8. There prevails, however, at the present day a widespread dislike to any conception which in- volves a break in the continuity of the physical order, and thus yarious hypotheses have been pro- posed, according to which miracles may be made to appear more or less ‘natural.’ Indeed, ‘natural law in the spiritual world’ has been accepted by some as the principle of the much desired eirenicon between science and religion. It will. be instruc- tive to consider in detail some of these hypotheses.
(a) In the discussion of the miraculous, stress has at times been laid on the principle that God works by means. ‘Miracles,’ says the Duke of Argyll, ‘may be wrought by the selection and use of laws of which man knows and can know nothing, and which, if he did know, he could not employ.’ | And he suggests that much of the difficulty attendant on belief in supernatural agency is due to neglect of this truth. Most people seem to understand by supernatural power, power independent of the use of means, and the scientific mind cannot bring itself to believe in this. It is doubtful if this helps usmuch. The difficulty of accepting an alleged miracle as real would not be much lessened, if it were shown that natural means had been used for its accomplishment. For example, in several of the ‘miracles’ of the OT, it is distinctly asserted that natural forces were employed as means, Thus
* Clarke, First Reply to Leibnits, p. 15. + De Trin, ili, 6. ¢ Reign of Lav, p. 16.
MIRACLE
the dividing of the Red Sea and the supply of quails are asserted to have been brought about through the agency of a wind blowing in a par- ticular direction (Ex 14°!, Nu 11%). Now, if any incredibility attach to these events, it does not seem that the introduction of machinery renders them any more credible. For the introduction of this machinery does not remove the direct intervention of God ; it merely shifts it back to an earlier stage. The wind brought the quails, but what brought the wind ?
‘It is as real a miracle that the wind should come at the direct command of God, as that the quails should come with- out the wind. And so in every case. The immediata consequent of the special exertion of the Divine will isa miracle. Between the immediate consequent and the final result any number of “means’? may be interposed; but this does not alter the miraculous character of the event—it only disguises it. A miracle is not the less a miracle because in the series of phenomena which we call an event there are present in addi- tion to the one miraculous element a hundred elements which are not miraculous,’ *
(b) Such events, however, as the dividing of the Red Sea and the supply of quails are not in them- selves extraordinary; they can be classed as ‘miracles’ only because of the circumstances under which they happened, and should perhaps be rather described as ‘ special providences,’ to use a common phrase whose meening is discussed below. But can we conceive any way in which events which seem to be an interruption of the physical order may be brought under law ? An ingenious illustration was put forward in this connexion by Babbage in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. He supposed the case of a complicated machine, so constructed that by turning the handle the first 100,000 natural numbers appear consecutively at regular intervals on a dial plate, but such that the next number is 100,100 instead of 100,001; after which apparent miracle the series goes on as before in arithmetical pro- gression. Now, the exceptional numbers are not miracles or even anomalies ; they were all provided for in the original construction of the machine ; they are examples of law, unknown to the unscientific public, but known to the wise artificer. Peabody gave a similar illustration. He told a story of a church clock, so contrived that at the close of a century it strikes the years as it ordinarily strikes the hours. ‘As 100 years come to a close, suddenly in the immense mass of complicated mechanism a little wheel turns, a pin slides into the appointed place, and in the shadows of the night the bell tolls a requiem over the generations which during a century have lived and laboured and been buried around it. One of these generations might live and die and witness nothing peculiar.’ The ano- malous striking of the clock at the close of the century would seem a miracle to the uninstructed public; and yet it was not abnormal in any true sense. Such analogies are obviously not apt in certain particulars. Not to speak of the comparison of nature to a machine, which, as we have already seen, is misleading, it is plain that the exceptional phenomena described above would react at regular intervals, however long. We cannot suppose that there is any such periodic law in the case of mir- acles, which, as signs, are in their very nature unique. And so the only service which such analogies render is to remind us of our unfathom- able ignorance of the inner constitution of nature, and so to guard us from hasty dogmatic negations of the possibility of this or that alleged event.
(c) A better illustration, perhaps, than either of the above is the following, which was (like that of the numerical machine) suggested by Babbage. The science of mathematics teaches us that there are many curves made up of isolated points, in addition to a continuous curved line. To a non- mathematical mind it seems an absurd paradox