went out before them all ;" it was a sign, for it gave token that one
greater than men deemed was among them ; it stood in connection with
a higher fact, of which it was the sign and seal, (cf. 1 Kin. xiii. 8 ; 2
Kin. i. 10 ;) being wrought that they might " know that the Son of man
hath power on earth to forgive sins."*
4. A further term by which St. John very frequently names the
miracles is eminently significant. They are very often with him simply
"works,"j (v. 36 ; vii. 21 ; x. 25, 32, 38 ; xiv. 11, 12 ; xv. 24 ; see
also Matt. xi. 2.) The wonderful is in his eyes only the natural form
of working for him who is dwelt in by all the fulness of God ; he must,
out of the necessity of his higher being, bring forth these works greater
than man's. They are the periphery of that circle whereof he is the
centre. The great miracle is the Incarnation ; all else, so to speak,
follows naturally and of course. It is no wonder that he whose name is
" Wonderful" (Isaiah ix. 6,) does works of wonder ; the only wonder
would be if he did them not.:}: The sun in the heavens is itself a won-
der, but not that, being what it is, it rays forth its effluences of light and
heat. These miracles are the fruit after its kind, which the divine tree
brings forth ; and may, with a deep truth, be styled " works"§ of Christ,
with no further addition or explanation. ||
* Pelt's definition {Cornm. in Thess.,p. 179,) is brief and good: Parum differunt
tria ista SwafieLs, arifxela, repara. Awafits numeros ingulari tamen est vis miraculorum
edendorum ; a-rifxda quatenus comprobandae inserviunt doctrinoc sive niissioui divinae :
repara portenta sunt, quae admirationem et stuporem excitant.
t The miracles of the Old Testament are called epya, Heb. iii. 9 ; Ps. xciv. 9, LXX.
t Augustine {In Ev. Joh., Tract. 17) : Mirum non esse debet h Deo factum mi-
raculum Magis gaudere et admirari debemus quia Dominus noster et Salvator
Jesus Christus homo factus est, quJim quod divina inter homines Deus fecit.
§ I am aware that this interpretation of epya, as used by St. John, has sometimes
been called in question, and that by this word has been understood the sum total of his
acts and his teachings, his words and his works, as they came under the eyes of men ;
not indeed excluding the miracles, but including also very much besides ; yet I cannot
doubt that our Lord, using this word, means his miracles, and only them. Tlie one
passage brought with any apparent force against this meaning, (John xvii. 4,) does not
really belong to the question. For that fpyof in the singular may, and here does, sig-
nify his whole work and task, is beyond all doubt ; but that in the plural the word means
his miracles, the following passages, v. 3G ; x. 25,32,38; xiv. 11, to which others
might be added, seem to me decisively to prove.
II With regard to the verbs connected with these nouns, we may observe in the
ON THE NAMES OF THE MIRACLES. 15
three first Evangelists, (ry)fxe'ia ZiS6vai, (Matt. xii. 39 ; xxiv. 24 ; Mark viii. 12,) and still
more fi-equently Svm/xeis iroie7v. (Matt. vii. 22 ; xiii. 58 ; Mark ix. 39, &c.) Neither
of these phrases occurs in St. John, but crriixua iroLe7v continually, (ii. 11 ; iii. 2 ; iv. 54,
&c.,) which is altogether wanting in the earlier Evangelists ; occurring, however, in the
Acts, (vii. 3G; xv. 22,) and in Revelations (xiii. 13; xix. 20). Once St. John has
ffilfieTa SeiKj/vew (ii. 18).
CHAPTER II.
THE MIRACLES AND NATURE.
Wherein, it may be asked, does the miracle differ from any step in the
ordinary course of nature ? For that too is wonderful ; the fact that it
is a marvel of continual recurrence may rob it, subjectively, of our ad-
miration ; we may be content to look at it with a dull incurious eye, and
to think we find in its constant repetition the explanation of its law, even
as we often find in this a reason for excusing ourselves altogether from
wonder and reverent admiration ;* yet it does not remain the less a mar-
vel still.
To this question it has been replied by some, that since all is thus
marvellous, since the grass growing, the seed springing, the sun rising,
are as much the result of powers which we cannot trace or measure, as the
water made wine, or the sick healed, or the blind restored to vision, there
is therefore no such thing as a miracle eminently so called. We have no
right, they say, in the mighty and complex miracle of nature which en-
circles us on every side, to separate off in this arbitrary manner some
certain facts, and to say that this and that are wonders, and all the rest
ordinary processes of nature ; but that rather we must confine ourselves
to one language or the other, and entitle all or nothing miracle.
