03.04. CHAPTER IV. MIRACLES: ARE THEY POSSIBLE . . .

CHAPTER IV.

MIRACLES: ARE THEY POSSIBLE AND PROBABLE?

"Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know." Acts 2:22

What is a miracle? Definitions lie at the basis of all discussions, for they define or limit the ground which argument is to cover; they set bounds within which we both keep ourselves and hold our opponents. This is of as much consequence in debate as it would be in a contest between athletes to settle the rules of honorable championship.

Much importance attaches to a definition. Carelessly to accept a false premise may compel us to admit a false conclusion. A whole building is made unsafe by a treacherous foundation. If we begin with a wrong or faulty definition, we unsettle our whole argument.

If a miracle be defined as a "natural impossibility," how shall we meet those who, like Hume and Strauss, first assume miracles to be impossible, and then ask triumphantly whether any testimony can establish an impossibility? It is very plausible to start by assuming a miracle to be a violation of natural laws; next, assert the uniformity of those laws as a fact and a necessity to the very stability of the system of nature; next, to argue the absurdity and impossibility of voluntary violations of those laws by the very Creator who fixed them as ruling forces; and so conclude that no testimony can establish a miracle. A miracle, in a Scripture sense, is simply this: A wonder and a sign. Its sole use is this, that God appeals to it as a sign of His power. This is the reason why it must also be a wonder. Were there nothing in it that strikes the mind as out of the common course of nature, or beyond the power of man, it could not be used by God to produce the impression and conviction of His presence and power. It need not be on the grandest scale; it need not call God’s power into its fullest exercise; that might be a waste. All that is necessary is that the act or occurrence shall be sufficiently wonderful to show that God’s hand is in it, and its end is accomplished. So must it be wonderful, as out of the common course, that it may arrest attention. A miracle must combine both these elements. It may be that you either mark a wonder which is not a sign, or a sign which is not a wonder; but neither is a miracle, because it does not meet both conditions. For example, sunshine is a wonder, and no familiarity with the daily mystery of the morning and the evening can take away the element of the marvelous. A vast globe, fifteen hundred thousand times the volume of the earth, gives to it life and heat and motion, at a distance of more than ninety millions of miles. If that bush in the desert of Horeb was wonderful, which burned with fire and was not consumed, what shall we say of a sphere of fire which six thousand years of unceasing combustion has not even reduced in size! Yet we do not call the sun a miracle, for God does not appeal to it as a special sign to confirm His word or show His power in consecution with human agency. The rainbow is a sign, to which God appeals, as a token of his covenant with man that the flood of waters shall not again deluge the earth. Yet we do not call that a miracle, for it is not out of the common course of nature, and does not arrest the attention of men as showing a power above nature.

Let us then fix firmly in mind that when any occurrence is sufficiently out of the natural or usual order to indicate a sure interposition of a power above nature and above man; and when God points us to such an occurrence as a sign that He is speaking by man, we have both conditions necessary to a miracle. It must be above the power both of nature and of man. Nature represents blind, mechanical force, acting without intelligence. All nature’s operations are marvelous, but not miraculous, for they move in the line of fixed laws. Man represents intelligent, intellectual force; all man’s operations are marvelous, but not miraculous, for they move in the line of fixed laws of mind as well as of matter. In order to a miracle, a marvel which shall show the power of God, there must be some proof of the intervention of an influence that is neither limited by the laws of matter nor by the laws of mind.

How will such proof or sign be likely to be furnished, if at all? There can be but one answer: There will be an interruption of those fixed laws which we have seen to guide the movements both of matter and mind. The objection urged against miracles, as an interruption of fixed laws, is not well taken. If there be a miracle at all, it must invade the fixed order; otherwise, however it might impress as curious or even marvelous, it would become no sign of a presence or power greater than those forces which obey the fixed order, and which we call mechanical, because, like the movements of a machine, they cannot act outside of fixed limits.

