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Evidences of Christianity by William Paley

W >> William Paley >> Evidences of Christianity




It hath been my care in the preceding work to preserve the separation
between evidences and doctrines as inviolable as I could; to remove from
the primary question all considerations which have been unnecessarily
joined with it; and to offer a defence to Christianity which every
Christian might read without seeing the tenets in which he had been
brought up attacked or decried: and it always afforded a satisfaction to
my mind to observe that this was practicable; that few or none of our
many controversies with one another affect or relate to the proofs of
our religion; that the rent never descends to the foundation.

The truth of Christianity depends upon its leading facts, and upon them
alone. Now of these we have evidence which ought to satisfy us, at least
until it appear that mankind have ever been deceived by the same. We
have some uncontested and incontestable points, to which the history of
the human species hath nothing similar to offer. A Jewish peasant
changed the religion of the world, and that without force, without
power, without support; without one natural source or circumstance of
attraction, influence, or success. Such a thing hath not happened in any
other instance. The companions of this Person, after he himself had been
put to death for his attempt, asserted his supernatural character,
founded upon his supernatural operations: and, in testimony of the truth
of their assertions, i.e. in consequence of their own belief of that
truth, and in order to communicate the knowledge of it to others,
voluntarily entered upon lives of toil and hardship, and, with a full
experience of their danger, committed themselves to the last extremities
of persecution. This hath not a parallel. More particularly, a very few
days after this Person had been publicly executed, and in the very city
in which he was buried, these his companions declared with one voice
that his body was restored to life: that they had seen him, handled him,
ate with him, conversed with him; and, in pursuance of their persuasion
of the truth of what they told, preached his religion, with this strange
fact as the foundation of it, in the face of those who had killed him,
who were armed with the power of the country, and necessarily and
naturally disposed to treat his followers as they had treated himself;
and having done this upon the spot where the event took place, carried
the intelligence of it abroad, in despite of difficulties and
opposition, and where the nature of their errand gave them nothing to
expect but derision, insult, and outrage.--This is without example.
These three facts, I think, are certain, and would have been nearly so,
if the Gospels had never been written. The Christian story, as to these
points, hath never varied. No other hath been set up against it. Every
letter, every discourse, every controversy, amongst the followers of the
religion; every book written by them from the age of its commencement to
the present time, in every part of the world in which it hath been
professed, and with every sect into which it hath been divided (and we
have letters and discourses written by contemporaries, by witnesses of
the transaction, by persons themselves bearing a share in it, and other
writings following that again regular succession), concur in
representing these facts in this manner. A religion which now possesses
the greatest part of the civilised world unquestionably sprang up at
Jerusalem at this time. Some account must be given of its origin; some
cause assigned for its rise. All the accounts of this origin, all the
explications of this cause, whether taken from the writings of the early
followers of the religion (in which, and in which perhaps alone, it
could he expected that they should he distinctly unfolded), or from
occasional notices in other writings of that or the adjoining age,
either expressly allege the facts above stated as the means by which the
religion was set up, or advert to its commencement in a manner which
agrees with the supposition of these facts being true, and which
testifies their operation and effects.

These prepositions alone lay a foundation for our faith; for they prove
the existence of a transaction which cannot even, in its most general
parts, be accounted for upon any reasonable supposition, except that of
the truth of the mission. But the particulars, the detail of the
miracles or miraculous pretences (for such there necessarily must have
been) upon which this unexampled transaction rested, and for which these
men acted and suffered as they did act and suffer, it is undoubtedly of
great importance to us to know. We have this detail from the
fountain-head, from the persons themselves; in accounts written by
eye-witnesses of the scene, by contemporaries and companions of those
who were so; not in one book but four, each containing enough for the
verification of the religion, all agreeing in the fundamental parts of
the history. We have the authenticity of these books established by more
and stronger proofs than belong to almost any other ancient book
whatever, and by proofs which widely distinguish them from any others
claiming a similar authority to theirs. If there were any good reason
for doubt concerning the names to which these books are ascribed (which
there is not, for they were never ascribed to any other, and we have
evidence not long after their publication of their bearing the names
which they now bear); their antiquity, of which there is no question,
their reputation and authority amongst the early disciples of the
religion, of which there is as little, form a valid proof that they
must, in the main at least, have agreed with what the first teachers of
the religion delivered.