But this, however at first sight it may seem very deep and true, is
indeed most shallow and fallacious. There is quite enough in itself and
in its purposes to distinguish that which we name by this name from all
with which it is thus attempted to be confounded, and in which to be lost.
The distinction indeed which is sometimes made, that in the miracle God
is immediately working, and in other events is leaving it to the laws
which he has established, to work, •tinnot at all be admitted : for it has
its root in a dead mechanical view of the universe which lies altogether
* See Augustine, De Gen. ad Lit., 1 12, c. 18 ; nnd Gregory the Great {Hum. 26
in Evang.) ; Quotitiiana Dei miracula ex assicluitate viluerunt.
THE MIRACLES AND NATURE. 17
remote from the truth. The clock-maker makes his clock and leaves it ;
the ship-builder builds and launches his ship, and others navigate it ; but
the world is no curious piece of mechanism which its Maker makes and
then dismisses from his hands, only from time to time reviewing and re-
pairing it ; but as our Lord says, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I
work ;" (John v. 17 ;) he " upholdeth all things by the word of his
power."* (Heb. i. 3.) And to speak of "laws of God," " laws of na-
ture," may become to us a language altogether deceptive, and hiding
the deeper reality from our eyes. Laivs of God exist only for us. It is
a will of God for himself. Tiiat will indeed, being the will of highest
wisdom and love, excludes all wilfulness — is a will upon which we can
securely count; from the past expressions of it we can presume its fu-
ture, and so we rightfully call it a law. But still from moment to mo-
ment it is a will ; each law, as we term it, of nature is only that which
we have learned concerning this will in that particular region of its ac-
tivity. To say then that there is more of the will of God in a miracle
than in any other work of his, is insufficient. Such an affirmation grows
out of that lifeless scheme of the world, of which we should ever be seek-
ing to rid ourselves, but which such a theory will only help to confirm
and to uphold.
For while we deny the conclusion, that since all is wonder, therefore
the miracle commonly so called is in no other way than the ordinary
processes of nature, the manifestation of the presence and power of God,
we must not with this deny the truth which lies in this statement. All
is wonder ; to make a man is at least as great a marvel as to raise a
man from the dead. The seed that multiplies in the furrow is as mar-
vellous as the bread that multi[)lied in Christ's hands. The miracle is
not a greater manifestation of God's power than those ordinary and ever-
repeated processes ; but it is a different'] manifestation. By those other
* Augustine : Sunt qui arbitrantur tantummodo mundum ipsum factum h Deo ; cetera
jam fieri ab ipso mundo, sicut ille ordinavit et jussit, Deum autem ipsum nihil operari.
Contra quos piofertur ilia sententia Domini, Pater meus usque adhuc operatur, et ego
operor. . . . Neque enim, sicut &, structura sedium, ciim fabricaverit quis, abscedit ; atque
illo cessante et absente stat opus ejus ; ita mundus vel ictu oculi stare poterit, si ei Deus
regimen suum subtraxerit. So Melancthon {In loc. de Creatione) : Infirmitas humana
etiamsi cogitat Deum esse conditorem, tamen postea imaginatur, ut faber discedit h,
navi exstructa et relinquit eam nautis ; ita Deum discedere a, suo opere, et relinqui crea-
turas tantum propriae gubernationi ; hsec imaginatio magnam caliginem offundit animis
et parit dubitationes.
t Augustine {Sertn. 242, c. 1) : In homini carnali tota regula intelligendi est con-
suetude cernendi. Quod Solent videre credunt: quod non solent, non credunt
Majora quidem miracula sunt, tot quotidie homines nasci qui non erant, qu<\m paucos
resurrexisse qui erant: et tamen ista miracula non consideratione comprehensa sunt,
sed assiduitate viluenint.
18 THE MIRACLES AND NATURE.
God is speaking at all times and to all the world ; they are a vast reve-
lation of him. "The invisible things of him are clearly seen, being un-
derstood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and God-
head." (Rom. i. 20.) Yet from tlie very circumstance that nature is
thus speaking unto all, that this speaking is diffused over all time, ad-
dressed unto all men, from the very vastness and universality of this
language, it may miss its aim. It cannot be said to stand in nearer re-
lation to one man than to another, to confirm one man's word more than
that of others, to address one man's conscience more than that of every
other man. However it may sometimes have, it must often lack, a pe-
culiar and personal significance. But in the miracle wrought in the
sight of some certain men, and claiming their special attention, there is
a speaking to them in particular. There is then a voice in nature which
addresses itself directly to them, a singling of them out from the crowd.
