‘Hume's argument is far from being conclusive when the existence of a Being who created the present order of nature, and therefore nay well be thought to have power to modify it, is accepted as a fact, or even as a probability resting on in- dependent evidence. Once admit a God, and the production by His direct volition of an effect which in any case owed its origin to His creative will is no longer a purely arbitrary hypothesis to account for the fact, but must be reckoned with as a serious possibility.’ +
The question is one of balancing improbabilities, as Hume said, but we must now take into con- sideration, on the positive side, not only the mere evidence of the witnesses, but also whatever there is of a priori probability that the Supreme would intervene in such fashion. Such @ priori proba- bility undoubtedly exists in the case of a miracle like the Incarnation. There is, on the one hand, if you will, the improbability that an event thus anomalous and out of the established order should take place. There is, on the other hand, not only the witness of the Gospels and of the Church to the claims of the Christ, not only the striking fact that thus all the hopes and expectations of ages found their realization, but this other serious con- sideration as well. If God made man in His own image, and intended him at the first for holiness, there is an a priori improbability in the supposi- tion that such Divine purpose would be for ever frustrate and in vain. The Fall demands the Incarnation and the Atonement; it demands a fresh act of Divine grace, which shall raise man out of the slough in which he is struggling. And so we can perceive a reason why, in the interests of morality and goodness, some such miracle as that of the Word who became flesh should appear in ‘the fulness of time.’ In other words, if we adept Hume’s way of looking at the question, though our belief in a miraculous occurrence de- pend ultimately on onr regarding the testimony to it as so strong that its falsity would be more miraculous than the truth of the miracle in ques- tion, yet when thus balancing probabilities we must not forget to give due weight to the moral probability that the Author of Creation may de- sire at certain epochs to give a special manifesta- tion of Himself, of His will, of His grace, to the creatures whom He has made.
4. It must be frankly conceded that such con- siderations have been at times made too much of. A priori speculation in theology, as we said above, is often misleading ; and if we committed ourselves altogether to its guidance we might be led to con- clusions which should forbid us to regard as recon- cilable the benevolence of God and the misery and sin and sorrow with which this earth is afflicted. If it be regarded as a priori probable that a remedy should be provided for sin, why, it has
*See Temple, Bampton Lectures, p. 216. t Mill, 1.6. p. 232.
MIRACLE
been asked,* is it not also a priori probable that a remedy should be provided for disease? Why should not sin be just as permanent an inherit- ance of man as death? And to that the only answer is that we do not rely solely on ἃ priori probabilities in religion; if they were contradicted at every turn by experience, we could not trust them. But when, as in the case of the miracle of the Incarnation, the @ posteriori witness falls in with the a priori suggestion of reason, then the two kinds of evidence, derived respectively from abstract and concrete considerations, mutually corroborate and support each other. A priori reasoning may lead us astray, but that is no reason for believing that it never points to the truth. Indeed, to profess that there is no scope for moral and rational probabilities in God’s government of the world, is to accept a creed more gloomy and more irrational than any which has yet been proposed to man.
5. It is not too much to say that the occurrence of miracle can hardly be certified to the intellect in a quiet hour of after-reflection, unless there be a convergence of both lines of evidence—the a posteriori of testimony, the a priori of ante- cedent probability. This is to say, that more and higher evidence is required to substantiate a miracle than is required to substantiate ordinary matters of fact. As the course of nature is gener- ally uniform, we must grant that there is some special improbability attaching to the allegation that an event of a miraculous order has been witnessed. To overcome this special improba- bility it is needful, first, to adduce some seem- ingly adequate reason why the Creator should deviate from that observed course of action which (save in the specific cases of alleged miracles) prior experience proves to have been His rule; and secondly, that we should have stronger and more unimpeachable direct evidence than that which is required for an ordinary event. Certainly ‘le vrai n’est pas toujours le vraisemblable’; we must never reject any statement merely because it sounds improbable. We must try to discover if its falsity would be more or less improbable than its truth. But, granting the force of this proviso, we must also admit that more evidence is required for a miracle than for ordinary matters of fact.