Suppose an ignorant and superstitious savage suddenly, as in sleep, transported to the very centres of the highest civilization! He stands beside a railroad track, and the iron horse rushes by. He looks with amazement at the rapid revolution of the driving-wheels, and the majestic movement of that symbol of mechanical omnipotence. He falls down to adore, but you arrest him. You tell him that is not a God; it is simply a machine; it moves according to a fixed law, and within the limits fixed by the rails, which also represent law. He cannot believe it. How shall you convince him? There is but one way. Show him that there is a power above the engine that can change its course; invade what appears to be a fixed order and a uniform law of its motion; and, if he have mind enough to appreciate your method of proof, he sees that the engine is a machine, and nothing more. You show him how, by the hand of the engineer, its motion is arrested; how, by the hand of the switch tender, its very track is changed at will; how, by the turn-table, its direction is changed; how, by quenching its fires, it can be made motionless and inert. Now, mark, you have given him a sign that some power greater than the engine is present, by interfering with its ordinary and uniform course. A very ignorant man knows that it is of the nature of a moving body to move on in one direction. When a moving body actually stops, backs, turns about when all its ordinary movements are reversed, we conclude there is a power above the mechanical and we call that power intelligence. If God gives us a similar sign of His presence, it must be in such a way as to show a power, not only superior to blind mechanism, but even to human intelligence; and that can be done only by some process which seems to reverse the ordinary laws both of matter and mind. We say, "seems to reverse," for it is not necessary that any law be either violated or suspended: let it only be plain that the divine engineer is guiding the engine, to convince me that he is present; and my need is met, though I may not understand the complex system of laws which has a place for the miracle.

Let us take note that, after all, in even a miracle there may in fact be no real invasion of the order of the universe. When the engine backs, wheels about, changes track, it as truly obeys law as when it moved on straightforward; there is, however, an intelligence guiding the machine, and bringing a new law to bear upon its motion. How do we know that a miracle invades or interrupts nature’s fixed order? What if it be the engineer, the intelligence of the Creator, simply bringing a new set of laws to bear upon the universe? When the secret things are revealed, we shall doubtless find that there are in this universe of matter and of mind two planes for the operation of law. One is the ordinary plane, the lower level, where everything moves in a uniform line and method; another, the extraordinary plane, the higher level, where the special intervention of the engineer introduces, for wise reasons, a new force not commonly in operation. It may be safe to take still more positive positions than these. Every act, by which intelligence voluntarily interrupts the working of mechanical law, has in it the essence of the miraculous, on a smaller scale. For example, you throw a ball through the air. I put out my hand and catch it. It would have continued to fly, till another mechanical law which we call gravitation, bringing it to the earth, had arrested its motion; but a different agent has been brought to bear; a voluntary, intelligent force suddenly puts forth its energy and controls the working of a blind, mechanical force. There is no disorder introduced into creation, but there is a new power at work, which shows an intelligent agent.

What does God, in a miracle? Let us suppose it literally true that the sun stood still while Joshua fought the Amorites, and that this is not a poetic description, from "the book of Jasher," of a prolonging of daylight. The mechanical law would require the continued march of the sun through the heavens: but there comes in the voluntary, intelligent force to control the working of the blind and mechanical, and show the presence of the divine agency. Is not this occurrence like the other, but on a grander scale suited to prove the power of God?

Lazarus died and was buried. The operation of mechanical laws would bring decay; but a new force, voluntary and intelligent, controls the mechanical, and there is no decay. At the word of the Son of God the breath returns. Man cannot restore the dead; yet he can revive a body out of which breath has fled, where there is no pulse, and where even animal heat is scarce left, as in the recovery of one who has been drowned. The living embraces the lifeless, warmth goes from one body to the other, breath passes from one to the other. All this could not be accomplished by mere mechanical force. Leave that body to the operation of natural law, and there will be no breath nor pulse. But bring a voluntary, intelligent force to bear in time, and the decree of death, ordained by mechanical law, is reversed. We do not bring the resurrection of Lazarus down to the level of the resuscitation of one who, after apparent death from drowning, is brought to life. Our object is to show that, in our ordinary experience, the will of an intelligent being arrests and reverses the action of mechanical law, proving the presence of a superior agency, without any violation of the real order of nature. And may not a miracle simply be, on a scale suited to the grandeur of God’s activity, the will of an infinite intelligence, arresting and reversing the action of mechanical law, proving the presence of a superior and supreme being.