It is plain that God has now a peculiar word which they are to give
heed to, a message to which he is bidding them to listen.*
An extraordinary divine causality belongs, then, to the essence of the
miracle ; more than that ordinary, which we acknowledge in every
thing ; powers of God other than those which have always been work-
ing; such, indeed, as most seldom or never have been working until
now. The unresting activity of God, which at other times hides and
conceals itself behind the veil of what we term natural laws, does in the
miracle unveil itself; it steps out from its concealment, and the hand
which works is laid bare. Beside and beyondf the ordinary operations of
nature, higher powers, (higher, not as coming from a higher source, but
as bearing upon higher ends,) intrude and make themselves felt even at
the very springs and sources of her power.
Yet when we say that it is of the very essence of the miracle that it
should be thus " a new thing," it is not with this denied that the natural
itself may become miraculous to us by the way in which it is timed, by
* All this is brought out in a very instructive discussion on the miracle, which finds
place in Augustine's great dogmatic work, De Trinit., 1. 3, c. 5, and extends to the
chapters upon either side, being the largest statement of his views upon the subject
which any where finds place in his works : Quis attrahit humorem per radicem vitis ad
botrum et vinum facit, nisi Deus qui et homine plantante et rigante incrementuni dat?
Sed ci!lm ad nutum Domini aqua in vinum inusitata celeritate conversa est, etiam stultis
fatentibus, vis divina declarata est. Quis arbusta fronde et flore vestit solemniter, nisi
Deus? Verilm ciim floruit virga sacerdotis Aaron, coUocuta est quodam modo cum
dubitante humanitate divinitas Ci!im fiunt ilia continuato quasi quodam fluvio
labeniium manantiumque rerum, et ex occulto in promptum, atque ex prompto in oc-
cultum, usitato itinere transeuntium, naturalia dicuntur: ciim vero admonendis homini-
bus inusitata, multabilitate ingeruntur, magnalia nominantur.
t Not, as we shall see the greatest theologians have always earnestly contended,
contra naturam, but prater naturam, and supra naturam.
THE MIRACLES AND NATURE. 19
the ends which it is made to serve. It is indeed true that aught which
is perfectly explicable from the course of nature and history, is assuredly
no miracle in the most proper sense of the word. Yet still the finger of
God may be so plainly discernible in it, there may be in it so remark-
able a convergence of many unconnected causes to a single end, it may
so meet a crisis in the lives of men, or in the onward march of the king-
dom of God, may stand in such noticeable relation with God's great
work of redemption, that even while it is plainly deducible from natural
causes, while there were such perfectly adequate to produce the effects,
we yet may be entirely justified in terming it a miracle, a providential,
although not an absolute, miracle. Absolute it cannot be called, since
there were known causes perfectly capable of bringing it about, and,
these existing, it would be superstition to betake ourselves to others, or
to seek to break it loose from these. Yet the natural lifts itself up into
the miraculous, by the moment at which it falls out, by the purposes
which it is made to fulfil. It is a subjective wonder, a wonder /or us,
though not an objective, not a wonder in itself.
Thus many of the plagues of Egypt were the natural plagues of the
land,* — these, it is true, raised into far direr than their usual activity.
But in itself it was nothing miraculous that grievous swarms of flies
should infest the houses of the Egyptians, or that flights of locusts
should spoil their fields, or that a murrain should destroy their cattle.
None of these visitations were or are unknown in that land ; but the
intensity of all these plagues, the manner in which they followed hard
on one another, their connection with the word of Moses which went
before, with Pharaoh's trial which was proceeding, with Israel's deli-
verance which they helped onward, the manner of their coming and
going, all these do entirely justify us in calling them "the signs and
wonders of Egypt," even as such is the Scriptural language about
them. (Ps. Ixxviii, 43 ; Acts vii. 36.) It is no absolute miracle to
find a coin in a fish's mouth, (Matt. xvii. 27,) or that a lion should meet
a man and slay him, (1 Kin. xiii. 24,) or that a thunder storm should
happen at an unusual period of the year; (1 Sam. xii. 16 — 19 j) and
yet these circumstances may be so timed for strengthening faith, for
punishing disobedience, for awakening repentance, they may serve such
high purposes in God's moral government, that we at once range them
in the catalogue of miracles, without seeking to make an anxious dis-
crimination between the miracle absolute and providential. f Especially
* See Hengstenberg, Die Bilcher Mose's und ^gypten, pp. 93 — 129.