When we open these ancient volumes, we discover in them marks of truth,
whether we consider each in itself, or collate them with one another.
The writers certainly knew something of what they were writing about,
for they manifest an acquaintance with local circumstances, with the
history and usages of the times, which could belong only to an
inhabitant of that country, living in that age. In every narrative we
perceive simplicity and undesignedness; the air and the language of
reality. When we compare the different narratives together, we find them
so varying as to repel all suspicion of confederacy; so agreeing under
this variety as to show that the accounts had one real transaction for
their common foundation; often attributing different actions and
discourses to the Person whose history, or rather memoirs of whose
history, they profess to relate, yet actions and discourses so similar
as very much to bespeak the same character: which is a coincidence that,
in such writers as they were, could only be the consequence of their
writing from fact, and not from imagination.

These four narratives are confined to the history of the Founder of the
religion, and end with his ministry. Since, however, it is certain that
the affair went on, we cannot help being anxious to know how it
proceeded. This intelligence hath come down to us in a work purporting
to be written by a person, himself connected with the business during
the first stages of its progress, taking up the story where the former
histories had left it, carrying on the narrative, oftentimes with great
particularity, and throughout with the appearance of good sense,*
information and candour; stating all along the origin, and the only
probable origin, of effects which unquestionably were produced, together
with the natural consequences of situations which unquestionably did
exist; and confirmed, in the substance at least of the account, by the
strongest possible accession of testimony which a history can receive,
original letters, written by the person who is the principal subject of
the history, written upon the business to which the history relates, and
during the period, or soon after the period, which the history
comprises. No man can say that this all together is not a body of strong
historical evidence.

_________

* See Peter's speech upon curing the cripple (Acts iii. 18), the council
of the apostles (xv.), Paul's discourse at Athens (xvii. 22), before
Agrippa (xxvi.). I notice these passages, both as fraught with good
sense and as free from the smallest tincture of enthusiasm.
_________


When we reflect that some of those from whom the books proceeded are
related to have themselves wrought miracles, to have been the subject of
miracles, or of supernatural assistance in propagating the religion, we
may perhaps be led to think that more credit, or a different kind of
credit, is due to these accounts, than what can be claimed by merely
human testimony. But this is an argument which cannot be addressed to
sceptics or unbelievers. A man must be a Christian before he can receive
it. The inspiration of the historical Scriptures, the nature, degree,
and extent of that inspiration, are questions undoubtedly of serious
discussion; but they are questions amongst Christians themselves, and
not between them and others. The doctrine itself is by no means
necessary to the belief of Christianity, which must, in the first
instance at least, depend upon the ordinary maxim of historical
credibility. (See Powell's Discourse, disc. xv. P. 245.)

In viewing the detail of miracles recorded in these books, we find every
supposition negatived by which they can be resolved into fraud or
delusion. They were not secret, nor momentary, nor tentative, nor
ambiguous; nor performed under the sanction of authority, with the
spectators on their side, or in affirmance of tenets and practices
already established. We find also the evidence alleged for them, and
which evidence was by great numbers received, different from that upon
which other miraculous accounts rest. It was contemporary, it was
published upon the spot, it continued; it involved interests and
questions of the greatest magnitude; it contradicted the most fixed
persuasions and prejudices of the persons to whom it was addressed; it
required from those who accepted it, not a simple, indolent assent, but
a change, from thenceforward, of principles and conduct, a submission to
consequences the most serious and the most deterring, to loss and
danger, to insult, outrage, and persecution. How such a story should be
false, or, if false, how under such circumstances it should make its
way, I think impossible to be explained; yet such the Christian story
was, such were the circumstances under which it came forth, and in
opposition to such difficulties did it prevail.

