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A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (New-Brunswick, 1815); selection from pp. 81–9.
Samuel Stanhope Smith
Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751–1819) was educated at Princeton by his future father-in-law, John Witherspoon. Smith taught for a while at his father’s (Robert Smith) Presbyterian academy at Pequea, Pennsylvania, and also in Hanover at Hampton-Sydney Academy, before taking up the position of professor of moral philosophy at Princeton in 1779. In 1795 he was elected president of Princeton following Witherspoon’s death in 1794. The selection reprinted below is evidently a revision of an essay Smith had originally published in the Evangelical Intelligencer in 1805 (reprinted above). On Smith see Edward L. Lach, “Samuel Stanhope Smith” in ANB, vol. 20, pp. 283–4; Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976), pp. 214–15; Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768–1822: The Search for a Christian Enlightenment in the Era of Samuel Stanhope Smith (Princeton, 1989); I. Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (New York, 1907), pp. 497–508; Herbert W. Schneider, A History of American Philosophy (New York, 1946).
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The second view in which this objection [to miracles] has been presented is less speculative. It is the celebrated argument ascribed to the ingenuity of Mr. Hume, although, it is probable of much earlier origin, and which has exercised the talents of several able and judicious writers to refute its sophistry.* I think I shall weaken nothing of its force by the following statement; All our knowledge of natural things we derive solely from experience. And the only rational ground of our belief of what has ever happened, or what can happen in the world, is our own experience of the regular and constant course of nature. Men may impose upon us by false testimony, or they may be deceived themselves; but nature never changes. Inasmuch then, as we have had no experience of any miraculous changes in the order of the world, it is unreasonable to believe that any such have ever taken place, whatever may be the number, or the character of the witnesses by whom they have been attested. If the principle of this objection is found to be false, the whole objection must fall to the ground with it. If it will not hold in its application universally to other subjects, it is contrary to all just reasoning to admit its validity only against the miracles of the gospel. Let us then try its application in other cases: let us follow it to its ultimate consequences; these will be found sufficient to destroy it. It leads to atheism; acted upon in its full extent it would resist all improvements in science; it will be found, in opposing the moral to the physical phenomena of nature, to refute itself. At least the moral phenomena will conclude as strongly in favour of the miracles of the gospel as the physical, admitting the justness of the principle, would seem to contradict them.
I return back on these ideas. And in the first place, it leads to atheism. For, if our own experience is the sole and exclusive ground of judging of whatever is credible in the physical history of the world, it is unreasonable to believe that this globe ever had a beginning, or that it will ever perish. It must always have existed, and must always continue to exist in the same state in which we now behold it. There can be no future condition of existence for human nature, no future judgment, no future retribution to the righteous and the wicked. For each of these states implies a condition of things, such as has never come under our observation, or been the subject of our experience. There is, on this supposition, no foundation for religion. The order of the world must be eternal, immutable, necessary; and can have no dependence on a creating and intelligent cause. We must embrace the philosophical absurdity of an eternal succession of mutable and perishing beings; and are driven to the impious alternative of believing that there is no God; or, that the universe itself is God.*
These consequences are deduced so obviously from the principle of Mr. Hume, that it is not a little surprising that they have not been more frequently remarked. Scarcely, indeed, have they been observed by any writer who has fallen in my way, except the learned and ingenious Dr. Allix, in his reflections on the books of the sacred scriptures. * Yet if they are fairly and legitimately drawn, they must be decisive against the principle in the opinion of every pious and virtuous man.
Another consequence of this doctrine, though not chargeable with impiety like the former, equally demonstrates its absurdity. It would arrest all great improvements in science. When the effects of the electric or magnetic influence, for example, were first discovered, how ought all philosophers, according to this principle, to have treated the history of their phenomena? Precisely as infidels have treated the miraculous history of the gospel: rejected it without examination, as absurd and impossible, because contrary to their experience. Do you say, they have it in their power to repeat the experiments by which those new properties in nature were originally discovered. But if the principle which we combat is just, what motive could a philosopher have for repeating these experiments, since his own past experience of the course of nature is the sole criterion of whatever is credible. And whence should the greater portion of mankind derive their knowledge who possess neither the skill, nor the means requisite to make the necessary experiments, it they are not to rely for the truth of new facts in science, and facts the most remote from the analogy of their own experience, upon the testimony of others? Must not the progress of science be arrested almost at its commencement?
