THEN MIRACLES

Theists believe in the existence of a personal God, intelligent and free,-not a God who is a part of nature, but one who is as distinct from nature, as the builder of the house, who lives in it, is distinct from the house. Phillips Brooks said, "The laws of nature are the hands of God, executing His will." Our best philosophers hold that the laws of nature are only the customary mode in which God operates; and that all nature, with all its laws, is perfectly under His control. Whoever holds such a belief will find no difficulty in believing that such a God may at any time, when the good of His creatures requires it, change the mode of His operations, and suspend those laws.

But this to man is a miracle. By a miracle, we may understand, in the strict theological sense, a direct interposition of God's power, changing or suspending temporarily the operation of an established law of nature, for the purpose of revealing Himself or His truth to men. It has been defined, also, as "God's credentials given to His servants, whom He has sent to reveal His will."

I. There are shallow and illogical theologians in these days who sneer at miracles, and vainly dream that they can hold to their Christianity without them. One of them says, (I will not name him), "Rationalism is the antithesis of all systems which depend on authority as the source of truth. Modern thinkers reject the strictly miraculous everywhere. Hence they reject the authority of the Scriptures. The Incarnation is totally unintelligible. . . . With the incarnation will also disappear the doctrine of the Trinity and the Atonement."

Another says: "Higher Criticism has destroyed the story of the Virgin Birth as a historic record. The same is true of almost every so-called incident in the Synoptic Gospels. It is impossible to regard as historical the Temptation, the Transfiguration, the cleansing of the Temple, and the numerous miracle incidents with which they are filled; and if there is no other way of reading them than as historical facts, then they must go on the rubbish heap of the world."

The above specimens are as bold infidelity as was ever uttered by Hume or Ingersoll, and yet they came from living Doctors of Divinity. God have mercy on the churches who allow them to preach, and the Educational Institutions who allow them to teach!

Our old teacher, Dr. G. P. Fisher of Yale, says: "Doubt or denial of the possibility of miracles results from an untheistic conception of nature, and the relation of nature to God. Or, if the personality of God is recognized, He is conceived of as exterior to the world, either a passive spectator or acting upon it from without. . . . When it is understood that God, transcendent and personal though He be, is likewise immanent in nature, and that nature and the interaction of its parts are dependent on His unceasing energy, the difficulty vanishes. Science, no more than religion, warrants us in assuming the existence of "forces" in nature, which form an independent totality."1 1. Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, pp. 16S, 166.

In the same spirit, Lotze says: "The whole course of nature becomes intelligible only by supposing the coworking of God, who alone carries forward the reciprocal action of the different parts of the world. But that view which admits a life of God that is not benumbed in an unchangeable sameness . . . shows how a miracle may take place without any disturbance elsewhere of the constancy of nature . . . with the consequence that its orderly movement goes on unhindered."

"Were the vision not clouded, the ordinary sequences of nature, its wise and beneficent order, would manifest its Author, and call out faith and adoration. The unexpected departure of nature from its beaten path serves to impress on the minds of men the half-forgotten fact that, inseparable from the 'forces,' of nature, even in its ordinary movement, is the will of God. What are 'natural laws'? They are not causes. They are not a code superimposed upon natural objects. They are simply a generalized statement of the way in which the objects of nature are observed to act and interact. Thus the miracle does not clash with natural laws. It is simply a modification in the effect, due to the unusual exertion of the voluntary agency which is its cause."2 2. Fisher's Theistic and Christian Belief, pp. 166-168.

We will now let a German thinker speak: "Why not look upon a miracle as that which it professes to be, as that apart from which it would be no miracle-as something happening outside the limits of the known laws of nature, be it an occurrence in obedience to higher laws, be it an arbitrary and supernatural intervention of God.

From this simple position with regard to a miracle, and this definition, which is contained in the Word itself, two things follow:

1. First, the absurdity of denying it. To maintain that no miracle has ever taken place, that such a thing is impossible, is nothing else than to maintain that we know all the forces and laws and possibilities in the universe.

