God is speaking at all times and to all the world; they are a vast revelation of him. "The invisible things of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." (Rom. i. 20.) Yet from the very circumstance that nature is thus speaking unto all, that this speaking is diffused over all time, addressed unto all men, from the very vastness and universality of this language, it may miss its aim. It cannot be said to stand in nearer relation to one man than to another, to confirm one man's word more than that of others, to address one man's conscience more than that of every other man. However it may sometimes have, it must often lack, a peculiar and personal significance. But in the miracle wrought in the sight of some certain men, and claiming their special attention, there is a speaking to them in particular. There is then a voice in nature which addresses itself directly to them, a singling of them out from the crowd. It is plain that God has now a peculiar word which they are to give heed to, a message to which he is bidding them to listen.* now. An extraordinary divine causality belongs, then, to the essence of the miracle; more than that ordinary, which we acknowledge in every. thing; powers of God other than those which have always been working; such, indeed, as most seldom or never have been working until The unresting activity of God, which at other times hides and conceals itself behind the veil of what we term natural laws, does in the miracle unveil itself; it steps out from its concealment, and the hand which works is laid bare. Beside and beyond the ordinary operations of nature, higher powers, (higher, not as coming from a higher source, but as bearing upon higher ends,) intrude and make themselves felt even at the very springs and sources of her power. Yet when we say that it is of the very essence of the miracle that it should be thus a new thing," it is not with this denied that the natural itself may become miraculous to us by the way in which it is timed, by * All this is brought out in a very instructive discussion on the miracle, which finds place in Augustine's great dogmatic work, De Trinit., 1. 3, c. 5, and extends to the chapters upon either side, being the largest statement of his views upon the subject which any where finds place in his works: Quis attrahit humorem per radicem vitis ad botrum et vinum facit, nisi Deus qui et homine plantante et rigante incrementum dat? Sed cùm ad nutum Domini aqua in vinum inusitatâ celeritate conversa est, etiam stultis fatentibus, vis divina declarata est. Quis arbusta fronde et flore vestit solemniter, nisi Deus? Verùm cùm floruit virga sacerdotis Aaron, collocuta est quodam modo cum dubitante humanitate divinitas..... Cùm fiunt illa continuato quasi quodam fluvio labentium manantiumque rerum, et ex occulto, in promptum, atque ex prompto in occultum, usitato itinere transeuntium, naturalia dicuntur: cùm verò admonendis hominibus inusitatâ mutabilitate ingeruntur, magnalia nominantur. Not, as we shall see the greatest theologians have always earnestly contended, contra naturam, but præter naturam, and supra naturam. the ends which it is made to serve. It is indeed true that aught which is perfectly explicable from the course of nature and history, is assuredly no miracle in the most proper sense of the word. Yet still the finger of God may be so plainly discernible in it, there may be in it so remarkable a convergence of many unconnected causes to a single end, it may so meet a crisis in the lives of men, or in the onward march of the kingdom of God, may stand in such noticeable relation with God's great work of redemption, that even while it is plainly deducible from natural causes, while there were such perfectly adequate to produce the effects, we yet may be entirely justified in terming it a miracle, a providential, although not an absolute, miracle. Absolute it cannot be called, since there were known causes perfectly capable of bringing it about, and, these existing, it would be superstition to betake ourselves to others, or to seek to break it loose from these. Yet the natural lifts itself up into the miraculous, by the moment at which it falls out, by the purposes which it is made to fulfil. It is a subjective wonder, a wonder for us, though not an objective, not a wonder in itself. Thus many of the plagues of Egypt were the natural plagues of the land,*—these, it is true, raised into far direr than their usual activity. But in itself it was nothing miraculous that grievous swarms of flies should infest the houses of the Egyptians, or that flights of locusts should spoil their fields, or that a murrain should destroy their cattle. None of these visitations were or are unknown in that land: but the intensity of all these plagues, the manner in which they followed hard on one another, their connection with the word of Moses which went before, with Pharaoh's trial which was proceeding, with Israel's deliverance which they helped onward, the manner of their coming and going, all these do entirely justify us in calling them "the signs and wonders of Egypt," even as such is the Scriptural language about them. (Ps. lxxviii. 