Dr. William M. Taylor has happily illustrated the consistency of miracles with the uniformity of law by a reference to the Holly system of water works. The engine, which furnishes the pressure for the water supply, is so arranged that the demand regulates the supply. According to the rapidity of the discharge at the hydrant, is the rapidity with which the pumping engine works. Then, when a fire in the town subjects the apparatus to a very unusual tax, a signal in the engine room, acting automatically, causes the engineer to gear on some reserve power, always ready for use; and so, even in an emergency, there is provision for ample supply. And yet all this is a mere triumph of mechanics. Now let the ordinary working of the machinery represent the common course of nature: and the intelligent, personal intervention of the engineer, in an exigency, the personal interposition of the sovereign of the universe in the crises of affairs; and you have almost an analogy, refuting the objection on a scientific basis.

Lacordaire, in his conferences, finely satirizes this modern scientific doctrine of the helplessness of God. A woman cries out from the slums of Paris for light and help. God answers, "I would gladly help you but I cannot. I have established a fixed order of things and I have limited myself to its working. Prayer is of no use, you must submit to the fixed order."

If this view of miracles be sound and sensible it knocks away the prop from the main objection urged against miracles. Skeptical persons say: "I can t believe that God would first make laws for nature and set them in motion, and then go on and violate His own laws. What would be the use of making them, if He himself would break them or so easily suspend or set them aside?" We meet the objector on the very threshold, and honestly dispute his position. Is a miracle a violation of the laws of nature, or is it only such an interference with the established course of things, as infallibly shows us the presence and the action of a supernatural power?

I have a watch here when wound up it runs straight forward until it needs winding. By a fixed law, in conformity with the very structure of the time piece, its hands move only in one direction, while they move at all. Yet, when I find that it is too fast I move the hands backward; I interrupt the usual movement, but I violate no law. The watch could not have turned back its own hands and corrected itself, but a superior intelligence interferes for a proper end. Have I suspended or violated any law? Or have I simply brought a new law to bear which, though not in ordinary operation, is entirely consistent with the laws which govern the movements of the watch? As I examine more minutely into the structure of this delicate piece of mechanism, I observe a remarkable fact: the maker of this watch has made provision for just such a reversal of that law, by which both minute and hour hands move only forward. He has provided for a backward movement, when the intelligent owner chooses, without any interference with this exquisite arrangement: while I turn back the hands I disturb no wheel, and there is not even one tick the less: and yet, left to itself, the hands of that watch never could change their direction of movement. Who is competent to say that, when God reverses the hands on the great dial of nature, He has made no provision for such reversal?

If we may concede the possibility, may we not also, the probability of miracles?

These two questions are by no means the same, even in substance. Many things are possible that are not probable. God has power to do things, without number, which he never did and never will do. He never acts without a reason. He does not waste power by useless expenditure of omnipotence. If, however, there is such a use to be made of miracles as amply justifies the put ting forth of such power we are prepared to find them actually used. In the natural world we find wonderful marks of design. Wherever there is a socket there is a ball to fit it and make the joint complete. If you discover any apparent lack, something wanting to render nature’s arrangement and adjustment perfect, further search will always reveal something else exactly adapted to supply the want.

Years ago, in the astronomical world, it was found that certain changes are taking place which threaten the very existence of the order of the universe. For example: the orbits of the planets are inclined to each other by an angle which does not remain uniform. From the earliest ages the inclination of the earth’s equator to the ecliptic has been decreasing, say about half a second a year. Should this decrease continue, in about 85,000 years the equator and ecliptic would coincide, the order of nature would be entirely changed, and the succession of seasons would give place to one unchanging spring. But in fact, by and by this decrease will reach its limit, and the angle of inclination will then increase, and so the seasons will keep revolving, and seed time and harvest time shall not fail. God has provided a compensation for what at first seemed a disturbing cause, and as by the chronometer balance in a model time piece, regularity of movement is insured, in the end. The action of this compensating law may consume two hundred millenniums, but this shows nothing more than the vast scale on which this machine is constructed. So as to the changes in the angles under which the planetary orbits are inclined toward each other. Should these inclinations increase, the stability of the system would be impossible; order would give place to disorder, and the cosmos finally return to chaos.

