que natura sit ? Portentum erojo jRt, non contra natnram, sed con-' tra quam est nota natura." ^ Baden Powell, in behalf of men of science, protests against being called upon to believe in anything " at variance with nature and law." " The enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural world," he says, " cannot but tend powerfully to evince the inconceivableness of imagined interrup- tions of natural order or supposed suspensions of the laws of mat- ter, and of that vast series of dependent causation which con- stitutes the legitimate field for the investigation of science, whose constancy is the sole warrant for its generalizations, while it forms the substantial basis for the grand conclusions of natural theol- ogy." 2 The question of miracles, he says,^ is not one " which can be decided by a few trite and commonplace generalities as to the moral government of the world and the belief in the Divine Om- nipotence, or as to the validity of human testimony or the limits of human experience. It, involves, and is essentially built upon, those gi-ander conceptions of the order of nature, those compre- hensive primary elements of all physical knowledge, those ulti- mate ideas of universal causation, which can only be familiar to those versed in cosmical philosophy in its widest sense." " It is for the most part hazardous ground for any general moral reasoner to take, to discuss subjects of evidence which essentially involve that higher appreciation of physical truth which can be attained only from an accurate and comprehensive acquaintance with the connected series of the physical and mathematical sciences. Thus, for example, the simple but grand truth of the law of conservation, and the stability of the heavenly motions, now well understood by all sound cosmical philosophers, is but a type of the universal self- sustaining and self-evolving powers which pervade all nature." * Professor Powell's conclusion is, " if miracles were, in the estima- tion of a former age, among the chie^ supports of Christianity, they are at present among the main difficulties and hinderances to its acceptance." ^ His whole argument is this, miracles, as usually defined, involve a suspension, or alteration, or violation of the laws of nature ; but those laws are absolutely immutable, there- fore that definition must be incorrect, or, in other words, miracles in that sense must be impossible.
1 De Civitiite Dei, xxi. 8, edit. Benedictines, vol. vii. p. 1006, a.
2 Recent Inqmries in Theology, or Essays and Reviews. By Eminent English Clergymen. Boston, 18G0, p. 124
a JUd. p. 150.
4 Ibid. p. 151. » Ibid. p. 158.
620 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. XH. - Miracles.
Answe?' to the above Objection.
The form in which the objection is presented by those who make nature the will of God, is answered by saying that nature is not the will of God in any other sense than that He ordained the sequence of natural events, and established the laws or physical causes by which that regular sequence is secured. This relation between God and the world, assumes that nature and its laws are subject to Him, and therefore liable at any time to be suspended or counteracted, at his good pleasure.
As to the other form of the objection, which assumes that the laws of nature are in themselves immutable, and therefore that they cannot be suspended, it is enough to say, (1.) That this abso- lute immutability of natural laws is a gratuitous assumption. That a thing has been is no proof that it must always be. There is no absolute certainty, because no necessity, that the sun will rise to-morrow. We assume with confidence that it will thus rise, but on what ground ? What impossibility is there that this night the voice of the angel should be heard, swearing, " That time shall be no longer ? " If time began, time may end. If nature began to be, it may cease to be, and all about it must be liable to change. Scientific men have no right to assume that because physical laws are, and, within the limits of our experience, ever have been, regular in their operation, that they are, as Professor Powell says, " self-sustaining and self-evolving." It is a great mistake to sup- pose that uniformity is inconsistent with voluntary control ; that because law reigns, God does not reign. The laws of nature are uniform only because He so wills, and their uniformity continues only so long as He wills.
(2.) It is utterly derogatory to the character of God to assume that He is subject to law, and especially to the laws of matter. If theism be once admitted, then it must be admitted that the whole universe, with all that it contains and all the laws by which it is controlled, must be subject to the will of God. Professor Powell indeed says, that many theists deny the possibility of the sus- pension or violation of the laws of nature, but then he says that there are many degrees of theism, and he includes under that term theories which others regard as inconsistent with the doctrine of a personal God. It is certain that the objection to the defini- tion of a miracle given above, now under consideration, depends for its validity on the assumption, that God is subject to nature • that He cannot control its laws. J. Miiller well says, " Etiamsi