or after proof given that supernatural acts would be a degradation of God. "In order that any alleged fact should be contradictory to a law of causation, the allegation must be, not simply that the cause existed without being followed by the effect, for that would be no uncommon occurrence; but that this happened in the absence of any adequate counteracting cause. Now in the case of an alleged miracle, the assertion is the exact opposite of this. It is, that the effect was defeated, not in the absence, but in consequence, of a counteracting cause, namely, a direct interposition of an act of the will of some being who has power over nature; and in particular of a being, whose will having originally endowed all the causes with the powers by which they produce their effects, may well be supposed able to counteract them. A miracle, as was justly remarked by Brown, is no contradiction to the law of cause and effect; it is a new effect, supposed to be produced by the introduction of a new cause. Of the adequacy of that cause, if it exist, there can be no doubt; and the only antecedent improbability which can be ascribed to the miracle, is the improbability that any such cause had existence in the case. "All, therefore, which Hume has made out, and this he must be considered to have made out, is, that no evidence can be sufficient to prove a miracle to any one who did not previously believe the existence of a being or beings with supernatural power; or who believed himself to have full proof that the character of the being whom he recognizes, is inconsistent with his having seen fit to interfere on the occasion in question. The truth of this (however fatal to a school of theology which has recently been revived in this country, and which has the weakness to rest all the evidences of religion on tradition and testimony) may be, and is, admitted by all defenders of revelation who have made much figure as such during the present century. It is now acknowledged by nearly all the ablest writers on the subject, that natural religion is the necessary basis of revealed; that the proofs of Christianity presuppose the being and moral attributes of God; and that it is the conformity of a religion to those attributes which determines whether credence ought to be given to its external evidences; that (as the proposition is sometimes expressed) the doctrine must prove the miracles, not the miracles the doctrine. It is hardly necessary to point out the complete accordance of these views with the opinions which, not to mention other testimonies, the New Testament itself shews to have been generally prevalent in the apostolic age; when it was believed indeed that miracles were necessary as credentials, and that whoever was sent by God must have the power of working them; but no one dreamed that such power sufficed by itself as proof of a divine mission, and St. Paul expressly warned the churches, if any one came to them working miracles, to observe what he taught, and unless he preached Christ and him crucified,' not to listen to the teaching. . . . . It appears from what has been said, that the assertion that a cause has been defeated of an effect which is connected with it by a completely ascertained law of causation, is to be disbelieved or not, according to the probability or improbability that there existed in the particular instance an adequate counteracting To form an estimate of this, is not more difficult than of any other probability.' cause. If we begin by assuming, on the grounds of natural religion, that Miracles are unworthy of God, for us of course there are no Miracles, nor can we be expected even to look at the evidences, spiritual and historical, that might commend them to us. But this instinctive antipathy to the supernatural must belong to those who regard religion as a law of life deducible from facts, rather than as personal communion with the Spirit of life; or else to those who find everywhere the mind of God in such living contact with their own, that any further intimation of the divine presence, or elucidation of the divine meaning, is a needless superfluity. And since religion is not a moral rule, but personal guidance,—and all history exhibits that direct fellowship with a living Spirit is an exceptional condition of the soul in nations and in individuals, it is clear that the supernatural cannot be excluded either by the supposition that religion is a scientific law-for that is not true-or by the supposition that God is, and always has been, ordinarily known as an immediate Inspirer, shewing to all, except the wilfully and exceptionally blind, the movements of a living Hand beneath nature's vesture for that is not fact. The considerations which have caused the supernatural to be counted dishonourable to God are mainly these-that the universe is of the nature of a divine mechanism, in which the necessity for occasional intervention and repair would be discreditable to its original perfection, and that Miracles are violations of law, departures by God under the pressure of special emergencies from rules which He had prescribed to Himself. It is postulated that physical laws are the universal modes of the * A System of Logic, Vel. II. pp. 185-187, 1st edition. divine action, and then it is only necessary consequence that the supernatural is forbidden even to God himself. It is true ex vi termini that Miracles are contrary to the analogy of our experience, but to determine that therefore they are contrary to all experience, is simply to beg the question. They may observe a spiritual analogy in transcending a physical one: they may be working in the direction of God's habitual providence when they emit a ray of divine interpretation, or forbid the garments of light with which God clothes Himself in nature to be mistaken for self-acting substances or powers. Dei voluntas natura rerum est: and to exhibit the intent of God must be in the order of nature even when it is beyond nature. The grounds on which it is predetermined that the supernatural is unworthy of God are unreal hypotheses. The universe is not of the nature of a machine: and a miracle is not a violation of law. For purposes of physical repair God works no Miracles in the universe; and a Miracle is not properly a physical