Even such men as Humboldt have been misled into the prediction of a universal catastrophe. In his Cosmos he predicts the end of all things as surely coming, however remote from our day. The balance would be destroyed, wheels become dislodged, and the whole grand mechanism grind itself to atoms by its own collisions. Even astronomers and philosophers stood aghast at the prospect of such a final wreck and ruin. But the eyes of science continued to watch and search. And lo, it was found by Lagrange that these changes are like the movements of a pendulum which swings to the end of its arc and then swings back again, never once passing its proper and prescribed limits. How grand this conception! Think of a clockwork so magnificently vast and complicated that every tick of this pendulum represents millions of years! Yet what confidence it inspires in the Maker, when we find that, for every disturbing force, though, for periods too vast to be measured by time, it may seem to be driving the universe toward ruin, God has placed there another force or law to restore equilibrium and keep harmony! So in the spiritual world we shall find no lack unsupplied. As surely as there is a need for miracles, the need will be met. Can we foresee that there would be need? Remember that a miracle is an occurrence so marked in its departure from the usual order of things as to be to men a sign of God’s special power.

Let us suppose that we are all now living in the very year when Jesus Christ first appeared among men as a public teacher. The old Jewish church is corrupt and virtually dead. Even its beautiful forms of faith and worship are like the radiant skin of the serpent, when the living animal has cast it off and gone elsewhere; or like the "dead leaf retaining the form of its former self but performing none of its functions," a mere skeleton without the currents or even colors of life. Men grope in darkness and groan for light. The wise men of the East are waiting and watching for a star which may guide to the day dawn.

Let us suppose that God is purposing to give to men some clear and complete knowledge of His will. He might do it by a human teacher, like Plato; but how would mankind know that it is God who speaks? There have been many men who claimed to speak for God, and among them all we find it not easy to choose. All of them say something worth hearing, and perhaps something which is not unworthy to be a word from God; but even in the best of these teachers so much is at best uncertain, that it cannot be the utterance of Him who never makes a guess at truth or duty.

Now if God does speak to man, as to the grandest themes to which man can give heed, it is all important to hear and recognize God’s voice, and know that it is God. Man has no right to be satisfied without proof that God has spoken; for he may be imposed upon and so misled into error and wrong doing. If anything is plain it is that I have a right reverently to ask for unmistakable evidence that the God of the universe is addressing me.

How shall He satisfy such honest doubt? By any method which shews that it is He who is actually revealing himself. If He shall choose to come down, as on Mount Sinai, and in a voice of thunder speak, till in terror we cry out, "Let not God speak to us lest we die!" we shall be satisfied that it is He. If He shall choose to appear, as to Moses, in a flame that burns a bush without consuming it, His whisper will be as convincing as the thunder was before; for we shall know that something more than a flame must be making that bush radiant and glorious. It is the fact of marked departure from the ordinary course of things, which arrests the mind and impresses it with the presence and power of God. There is an instinctive or intuitive conviction that where there is such a departure from the natural and usual order, God must be especially present and working. Nicodemus said to Christ, "We know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him." There is the argument for miracles, and from miracles, in a nutshell. Where miracles are, we feel that God certainly is. And to meet this natural need of some clear proof that God speaks to us, it is probable that if He does speak through a man, that man will do such works as prove to all candid minds that he comes with the authority of God.

Miracles are simply God’s signs that authority comes with his messenger- when a minister or ambassador claims to represent the Court of St. James, the first inquiry is for his credentials. He may be a gentleman, scholar, statesman, hero - all this does not secure his reception as the representative of a foreign court. Nor should it. It is august business to stand in the stead of an empire that belts the world on whose realm the sun never sets whose beck makes the world tremble. When such ambassador meets our President and Cabinet in council, it is as though the British nation stood there in all the majesty of her greatness and power; and therefore we rightly require of such an ambassador credentials, so plain as to forbid a doubt of his mission and commission. Miracles are simply the credentials of God’s special representatives, and their probability is established the moment we concede the grandeur of the occasion when the Lord of the universe declares His will, and the imperative necessity that we shall not mistake His true messengers. This is the precise test which the word of God authorizes us to apply. Throughout these sublime pages there is but one uniform testimony on this subject. If any prophet arises, any religious teacher claiming to speak in behalf of God, this is the sign by which he is to be known: he shall, in his words or works, or both, shew that a power, beyond that of man, is moving in him and through him. What kind of words will answer these conditions? Not words of wisdom, only, however wise; for they would not prove that he who speaks is more than the wisest of men: not words of truth, only, for we cannot say how much truth a mere man may be able to discover and declare.

