* Jellett, Aficacy of Prayer, p, 166,
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to maintain that a single outlying point can be treated as lying on a continuous curve in its neighbourhood. But, in spite of the apparent absurdity, nothing is more certain than that it can be so treated. A curve, which to the eye appears to be discontinuous and broken, is known by the mathematician to follow an unvarying law. Now, it is not extravagant to suppose that our knowledge is at least as inferior to that of the Divine mind as the knowledge of geometry possessed by the beginner is inferior to the know- ledge of the skilled mathematician. In short, apparent discontinuity may not involve any real breach of law, the whole progress of science tending as it does to bring what were formerly anomalous facts under the protection of general principles. And thus a ‘miracle’ may really be explicable by Supreme Intelligence as an illustration of law. These considerations do not prove that miracles are reducible to law, but show that there is nothing incongruous with daily experience in supposing that they may be so reduced.
9. The law of continuity, which is often appealed to as putting out of court the possibility of miracles, is—it must ever be remembered —nothing more than a convenient principle for the direction of scientific investigation. It may often deceive us; we may imagine that phenomena exhibit discon- tinuity, when a larger experience shows us that continuity has been most strictly observed. But it is even more important to recognize that it has no claim at all to be regarded as a constitutive principle of nature ; it is not a fetish before which we must bow down, and which we must worship. The gap between the inorganic and the organic, between death and living matter, between animal life and human thought,—all these are chasms which cannot be bridged, so far as we know. In each case there is a μετάβασις els ἄλλο γένος. The most evident breach of continuity that can be imagined is the Creation itself: to conceive an Infinite Creator calling into existence a finite world, is to conceive discontinuous action. And other points of singularity on the curve of develop- ment of life are to be found at the points where man became conscious of his powers and of him- self, and, lastly, when, in the fulness of time, God became Man. Stupendous miracles, indeed ! ‘Tria mirabilia,’? said Descartes, ‘ fecit Dominus ; res ex nihilo, liberum arbitrium, et hominem Deum.’
40. We may put the case in another way. Con- ceive for the moment the existence of beings confined to two dimensions of space. Length and breadth they understand ; of height they can have no conception whatever. They live their lives in a plane; that space has other possibilities in store would be to them the maddest of dreams. To move northward or southward, eastward or west- ward, would be within their power; but the terms ‘upward’ or ‘downward’ could have no meaning at all. To such beings the advent of a visitor from the third dimension of space would be a true ‘miracle’; it would be a violation of all the laws by which their universe has been ordered in the past. For such visitation could be reduced by them to no law; the appearance or disappearance of the vision (which would be simply brought about by descending upon or rising from the plane of their being) would be inexplicable. The move- ments of a visitor who could thus intrude into their universe would remain for ever anomalous and extraordinary, inasmuch as the third dimension of space is for them inconceivable. Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. By what right do we, the inhabitants of this solid earth, assume that space is necessarily limited to three dimensions, and three only ? Why not four or five? Indeed,
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mathematical research does not get very far before it begins to suggest that the possibilities of space are infinite, though inconceivable. We cannot, in short, assert the impossibility of miracle unless we are prepared to assume that the laws of space which fetter and confine us in every region of outward experience are laws for the whole universe. It does not need a study of the Kantian philosophy to perceive that such an assumption is entirely un- warranted. But—it is only a possibility, yet one worth pondering—if the existence of a world where space has four dimensions be credible (though not imaginable), it may well be that what we call miracles are to the inhabitants of that world the ordinary manifestations of ‘ natural’ forces.*
11. Such considerations as these lead to a con- clusion of considerable importance. They teach that the wonderful or anomalous or extraordinary character of any phenomenon is quite insufficient, by itself, to justify us in asserting that it must be due to the intervention of supreme spiritual powers. For there is always the possibility, not to be ignored, that it is due to unknown combinations of known natural forces, or to a natural force hitherto undetected. A remark- able verse in the Bk. of Wis (1915) illustrates the anomalous combination of natural forces in a miracle, by likening it to the transposing of the melody played on a musical instrument to a different key: ‘As the notes of a psaltery vary the character of the rhythm, even so did the elements, changing their order one with another, continuing always the same, each in its several sound.’ And (as is pointed out in art. NATURAL) it is inevitable that what seems extraordinary to one man will not seem so to another. Cortes seemed a superhuman person to the Mexicans when he predicted an eclipse. To a dog, the actions of his master must repeatedly seem ‘extra- ordinary ? =e, anomalous and inexplicable to his cocte-nco. Thus Locket defines a miracle as ‘a Scusiple operation, which, being above the compre- hension of the spectator and in his opinion contrary to the established course of nature, is taken by him to be divine.’ The definition is not entirely satisfactory, for it loses sight of the important consideration which has been under discussion, viz. that the anomalous character of the alleged occurrence does not by itself establish the operation of spiritual force ; but it is valuable as bringing out clearly the inadequacy of any such criterion to serve as an objective or universal test of ‘ miracle.’ To class all ‘extraordinary’ or ‘abnormal’ occur- rences as ‘miracles’ is to make an unwarrantable assumption. In short, to use the technical language of scholastic theology, we must not include among miracles ‘ea que natura facit nobis tamen vel alicui occulta,’ viz. the effects of physical forces as yet unknown.