43; Acts vii. 36.) It is no absolute miracle to find a coin in a fish's mouth, (Matt. xvii. 27,) or that a lion should meet a man and slay him, (1 Kin. xiii. 24,) or that a thunder storm should happen at an unusual period of the year; (1 Sam. xii. 16-19 ;) and yet these circumstances may be so timed for strengthening faith, for punishing disobedience, for awakening repentance, they may serve such high purposes in God's moral government, that we at once range them in the catalogue of miracles, without seeking to make an anxious discrimination between the miracle absolute and providential. Especially * See HENGSTENBERG, Die Bücher Mose's und Egypten, pp. 93–129. The attempt to exhaust the history of our Lord's life of miracles by the supposition of wonderful fortuitous coincidences is singularly self-defeating. These might have they a right to their place among these, when (as in each of the instances alluded to above) the final event is a sealing of a foregoing word from the Lord; for so, as prophecy, as miracles of his foreknowledge, they claim that place, even if not as miracles of his power. Of course, concerning these more than any other it will be true that they exist only for the religious mind, for the man who believes that God ruleth, and not merely in power, but in wisdom, in righteousness, and in love; for him they will be eminently signs, signs of a present working God. In the case of the more absolute miracle it will be sometimes possible to extort from the ungodly, as of old from the magicians of Egypt, the unwilling confession, "This is the finger of God," (Exod. viii. 19;) but in the case of these this will be well nigh impossible; since there is always the natural solution in which they may take refuge, beyond which they will refuse, and beyond which it will be impossible to compel them, to proceed. But while the miracle is not thus nature, so neither is it against nature. That language, however commonly in use, is yet wholly unsatisfactory, which speaks of these wonderful works of God as violations of a natural law. Beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which we know, they are, but not contrary to it. Nor let it be said that this distinction is an idle one; so far from being so, Spinoza's whole assault upon the miracles, (not his objections, for they lie much deeper, but his assault,*) turns upon the advantage which he has known how to take of this faulty statement of the truth, and, that being stated rightly, it becomes at once beside the mark. The miracle is not thus unnatural, nor can it be; since the unnatural, the contrary to order, is of itself the ungodly, and can in no way therefore be affirmed of a divine work such as that with which we have to do. The very idea of the world, as more than one name which it bears testifies, is that of an order; that which comes in then to enable it to realize this idea which it has lost, will scarcely itself be a disorder. So far from this, the true miracle is a higher and a purer nature, coming down out of the world of untroubled harmonies into this world of ours, which so many discords have jarred and disturbed, and bringing this back again, though it be but for do for once or twice; but that such happy chances should on every occasion recur, what is this for one who knows even but a little of the theory of probabilities? not the delivering the history of its marvellous element, but the exchanging one set of marvels for another. If it be said that this was not mere hazard, what manner of person then must we conclude him to be, whom nature was always thus at such pains to serve and to seal? * Tract. Theol. Pol., c. 6, De Miraculis. one prophetic moment, into harmony with that higher.* The healing of the sick can in no way be termed against nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed was against the true nature of man- -that it is sickness which is abnormal, and not health. The healing is the restoration of the primitive order. We should term the miracle not the infraction of a law, but behold in it the lower law neutralized, and for the time put out of working by a higher; and of this abundant analogous examples are evermore going forward before our eyes. Continually we behold in the world around us lower laws held in restraint by higher, mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by moral; yet we say not when the lower thus gives place in favor of the higher, that there was any violation of law,-that any thing contrary to nature came to pass; rather we acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swallowing up the law of a lesser. Thus, when I lift my arm, the law of gravitation is not, as far as my arm is concerned, denied or annihilated; it exists as much as ever, but is held in suspense by the higher law of my will. The chemical laws which would bring about decay in animal substances still subsist, even when they are hemmed in and hindered by the salt which keeps those substances from corruption. The law of * Augustine (Con. Faust., 1. 