But, if this teacher shall foretell future events; if, like Elijah, he shall correctly prophesy a drought of three years, to begin and end only according to his word; men will say, this is more than human wisdom. Thus Samuel, even when a child, and after the prophetic fires had seemingly died out on the altars of Israel, was established as a prophet of the Lord. He declared what no mere man could foresee or foretell, the sudden and terrible destruction of Eli’s two sons: and when this awful word was fulfilled, all Israel said, the Lord is with him. So may a teacher from God shew his credentials in his works, by doing anything which plainly shews a power above man. While the wonders which Moses wrought at Pharaoh’s court were successfully imitated by the magicians, they carried but little weight; but when the rod was stretched forth and smote the dust of the earth so that it became lice in man and beast, and all the power of enchantment could not even imitate the miracle, even the magicians said unto Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God!"

III. If on any basis, we concede that miracles are possible and probable, they may certainly be most naturally expected, if the Son of God actually comes among men. The evidence will be on a scale correspondent with His dignity and majesty. Now look at His miracles. The first of them was the changing of water into wine at Cana. Nature does that every season. By processes that are the wonder of all ages, and a mystery even to the learned, she gathers from air and earth the secret of their moisture, and by the marvelous action of roots and sap-ducts, distils it into the grape; then by the aid of air and light and heat and actinic ray, slowly changes the acid liquid into delicious nectar. By no artificial process has man been able to imitate the juice of the grape. He must wait on the vine, as his laboratory. When Jesus, by an instantaneous process, and without approaching the pots, changed water into grape juice, doing in a moment what nature does only in months, and doing it without her apparatus for distillation, He showed to those present that He knew nature’s secrets and could, without her aid, work the same results; and so He showed himself the God of nature, and "manifested forth His glory." If you mark closely you will see in His recorded miracles a progressive character, and a gradual unfolding of His real self. The second miracle was one of healing and showed power over disease; the third, the miraculous draught, showed control over the animate creation; the fourth, the casting out of the devil, showed His power over demons; and so his miracles grow in importance, till the rising of the dead proves His control over death and decay.

Now, whatever may be said of miracles, as a sign that God spake by ordinary men, if ever a crisis justified them, it was when, last and best of all, God sent His only Son. We are justified in expecting that God’s seal-ring will be on His finger. And, so, when John Baptist from his cell sent to ask him for signs of his Messiahship, He replied by referring to the grand scale on which he was wielding the power of God: "the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised up!" He wrought miracles, not to gratify curiosity; but to satisfy the reasonable demand for evidence that His power was divine. Did His miracles give certain proof of the presence and power of God? Let us see. The famous clock in Strasburg Cathedral has a mechanism so complicated, that it seems to the ignorant and superstitious almost a work of super human skill. The abused and offended maker, yet unpaid for his work, came one day and touched its secret springs, and it stopped. All the patience and ingenuity of a nation’s mechanics and artisans failed to restore its disordered mechanism and set it in motion. Afterward, when his grievances were redressed, that maker came again, touched the inner springs and set it again in motion, and all its multiplied parts revolved again obedient to his will. When thus, by a touch, he suspended and restored those marvelous movements, he gave to any doubting mind proof that he was the maker, certainly the master, of that clock. And when Jesus of Nazareth brings to a stop the mechanism of nature, makes its mighty wheels turn back or in any way arrests its grand movement more than all, when he cannot only stop, but start again, the mysterious clock of human life, he gives to an honest mind overwhelming proof that God is with him. For a malignant power might arrest or destroy, but only He could reconstruct and restore!

