16. It may be asked at this point (and the question demands an answer), If miracles are not impossible, can it be said that anything is im- possible ? Has the word impossibility any mea”- ing, if the possibility of interruptions of t» ordinary course of nature, of breaches of the lay of physical continuity, be admitted? It has a meaning. There are certain permanent impos- sibilities which can neither be conceived nor be- lieved, of which we cannot assert in any intelligible sense that they could become possible by the act of Omnipotence, viz. logical impossibilities, viola- tions of the laws described by logicians as the laws of thought, the laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle. That A should be the same as not-A, that a thing should possess two directly contradictory attributes at the same time,—these are permanent impossibilities; their truth is in- conceivable for any rational being. Such axioms are not like the axioms of mathematics, which depend for their validity upon the constitution of space, and which therefore may not be true in regions where the conditions of space are not the same as they are with us. We cannot impose the laws of space upon Him ‘ whose kingdom is where space and time are not.’ But it is quite otherwise with the laws of thought, of that reason in virtue of which it is written that man was made ‘in the image of God.’ These laws we must consider to be of universal and permanent validity, unless we are prepared to surrender ourselves to intellectual chaos; and a violation of them must be counted by us as strictly impossible. It is evident that such violation is not ejusdem generis with those anomalies in the ordinary course of nature which we call miracles. There is no miracle recorded in the Bible or anywhere else which is in the least like a violation of the laws of thought: if there were, we could not believe it, no matter what the authority on which it were presented to us, for we should be prevented from doing so by the constitu- tion of our own minds. Far from being violations
MIRACLE
of the laws of thought, miracles cannot (as has been shown) be accurateiy and with confidence described as violations of the laws of nature; they are not violations, for instance, of the law of causation, that every effect must have an adequate cause, because in each case, ex hypothesi, the cause that is assigned is the direct action of the Divine will. It is doubtful, even, if any of the Gospel miracles could be described as violations of the laws of space and time. But however that may be, the point necessary to emphasize is, that in asserting the possibility of miracles on the hypo- thesis of Theism, we are far from denying the im- possibility of any such contradiction as a violation of the fundamental laws of thought would in- volve. Such a violation would be contradictory to reason; it is a misuse of language to say that the miracles of the Gospel are so.
17. The problem of the abstract possibility of miracles cannot be considered further here. No- thing has yet been said as to their probability, or credibility, or utility ; but, before this section of the subject is closed, it may be worth while to remark that representative thinkers of many schools of thought have expressed their conviction that thus far the argument is impregnable. Thus Kant, the apostle of criticism, while allowing no value to miracles as credentials of a moral religion, distinctly concedes their possibility, and indeed their utility, under certain circumstances.* So, in like manner, Rousseau declared: ‘This ques- tion, whether God can work miracles, seriously treated, would be impious, if it were not absurd ; and it would be doing too much honour to him who would answer it in the negative to punish him; it would be sufficient to keep him in custody.’+ And, once more, Huxley wrote: ‘Denying the possibility of miracles seems to me quite as un- justifiable as speculative Atheism.’t ‘There is, in- deed, a growing conviction among Christians and non-Christians alike that @ priori speculation in theology, as in science, is worth very little ; that the one hope of arriving at truth is to keep an open mind, and to welcome evidence from any and every quarter, without previous decision as to its value or worthlessness. It is in this spirit that an investigation into the evidence of the Christian miracles must be approached.
ii. THE SUBJECTIVE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. —1. It would seem, from the preceding discussion, that the question whether miracles have ever happened or not is a mere question of fact. This question, like all similar ones, must be determined by evidence—the evidence of the senses if the ‘miracle’ is within the range of our own personal experience, the evidence of credible and sufficient testimony if it belongs to an age other than our own. In the case of the miracles which accom- panied the dawn of Christianity, the former kind of evidence is not now to be had; we must have recourse to the testimony of others. And so it might be thought that the only problem for the scientific inquirer is to investigate the nature of the evidence which is forthcoming, its amount, its date, and its consistency, and to determine, if it may be, the character and veracity of the witnesses. A preliminary difficulty, however, was raised by the ingenuity of David Hume, which still remains to be dealt with.