The conclusion would seem to be that miracles have never been intended to be a direct proof of the truth of the gospel, or of the holiness of those who worked them ; and their absence does not imply want of authority or of saintliness. But when at great crises of the world's history they were worked, they at once arrested attention, and so led men on to believe in doctrines which for other reasons commended themselves to the sense of humanity.
LiTERATORB. — Out of a voluminous literature may be men. tioned : W. Sanday, Life of Christ in Recent Research, Oxford, 1907, ch. viii., and art. ' Jesua Christ' in UDD ii. (section on the '.Miracles of Jesus') : J. H. Bernard, HDB iii., art. ' Miracle ' ; T. H. Wrigrht, DCG ii., art. ' Miracles ' : J. R. lUingTvorth, Divine Ivrtmanence, London. 1.S98 ; R. C. Trench, Notes on the Miracles of our Lord^, do. , 1870, which is never out of date ; G. Salmon, Non-Miraculous Christianity, London, 1881. For other works see HDB and DCG as above.
A. J. Maclean.
MIRROR (laoirrpov, 1 Co 13", Ja 1=» ; the classical word was KaroTrrpov, wiience KaTOTrrpl^effOat, in 2 Co 3'* ; Lat. speculum, late Lat. miratorium, from mirari, whence Fr. miroir). — The mirrors of the ancients consisted of a thin disk of metal — usually bronze, more rarely silver — slightly convex and polished on one side. Glass mirrors coated with tin, of which there was a manufactory at Sidon (Pliny, HN xxxvi. 66, 193), were little used, and the art of silvering glass was not discovered till the 13th century. Corinthian mirrors were considered the best, and it is interesting that St. Paul's two figurative uses of the word occur in his letters to Corinth.
1. To bring home to the imagination the limita- tions of human knowledge, he says that ia the present life we see only by means of a mirror darkly (5t' iaoirrpov ev alviyfxaTi, 1 Co 13'=). In a modern mirror the reflexion is perfect, but the finest burnished metal gave but an indistinct image. To see a friend in a mirror, and to look at his own face, was therefore to receive two ditt'erent impres- sions. So this world of time and sense, as appre- hended by the human mind, imperfectly mirrors the true and eternal world, leaving many things 'enigmatic' Mediate knowledge can never be so sure .and satisfying as immediate. Plato (/?c/). vii. 514) in his well-known simile of the cave compares
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our seiise-inipressions to shadow-shapes that come anil go, givinj; but hints of the real worlil beyond ; and "the tiguie of the mirror is found in sui-li Platonists as the writer of Wisdimi (7='') and riiilo (de Decal. 21). J. H. Newman directed that his memorial tablet at f'djjbaston should bear the words — Ex umbris et imafjinibus in vcritatf.m. Many writers have supposed that St. Paul refers not to a mirror but to a semi-transparent window- pane : ' velut per corneum specular obsoletior lux ' (Tertullian, de An. 53). But a window of talc would be dloTTTpov (Lat. spccidare), not (aowTpov. Tertulliau has indeed the right interpretation in adi: Prax. 1(3, 'in imagine etspeculo et a;nigmate.'
2. St. Paul saj's that we all, with unveiled face mirroring ((caroTrrpis'ei/xei'oi) the glory of the Lord, are transfigured (cf. Mk 9'-) into the same image (2 Co 3'*). While Moses, who saw God and for a little while outwardly reflected His glory, gradu- ally lost the supernatural radiance, the disciples of Christ steadily beholding (cf. Jn l") and reflecting His moral glory, become daily more like Him : ' the rays of Divine glory penetrate their innermost being and fashion them anew' (Bousset, Die Schrift- en des NT, 19U8, ii. 179). The older interpretation — ' beholding as in a mirror ' — loses the parallel between Moses' direct vision of God and ours (by faith) of Christ, and fails to do justice to the ' unveiled face.'
3. James (I'-^-^S) compares the law of liberty — a splendid paradox — to a mirror in which a man sees himself as he is. The mere hearer of the law is like a person who gives a hasty glance at his face in a mirror and then turns his attention to other things ; but he who continuesto look into the mirror of the law till the moral ideal fascinates him and the categorical imperatives win his passionate assent, so that his own will is more and more conformed to the will of God — that man shall learn the secret of true happiness. JAMES Steahan.
MITYLENE(MiTuX^>'i;).—Mitylene,or— according to the usual spelling in classical writings and on coins — Mytilene, was the chief town in the island of Lesbos, lying on the S.E. coast, about 12 miles from the mainland of Asia Minor. Built on a peninsula which had once been an island, it had two excellent harbours, the northern for merchant- men, the southern for triremes.
Horace calls it 'Mitylene pulchra ' (i?p. I. xi. 17), and Cicero praises it as ' urbs et uatura de situ et descriptione sdificiorum et pulchritudine, in primis nobilis' {Leg. Agr. ii. 41). Mitylene was the home of Alcaeus and of Sappho, *an extraordinary person {9av}j.a(TT6v rt xP'^j^a), for at no period within memory has any woman been known at all to be compared to her in poetry' (Strabo, xiir. ii. 3). For its old renown the Romans left the city free—* libera Mitylene ' (Pliny, v. 39).