Note 11 — Chapter II · THE EXTRAORDINARY STATE OF APOLOGETICS WITH REGARD TO MIRACLES

In all these examples the explanations offered to us seem to come to this—the phenomena were purely natural from start to finish, only they occurred opportunely and were afterwards poetically embellished; or they contain a spiritual meaning. Perhaps the most extraordinary argument ever brought forward concerning the “sun standing still” is that urged by the learned Bishop Westcott in his Gospel of the Resurrection. He says (pp. 38–9): “It would be positively immoral for us now to pray that the tides or the sun should not rise on a particular day; but, as long as the idea of the physical law which ruled them was unformed or indistinct, the prayer would have been reasonable, and (may we not suppose?) the fulfilment also.” It is difficult to believe that these can really be the words of one of the Church’s greatest scholars. To what extent will not bias influence the brain to use its powers perversely? It is far-fetched arguments of this kind that increase rather than dispel doubt in the normal mind, and especially when they are brought forward in all seriousness by the very pillars of the Church. We are sometimes asked to banish our doubts and “craving for intellectualism,” as it is called, and “to come to Christ as little children and in Him to find rest.” Certainly it is only by letting our minds sink to the level of a little child’s, or, what is the same thing, to the level of a primeval man’s, that we could bring ourselves to accept such childish nonsense. A child asks for the moon, but does not know the physical impossibility of obtaining his desire. His prayer is therefore reasonable, and (may we not suppose?) the fulfilment also. This unconscious trifling with the truth—for in reality it is nothing else—reminds me of a passage in Dr. Smith’s orthodox, but somewhat out of date, Dictionary of the Bible, where an attempt is made to reconcile the Mosaic narrative of Creation with the discoveries of modern science. It runs as follows: “The very act of creation must have been the introducing of laws; but, when the work was finished, those laws may have suffered some modification.”11