fact, nor wrought for physical ends. To assume the opposite of either of these two propositions is a wilful attempt to degrade the whole conception of the supernatural; it is to assign to Miracles a purpose and explanation which no Theist ought to ascribe to them, and to condemn them for a character which does not belong to them. In a machine a change in any one part must affect all the other and related parts, whereas if God himself is the moving power everywhere He may, for a sufficient purpose, vary His operation at any one point of human observation, and keep the analogy of His ways for all the rest. For scientific purposes, in order to impart to man physical knowledge and physical power, God acts uniformly; else could we learn nothing in a world without order, and do nothing in a world where there were no materials whose properties could be ascertained. The infinite condescension of the Almighty in the regularity of physical action, that we may become partakers of His thought and sharers in His power, can be no valid hindrance to flashes of additional light from Himself at certain points of spiritual experience, if such light is needed to shew that the natural is within the supernatural, that all things physical are for spiritual as well as for scientific instruction, that all nature is a divine parable whose interpretation must be lost whenever the mind contemplates only laws, not discerning the living energies of a present God. It is absurd to argue that the scientific ends for which God observes a regularity of action would suffer disturbance, if the Father ever adopted other ways of speaking to His children which could not be reduced to science. The laws of Mind are as uniform as the laws of Matter, yet who can logically deny on that account that God may originate within the soul movements of spiritual life which are not matters of law in His impartation of them, though they may become so in our treatment of them? Every word of God spoken to the soul is in reality a supernatural fact it is fresh life from the Source of life. It is not a miracle, in the ordinary sense, partly because it is so constant, and partly because it can have no external verification. But if the inspiration was so full as to produce an original form of human nature which seemed to all after ages to fulfil and exhaust the capabilities of Man, then the supernatural would not only be in inward operation, but might outwardly and adequately be revealed. There can be no violations of law. The same antecedents will always have the same consequents. But God can introduce a new antecedent when He pleases. The scientific cosmos and the spiritual cosmos are not to be confused. The one exists at all only on the condition of an invariable causation within its own region; the other exists at all only on the condition of a living power being discerned, and of a fresh life being experienced. The only real questions respecting Miracles are these two: What spiritual purpose could they serve? and, What evidence is there of any manifestation of God in history that cannot be brought within the chain of physical causation? An unusual event, with no conceivable spiritual purpose, has no claim to be a miracle, no justification, no raison d'être, as a supernatural fact. If it is a fact at all, it is a scientific fact, waiting for its law to be discovered. The essence of a miracle, as distinguished from a wonder, a monster or a prodigy, is, that it touches something that before was undiscerned in God's ways at an illuminated point: its own purpose therefore cannot remain obscure. Its divine meaning is an essential part of the evidence of a miracle: it must be judged by spiritual discernment of its worthiness, before it can claim to be tried by historical criteria of its reality, and by scientific criteria of its causation. The attitude of our minds towards Miracles will depend upon the relations in which we dispose man towards the material universe. Is nature made for man? or, Is man made for nature? Because the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath, the sabbath, divine law though it might be, had to yield whenever it concealed or disturbed a higher fellowship, the flow of a more intimate grace. Nature, and natural law, may perfectly serve the purpose of the scientific education of man, and on that very account may have a tendency to obscure the originating life of God. If God is never felt as initiating great movements within and without, it is difficult to see how we should ever come into contact with His living spirit, or how we should escape a pantheistic impression, even though pantheism was no part of our philosophy. We apprehend, accordingly, that external nature reveals God directly more through what it communicates to the contemplative soul, of personal life, of mysterious awe, of transcendent beauty, of ever-changing harmony, than through what it conveys of positive knowledge to the scientific intellect. We must have found God through some other sources and inlets before invariable uniformities will be accepted as signs of a tender and watchful solicitude. That they really are so is most true, ladders for the intellect firmly held by God himself to enable us to climb the heights of His own wisdom, and to go forwards. or backwards on the steps till we make the way familiar and secure; but the living Lord has assured us of His presence through other sensibilities before we come to feel that He is treading with us in the impersonal paths of science, where multitudes of observers and thinkers travel all their lives spiritually uncompanioned. It is where the natural is least distinguishable from the supernatural that it emits the most vivid sense of God, in forms not reducible to law, in mysterious sympathies between nature and the soul, in mysterious appeals as from Spirit to spirit, in moments of conscious harmony between this vast creation and the feeble life that flutters in us, when we feel ourselves only in our place resting and gazing amid God's works, when the earth and the sky are communicative and responsive to us, or in the majesty spread upon the mountains through lights, colours, aerial distances, that seem worn like a vesture of everchanging glory, we own in immediate presence the infinite |