An event so connected with the religion, and with the fortunes, of the
Jewish people, as one of their race, one born amongst them, establishing
his authority and his law throughout a great portion of the civilised
world, it was perhaps to be expected should be noticed in the prophetic
writings of that nation; especially when this Person, together with his
own mission, caused also to be acknowledged the Divine original of their
institution, and by those who before had altogether rejected it.
Accordingly, we perceive in these writings various intimations
concurring in the person and history of Jesus, in a manner and in a
degree in which passages taken from these books could not be made to
concur in any person arbitrarily assumed, or in any person except him
who has been the author of great changes in the affairs and opinions of
mankind. Of some of these predictions the weight depends a good deal
upon the concurrence. Others possess great separate strength: one in
particular does this in an eminent degree. It is an entire description,
manifestly directed to one character and to one scene of things; it is
extant in a writing, or collection of writings, declaredly prophetic;
and it applies to Christ's character, and to the circumstances of his
life and death, with considerable precision, and in a way which no
diversity of interpretation hath, in my opinion, been able to confound.
That the advent of Christ, and the consequences of it, should not have
been more distinctly revealed in the Jewish sacred books, is I think in
some measure accounted for by the consideration, that for the Jews to
have foreseen the fall of their institution, and that it was to merge at
length into a more perfect and comprehensive dispensation, would have
cooled too much, and relaxed, their zeal for it, and their adherence to
it, upon which zeal and adherence the preservation in the world of any
remains, for many ages, of religious truth might in a great measure
depend.

Of what a revelation discloses to mankind, one, and only one, question
can properly be asked--Was it of importance to mankind to know, or to be
better assured of? In this question, when we turn our thoughts to the
great Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and of a
future judgment, no doubt can possibly be entertained. He who gives me
riches or honours, does nothing; he who even gives me health, does
little, in comparison with that which lays before me just grounds for
expecting a restoration to life, and a day of account and retribution;
which thing Christianity hath done for millions.

Other articles of the Christian faith, although of infinite importance
when placed beside any other topic of human inquiry, are only the
adjuncts and circumstances of this. They are, however, such as appear
worthy of the original to which we ascribe them. The morality of the
religion, whether taken from the precepts or the example of its Founder,
or from the lessons of its primitive teachers, derived, as it should
seem, from what had been inculcated by their Master, is, in all its
parts, wise and pure; neither adapted to vulgar prejudices, nor
flattering popular notions, nor excusing established practices, but
calculated, in the matter of its instruction, truly to promote human
happiness; and in the form in which it was conveyed, to produce
impression and effect: a morality which, let it have proceeded from any
person whatever, would have been satisfactory evidence of his good sense
and integrity, of the soundness of his understanding and the probity of
his designs: a morality, in every view of it, much more perfect than
could have been expected from the natural circumstances and character of
the person who delivered it; a morality, in a word, which is, and hath
been, most beneficial to mankind.

Upon the greatest, therefore, of all possible occasions, and for a
purpose of inestimable value, it pleased the Deity to vouchsafe a
miraculous attestation. Having done this for the institution, when this
alone could fix its authority, or give to it a beginning, he committed
its future progress to the natural means of human communication, and to
the influence of those causes by which human conduct and human affairs
are governed. The seed, being sown, was left to vegetate; the leaven,
being inserted, was left to ferment; and both according to the laws of
nature: laws, nevertheless, disposed and controlled by that Providence
which conducts the affairs of the universe, though by an influence
inscrutable, and generally undistinguishable by us. And in this,
Christianity is analogous to most other provisions for happiness. The
provision is made; and; being made, is left to act according to laws
which, forming a part of a more general system, regulate this particular
subject in common with many others.

Let the constant recurrence to our observation of contrivance, design,
and wisdom, in the works of nature, once fix upon our minds the belief
of a God, and after that all is easy. In the counsels of a being
possessed of the power and disposition which the Creator of the universe
must possess, it is not improbable that there should be a future state;
it is not improbable that we should be acquainted with it. A future
state rectifies everything; because, if moral agents be made, in the
last event, happy or miserable, according to their conduct in the
station and under the circumstances in which they are placed, it seems
not very material by the operation of what causes, according to what
rules, or even, if you please to call it so, by what chance or caprice
these stations are assigned, or these circumstances determined. This
hypothesis, therefore, solves all that objection to the divine care and
goodness which the promiscuous distribution of good and evil (I do not
mean in the doubtful advantages of riches and grandeur, but in the
unquestionably important distinctions of health and sickness, strength
and infirmity, bodily ease and pain, mental alacrity and depression) is
apt on so many occasions to create. This one truth changes the nature of
things; gives order to confusion; makes the moral world of a piece with
the natural.

