3.09. Miracles

Miracles The government of God is occasionally administered by means of miracles. The miracle is an extraordinary act of God. It does not differ from the ordinary course of nature because it requires a greater exertion of divine power, but because it requires a different exertion of it. To cause the sun to rise and to cause Lazarus to rise both alike demand omnipotence; but the manner in which omnipotence works in one instance is unlike the manner in the other. The possibility of the miracle rests upon the fact mentioned in Westminster Confession 5.3 that “the Creator is free to work without means, above means, and against means, at his pleasure.”

Whenever the ordinary method by natural means is inadequate to accomplish the divine purpose in the government of the universe or any part of it, God employs the extraordinary method by miracle. The rule which Horace lays down for introducing the supernatural into poetry applies to its introduction into theology: “Nor should a god intervene unless a knotty problem worthy of such a liberator shall have occurred.”¹[Note: 1. Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit.]

The miracle occurs only when there is an occasion requiring it. When, for example, it became necessary on account of its great wickedness to destroy the world of mankind more suddenly and swiftly than was possible by natural causes, God miraculously opened the fountains of the great deep, and the flood destroyed them all. The miraculous judgments recorded in the Old Testament were sent for the purpose of controlling and “governing human creatures and all their actions.” The birth of Jesus Christ, the promised Redeemer of man, a God-man, was impossible by the method of ordinary generation; hence, the miraculous conception. In the future history of the world, certain events are to be brought about miraculously because they cannot be by ordinary physical laws. The resurrection of the bodies of all men is one of them. The sudden dissolution and reconstruction of this material world at the end of the redemptive economy (1 Corinthians 15:24; Matthew 25:31-46) cannot be effected by the present slow and gradual operation of natural laws. There must, therefore, be a miraculous interference similar to that by which the world was first created and by which it was whelmed in the waters of the deluge. The miracle, consequently, is to be expected under the government of an intelligent and wise God. Says Channing (Evidences of Revealed Religion): To a man whose belief in God is strong and practical, a miracle will appear as possible as any other effect, as the most common event in life; and the argument against miracles drawn from the uniformity of nature will weigh with him, only as far as this uniformity is a pledge and proof of the Creator’s disposition to accomplish his purposes by a fixed order or mode of operation. Now it is freely granted, that the Creator’s regard or attachment to such an order may be inferred from the steadiness with which he observes it; and a strong presumption lies against any violation of it on slight occasions or for purposes to which the established laws of nature are adequate. But this is the utmost which the order of nature authorizes us to infer, respecting its author. It forms no presumption against miracles universally, in all imaginable cases; but may even furnish a presumption in their favor. We are never to forget that God’s adherence to the order of the universe is not necessary and mechanical, but intelligent and voluntary. He adheres to it, not for its own sake or because it has a sacredness which compels him to respect it, but because it is most suited to accomplish his purposes. It is a means and not an end; and like all other means must give way when the end can best be promoted without it. It is the mark of a weak mind to make an idol of order and method; to cling to established forms of business when they clog, instead of advancing it. If, then, the great purposes of the universe can best be accomplished by departing from its established laws, these laws will undoubtedly be suspended; and though broken in the letter, they will be observed in their spirit, for the ends for which they were first instituted will be advanced by their suspension.

Miracles are not unnatural events; they are natural to God. The miracles of Christ wear no appearance of magic and artifice, like the tricks of a juggler. They are not whimsical and extravagant, like the miracles attributed to him in the apocryphal gospels or like the ecclesiastical miracles of the papal church. “A miracle,” says Feltham (Resolves, 33), “when God pleases, is as easy to him as a natural cause. For it was at first by miracle that even that cause was natural. And all the miracles that we have heard of in the world are less a miracle than the world itself.” Says Richter: “Miracles upon earth are nature in heaven.”