As Maudsley remarks, "It is the presumption of human ignorance to hold that a thing is impossible, simply because it seems to us incomprehensible." Science is not, and never will be, in a position to decide with infallibility what can and what can not be. Therefore the possibility of a miracle, as something apparently incomprehensible, is not to be denied. The old discussion as to whether it results from the operation of laws unknown, or from a direct and sudden dispensation of God, is for us idle and unprofitable. We know of no laws of nature which, once set in motion by God, now work independently like a clock, constructed and wound up once for all. What we, for the sake of brevity and convenience, call natural forces, are really a continual exercise of the power of God, an emanation of His will. . . . There is for us nothing which can strictly be called natural, all is divine; and we might just as well say that every form of existence is a miracle, as that there is no such thing as a miracle.

2. The second result that follows from the above definition of a miracle, is the impossibility of scientifically disputing it. A miracle is altogether outside the province of scientific criticism. This was acknowledged by the great scientist, Tyndall, who was by no means a believer in the Bible, yet admitted that if there is a God, He is Almighty, and can therefore work miracles; and that miracles, if there is such a thing, have nothing to do with science, but lie outside her province.

Quite true we say, and would recommend this utterance of a man of the first rank, to those of the tenth rank who delight in confronting miracles with science.

He who tries to understand and to explain a miracle, to comprehend or to fix such a flash of illimitable, Divine power shows that he does not know what a miracle is, and in his attempt to explain it only succeeds in making a fool of himself, both from the scientific and Christian point of view. A miracle, scientifically proved and explained, would be a logical contradiction. No zoology, however advanced, will ever be able to prove that Balaam's ass was not miraculously endowed with speech; no physics, however deep and highly-developed, will be able to prove that the three Hebrews were burnt in the fiery furnace; or that Christ must have sunk when walking on the sea. Even a child must have recognized that these things were contrary to nature. He who allows his belief in miracles to be reasoned away or even shaken, by professedly scientific arguments, is, to say the least of it, sadly lacking in perspicacity, and would do well to test his conception of an Almighty God, and find out what he really does believe. God is a miracle, and he who does not believe in miracles does not believe in God, even though he believes that he believes in Him; that is to say, he is mentally too weak to grasp both. . . . We who believe in God, believe of necessity in a miracle, for a God who was obliged to obey self-made laws of nature with regard to the manner in which He reveals Himself in his creation, would not be, a God at all.

There are sundry facts which it is well to note in connection with the miracles recorded in the Bible. First, that they are done to the honor of God, and for the weal and blessing of mankind. The miracle has a moral purpose and an ethical value. Secondly, the miracle is not an arbitrary sport of God, but has an aim and a purpose. . . . Thirdly, the miracle is always an amplification and elevating of life. . . . Man was created for health and everlasting life; and the aim of science is to abolish disease, and some say death; Christ heals the sick and raises the dead in pledge of health and immortality...

Many people do not see the necessity for a miracle. It is true God does not need them; he does not perform miracles for his own sake; for Him there are no miracles; the creation of a new sun or the birth of a worm are the same to him. But for our sakes he performs miracles; for our sakes, that we may not be led to worship God as nature, nor nature as God! God works miracles in order to show Himself another and greater than his nature, and to say to everyone not spiritually blind: "I am in nature, but I am not nature. I am its Creator, and since I created it voluntarily, I can at any time arbitrarily alter it." . . .

Man cannot get away from miracles; even the materialist believes in them. Not in those, it is true, which happened eighteen hundred years ago, and to which many trustworthy men bore witness, more than one of whom sealed that witness with his life; but in such as happened millions of years ago, which were observed by none who could testify to their genuineness. That he may not have to believe in a creation, he believes in an unproved spontaneous generation, or imports at great expense life-germs from other worlds. That Christ raised the dead, made an organism that had lived, live again, he does not believe; but he does believe that organisms were generated by dead matter. That God for a special purpose endowed an ass with speech, that it spoke certain words, is too absurd to be believed; but that an ape, without knowing why, gradually began to talk, and that all the asses in the world will one day speak is, or ought to be, seriously believed by those who hold the doctrine of evolution!

