Lightfoot (ii. 27) points out that the Vulgate renders the gate Miphkad as the gate of judgment: this may perhaps refer to the hall of judgment in the Pretorium, situated in later days in the Antonia, to the north of the temple, or it may refer to the east gate of the temple (Ezk 35-39, Jl 2, Mie 4%) overlooking the Valley of Jehosha- phat: both Moslems and Jews believe that the last judgment is to take place there. Brocardus speaks of a Porta Judiciaria over against the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The general opinion is that Miphkad was situ- ated to the north-east of the temple (PEF St, 1879, 176 ; 1883, 215; 1885, 61; 1889, 90; 1890, 47).
C. WARREN. **MIRACLE.—
i, The objective possibility of miracles. ii. Their subjective credibility. ili. Their evidential value. iv. The miracles of the Gospels, their characteristics and their attestation. y. Other Bible miracles: (a) In the Acts of the Apostles. (Ὁ) In the Old Testament. vi. Christian miracles after the apostolic age,
i. THE OBJECTIVE POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES. —1. It isa remarkable circumstance that the great stumbling-block at the present day to many persons who are anxious to accept the Christian creeds should be the statement of the very fact which was put forward in the apostolic age as the one con- vincing proof of their truth, viz. the fact of the Resurrection of Christ. The Christian miracles were once an ‘aid to faith’; they are now regarded by many as a grave hindrance to the acceptance of Christianity. It is not hard to account for this. With the development of physical science, and with the largely increased knowledge of what we are accustomed to call the laws of nature, and still more with the growth of the conviction which is at the root of all science that nothing happens abnormally, but that in the physical world every effect has its cause, and that the same causes under the same circumstances will always produce the same effects, men have come to think that there is something about a ‘miracle’ which no scientifically educated person can believe. So it has come to pass that the argument based on the miracles with which Christianity was ushered into the world, has been more vehemently attacked than any other of the ‘evidences’ which are usually marshalled: so strenuous, indeed, has been the attack, that not a few theologians, in deference to the spirit of the age, while not conceding in so many words the im- possibility of miracles, have relegated the miracu- lous to some obscure corner of the religious system which they profess and teach. And the impossi- bility of miracles is avowedly the foundation of much. of the negative criticism to which the Christian documents have been subjected. The spirit in which Goethe said to Lavater, * A voice from heaven would not convince me that water burned or a dead man rose again,’ often finds expression in literature. Renan prefaces his Vie de Jésus by saying of the Gospels, ‘ C'est parce
**Copyright, 1900, by Charles Seritmer’s Sons
MIRACLE
qwils racontent des miracles que je dis, Les Evangiles sont des légendes; ils peuvent contenir de histoire, mais certainement tout n’y est pas historique.’ And Strauss is careful to distinguish the ‘supernatural’ element in the Gospels from ‘the natural element which alone is historically available,’ criticism of the documents being thus prejudiced at the outset by the assumption that no account which involves the miraculous can possibly be historical.
2. What then is a ‘miracle,’ and wherein con- sists the difficulty of believing that it has taken place? It is evident that precise definition is necessary, if we are to arrive at any conclusion of value in respect of a question like this. Let us start with the definition given by J. S. Mill: ‘To constitute a miracle, a phenomenon must take place without having been preceded by any ante- cedent phenomenal conditions sufficient again to reproduce it... . The test of a miracle is, Were there present in the case such external conditions, such second causes we may call them, that when- ever these conditions or causes reappear the event will be reproduced? If there were, it is not a miracle ; if there were not, it is..* Now from this definition it is apparent that to one who holds that there is nothing to be known save the sequences and coexistences of phenomena, that ‘nature’ is only a name for the sum-total of the mechanical and chemical forces of the universe (see NATURE), that there is, in short, no other mode of existence than that which can be perceived by the bodily senses, the occurrence of a miracle would be a violation of the law of causation, which demands a cause for each observed effect. No causes other than material can come within the cognizance of man, and therefore, since a ‘miracle’ has no
material cause, it cannot be considered as within
the field of possibility. To consistent and thorough- going materialism miracles are impossible. If, by any chance, some anomalous and extraordinary phenomenon were attested on unimpeachable testi- mony, which satisfied the definition that has been quoted from Mill of a ‘miracle,’ the conclusion that the materialist would be forced to adopt would be that the phenomenon in question was due to some hitherto unobserved combination of physical forces. It could not be a miracle. for a miracle, ex hypothesi, is a perturbation of the nor- mal sequence of physical causation, and the materialist does not admit the existence or the possibility of any force adequate to produce such perturbation.