Miracles are natural to a personal deity, but unnatural and impossible to an impersonal. All the arguments against them by Spinoza, Baur, and Strauss proceed upon the pantheistic assumption that the infinite is impersonal and that everything occurs through the operation of an impersonal system of natural law. But if the existence of a personal infinite is conceded, it would be strange and unnatural if there were never any extraordinary exertion of his omnipotence. Miracles are tokens of a person who can modify his plans and make new arrangements in space and time. They are the natural accompaniments of personality and free will. If a human person should never by the exercise of will enter upon a new course of action, but should pursue through his whole existence one unvarying tenor like an animal led by instinct or a machine propelled mechanically, we should doubt his personality. He would come under the suspicion of being only a brute or a machine. (See supplement 3.9.1.) Miracles, as Paley argues, are to be expected in connection with a revelation from God:

Hume states the case of miracles to be a contest of opposite improbabilities; that is to say, a question whether it be more improbable that the miracle should be true or the testimony false. But in describing the improbability of miracles, he suppresses all those circumstances of extenuation [favoring circumstances] which result from our knowledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the deity. As Hume has represented the question, miracles are alike incredible to him who is previously assured of the constant agency of a divine being and to him who believes that no such being exists This, surely, cannot be a correct statement. (Paley, Evidences, preface) The laws of nature are being continually modified in their action by the interference of the human will. A stone falls to the ground in a perpendicular line by the operation of gravity. Taking this material force, only, into view, there is and can be no variation from this. But a stone can be made to fall in a curve by human volition. In this case, there is still the operation of the force of gravity, but with this an accompanying voluntary force that deflects the stone from the perpendicular. If there were only a single solitary instance of such an alteration of nature by will, it would be regarded as supernatural. The laws of nature are also being continually modified in their action by the intervention of the divine will. The striking differences in the seasons are examples. The winter of 1885 is remarkably different from that of 1884. But there is the same system of nature and of natural laws, and these in themselves considered, apart from any influence of a personal will, are invariable in their operation. On the hypothesis that there is no Creator and no God, one physical year should be a facsimile of another. Why this difference between two winters, unless an element of personal will be combined with that of impersonal laws? Physical properties and laws in themselves are invariable in their operation. The occasional variety, therefore, that is witnessed in the general uniformity of natural phenomena implies divine volition modifying the general system.

Consider as another example of the modifying influence of the divine will upon natural properties and laws the difference in the longevity of individuals. A person of feeble constitution lives to old age; one with a vigorous constitution dies in early manhood. If nothing but physical properties and laws determines the event, the former person must necessarily die before the latter. But if the personal will of the author of nature can modify the action of nature, then the former may outlive the latter. The race will not be to the swift nor the battle to the strong.

Physical nature is full of examples that go to prove the presence of a personal will in impersonal nature and matter. Cut off a snail’s head, and it will grow out again; but cut off a crab’s head, and it will not grow out again. Cut off a crab’s claw, and it will grow out again; cut off a dog’s leg, and it will not grow out again (Roget, Physiology 2.587). Why this difference in the operation of the very same properties and laws of animal substance? The properties and laws themselves will not account for it. The modifying power of a will above them explains it. Molecules of matter in atmospheric air are very elastic. If pressure is removed, they recede from each other indefinitely. Air in an air pump becomes extremely rarefied. Molecules of matter in a fluid are less elastic. If pressure is removed, they recede from each other, but much less than in the case of air or a gas. Molecules of matter in a solid are still less elastic than those of a fluid. The removal of pressure makes very little change (Herschel, Preliminary Discourse §§239-43). Why should molecules of matter have these different degrees of elasticity, but from the will which created them from nothing? The reality of miracles implies the superiority of mind to matter. The denial of a power above material laws and phenomena is materialism. It is equivalent to asserting that matter controls mind. He who denies the supernatural affirms that nature and matter are the ultimate basis of the universe. The conflict consequently between the believer and the disbeliever is a conflict between the spiritual and the material, the intellectual and the sensual. It is therefore a conflict between civilization and barbarism. The position of the materialist is that matter moves mind and that material motion explains mental phenomena. This is incompatible with the miracle. The position of the spiritualist is that mind moves matter and that mental motion or volition explains material phenomena. This is compatible with the miracle. That the latter position is the truth is proved by the following facts: (1) Thinking tires the body, but digging does not tire the mind; (2) feeling in the mind causes the molecular change in the brain, not vice versa; shame causes the blush, not the blush shame; (3) the human tear in its purely physical or healthy state is insipid; in its morbid state, as affected by grief, is salt, pungent, and corrosive; (4) the saliva when affected by gluttonous appetite, that is, by a mental desire, is greatly increased in quantity, compared with the secretion from mere hunger; and (5) teasing bees in a hive generates heat in the swarm (Kirby and Spence, Entomology 2.214). Bees have adaptive intelligence, and the irritation of this affects their material organism. (See supplement 3.9.2.) The assertion that the miracle is impossible proceeds upon the hypothesis that nothing can happen but what is now happening. The present is the norm for all the past and all the future. The local is the rule for universal space. The skeptic assumes that the phenomena which he now witnesses are the only phenomena that are possible. This implies that his experience is the only criterion. It not only makes man the measure of all things, but a class of men. For the experience of each a great majority of mankind does not constitute universal experience. There is nothing in the structure of the human intellect that supports this assumption. On the contrary, the mind repels the proposition that the experience of certain generations of men is an infallible index of all that is possible in all time and throughout the vast universe of being:

