to be done is to make it perfectly clear to oneself that its reporters both could err and did err. For a plain person, an incident in the report of St. Paul's conversion,—which comes into our minds the more naturally as this incident has been turned against something we have ourselves said,[1] —would, one would think, be enough. We had spoken of the notion that St, Paul's miraculous vision at his conversion proved the truth of his doctrine. We related a vision which converted Sampson Staniforth, one of the early Methodists; and we said that just so much proving force, and no more, as Sampson Staniforth's vision had to confirm the truth of anything he might afterwards teach, St. Paul's vision had to establish his subsequent doctrine. It was eagerly rejoined that Staniforth's vision was but a fancy of his own, whereas the reality of Paul's was proved by his companions hearing the voice that spoke to him. And so in one place of the Acts we are told they did; but in an other place of the Acts we are told by Paul himself just the contrary: that his companions did not hear the voice that spoke to him. Need we say that the two statements have been 'reconciled'? They have, over and over again; but by one of those processes which are the opprobrium of our Bible-criticism, and by which, as Bishop Butler says, any thing can be made to mean anything. There is between the two statements a contradiction as clear as can be. The contradiction proves nothing against the good faith of the reporter, and St. Paul undoubtedly had his vision; he had it as Sampson Staniforth had his. What the contradiction proves is the incurable looseness with which the circumstances of what is called and thought a miracle are related; and that this looseness the Bible-relaters of a miracle exhibit, just like other people. And the moral is: what an unsure stay, then, must miracles be!
- ↑ St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 54.