IV. The argument for the credibility of miracles is grandly conclusive and magnificent in the scope of its horizon: in fact its very extent is embarrassing; but the main difficulty is that it must embrace in its wide range the entire question of the credibility of gospel history. If the writers of the New Testament are to be believed, then we are just so far on the road to believing their accounts of miraculous works. If their narrative is, for any reason, unworthy of credence, of course the credibility of the miracles which they record need not engage our attention. There is, however, a general question that can be examined without the extended argument on the credibility of the Scripture history, viz., is the account of a miracle, in itself, credible? The foes of Christianity have wit and wisdom enough to see that they may as well give up the fight, unless they can break down the evidence of miracles. Let them allow that one miraculous work has been wrought, and there is a fatal breach in their wall of defense; for, if one miracle has been wrought, others may have been. If miraculous works, why not miraculous words? And so prophecy, as well as miracle, is conceded. And of what use to oppose a system of religion, but dressed up by both prophecy and miracle! No wonder the entire force of infidel argument, the whole mighty host, is massed and hurled against this giant fortress of our faith, and that every possible weapon of wit and wisdom, ignorance and learning, science and philosophy, sophistry and fallacy, is forged for this combined assault. Here is the Marathon, the Thermopylae, the Waterloo, of the ages. And what is their grand plan of attack? They boldly unite in this assertion: that no testimony can prove a miracle; they attempt to undermine and blow up the very foundation of all arguments for the credibility of miracles by claiming, as though it were a self-evident truth, that a miracle is incredible. This is a desperate measure, but it is becoming to a desperate cause. Where a man voluntarily assumes a position like this, in order to make all argument impossible, there is no more hope of convincing him of the truth than of expanding or dilating the pupil of the eye by pouring more light upon it; bigotry, whether in believers or unbelievers, hates light, and grows narrower and more contracted as the light increases in intensity. But for the sake of candid minds, in danger of being misled by plausible sophistry, let us examine this infidel position. Is there anything incredible in a miracle? Of course, if it be established at all, it must be by the evidence of the senses to immediate witnesses; and by their testimony to others who do not have the proof of the senses. Are we to accept testimony on this subject? All questions of historic fact must be settled only by testimony: many matters of scientific fact are settled by testimony, for thousands who have no time, knowledge, opportunity for personal investigation; and yet we feel certain of historic facts and scientific discoveries. Of course, if miracles wrought by Christ, and by prophets and apostles, are to be made credible to us, it can be by no other evidence than that of testimony. On what basis, then, rests the assertion that miracles are not credible? Are they not supported by testimony? Are there no witnesses? Are the witnesses not competent or trustworthy? If these were the ground of the attack, it would be easy to show how unsafe and unsound it is; for if on any subject, we have abundance of testimony and that of the most credible sort, it is with respect to miracles. No other religion ever dared to make its appeal to miracles, and to rest its appeal on miracles! Where and when miraculous wonders have been claimed, it has not been as decisive signal tests, by which the claims of such religions should stand or fall. It is one thing to challenge an unbeliever to try a religion by its miracles, and quite another to ask a believer to accept them as part of a system in which he already believes. A man may not marry a woman because of her poverty or her fortune, or a wen on her neck, who will, if he first loves the woman, take her with poverty or wealth, and wen beside. When a religion approaches a man and boldly says: "God bears me witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles," it meets him with a challenge; it bids him dispute its claims if he dare, by first disproving its signs if he can. But when a man has already become a disciple, for example, of Mohammed, he is disposed to receive his miracles as genuine without any witness but his word; and so the religious system instead of being based on these miracles as its proof, rather becomes the basis which supplies them with proof. But Christianity starts by bidding us apply these severe tests. If we can even disprove one miracle, the resurrection of Christ, St. Paul confesses that the whole structure falls; "our preaching is vain; your faith is vain." The grandeur of this bold challenge to try the Christian faith by the test of miracles, needs to be appreciated.

Mohammed did not claim miraculous powers, though, centuries after, they were claimed for him; and such marvels as he did impose on the credulity of his followers, he took good pains not to make dependent on any other testimony than his own. But see how audacious the challenge of our Lord: "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did they had not had sin!" And none of these things were done "in a corner, 1 but openly, in temple courts, on public streets, by lake shores, before thousands.