All reasoning from analogy or similitude is from the habitual association of ideas and consequently can amount to no more than this: That the thing appears so to us because it always has appeared so and we know of no instance to the contrary. I have seen the sun set tonight and conclude that it will rise again tomorrow; because my own experience and the tradition received from others have taught me to associate the idea of its rising again, after a certain number of hours, with that of its setting; and habit has rendered these ideas inseparable. But, nevertheless, I can give no demonstrative reason from the nature of things why it should rise again; or why the Creator and Governor of the universe may not launch it, as a comet, to wander forever through the boundless vacuity of space. I only know that during the short period and within the narrow sphere which bound my knowledge of this universe, he has displayed no such irregular exertions of power: but still that period and that sphere shrink into nothing in the scale of eternity and infinity; and what can man know of the laws of God or nature that can enable him to prescribe rules for omnipotence? (Knight, On Taste 2.3) The miracle is a suspension of a law of nature in a particular instance. Hume defines the miracle to be “a violation of the laws of nature,” “a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity” (Essay on Miracles, 1). This is incorrect. When our Lord raised Lazarus from the dead, he merely suspended in that particular instance, and in that only, the operation of the chemical action by which putrefaction goes on. He did not violate the law. This would have required that he should cause the same chemical action that was putrefying the flesh to stop the putrefaction. Christ in working this miracle did not undo or revolutionize any law of nature. The general course of nature was undisturbed. Another corpse lying beside that of Lazarus, like all the other corpses in the world, would have continued to putrefy by chemical decomposition. But the mere suspension of a law of nature in a particular instance is not sufficient to account for the miracle. Christ, by virtue of the control which he had over natural law, might have arrested the process of decomposition, and yet Lazarus would not have come forth from the tomb, any more than he would if he had been embalmed or petrified. Over and above this power to suspend existing natural laws, there must have been the exertion of a positively reanimating power. Christ must have been able to create or originate physical life itself. Lazarus was made alive from the dead by the exertion of an energy of the same kind by which the first man was made on the sixth day, that is, by the operation of mere mind itself, apart from matter and its laws. The explanation that a miracle is the effect of an unknown law of nature higher than the ordinary law is untenable because …

1. It supposes two systems of nature that are contrary to each other. If the iron ax of Elijah’s pupil was made to swim, not by the suspension of the law of gravity in that instance but by the operation of another natural law, it is plain that this latter law is exactly contrary to the law of gravity. But this would imply two systems of nature: one in which gravity of matter is the law and one in which levity of matter is the law. This destroys the unity of the material universe.

2. The miracle could not be accounted for upon this theory except by supposing that one of these two systems of nature is superior to the other. If the two systems were equal in force, the result of their collision would be an equilibrium, and nothing would occur. But if one is superior to the other, the latter must be overcome and disappear. The higher system would annihilate the lower, and finally all nature would become miraculous (so-called). If it be said that the two systems are kept apart and do not come into collision, that each system is a distinct circle having its own center, then it is impossible that a miracle could happen at all. Everything in the circle where gravity is the natural law must occur accordingly. The iron must sink in every instance. And everything in the circle when a force contrary to gravity prevails must occur accordingly. The iron must swim in every instance. If it be said that there is no system or circle where such a higher natural law prevails, but that this force is originated in each instance for the particular purpose of working a miracle, there are these objections: First, it is improper to denominate a few exceptional instances a “law.” Second, it is unnatural to suppose that the Creator would call a new material force into being to bring about what he might accomplish by the simple suspension of an existing force and by the exertion of a single volition of his own.

