possibly the brilliant
Alcibiades: "What a form of surpassing beauty!" said another, not
unlikely the softer Crito. "Not so, my children," answered Socrates.
"Kings and the beautiful are few, and the God, if he came on earth as an
exemplar, would in shape and station be like the greater number."
"Indeed, Master? then how should he fail of being made a King of men,
for his goodness, and his majesty, and wisdom?" "Alas! my children," was
pure Reason's just rejoinder, "[Greek: oi pleiones kakoi], most men are
so wicked that they would hate his purity, despise his wisdom, and as
for his majesty, they could not truly see it. They might indeed admire
for a time, but thereafter (if the God allowed it), they would even hunt
and persecute and kill him." "Kill him!" exclaimed the eager group of
listeners; "kill Him? how should they, how could they, how dare they
kill God?" "I did not say, kill God," would have been wise Socrates's
reply, "for God existeth ever: but men in enmity and envy might even be
allowed to kill that human form wherein God walked for an ensample. That
they could, were God's humility: that they should, were their own
malice: that they dared, were their own grievous sin and peril of
destruction. Yea," went on the keen-eyed sage, "men would slay him by
some disgraceful death, some lingering, open, and cruel death, even such
as the death of slaves!"--Now slaves, when convicted of capital crime,
were always crucified.
Whatever be thought of the genuineness of the anecdote, its uses are the
same to us. Reason might have arrived at the salient points of Christ's
career, and at His crucifixion!
I will add another topic: How should the God on earth arrive there? We
have shown that His form would probably be such as man's; but was he to
descend bodily from the atmosphere at the age of full-grown perfection,
or to rise up out of the ground with earthquakes and fire, or to appear
on a sudden in the midst of the market-place, or to come with legions of
his heavenly host to visit his Temple? There was a wiser way than these,
more reasonable, probable, and useful. Man required an exemplar for
every stage of his existence up to the perfection of his frame. The
infant, and the child, and the youth, would all desire the human-God to
understand their eras; they would all, if generous and such as he would
love, long to feel that He has sympathy with them in every early trial,
as in every later grief. Moreover, the God coming down with supernatural
glories or terrors would be a needless expense of ostentatious power.
He, whose advent is intended for the encouragement of men to exercise
their reason and their conscience; whose exhortation is "he that hath
ears to hear, let him hear;" that pure Being, who is the chief preacher
of Humility, and the great teacher of man's responsible
condition--surely, he would hardly come in any way astoundingly
miraculous, addressing his advent not to faith, but to sight, and
challenging the impossibility of unbelief by a galaxy of spiritual
wonders. Yet, if He is to come at all--and a word or two of this
hereafter--it must be either in some such strange way; or in the usual
human way; or in a just admixture of both. As the first is needlessly
overwhelming to the responsible state of man, so the second is
needlessly derogatory to the pure essence of God; and the third idea
would seem to be most probable. Let us guess it out. Why should not this
highest Object of faith and this lowest Subject of obedience be born,
seemingly by human means, but really by divine? Why should there not be
found some unspotted holy virgin, betrothed to a just man and soon to be
his wife, who, by the creative power of Divinity, should miraculously
conceive the shape divine, which God himself resolved to dwell in? Why
should she not come of a lineage and family which for centuries before
had held such expectation? Why should not the just man, her affianced,
who had never known her yet, being warned of God in a dream of this
strange, immaculate conception, "fear not to take unto him Mary his
wife," lest the unbelieving world should breathe slander on her purity,
albeit he should really know her not until after the Holy Birth. There
is nothing unreasonable here; every step is previously credible: and
invention's self would be puzzled to devise a better scheme. The
Virgin-born would thus be a link between God and man, the great
Mediator: his natures would fulfil every condition required of their
double and their intimate conjunction. He would have arrived at humanity
without its gross beginnings, and have veiled his Godhead for a while in
a pure though mortal tenement. He would have participated in all the
tenderness of woman's nature, and thus have reached the keenest
sensibilities of men.
