3. A miracle is not only a display of thau- maturgic power. This enables us to answer an objection raised by Matthew Arnold, who asked what possible evidence of authority would be shown by a man’s turning a pen into a penwiper before our eyes.t And truly the answer is, None whatever! But then this applies only to miracles which are τέρατα, without being σημεῖα ; whereas, in the view we have adopted, the true miracle is a vehicle of revelation, as well as an evidential adjunct.
‘This guarantees the standing of miracles, gives them a secure position in connexion with revelation; and also it guarantees their quality; it requires them to possess characteristics con- gruous to the nature of the revelation with which they are associated, If it be a revelation of grace, the miracles also must be gracious. Any kind of miracle will not do; a definite
ethical character is indispensable. They must tend directly to advance the interests of the Divine kingdom.’ ¢
When miracles are regarded as credentials, their inward meaning no less than their outward form must receive attention. Thus Augustine likens the man who sees the outward side of the miracle to one who, being unable to read, admires the fair writing of a manuscript which the student values rather for the message it brings him: ‘est oculis laudator, mente non cognitor.’§ No amount of evidence to the occurrence of a miracle, in short, is sufficient to justify us in inferring the inter- vention of Divine power, unless the miracle be one which our conscience assures us is not unworthy of God.
4. It hardly needs illustrations to explain that this is a test, which, though necessary to apply with all care and reverence, may yet be applied with some confidence. Many cf the miracles recorded in the Apocryphal Gospels and in the Acta Sanctorum when submitted to this moral test are found at once to be lacking in the qualities which alone would justify their claim to be cre- dentials. They are grotesque and absurd; they teach no definite lesson; they are associated with no word of wisdom; they are signs of nothing, save the poverty of imagination possessed by tue romancers who invented them.
The alleged miracles of the infancy of Christ are purposeless and wanton, even when they are not deliberately cruel. There is an absence of dignity about them, for they are worked without any great or worthy object. And, speaking generally, if a recorded miracle does not serve any moral purpose, if it be unfruitful in any good result, if the teaching by which it is accompanied be not spiritually elevating, then it stands self-con- demned, ‘the story,’ as Butler would say, ‘ being rightly proved false from internal evidence.’ On the other hand, the miracles of the Gospel are not
* Liddon, Elements of Religion, p. 73; see Trench, Miracles, . 29 fF. - + Literature and Dogma, p. 95. Bruce, Miraculous Element in the Gospels, p. 290. Serm. xcviii. 3.
mere freaks of power; they have a definite moral purpose. They are examples and acted parables of the love of Christ; they are the works of Him ‘who declares His almighty power most chiefly by showing merey and pity.’ ‘As nature is an image of grace, so,’ says Pascal, ‘the visible miracles are but the images of those invisible which God wills to accomplish’; they are, as it were, sacraments of the Divine operation. Thus, then, if a miracle be looked upon merely as an act of power beyond the power of man, it would not prove that the revelation which it accompanies is from God ; but if it bear marks of wisdom in regard to the time and circumstances of its introduction, and of goodness as regards its moral character and its fruits, there can be no further doubt about the matter. And when we so look at the Christian miracles, we see that the supposed alternative that they might be due to superhuman malevolence rather than to benevolence is only ingenious but not serious. For Christianity so completely opposes evil and is so identified with God’s provi- dential working both before and since its promulga- tion, that to say that its miracles might have been worked by Satanic agency is simply absurd.
It is not contended that the Gospel miracles are all alike the evident work of supreme wisdom and goodness. The blasting of the fig-tree (Mt 211% | Mk 11°f-) has often been described as being rather like a freak of power than a sign of love. But, not to speak of the many explanaticws of the purpose of such an act at such a moment which Lave deen suggested, and passing by the lesson which it surely conveyed to the observers, that the Divine judgment on unfruitfulness is stern and final, it may be said at once that this miracle must not be detached from the others which were wrought by Christ. Voscitur a sociis is a maxim of prudence; and a miracle like this of the fig-tree is guaranteed, so to speak, by the company in which it is found, and by the character, otherwise known, of Him who worked it. Viewed as an isolated marvel, it would no? serve as a sufficient credential of the claims of the Christ; viewed as one of the incidents of His Passion, as one of His ἔργα, it has a meaning full of instruction. And the same may be said of any other cases in which a similar objection might be raised.