3. A miracle, by the very definition, must be exceptional, solitary, and sporadic. It is the effect of a single volition. Miracles are disconnected from one another. They do not evolve out of each other, but are wrought one at a time. Consequently, a miracle cannot occur by a law because this implies a connected series and an endless series so long as the law remains in existence. Miracles would be as numerous and constant if there were a law of miracles as the phenomena of gravitation. When God made the hand of Moses leprous (Exodus 4:6-7), he did it by an omnipotent volition. This, from the human point of view, was a single separate act of the divine will. And when he healed the leprosy, this was a second volition. Neither miracle was effected by a force operating continuously like a law of nature. (See supplement 3.9.3.) The argument of Hume against the credibility of miracles begins with asserting that a miracle “contradicts uniform experience.” This is begging the point. The question between the disputants is this: Does the miracle contradict the uniform experience of mankind? By the word uniform Hume must mean “universal”; otherwise his argument would fail. A single experience of a miracle would be as good as a thousand in logical respects. Mill so understood his use of the term. He states it thus: “Whatever is contrary to a complete induction is incredible.” But a complete induction would embrace all the particular facts. If one were omitted, it would be incomplete. “Uniform experience,” consequently, would involve an experience covering all the phenomena upon earth from the beginning of human history. It must be more than the experience of the majority of men. It must include that of the minority. In this case as in politics, the minority have rights which the majority are bound to respect. The miracle cannot be decided by a majority vote. That a miracle contradicts the experience of all men in the eighteenth century is not sufficient to prove that it contradicted the experience of all men in the first century. The induction of particulars must be absolutely complete in order to evince incredibility. It is not enough to show merely that the miracle contradicts the experience of the disbeliever and of his contemporaries.

There is nothing in physical science that justifies the position that there never has been and never will be a miraculous event in all space and all time because there is nothing in physical science to prove the necessary and eternal immutability of nature. That things have been as they are for a million years does not prove that they will be the same for a billion years and forevermore. All that physics teaches is that there is nothing in nature and natural forces that can work a miracle. This, the theologian is as ready to say as anyone. But by what right is it inferred that because in matter and nature there is no power able to raise the dead there is no power anywhere? Physics has examined only physical nature. It may affirm with reference to this, but not beyond this. And to deny that there is anything beyond this is begging the question. To infer respecting the supernatural power of God and the probability of its exercise from the experience of only a portion of mankind-even though it be the greater portion thus far-is unwarranted. In the future, the experience of the greater part of mankind or of the entire whole may be reversed, for all that the objector knows. It is a general law that substances contract by cold. Water contracts by cold down to 39° Fahrenheit; at which point it begins to expand, and on reaching 32° it freezes-which is a great expansion. This law is reversed, Hume might say “violated,” at 39°. Suppose that the whole human race had never been in a climate below 40° and had known nothing of a chemistry by which artificial cold can be produced. If they should infer a so-called necessary law of nature from “experience,” in this instance, as Hume has in that of miracles, they would assert it to be impossible that water should expand by cold. And the testimony of fifty witnesses living eighteen centuries before Hume’s day and generation to the effect that they had seen the law of contraction by cold actually reversed would be liable to the same species of objection as that which now seeks to invalidate the testimony of the twelve apostles and others that a man was raised from the dead eighteen centuries ago. It might be said that the fifty witnesses of the expansion of a substance by cold were more likely to be deceived than that a phenomenon so contrary to the present universal experience of mankind should have occurred. Locke (Understanding 4.15) relates that “a Dutch ambassador entertaining the king of Siam with the particularities of Holland which he was inquisitive after, among other things told him that the water in his country would sometimes in cold weather be so hard that men walked upon it and that it would bear an elephant if he were there; to which the king replied, ‘Hitherto, I have believed the strange things you have told me, because I look upon you as a sober, fair man, but now I am sure you lie.’ ” (See supplement 3.9.4.)

Hume concedes the possibility, that is, the conceivability of a miracle (Inquiry, 4): “The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible.” But he denies the demonstrability of a miracle. In order to establish this denial, he defines a miracle so as to exclude all testimony to it. His definition of a miracle is that it is an event that never has been seen by an eyewitness. His language is as follows: “It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform [invariable] experience against any miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation” (Inquiry §10). That is to say, if an event was once an object of the senses, this takes it out of the category of the miraculous; for a miracle, by definition, is something that “never has been observed,” never was the object of the senses. It is impossible, consequently, to prove a miracle; for the proof of the miracle would be the destruction of the miracle. If the event was seen, it was not miraculous. The sophism in this argument of Hume is so patent that it is strange that it should have acquired so much reputation as it has. The point in dispute, namely, whether a miracle has ever been an object of the senses, is settled in favor of the skeptic by this definition of a miracle.