That God, the Creator of fire and of men, should have made three men fire proof for a few minutes, seems to them a ridiculous legend; but they believe that organic germs existed for millions of years in the glowing cosmic gas and in molten granite. Nay, even a scientist like Tyndall, believes that all life-germs, the inventive faculty, reason and will, in all their manifestations were once 'latent in a fiery cloud!' If that is not a miracle, what is it?... Looking at things in their true light, we swim in miracles as a fish in the ocean, and what we call a 'miracle,' is only the, to us, unaccustomed falling of a few rain-drops into this infinite and fathomless sea."1 1. Bettex: Science and Christianity, pp. 141-150.

We quote once more, and from Dr. Curtis of Drew Seminary: "Outside the range of conservative theology, there are three pronounced attitudes toward the miracles of the Bible.

1. The attitude where all miracles are regarded as impossible. The whole case is settled beyond recall by an a priori assumption.

2. The attitude is obnoxious to the person. . . . These are dominated by the scientific conception of natural law, and they feel that a miracle is incongruous, out of keeping with the quiet, steady majesty of the universal order, an event unlike God, an event which can be tolerated only by an immature mind, in short, miracle means to them lawlessness, and so it is an offense to their scientific habit of mind.

3. The attitude where the miracle is considered burdensome in Christian apology. At the front as teachers, or writers, or preachers, they feel the reality and sorrow of the fact that faith after faith is yielding, that man after man is going down into hopeless skepticism. They thus come to a full realization of the entire strain upon thoughtful men, in this, the most critical period in Christian history. And they try to relieve this strain; they try to see how much they can give up, and yet save the essential content of the Christian religion. As one writer stated it, in an editorial on "The Recession of Miracle," "We still hold to the miracle; but we are looking for our lines of retreat." Once filled with this apologetic purpose, it is not strange that the miracle is rejected outright or refined away.

The first of these attitudes does not merit the serious consideration of any real Christian theist; for if there is an infinite personal God, the question of miracle cannot be one of possibility, but must be one only of method or divine intention.

The second attitude results from a failure to appreciate the ethical dignity of a. Christian miracle. It is not incongruous for God to-break the order, if such a rupture can be made to contribute to righteousness. There is majesty in the natural law; but there is still greater majesty in the moral law. As Cardinal Newman once said: "Miracles, though they contravene the physical laws of the universe, tend to the due fulfillment of its moral laws."

The third attitude is a serious misapprehension. The stress of the situation is not caused by science, but by a superficial ethical life. . .. Given a profoundly moral situation, and the Christian miracle would not be burdensome in the least. Science has not proven anything which tends in any way to weaken man's moral openness toward the literal resurrection of our Lord's body.

Again there is a misapprehension of the Christian religion itself. The miraculous cannot be taken out of Christianity, for the simple reason that it is fundamental in the Christian structure. Christianity is an organized miracle. Suppose you could get rid of the smaller miracles, you would still have to deal with the Incarnatiqn and the Resurrection; and if you tried to get on without these, there would still be remaining the peculiar person of Jesus, and He is the most stupendous miracle of all, "the grand miracle of Christianity, about which all the others play as scintillations only of the central fire."

Now we sweep on to the Incarnation. To render possible the moral salvation of mankind, the only Son of God actually becomes man. This is beyond the divine habit, and against the divine habit; but it is more than all that, it is a continual contravention, a breaking forever of the normal life of the Godhead, an everlasting miracle. The whole ethical intensity of Christianity can be expressed in a sentence: The redemption of man has cost God a miraculous sacrifice which is never, never to end."1 1. Curtis, The Christian Faith, pp. 161-167.

We make no apology for these lengthy quotations from these noble scholars. The great battle with modern skepticism is being fought over miracles. Shallow theologians vainly imagine that they can relegate miracles, "to the rubbish heap of the world" and still have Christianity and salvation left. The acute minded and logical apostle Paul thought otherwise. He declared, "If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins."2 With Paul, it was miracles or no Christianity; faith in miracles, or damnation! 2. 1 Corinthians 15: 17.