Let us take another example in which no experiment can possibly be applied to verify the testimony of the narrators with regard to facts the most certain in nature. The inhabitants of a torrid climate never can have the effects of frost presented to their senses. Congelation is as great a mystery to them, as any mystery or miracle of the christian religion. According to this favourite maxim of infidelity, then, they ought to refuse all credit to the fact: and the king of Siam acted according to the principles of sound wisdom in punishing the Dutch navigator for insulting his understanding by incredible stories, who assured him, that, in Holland, water became so hard during part of the year, that it bore horses and carriages upon its surface. If testimony were, under no circumstances, sufficient to vouch to us facts which not only are not conformable, but which, in many instances, are contrary, to all our past experience, science must be circumscribed within a very narrow sphere. This consequence was certainly not adverted to by the ingenious author who invented, or who gave its present form to the principle against which we contend. It was aimed solely against the miracles of the sacred scriptures. But when we are testing the merit of a principle, if it is not found to hold universally, or coextensively with the latitude of its terms, it cannot furnish the ground of any certain conclusions. For, by what rule shall we apply it only to the facts of religion, when it is false in its application to the facts of science? Miracles then, as well as other extraordinary facts in nature, are susceptible of proof from testimony. The only subject of inquiry is, the competence and integrity of the witnesses: the soundness of their judgment, the accuracy of their observation, the fidelity of their narration. In all these respects the disciples of our blessed Saviour, the witnesses of his miracles will be found to possess a decided superiority over the witnesses of any other facts recorded in history. Their writings demonstrate their wisdom; their long intimacy with their Master is sufficient to gives [sic] us confidence in the accuracy of their observation; their labours, their sacrifices, their deaths, attest their sincerity, and the fidelity of their narration.*
I maintain, in the last place, that this celebrated argument, drawn from our experience of the uniformity of nature refutes itself. For, if the physical course of nature, on which the argument rests, is found to be stable and uniform, the moral order of things appears to be not less steady and regular. If the former of these facts opposes, upon Mr. Hume’s principle, our reception of the miraculous history of the gospel; the latter, upon the same ground, forbids the rejection of that history, if, by rejecting it, we must contradict all the moral phenomena of human nature. Admitting then, what can hardly be denied by the bitterest enemies of Christianity, that the apostles and evangelists were men of the soundest understandings,† and the most upright hearts, it is contrary to all that we know of the motives of human conduct, that, for the sake of propagating a most improbable, and to them, unprofitable imposture, they should voluntarily submit to incessant toils and extreme sufferings; they should abandon all that is usually accounted most dear to the human heart, and march with intrepidity through perceptual persecutions to certain death inflicted in the most excruciating and dreadful forms. Their writings, which are always rational in their doctrines, simple in their style, and calm and judicious in their manner of address, exempt them from every charge of enthusiasm; yet, renouncing all the early prejudices of their nation, in which they had been educated, and all the hopes which they had originally conceived from a royal and triumphant Messiah, which might have inflamed the zeal of enthusiastic minds, do we not see them, for a suffering Master, encounter every actual evil, and every possible hazard? If then, we should suppose, according to the spirit of this objection, that the apostles, who expected no recompense in this world, could have acted from any other motive than a deep conviction of the miraculous power, and the divine mission of Jesus Christ, would we not be involved in contradictions to the moral order of things; that is, to all the ordinary principles of conduct among men which have ever occurred to our experience, not less wonderful, and out of the course of nature, than were the miracles themselves in the attestation of which these wise and pious men, the companions and witnesses of his life, made such astonishing and almost incredible scarifies?
Thus does this so much vaunted objection against the miracles of the gospel refute itself; inasmuch as, in its application to the moral order of things, it contradicts the conclusion which the enemies of religion have drawn from their physical order. And this consequence ought to be admitted by those especially who have most earnestly urged this objection against the evangelic history, since, according to their philosophic system, they subject the natural and the moral world equally to the laws of necessity. I repeat, then, that it is not by the nature of the works ascribed to Christ as being conformable, or contrary to our experience, but by the character and competence of the witnesses, together with all the preparatory and attending circumstances of these miracles, and their consequences upon the world, that the question of their truth is to be decided.
*Particularly Dr. Campbell in his treatise on miracles. Bishop Watson in his third letter to Mr. Gibbon, having introdued [sic] the subject, appears to me to have, in a few sentences, effectually overturned the principle on which the whole objection rests.
*This tenet of the Aristotelian philosophy has always been regarded by christians as only a modification of atheism.
*This work of Dr. Allix, a celebrated French refugee, was published in London in the year 1688, which sufficiently demonstrates that the objection of Mr. Hume to the miracles of the gospel is not novel; but has only been set in a new light and urged with more plausibility by that ingenious writer.
*These topics will hereafter be more amply illustrated.
†The perfection of that system of piety and morals published by these humble fishermen, so far excelling the philosophy of their age, demonstrates that, if they were not inspired from above, they must have possessed a degree of wisdom and understanding far surpassing whatever antiquity has produced besides.