56, c. 3): Contra naturam non incongruè dicimus aliquid Deum facere, quod facit contra id quod novimus in naturâ. Hanc enim etiam appellamus naturam, cognitum nobis cursum solitumque naturæ, contra quem cum Deus aliquid facit, magnalia vel mirabilia nominantur. Contra illam verò summam naturæ legem à notitiâ remotam sive impiorum sive adhuc infirmorum, tam Deus nullo modo facit quàm contra seipsum non facit. Cf. ibid., 1. 29, c. 2. The speculations of the great thinkers of the thirteenth century, on the subject of miracles, and especially on this part of the subject, are well brought together by Neander. (Kirch. Gesch., v. 5, pp. 910-925.) See a very interesting discussion upon this subject in AUGUSTINE. (De Gen. ad Litt., 1. 6, c. 14-18.) When Spinoza affirmed that nothing can happen in nature which opposes its universal laws, he acutely saw that even then he had not excluded the miracle, and therefore to clench the exclusion, added,-aut quod ex iisdem [legibus] non sequitur. But all which experience can teach us is, that these powers which are working in our world will not reach to these effects. Whence dare we to conclude, that because none which we know will bring them about, so none exist which will do so? They exceed the laws of our nature, but it does not therefore follow that they exceed the laws of all nature. If the animals were capable of a reflective act, man would appear a miracle to them, as the angels do to us, and as the animals would themselves appear to a lower circle of organic life. The comet is a miracle as regards our solar system; that is, it does not own the laws of our system, neither do those laws explain it. Yet is there a higher and wider law of the heavens, whether fully discovered or not, in which its motions are included as surely as those of the planets which stand in immediate relation to our sun. sin in a regenerate man is held in continual check by the law of the spirit of life; yet is it in his members still, not indeed working, for a mightier law has stepped in and now holds it in check, but still there, and ready to work, did that higher law cease from its more effectual operation. What in each of these cases is wrought may be against one particular law, that law being contemplated in its isolation, and rent away from the complex of laws, whereof it forms only a part. But no law does stand thus alone, and it is not against, but rather in entire harmony with, the system of laws: for the law of those laws is, that where powers come into conflict, the weaker shall give place to the stronger, the lower to the higher. In the miracle, this world of ours is drawn into and within a higher order of things; laws are then at work in the world, which are not the laws of its fallen condition, for they are laws of mightier range and higher perfection; and as such they claim to make themselves felt, and to have the pre-eminence which is rightly their own. To make this clearer I might take a familiar illustration, borrowed from our own church-system of feasts and fasts. It is the rule here that if the festival of the Nativity fall on a day which was designated in the ordinary calendar for a fast, the former shall displace the latter, and the day shall be observed as a festival. Shall we therefore say that the Church has awkwardly contrived two systems which here may, and sometimes do, come into collision with one another? and not rather admire her more complex law, and note how in the very concurrence of the two, with the displacement of the poorer by the richer, she brings out her idea that holy joy is a higher thing even than holy sorrow, and shall at last swallow it up altogether? * In remarkable words the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon (xix. 6) describes now in the passage of the Red Sea all nature was in its kind moulded and fashioned again from above (ʼn kríois túĥiv åvwßev diervñovтo) that it might serve God's purposes for the deliverance of his people, and punishment of his enemies.. Thus Aquinas, whose greatness and depth upon the subject of miracles I well remember once hearing Coleridge exalt, and painfully contrast with the modern theology on the same subject (Sum. Theol., pars 1, qu. 105, art. 6): A quâlibet causâ derivatur aliquis ordo in suos effectus, cùm quælibet causa habeat rationem principii. Et ideo secundùm multiplicationem causarum multiplicantur et ordines, quorum unus continetur sub altero, sicut et causa continetur sub causâ. Unde causa superior non continetur sub ordine causæ inferioris, sed è converso. Cujus exemplum apparet in rebus humanis. Nam ex patrefamiliâs dependet ordo domûs, qui continetur sub ordine civitatis, qui procedit à civitatis rectore: cùm et hic contineatur sub ordine regis, à quo totum regnum ordinatur. Si ergo ordo rerum consideretur prout dependet à primâ causâ, sic contra rerum ordinem Deus facere non potest. Si enim sic faceret, faceret contra suam præscientiam aut voluntatem aut bonitatem. Si verò consideretur rerum ordo, prout dependet à qualibet secundarum causarum, sic Deus potest facere præter |