t The attempt to exhaust the history of our Lord's life of miracles by the suppo-
sition of wonderfiil fortuitous coincidences is singularly self-defeating. These might do
20 THE MIRACLES AND NATURE.
have they a right to their place among these, when (as in each of the
instances alluded to above,) the final event is a sealing of a foregoing
word from the Lord ; for so, as prophecy, as miracles of his foreknow-
ledge, they claim that place, even if not as miracles of his power. Of
course, concerning these more than any other it will be true that they
exist only for the religious mind, for the man who believes that God
ruleth, and not merely in power, but in wisdom, in righteousness, and
in love ; for him they will be eminently signs, signs of a present
working God. In the case of the more absolute miracle it will be
sometimes possible to extort from the ungodly, as of old from the magi-
cians of Egypt, the unwilling confession, " This is the finger of God,"
(Exod. viii. 19;) but in the case of these this will be well nigh impos-
sible; since there is always the natural solution in which they may take
refuge, beyond which they will refuse, and beyond which it will be
impossible to compel them, to proceed.
But while the miracle is not thus nature, so neither is it against
nature. That language, however commonly in use, is yet wholly un-
satisfactory, which speaks of these wonderful works of God diS. violations
of a natural law. Beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which
we know, they are, but not contrary to it. Nor let it be said that this
distinction is an idle one ; so far from being so, Spinoza's whole assault
upon the miracles, (not his objections, for they lie much deeper, but his
assault,*) turns upon the advantage which he has known hovy to take of
this faulty statement of the truth, and, that being stated rightly, it be-
comes at once beside the mark. The miracle is not thus unnatural,
nor can it be ; since the unnatural, the contrary to order, is of itself the
ungodly, and can in no way therefore be affirmed of a divine work
such as that with which we have to do. The very idea of the world,
as more than one name which it bears testifies, is that of an order; that
which comes in then to enable it to realize this idea which it has lost,
will scarcely itself be a disorder. So far from this, the true miracle is
a higher and a purer nature, coming down out of the world of un-
troubled harmonies into this world of ours, which so many discords have
jarred and disturbed, and bringing this back again, though it be but for
for once or twice ; but that such happy chances should on every occasion recur, what
is this for one who knows even but a little of the theory of probabilities? not the
delivering the history of its marvellous element, but the exchanging one set of marvels
for another. If it be said that this was not mere liazard, what manner of person then
must we conclude him to be, whom nature was always thus at such pains to serve and
to seal ]
* Tract. Theol. Pol, c. 6, De 3Iiraculls.
THE MIRACLES AND NATURE. 21
one prophetic moment, into harmony with that higher.* The Healing of/
the sick can in no way he termed against nature, seeing that the sickness j
which was healed was against the true nature of man — that it is sick- I
ness which is abnormal, and not health. The healing is the restoration
of the primitive order. We should term the miracle not the infraction
of a law, but behold in it the lower law neutralized, and for the time
put out of working by a higher ; and of this abundant analogous ex-
amples are evermore going forward before our eyes. Continually we '
behold in the world around us lower laws held in restraint by higher,
mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by moral ; yet we
say not when the lower thus gives place in favor of the higher, that
there was any violation of law, — that any thing contrary to nature came
to pass ;f — rather we acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swal-
lowing up the law of a lesser.^ Thus, when I lift my arm, the law of
gravitation is not, as far as my arm is concerned, denied or annihilated ;
it exists as much as ever, but is held in suspense by the higher law of
my will. The chemical laws which would bring about decay in animal ,
substances still subsist, even when they are hemmed in and hindered by \
the salt which keeps those substances from corruption. The law of
* Augustine (Con. Faust., 1. 56, c. 3) : Contra naturam non incongiufe dicimus
aliquid Deum facere, quod facit contra id quod novimus in naturS,. Hanc enim etiam
appellamus naturam, cognitum nobis cursura solitumque naturae, contra quem cum
Deus aliquid facit, magnalia vel mirabilia nominantur. Contra illam vero summam
naturae legem ci notitia remotam sive impiorum sive adhuc infirmorum, tam Deus nullo
modo facit qu^m contra seipsum non facit. Cf ibid., 1. 29, c. 2. The speculations of
the great thinkers of the thirteenth century, on the subject of miracles, and especially
on this part of the subject, are well brought together by Neander. (Kirch. Gesch., v.
