present, and everywhere acting, controlling physical laws so as to accomplish his purposes ; but they insist that He never operates immediately, but always acts through the established laws of nature. Thus the Duke of Argyle, whose excellent woik on the " Reign of Law " is thoroughly religious, says i^ " There is nothing in religion incompatible with the belief that all exercises of God's power, whether ordinary or extraordinary, are effected through the instrumentality of means — that is to say, by the instrumentality of natural laws brought out, as it were, and used for a divine pur- pose." He begins his book with quotations from M. Guizot's work, " L'Eglise et la Societe Chretienne en 1861," to the effect that belief in the supernatural is the special difficulty of our time ; that the denial of it is the form taken by all modern assaults on Ciiristian faith ; and that acceptance of it lies at the root, not only of Christianity, but of all positive religion whatever. By the supernatural, he understood Guizot to mean, what the word does properly and commonly mean, namely, what transcends nature ; and by nature is meant all things out of God. A supernatural event, therefore, in this sense, which is Guizot's sense of the word, is an event which transcends the power of nature, and which is due to the immediate agency of God. M. Guizot is undoubtedly correct in saying that the belief in the supernatural, thus explained, is the great difficulty of the age. The tendency, not only of science, but of speculation in all departments, is, at least for the time being, to merge everything into nature and to admit of no other causes.
Although the Duke of Argyle is a theist, and admits of the con- stant operation of the Divine will in nature, he is still urgent in insisting that the power of Gpd in nature is always exercised ac- cording to law, and in connection with physical causes. Miracles, therefore, differ from ordinary events only in so far as the law accoi-ding to which they come to pass, or the physical forces acting in their production are unknown. He quotes with approbation from Locke, the following most unsatisfactory definition : " A miracle, then, I take to be a sensible operation, which, being above the comprehension of the spectator, and, in his opinion, contrary to the established course of nature, is taken hy him to be divine." ^ This is the precise view held by Baden Powell, who in the essay repeatedly referred to above, makes a miracle a mere matter of opinion. It is not a matter of fact to be determined by testimony,
1 Reign of Laio. By the Duke of Argj'le. Fifth edition, London, p. 22.
2 Reign of Law, pp. 24, 25.
624 PARI I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. XH. — Miracles.
but a matter of opinion as to the cause of that fact. The fact may be admitted, and one man may say it is due to natural law, known or unknown ; and then it is no miracle. Another man says it is due to the immediate power of God. In that case it is a mira- cle. Which of the two is correct, cannot be decided by testimony. It must be decided by the general views of nature and of God's relation to the world, which men entertain. The doctrine that God works in the external world only through physical force, and even that He can act only in that way, leads, of necessity, to the conclusion that miracles are events in the external world brought about by unknown physical causes. They prove only " the pres- ence of superhuman knowledge and the working of superhuman
Objections to the Boctriiie of a Higher Law.
(1.) With regard to this theory, it may be remarked in the first place, that it is a perfectly gratuitous hypothesis. It assumes the existence of laws of nature without necessity and without evi- dence. By laws, in such connections, is usually meant either the ordered sequence of events, or the power by which that sequence is secured. In either case there is this ordered sequence. But where is tlie evidence that anywhere in the universe the living of the dead, the recovery of the sick, the stilling of the storm, and the swimming of iron, follow as matters of course on a command ? The Church doctrine on miracles gives a simple, rational, and satisfactory account of their occurrence, which renders all assump- tion of unknown laws unnecessary and unjustifiable. It is utterly impossible to prove, as this theory assumes, that every physical effect must have a physical cause. Our own wills are causes in the sphere of nature ; and the omnipotent will of God is not tied to any one mode of operation.
(2.) This hypothesis is not only unnecessary, but it is unsatis- factory. There are miracles which transcend not only all known, but all possible laws of nature. Nature cannot create. It cannot originate life ; otherwise it would be God, and nothing beyond nature would be necessary to account for the universe and for all that it contains. As, therefore, there are miracles which cannot be accounted for by "a higher law of nature," it is clear that they are to be referred to the immediate power of God, and not to some un- known physical force. All theists are obliged to acknowledge this
1 Reign of Law, p. 16, note.
f.l.] MIRACLES.— THEIR NATURE. 625
immediate agenc^^ of God in the original act of creation. Then there were no la\\ s or forces through which his efficiency could be exercised. The fact, therefore, on which the Church doctrine on this subject rests must be admitted.
(3.) The Scriptures not only are silent about any higher law as the cause of miraculous events, but they always refer them to the immediate power of God. Christ said He cast out devils by the finger of God. He never referred to anything but his own will as the efficient antecedent of the effect produced, " I will, be thou clean," He healed by a touch — by a word. When he gave miraculous powers to the Apostles, He did not make them alche- mists. They did not claim knowledge of occult laws. Peter, when called to account for the healing of the lame man in the temple, said that it was the name of Christ, faith in his name that had made the man every whit whole. It is moreover plain that, on this theory, miracles must lose their value as proofs of a divine commission. If the Apostles did the wonders which they per- formed by the knowledge of, or through the efficiency of natural laws, then they are on the level of the experimenter who makes water freeze in a red hot spoon. If God be not the author of the miracle, it does not prove a divine message.
(4.) There is force also in what the Rev. J. B. Mozley says: " To say that the material fact which takes place in a miracle admits of being referred to an unknown natural cause, is not to say that the miracle itself does. A miracle is the material fact as coinciding with an express announcement or with express super- natural pretensions in the agent. It is this correspondence of two facts which constitutes a miracle. If a person says to a blind man, ' See,' and he sees, it is not the sudden return of sight alone that we have to account for, but its return at that particular moment. For it is morally impossible that this exact agreement of an event with a command or notification could have been by mere chance, or, as we should say, been an extraordinary coincidence, especially if it is repeated in other cases." ^ It is very certain that no one who saw Lazarus rise from the grave, when Jesus said, " Lazarus, come forth," ever thought of any physical law as the cause of that event.
Miracles and Extraordinary Providences.
A third objection urged against the definition above given is, that it is not sufficiently comprehensive. It does not cover a large
I Eight Lectures cm Miracles; by J. B. Mozley, B. D. Bamplon Lectures for 1866. London, 1865, p. 148.
626 PART I — THEOLOGY. [Ch. XH. —Mnt agues.
class of miracles recorded in the Scriptures. In the sudden rising of a fog which conceals an army and thus saves it from destruction; in a storm which disperses a hostile fleet and thus saves a nation, — in any such providential intervention, it is said, we have all the elements included in many of the miracles recorded in the Bible. The events occur in the external w^orld ; they are not due to mere physical causes, but to such causes guided by the immediate agency of God, and directed to the accomplishment of a particular end. This is all that can be said of many of the plagues inflicted on the Egyptians ; of the flight of quails to supply the Avants of the He- brews in the desert ; and of the draught of fishes recorded in the Gospels.