There are two observations to be made respecting Hume’s position that a miracle is possible but undemonstrable. (1) The admission that a miracle is possible amounts to nothing if a miracle is incapable of being proved. A thing that is possible but indemonstrable is practically equivalent to an impossibility. (2) It is logically inconsistent to assert the possibility and deny the demonstrability of an event. Anything that is conceivably possible is conceivably demonstrable. If there is nothing in the nature of an event to prevent our conceiving that it might happen, there is nothing in its nature to prevent our conceiving that it might be observed to happen. If there be no absurdity in supposing that an event might occur, there is certainly none in supposing that it has occurred; and if it has occurred, there is no absurdity in supposing that it has been seen. The miracle is a part of a great whole which is supernatural, namely, the person of the Redeemer and the work of redemption. If there is no incarnation and no redemption, there is no need of the miracle. But if there is, then the miracle is necessary and natural. Hence the person of Christ, his incarnation and resurrection, is the real battleground. The Old Testament miracles are connected with the Jehovah-Angel or the redeeming God. Those of the New Testament are connected with the Jehovah-Logos or Jesus Christ. Here is the point from which both faith and unbelief take their departure. He who believes that God incarnate has appeared on earth to save man from sin will have no difficulty with the miracle. He who disbelieves this cannot accept it. It is the first step that costs. If the human mind does not stumble over that divine-human person who is “set for the fall and rising again of many,” it will not stumble over the supernaturalism that is naturally associated with him.

S U P P L E M E N T S

3.9.1 (see p. 417). The following fatalistic definitions of Spinoza follow logically from his postulate that God is impersonal and of one substance with the universe. They also exhibit his abuse of the terms of theism and of Scripture. God, decrees, election, and miracles are words which he continually uses, but in a wholly different signification from the true one. No writer so “palters with us in a double sense.” “By the help of God, I mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature, or the chain of natural events; for I have said before, and shown elsewhere, that the universal laws of nature, according to which all things exist and are determined, are only another name for the decrees of God, which always involve eternal truth and necessity. So that to say that everything happens according to natural law and to say that everything is ordained by the decree and ordinance of God is the same thing. Now, since the power in nature is identical with the power of God, by which alone all things happen and are determined, it follows that whatsoever man, as a part of nature, provides himself with to aid and preserve his existence, or whatsoever nature affords him without his help is given him solely by divine power, acting either through human nature or external circumstances. So whatever human nature can furnish itself with by its own efforts to preserve its existence may fitly be called the inward aid of God, whereas, whatever else accrues to man’s profit from outward causes may be called the external aid of God” (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 3). “We can now easily understand what is meant by the election of God. For since no one can do anything save by the predetermined order of nature, that is, by God’s eternal ordinance and decree, it follows that no one can choose a plan of life for himself or accomplish any work save by God’s vocation choosing him for the work, or the plan of life in question, rather than any other person” (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 3). “By fortune or chance I mean the ordinance of God, insofar as it directs human life through external and unexpected means” (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 3). “Miracles require causes and follow not from some mysterious royal power which the masses attribute to God, but from divine rule and decree, that is, as we have shown from Scripture itself, from the laws and order of nature. Miracles were natural occurrences and must therefore be so explained as to appear neither new (in the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:9) nor contrary to nature, but as far as possible in complete agreement with ordinary events. We may be absolutely certain that every event which is truly described in Scripture necessarily happened, like everything else, according to natural laws; and if anything is there set down which can be proved in set terms to contravene the order of nature or not to be deducible therefrom, we must believe it to have been foisted into the sacred writings by irreligious hands. Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and the style which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion, and therefore it speaks inaccurately of God and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination. If the Bible were to describe the destruction of an empire in the style of political historians, the masses would remain unstirred, whereas the contrary is the case when it adopts the method of poetic description and refers all things immediately to God” (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 6).