Nevertheless, a higher degree of assurance than that to which it is
possible to advance this, or any argument drawn from the light of
nature, was necessary, especially to overcome the shock which the
imagination and the senses received from the effects and the appearances
of death, and the obstruction which thence arises to the expectation of
either a continued or a future existence. This difficulty, although of a
nature no doubt to act very forcibly, will be found, I think, upon
reflection to reside more in our habits of apprehension than in the
subject: and that the giving way to it, when we have any reasonable
grounds or the contrary, is rather an indulging of the imagination than
anything else. Abstractedly considered, that is, considered without
relation to the difference which habit, and merely habit, produces in
our faculties and modes of apprehension, I do not see anything more in
the resurrection of a dead man than in the conception of a child; except
it be this, that the one comes into his world with a system of prior
consciousness about him, which the other does not: and no person will
say that he knows enough of either subject to perceive that this
circumstance makes such a difference in the two cases that the one
should be easy, and the other impossible; the one natural, the other not
so. To the first man the succession of the species would be as
incomprehensible as the resurrection of the dead is to us.

Thought is different from motion, perception from impact: the
individuality of a mind is hardly consistent with the divisibility of an
extended substance; or its volition, that is, its power of originating
motion, with the inertness which cleaves to every portion of matter
which our observation or our experiments can reach. These distinctions
lead us to an immaterial principle: at least, they do this: they so
negative the mechanical properties of matter, in the constitution of a
sentient, still more of a rational, being, that no argument drawn from
the properties can be of any great weight in opposition to other
reasons, when the question respects the changes of which such: a nature
is capable, or the manner in which these changes am effected. Whatever
thought be, or whatever it depend upon the regular experience of sleep
makes one thing concerning it certain, that it can be completely
suspended, and completely restored.

If any one find it too great a strain upon his thoughts to admit the
notion of a substance strictly immaterial, that is, from which extension
and solidity are excluded, he can find no difficulty in allowing, that a
particle as small as a particle of light, minuter than all conceivable
dimensions, may just as easily be the depositary, the organ, and the
vehicle of consciousness as the congeries of animal substance which
forms a human body, or the human brain; that, being so, it may transfer
a proper identity to whatever shall hereafter be united to it; may be
safe amidst the destruction of its integuments; may connect the natural
with the spiritual, the corruptible with the glorified body. If it be
said that the mode and means of all this is imperceptible by our senses,
it is only what is true of the most important agencies and operations.
The great powers of nature are all invisible. Gravitation, electricity,
magnetism, though constantly present, and constantly exerting their
influence; though within us, near us, and about us; though diffused
throughout all space, overspreading the surface, or penetrating the
contexture, of all bodies with which we are acquainted, depend upon
substances and actions which are totally concealed from our senses. The
Supreme Intelligence is so himself.

But whether these or any other attempts to satisfy the imagination bear
any resemblance to the truth; or whether the imagination, which, as I
have said before, is the mere slave of habit, can be satisfied or not;
when a future state, and the revelation of a future state is not only
perfectly consistent with the attributes of the Being who governs the
universe; but when it is more; when it alone removes the appearance of
contrariety which attends the operations of his will towards creatures
capable of comparative merit and demerit, of reward and punishment; when
a strong body of historical evidence, confirmed by many internal tokens
of truth and authenticity, gives us just reason to believe that such a
revelation hath actually been made; we ought to set our minds at
rest with the assurance, that in the resources of Creative Wisdom
expedients cannot be wanted to carry into effect what the Deity hath
purposed: that either a new and mighty influence will descend upon the
human world to resuscitate extinguished consciousness; or that, amidst
the other wonderful contrivances with which the universe abounds, and by
some of which we see animal life, in many instances, assuming improved
forms of existence, acquiring new organs, new perceptions, and new
sources of enjoyment, provision is also made, though by methods secret
to us (as all the great processes of nature are), for conducting the
objects of God's moral government, through the necessary changes of
their frame, to those final distinctions of happiness and misery which
he hath declared to be reserved for obedience and transgression, for
virtue and vice, for the use and the neglect, the right and the wrong
employment of the faculties and opportunities with which he hath been
pleased, severally, to intrust and to try us.

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We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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