Further, we wished to exhibit the childish prattle and fathomless conceit of those writers who affirm that "Modern thinkers reject the strictly miraculous everywhere." As if these skeptical scribblers against miracles were the only "modern thinkers"! As if there were not multitudes who are their peers in thinking, and literally thousands who are vastly their superiors in scholarship and literary reputation world-wide, and Christian usefulness that has reached the ends of the earth, all of whom believe in the Bible miracles! One wonders in what a Fool's Paradise these clerical infidels dwell!

II. Miracles admit of proof by testimony.

Here we are compelled to discuss briefly the famous argument of Hume, by which he thought to have annihilated belief in Christian miracles. Hume argued thus: "Experience is our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact... A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined."

"It is experience only which gives authority to human testimony; and it is the same experience which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experiences are contrary, we have nothing to do but subtract the one from the other... But this subtraction, with regard to all popular religions, amounts to an entire annihilation; and therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle and make it a just foundation for such a system of religion."

We make the following answer to Hume's famous argument:

1. By his definition that a miracle is something against a firm and unalterable experience, he assumes the whole question in dispute.

2. He leaves God out of the problem. His so-called "laws of nature," are only the customary mode in which God operates. For a sufficient reason, He can temporarily change His mode of operation. What does God care about the customary method of running His physical machine, when the interests of His kingdom and the spiritual welfare of His children are at stake? One human being is of more significance to God than a world of dirt.

3. But Hume's third mistake is that he does not take moral government of God into his account at all. "It is like the mistake of the astronomer who should carefully notice .the recurring movements of the planets around their primary, but should fail to notice that mightier movements by which the planets and suns are all borne onward toward some unknown point in infinite space."

4. Hume puts human experience at war with human testimony. There is no such conflict. When the Israelites testified to the miracle of crossing the Jordan, they testified to their own experience, which was a part of the experience of the race. The testimony and experience were one. Human experience could not overthrow the testimony to a miracle unless we could adduce the experience of every member of the race from the beginning of time.

5. Hume's argument is a practical absurdity. According to Hume the very thing that renders a miracle possible must render the proof of it impossible- Without an ordinary settled course of nature, there could be no extraordinary event which is a miracle; but with the uniformity, according to Hume, the extraordinary event could not be proved. It is absurd to suppose that the human mind can be put in such a relation as this to the proof of any possible event.

6. Hume begs the whole question. To say that a suspension of the laws of nature never happened because those laws are uniform, and to define a miracle as something that has never been observed in any age or country, is taking for granted the very thing to be proved. It is as bald and barefaced a "begging of the question" as can be imagined. Hume says, "It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life, because that has never happened in any age or country. There must therefore be a uniform experience against every miraculous event; otherwise the event would not merit that appellation." It is an utterly dishonest argument.

7. Hume violates the laws of logic by using the term "experience" in two senses. First he uses it in the sense of personal experience and contemporary experience; afterward he uses it in the sense of universal experience. By such juggling with this term in his premises he reaches his fallacious conclusion.

8. Professor Fisher points out that "The fundamental fallacy of this reasoning is in the premises, which base belief on naked 'experience,' divorced from all rational expectations drawn from any other source. The argument proceeds on the assumption that a miracle is just as likely to occur in one place as in another; that a miracle whereby the marks of truthfulness are transformed into a mask of error and falsehood is as likely to occur as the healing of a blind man, by a touch of the hand. This might be so if the Power that governs the world were destitute of moral attributes. 'The question is whether the presumption against miracles as mere physical phenomena, is rebutted by the presumption in favor of miracles as works of infinite benevolence.' Hume's argument is valid only on the theory of Atheism."1 1. Fisher's Theistic Belief, pp. 169, 170.

9. Finally, Hume has given away his own argument. He manifestly felt its unsoundness, and added: "I beg the limitations here may be remarked when I say, that a miracle can never be proved so as to be the foundation of a system of religion. For I Own that otherwise, there may possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony." This single admission overthrows his whole argument.2 2. Mark Hopkins' "Evidences of Christianity," pp. 28-37.