3.9.2 (see p. 419). A miracle necessarily implies the difference in kind between mind and matter. He who denies this difference cannot believe in miracles. For a miracle is an effect of mind exerted upon matter with nothing intervening, of a spiritual agent operating directly upon a material object. When matter operates upon matter in accordance with material laws there is no miracle; but when will operates upon material and physical nature, not in accordance with material and physical laws but above them and without them by pure self-decision, this is of the essence of the miraculous. The operation of a man’s will upon his own body furnishes an analog to the miracle. When a volition of the will, which is spirit not matter, moves a muscle and thereby a limb of the body, this is finite mind moving matter immediately, without the instrumentality of anything material or physical. A person does not raise his hand by employing the law of gravitation or any other material law, but by a pure volition. This immediate action of the human will upon the muscles of the body is so common that its supermaterial, and in this sense supernatural, character is overlooked. But if a person by the exertion of a volition should move immediately without the use of any means the muscle of another person, this would be considered miraculous. Yet both cases are alike in regard to the point of the direct action of mind upon matter without intervening media.

Locke (Understanding 4.10) calls attention to the inexplicableness and wonderful nature of the voluntary action of mind upon matter and to the impossibility of explaining it by the operation of material and physical properties: “We cannot conceive how anything but impulse of body can move body; and yet that is not a reason sufficient to make us deny it to be possible, against the constant experience we have of it in ourselves in all our voluntary motions, which are produced in us only by the free action or thought of our own minds and are not, nor can be the effects of the impulse or determination of the motion of blind matter in or upon our bodies; for then it could not be in our power or choice to alter it. For example, my right hand writes, while my left hand is still. What causes rest in one and motion in the other? Nothing but my will, a thought in my mind. If my thought changes, the right hand rests, and the left hand moves. This is matter of fact, which cannot be denied. Explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step will be to understand creation [from nothing, which is likewise an effect of pure will without means or instruments]. For the giving a new determination to the motion of the animal spirits, which some make use of to explain voluntary motion [as the present materialism, for the same purpose, makes use of the motion of molecules], clears not the difficulty one jot; for to alter the determination of [material or physical] motion in this case is no easier nor less than to give motion itself; since the new determination given to the animal spirits must be either immediately by thought [will], or by some other body put in their way by thought [will] which was not in their way before, and so must owe its motion to thought [will]; either of which suppositions leaves voluntary motion an unintelligible [inexplicable] as it was before.”

Coleridge (Works 5.543) reasons in a similar manner: “A phenomenon in no connection with any other phenomenon as its immediate cause is a miracle; and what is believed to have been such is miraculous for the person so believing. When it is strange or surprising, that is, without any analogy in our former experience, it is called a miracle. The kind defines the thing; the circumstances the word. To stretch out my arm is a miracle, unless the materialists should be more cunning than they have proved themselves hitherto [by explaining the movement by a purely physical or material cause]. To reanimate a dead man by an act of will, no intermediate agency being employed, not only is, but is called, a miracle. A Scripture miracle, therefore, must be so defined as to express not only its miraculous essence, but likewise the condition of its appearing miraculous; add therefore to the preceding, the words beyond all prior experience.²[Note: 2. praeter omnem priorem experientiam] A miracle might be defined, likewise, as an effect not having its cause in anything congenerous [homogeneous]. That thought calls up thought is no more miraculous than that a billiard ball moves a billiard ball; but that a billiard ball should excite a thought, that is, be perceived [by the agency of the ball], is a miracle, and were it solitary and strange would be called such. For suppose the converse, that a thought should produce a billiard ball! Yet where is the difference, but that the one is a common experience, the other never yet experienced? It is not strictly accurate to affirm that everything would appear a miracle if we were wholly uninfluenced by custom and saw things as they are; for then the very ground of all miracles would probably vanish, namely, the heterogeneity of spirit and matter. As objective, the essence of a miracle consists in the heterogeneity of the consequent and its causative antecedent; as subjective, it consists in the assumption [recognition] of the heterogeneity. Add the wonder and surprise excited when the consequent is out of the course of experience, and we know the popular sense and ordinary use of the word.” Of the same tenor is the following from Carlyle (Sartor resartus 3.8): “Were it not miraculous could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the sun? Yet you see me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing and swing it hither and thither. Are you a grown baby, then, to fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable God-revealing miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have free force to clutch aught therewith?” That the miracle is wrought by an exertion of personal will that is independent of the usual means or instruments that are employed in nonmiraculous events is taught by Shakespeare:

Miracles are ceased, And therefore we must admit the means How things are perfected.