5, pp. 910—925.)
t See a very interesting discussion upon this subject in Augustine. {De Gen. ad
Liu., 1. 6, c. 14—18.)
\ When Spinoza affirmed that nothing can happen in nature which opposes its
universal laws, he acutely saw that even then he had not excluded the miracle, and
therefore to clench the exclusion, added, — aut quod ex iisdem [legibus] non sequitur.
But all which experience can teach us is, that these powers which are working in our
world will not reach to these effects. Whence dare we to conclude, that because none
which we know will bring them about, so none exist which will do so 1 They exceed
the laws of our nature, but it does not therefore follow that they exceed the laws of all
nature. If the animals were capable of a reflective act, man would appear a miracle
to them, as the angels do to us, and as the animals would themselves appear to a lower
circle of organic life. The comet is a miracle as regards our solar system ; that is, it
does not own the laws of our system, neither do those laws explain it. Yet is there
a higher and wider law of the heavens, whether fully discovered or not, in which its
motions are included as surely as those of the planets which stand in immediate rela-
tion to our sun.
22 THE MIRACLES AND NATURE.
sin in a regenerate man is held in continual check by the law of the
spirit of life ; yet is it in his members still, not indeed working, for a
mightier law has stepped in and now holds it in check, but still there,
and ready to work, did that higher law cease from its more effectual
operation. What in each of tiiese cases is wrought may be against one
particular law, that law being contemplated in its isolation, and rent
away from the complex of laws, whereof it forms only a part. But no
law does stand thus alone, and it is not against, but rather in entire
harmony with, the system of laws ; for the law of those laws is, that
where powers come into conflict, the weaker shall give place to the
stronger, the lower to the higher. In the miracle, this world of ours is
drawn into and within a higher order of things ; laws are then at
work in the world, which are not the laws of its ftiUen condition, for
they are laws of mightier range and higher perfection ; and as such
they claim to make themselves felt, and to have the pre-eminence which
is rightly their own.* To make this clearer I might take a familiar
illustration, borrowed from our own church-system of feasts and fasts.
It is the rule here that if the testival of the Nativity fall on a day which
was designated in the ordinary calendar for a fast, the former sliall
displace the latter, and the day shall be observed as a festival. Shall
we therefore say that the Church has awkwardly contrived two systems
which here may, and sometimes do, come into collision with one another?
and not rather admire her more complex law, and note how in the very
concurrence of the two, with the displacement of the poorer by the
richer, she brings out her idea that holy joy is a higher thing even
than holy sorrow, and shall at last swallow it up altogether ?f
* In remarkable words the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon (xix. 6) describes
how at the passage of the Red Sea all nature was in its kind moulded and fashioned
again from above (rj Kricns ttcCKiv avwQiv Sktv^ovto) that it might serve God's purposes
for the deliverance of his people, and punishment of his enemies.
t Thus Aquinas, whose greatness and depth upon the subject of miracles I well
remember once hearing Coleridge exalt, and painfully contrast with the modern theology
on the same subject (Sum TheoL, pars 1, qu. 105, art. 6:) A qualibet caus4 derivatur
aliquis ordo in suos effectus, cum quffilibet causa habeat rationem principii. Et ideo
secundiim multiplicationem causarum multiplicantur et ordines, quorum unus con-
tinetur sub altero, sicut et causa continetur sub causS,. Unde causa superior non con-
tinetur sub ordine causaB inferioris, sed 6 converse. Cujus exemplum apparet in rebus
huraanis. Nam ex patrefamilias dependet ordo domiis, qui continetur sub ordine
civitatis, qui procedit h civitatis rectore : ciim et hie contineatur sub ordine regis, h.
quo totum regnum ordinatur. Si ergo ordo rerum consideretur prout dependet h prima
causa,, sic contra rerum ordinem Deus facere non potest. Si enim sic faceret, faccret
contra suam praescientiam aut voluntatem aut bonitatem. Si vero consideretur rerum
ordo, prout dependet ii qualibet secundarum causarum, sic Deus potest facere prater
THE MIRACLES AND NATURE. 23
It is with these wonders which have been, exactly as it will be with
those wonders which we look for in regard of our own mortal bodies,
and this physical universe. VVe do not speak of these changes which
are in store for this and those as violations of law. We should not speak
of the resurrectfon of the body as something contrary to nature, as un-