Themes such as these are inexhaustible: and I am perpetually conscious
of so much left unsaid, that at every section I seem to have said next
to nothing. Nevertheless, let it go; the good seed yet shall germinate.
"Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shall find it after many
days."
It may to some minds be a desideratum, to allude to the anterior
probability that God should come in the flesh. Much of this has been
anticipated under the head of Visible Deity and elsewhere; as this
treatise is so short, one may reasonably expect every reader to take it
in regular course. For additional considerations: the Benevolent Maker
would hardly leave his creatures to perish, without one word of warning
or one gleam of knowledge. The question of the Bible is considered
further on: but exclusively of written rules and dogmas, it was likely
that Our Father should commission chosen servants of his own, orally to
teach and admonish; because it would be in accordance with man's
reasonable nature, that he should best and easiest learn from the
teaching his brethren. So then, after all lesser ambassadors had failed,
it was to be expected that He should send the highest one of all,
saying, "They will reverence my Son." We know that this really did occur
by innumerable proofs, and wonderful signs posterior: and now, after the
event, we discern it to have been anteriorly probable.
It was also probable in another light. This world is a world of
incarnations; nothing has a real and potential existence, which is not
embodied in some form. A theory is nothing; if no personal philosopher,
no sect, or school of learners, takes it up. An opinion is mere air;
without the multitude to give it all the force of a mighty wind. An
idea is mere spiritual light; if unclad in deeds, or in words written or
spoken. So, also, of the Godhead: He would be like all these. He would
pervade words spoken, as by prophets or preachers: He would include
words written, as in the Bible: He would influence crowds with
spirit-stirring sentiments: He would embody the theory of all things in
one simple, philosophic form. As this material world is constituted, God
could not reveal himself at all, excepting by the aid of matter. I mean;
even granting that He spiritually inspired a prophet, still the man was
necessary: he becomes an inspired man; not mere inspiration. So, also,
of a book; which is the written labour of inspired men. There is no
doing without the Humanity of God, so far as this world is concerned,
any more than His Deity can be dispensed with, regarding the worlds
beyond worlds, and the ages of ages, and the dread for ever and ever.
MAHOMETANISM.
It seems expedient that, in one or two instances, I should attempt the
illustration of this rule of probability in matters beyond the Bible. As
very fair ones, take Mahometanism and Romanism. And first of the former.
At the commencement of the seventh century, or a little previously to
that era, we know that a fierce religion sprang up, promulgated by a
false prophet. I wish briefly to show that this was antecedently to have
been expected.
In a moral point of view, the Christian world, torn by all manner of
schisms, and polluted by all sorts of heresies, had earned for the human
race, whether accepting the gospel or refusing it, some signal and
extensive punishment at the hands of Him, who is the Great Retributor as
well as the Munificent Rewarder. In a physical point of view, the
civilized kingdoms of the earth had become stagnant, arguing that
corrupt and poisonous calm which is the herald of a coming tempest. The
heat of a true religion had cooled down into lukewarm disputations about
nothings, scholastical and casuistic figments; whilst at the same time
the prevalence of peaceful doctrines had amalgamated all classes into a
luxurious indolence. Passionate Man is not to be so satisfied; and the
time was fully come for the rise of some fierce spirit, who should
change the tinsel theology of the crucifix for the iron religion of the
sword: who should blow in the ears of the slumbering West the shrill
war-blast of Eastern fervencies; who should exchange the dull rewards of
canonization due to penance, or an after-life voluntary humiliation
under pseudo-saints and angels, for the human and comprehensible joys of
animal appetite and military glory: who should enlist under his banner
all the frantic zeal, all the pent-up licentiousness, all the
heart-burning hatreds of mankind, stifled either by a positive
barbarism, or the incense-laden cloud of a scarcely-masked idolatry.
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