-Henry V 1.1 The essence of the miracle is creation ex nihilo. Whoever holds this doctrine holds that of miracles generally; for every miracle is an exercise of this kind of power. In every one of the biblical miracles there is an element of creation from nonentity by pure will without the use of existing materials or instruments. This element is greater in some miracles than in others, but it is in them all. When Christ multiplied the loaves, there was some existing material to being with; but the addition to them was origination of bread from nothing. The “five loaves” could not become a mass of bread sufficient for “five thousand men besides women and children” by mere evolution. But when Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, there was no existing life to which life was added by an act of will. Here there was no existing element upon which the miraculous power joined. This was a higher grade of miracle than the former. Christ teaches that the power to work a miracle originally, as he did, and not by delegated power, is proof conclusive of omnipotent deity, like the power to forgive sin (Mark 2:6-11).

3.9.3 (see p. 421). To explain a miracle as the effect of a higher natural law is to make the miracle natural, not supernatural. A higher law of nature is as much within the sphere of nature as a lower law is. Says the writer of “Miracles” in Penny Cyclopaedia: “If the raising of Lazarus from the dead was an event which took place by virtue of a preestablished law or course of events, in which this one event, to us an apparent exception, was in fact a necessary consequence of this preestablished law or course of events, such event is not a miracle nor such an event as is generally understood by the word miracle. Those then who would bring miracles within what are called the laws of nature mistake the question. If the event of raising of Lazarus and all the attendant circumstances took place in the course of things agreeably to a law unknown by us, such an event is as much an event consistent with what are called the laws of nature as the event of any man’s death; but in that case it is not the kind of event which the New Testament presents to us.” The miracle of the woman with the issue of blood is a good illustration of this. Had the touch of Christ wrought the cure naturally and mechanically apart from his will in the particular instance and apart also from the faith of the person to be healed, which was also an act of will though not an efficient in producing the miracle like the will of Christ, every touch of Christ in a crowd would have healed a disease in a diseased person. The operation of the “virtue” in this case would have been like that of gravity and chemical affinity. But it was not. Our Lord evidently knew who the woman was and only asked the question “who touched me?” in order that she might avow her faith. The “virtue went out” of him, in this instance, because he so willed, and not by a uniform material law of operation: “A plain farmer who was teaching a Sabbath school in a country schoolhouse was asked to define a miracle. He was thoughtful for a moment and then replied: ‘A miracle is something which there is no law to produce, no law to govern, but is the direct act of God himself.’ ”

3.9.4 (see p. 422). Hume rests his argument very much upon the improbability of a miracle. But in a question that depends upon the testimony of eyewitnesses this feature is of secondary importance. A particular murder by a particular person may, on the face of it, seem highly improbable, but if actual witnesses testify to its commission by such a person and there is no reason to doubt their veracity, the improbability in the case does not nullify the testimony. Witnesses in a court are believed or disbelieved, not because of the probability or improbability of the fact to which they testify but because of the soundness of their senses and their honesty.

It is too generally forgotten in discussing the argument for miracles that there is no rebutting testimony against them to contradict or weaken the testimony of the Jewish and Christian eyewitnesses. Not a single person of the generation contemporary with the apostles testifies that he was present when the alleged miracles were wrought and that he did not see them. In a court trial, if the testimony is all in one way and not a single witness appears to contradict, it is considered to make the case highly certain. The denial of miracles is not supported by any countertestimony of persons living at the time. It is merely the verbal denial of persons living in later generations, who offer no testimony of eyewitnesses to support their denial. In the eighteenth century Hume asserts that no miracles were wrought in the first century, but brings forward no witnesses from the first century who were present at the crucifixion of Christ and testify that they saw no darkness over the whole land, that there was no earthquake, no resurrection of dead men, and no rending of the temple veil. Such rebutting testimony as this from persons on the ground at the time of the crucifixion would be a strong argument against miracles, compared with the weak argument from the inference that because miracles are not wrought now and have not been for centuries they never were-which is the substance of Hume’s argument. That there should not be much testimony to the truths and facts of the Old Testament from profane or secular history is to be expected. The history of Israel does not make a part of secular history, like that of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It is a lesser circle by itself within the great circle of universal history. Being founded upon a supernatural revelation, it is not in the common stream of merely natural events and therefore is not known to the common historian and is not noticed by him. It has its own special history, recorded by its own prophets and contained in its own documents. The same remark holds true of Christianity and the life of its founder. This is the reason why there are so few references to Christ in contemporary historians. At the same time it should be observed that there are many events and things in secular history that are not spoken of by secular writers. The magnificent temples at Paestum, for example, which are among the most remarkable structures of antiquity, are not alluded to by an classical author.