tive to human feeling and apprehension. This definition does not go beyond the etymology of the term. But an event which excites wonder in an extraordinary degree is not thereby constituted a miracle. The authority of Augustine has often been pleaded in favor of this faulty definition. He says that a miracle is not contrary to Nature, but only to that Nature which is known to us. The ordinary operations of nature, he says, were they unfamiliar, would excite not less amazement, and are in reality not less wonderful, than miracles. But in Augustine's view, which results from his anti-manichæan philosophy, all the operations of Nature are immediate exertions of the Divine will. In this respect, therefore, he can place miracles in the same category with the every-day operations of nature, while he holds, at the same time, that the miracle when regarded from another point of view, is an altogether exceptional event.* Spinoza, identifying God with Nature, is consistent in denying that any distinctive characteristic of an objective kind belongs to a miracle. This term, he says, has respect only to the opinions entertained by men, and signifies no more than this, that we, or at all events, they who narrate the event in question, are unable to explain it by the analogy of any other event familiar to experience. On Spinoza's scheme, a miracle in the proper sense, is a complete absurdity.† Schleiermacher, never wholly able to escape from the atmosphere of Pantheism, comes no nearer the true idea, when he says that any event, even the most natural, may be styled a miracle, provided the religious view of its origin is sponta * Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xxi. 8. 2. Omnia quippe portenta contra Naturam dicimus esse: sed non sunt. Quomodo est enim contra Naturam, quod Dei fit voluntate, cum voluptas tanti utique Conditoris conditæ rei cujusque natura est? The will of God-the voluntas of the Creator-is Nature. + Spinoza devotes c. vi. of the Tract. Theolog-Polit, to the subject of miracles; and further considers the subject in his Letters-Epist. xxi and xxiii. He says (in the chapter above referred to): "Ex his-sequitur, nomen miraculi non nisi respective ad hominum opiniones posse intelligi, et nihil aliud significare, quam opus, cujus causam naturalem exemplo alterius rei solitæ explicare non possumus, vel saltem ipse non potest, qui miraculum scribit aut narrat." With Spinoza leges naturales are one and the same with Dei natura. See the context of the passage. neously awakened in the mind, with a forgetfulness of the proximate natural causes. The relative notion of the miracle fails to separate it objectively and really from a natural event-an event occurring by Natural law. Neither the degree of astonishment with which events are regarded, nor the question whether they can be referred to a previously ascertained law, nor, again, the question whether they are attributed spontaneously to the power of God, forms the defining characteristic of a miraculous occurrence. An attentive observation of the * Wunder ist nur der religiöse Name für Begebenheit: jede, auch die allernatürlichste, sobald sie sich dazu eignet, dass die religose Ansicht von ihr die herrschende sein kann, ist ein Wunder. Mir ist alles Wunder, &c. Reden (6 A.) S. 106. See, also, N. 16, S. 145. Schleiermacher's views are more fully set forth in his System of Theology—the Glaubenslehre—§14 Zusatz, §34, 2, 3, and §47. Though not rejecting the New Testament miracles, as historical occurrences, he still professes his agreement with those who hold "dass Gott die Wunder auf eine uns unbegreifliche Art in der Natur selbst vorbereitet gehabt." B 1. S. 240. But his reasoning to prove that a divine act must be performed through the system of Nature and provided for in that system, is unsound and of a Pantheistic tendency. Schleiermacher has again discussed the subject of miracles in his Lectures upon the Life of Jesus, published lately for the first time. He has taken, however, no new positions. In his endeavor to refer the miracles of Jesus to energies belonging to Nature, he is perplexed by the control which Christ exercised over inanimate existence, as in stilling the tempest, multiplying the loaves of bread, and raising the dead. (See p. 223). Such events, he perceives, can be attributed to no mysterious natural energy, which is supposed to have enabled him to produce extraordinary effects-for example, in healing-in contact with living men. Yet the miracles of the class mentioned above are historically as well attested as any of the rest. This fact Schleiermacher is constrained to allow, and hence finds it impossible to extricate himself from the difficulty into which he is thrown, and which is due to the false assumption as to the relative nature of the miracle, with which he sets out. That the miracles of Christ could not have been performed by any power embosomed in Nature-as, for example, by an energy belonging naturally to preeminent human virtue-would seem to be an obvious truth. Yet a recent writer (Furness, Veil partly Lifted, p. 216) takes this position, even respecting the res urrection of Jesus. Aside from the tremendous difficulty of supposing such anomalous events, as the miracles recorded in the Bible, to be due to any power latent in human nature, we are cut off from that supposition by the testimony of Christ himself, and are obliged to refer them to a supernatural Author. The broaching of such a theory indicates a desire, which amounts to a determination, to get rid of the agency of a living, personal God. common phenomena of Nature, as Augustine and after him Luther and many others have forcibly pointed out, may well kindle wonder, and in a religious mind will carry up the thoughts to God. But such phenomena are not, on this account, to be deemed miraculous.