He admitted that there might be a miracle if it had nothing to do with religion; but if it had, then it was flatly unprovable and impossible. He shut his eyes to all evidence in its favor, simply because he shut the eyes of his heart against religion and God.

Closing Remarks

Whatever probability there was that there would be a revelation, there was the same that there would be miracles. They were the means by which it would be possible for God to authenticate a communication to man. This is the simple, natural, majestic seal which we all should expect God would affix to a revelation from himself. As Professor Fisher says, "When inclined to believe in a revelation of God, we spontaneously crave some attestation of an objective character. We really expect, that, if all this be really on a plane above nature, there will be some explicit sign and confirmation of the fact. . .

The agency of God in connection with the origin of Christianity, is manifested to the senses, as well as to the reason and heart...

Miracles, it may also be affirmed, are component parts of that gospel which is the object of belief. Not only are they parts of the act of revelation, they are also comprehended within the work of deliverance through Christ-the redemption which is the object of the Christian faith. This is evidently true of His resurrection, in which His victory over sin in its appropriate fruit, and His victory over death was realized as well as demonstrated to man."3 3. Fisher's Theistic Belief, pp. 176, 177

Miracles produced the following results:

1. A conviction of the being of a personal God, both im-manently in, and transcendently above, nature.

2. They showed that the laws of nature are subordinate to the higher laws of God's moral kingdom, and are controlled or temporarily suspended with reference to that. The moral government of God is His greatest concern, and the supreme interest of the universe. In comparison with that, the fixed order of the physical world is of no significance. "If a law of nature were destroyed it could be re-established; if a system of suns and planets were annihilated, another might be produced in its

room; if heaven and earth were to pass away, they might be created again; but if the brightness of the moral character of God (in administering His government) should be tarnished, that character would be lost forever."1 1. Hopkins' "Evidences of Christianity," pp. 60, 61.

It remains to speak a word about miracles that are false or pretended, or, if real to us and unaccountable, are used by the Evil One and his wicked emissaries for unholy ends. Mark Hopkins says: "I do not myself believe that any being but God can work a real miracle. Miracles are His great seal." This may possibly be true. But they may be counterfeited so successfully by Satan that they are as real to us as any miracle can be.

The Bible speaks about such miracles in seven very different passages, viz., Ex. 7: 11, 12; Deut.

13: 1-5; Mat. 24: 24; 2 Thess. 2: 9; Rev. 13: 13, 14; Rev. 16: 13, 14; Rev. 19: 20. Some of these are very remarkable, as Rev. 16: 13, 14: "And he doeth great signs, that he should even make fire to come down out of heaven upon the earth in the sight of men. And he deceiveth them that dwell upon the earth by reason of the signs . . . saying to them . . . that they should make an image to the beast."

Now, if a sign, or miracle, or wonder, should be wrought in our day, accompanied by a pretended message from God, by what criterion shall it be judged? There are three tests. (1) Are they worthy of God. The table-tippings and other fooleries of Spiritualism done in the dark, are not worthy of Him. (2) Are they wrought by men of pure and benevolent lives? (3) Are the teachings accompanying the miracles in harmony with the Word of God, and His character, and of the highest importance to man, and in entire conformity to his nature.

An apparent miracle, performed by an unclean person, asking us to forsake God, or to sin, we should never heed.

But the Bible miracles offer no such practical difficulty. They were performed by saintly men, accompanied by a call to practical Godliness, and were becoming the high and holy God.

Let us hear no more of this senseless clamor against, and drivelling criticism of the Bible miracles. They reflect no credit on either the intellects or the hearts of the critics.

We say with our old and revered teacher of Church History, Professor Fisher, "In fine, miracles are the complement of the internal evidence. The two sorts of proof lend support, each to the other, and they conspire together to satisfy the candid inquirer that Christianity is of supernatural origin."1 1 Fisher's Theistic and Christian Belief, p. 177.