* In defining a miracle we pledge ourselves to no particular theory concerning the constitution of Nature. If the new doctrine of the persistency of force-the correlation of forces, Mr. Grove calls it should be established, and if all the phenomena of matter should be found to be due to varieties of motion-to be varied manifestations of one essence-our present discussion would not be sensibly affected. If occasionalism be adopted as the true philosophy; if it be maintained that the operations of Nature proceed immediately from the volitions of God, the efficiency of second causes being denied, or even that the phenomena of Nature are indistinguishable from these volitions, what we have to say, would, with slight verbal modifications, hold good. We proceed, however, upon the position which is commonly taken by theists, that secondary causes are real, that matter is an entity manifesting forces, though requiring the direct sustenance and co-working of the power of God. The forces resident in Nature subsist and act, but they subsist and act, not without the Divine preservation-the concursus Dei. A miracle is an event which the forces of Nature, or secondary causes, operating thus under the ordinary divine preservation, are incompetent to produce.† Secondary causes may be concerned in the production of a miracle. For a miracle (ex * For good remarks on the relative notion of a miracle, see the valuable Essay of Julius Müller on the subject of Miracles, to which we shall again refer, c. iv. Relativa quam vocant miraculi notio examinatur. In this definition we use the term Nature as a synonym for the sum of second causes, or the creation in distinction from God. If the term be taken less comprehensively, as embracing only man and the material universe, or that portion of the material universe of which he has any knowledge, then in order to differentiate a miracle from other supernatural events-events, for example, which it may be thought possible for superhuman, created intelligences to bring to pass -we must add another element to the definition and explicitly connect the miracle with a volition of God. cept in the case of creation de nihilo) is wrought in Nature, or in the realm of second causes; but these are insufficient to explain it. It is an event which only the intervention of the First Cause is adequate to produce. Beyond the constant upholding of Nature in the normal exercise of its powers, there has been an interposition of God to effect that which otherwise could not have taken place. Pascal has exactly hit the true nature of a miracle, when he terms it a result exceeding the natural force of the means employed. If the axe floats on the water, some power is exerted above the powers of Nature. They, if left to themselves, would necessarily carry it to the bottom. IS A MIRACLE TO BE CONSIDERED A SUSPENSION OR VIOLATION OF NATURAL LAW? More commonly this question has been answered in the affirmative. Yet the point is one on which theologians are not yet agreed. For example, Dr. N. W. Taylor, whose discussion of the general subject is marked by his wonted acuteness, styles a miracle a "deviation" from some law of Nature, and appears, also, to sanction the statement that miracles may involve a violation of natural law.* On the contrary, Dr. Julius Müller considers the statement improper and unfounded.+ The difference is really due to the different mode in which the phrase, "law of Nature," is defined by the parties respectively. Dr. Taylor means by a law of Nature "that established course, or order, of things or events, which depends solely on the constitution, properties, or nature of any created thing, and which admits of no deviation by any created power." The stated connection between a given event and a certain set of physical antecedents, which that event is observed invariably to follow, is taken as the idea of a law of Nature. Under this conception, a miracle is properly said to involve a counteraction, or suspension, or violation of natural law; for in the case of the miracle the presence of a given set. * See Dr. Taylor's Moral Government, Vol. II., pp. 388, 390. of physical antecedents is not followed by the usual event. When a leper is healed, as the effect of a word uttered by a human voice, the connection usually observed to subsist between physical antecedent and consequent, is dissolved. If the law of Nature be this stated connection, then, of course, the natural law is suspended or violated. But there is another and more exact meaning to be given to natural law, which does not involve this consequence. What is natural law but the method in which a force or energy is observed to operate? The laws of Nature are the method of the operation of the forces which inhere in Nature. Such laws are not a norm for an energy that is outside of Nature, or is imported from without. We need not affirm-we are not authorized to affirm-that a miracle involves a change in the constitution of matter or mind, or in the law under which they And if it did involve such a change-so that matter, for example, were transformed into something different from matter, even then the miraculous event would be no violation of the laws of matter, since matter, by the supposition, has ceased to exist, and has been displaced by a substance endowed with diverse properties. Suppose the axe to float miraculously upon the water. There is here no violation of the laws of Nature. For the extraordinary event is not due to the abnormal action of the energies that belong either to the water or to the iron; but is owing rather to the introduction of a new and extrinsic cause which operates according to a law of its own. There is no more violation of natural law than if the axe were upheld upon the water by the human hand. The effect which a given antecedent, or sum of antecedents, would otherwise produce, may be counteracted by the presence of other forces which are also natural. This is done whenever a stone is thrown into the air, or water raised by a pump, or lightning diverted from a building by an iron rod. In these cases, there is not, as we conceive, any violation of natural laws. For the law of gravitation is not properly stated when it is made to involve the bringing to the earth of a stone in those circumstances under which we observe the stone to rise; and the same is true of the other examples of a supposed in |