Mohammed might tell of Gabriel’s night visits and his own night journey; of the celestial delivery of the divine book, in fragments, till the Mohammedan bible was complete; but who was there to prove or disprove his testimony? But Christ moved, during at least three years, among men publicly, and every step marked by words and works such as never before or since challenged the faith of man. These miracles could not be ascribed to natural causes; they were such as admitted of the test of the senses; they were so public as to command universal attention; and they were of such various character as precludes the notion of deception or delusion. Their number, the instantaneous and complete character of the cures he wrought, and the absence of one failure in the attempt even to raise the dead, put infinite distance between these miracles and the pretended wonders of this or any other age, where those who claimed to have been cured, at sight or touch of sacred relics, were the few exceptions to hundreds of disappointed applicants for healing virtue. No confirmation of the miracle of scripture is more remarkable than the silence of enemies; nay, we have more than silence - confession of the fact that they were wrought. Let us remember that, from the beginning, the founder of this great religion was the focal centre of all the intensity of human hate. All eyes turned to him and subjected him to microscopic scrutiny.

Forgeries of any kind, though as well done as the poems that Chatterton feigned to have found in old St. Mary’s, are sure of detection sooner or later. No forgery is so difficult as that of miracles, especially when publicly wrought, under the scrutiny of keen-eyed foes. Yet, though there was every motive for overthrowing them if possible, and although they were constantly appealed to as known facts, they went unchallenged! In days of persecution, thousands suffered torture and death, where, to have confessed the miracles of our Lord to have been impostures, would have been deliverance, and yet no disciple ever made a confession such as this!

Most remarkable of all, even the Jewish Rabbis, in the Talmud, acknowledge these miracles, but pretend they were wrought by magic or by the use of a secret charm which Jesus stole out of the temple. Celsus, learned and able as he was among the assailants of Christianity, both allows the facts of the gospel history and concedes that Christ wrought miracles, but ascribes them to magical arts learned in Egypt. Hierocles, the persecutor, does not deny these miracles, though he ridicules the idea of worshipping Christ. Julian, the apostate, confesses that Christ cured the lame and blind, and cast out demons, but thinks these works did not make him worthy of such fame.

Modern foes of Christianity do not venture often to attack our faith from this quarter; it is too well defended. No, they put on the air of gracious, condescending concession: they allow the testimony to be honest and ample, but mistaken. Mr. Hume’s fertile and ingenious mind suggests a short path by which to escape the necessity of faith: "deny that any testimony can prove a miracle, and it is done! And the modern skeptic is tempted to ask with Isaac when Jacob got ready his venison so soon by making a tame lamb from the fold answer for a wild deer from the fields, ’how hast thou found it so quickly, my son !’"

It must be confessed that Hume’s argument is very plausible and subtle. "Nature’s laws are uniform; miracles imply a violation of that uniformity. It is easier to believe a hundred men honest but mistaken than to believe one such absurdity to be possible!" No room remains for the exposure of the sophistry of Hume’s argument. Already it has been partly answered by showing that a miracle is not a violation of natural laws. But a few suggestions may be added.

One of the hinges of Hume’s argument is this, that a miracle is contrary to experience. Of course if miracles were not contrary to our common experience they could have no power as a sign of divine interposition. But were they contrary to the experience of those who witnessed them? If I am to believe nothing that is contrary to my experience, the door is shut to all grand discoveries, and corrections of erroneous opinion. The savage in equatorial Africa is justified in denying that water is ever solid so that its surface will sustain many tons, for it is contrary to his experience: and if he sees the magnet lift and hold a heavy weight without hands or visible means, or a balloon inflated with hydrogen gas dart upward with heavy ballast in the basket, he is justified in disbelieving his own senses, for his experience of the uniformity of nature’s laws is that what is heavy falls to the earth. And here is a suspension of the laws of gravity. This objection argues absurdity: for it renders incredible all exceptions to the otherwise uniform experience of men. This is unfair. On a basis of simple science, when any new fact contradicts our hitherto uniform experience, instead of denying the fact, we make our science broader, and look for some new law or force, unknown or not understood before. Just this, God means we shall do when we behold a miracle: stop and ask what new force is at work, which is not found in the ordinary uniform operation of mechanical laws: and what means this intervention of a superior hand to control and reverse nature’s ordinary movement.

Hume’s argument will have little weight with those who understand Mr. Hume, and see how he was forced by his own philosophy to this position. One of his unfortunate admirers acknowledged that the disposition to doubt everything was so interwoven with his whole character, that he seemed to be uncertain even of his own existence. He was the modern Pyrrho, and not an unworthy successor of that ancient doubter who was not sure of anything, who did not know anything, and was not sure he did not know, who doubted whether even the world itself were not an illusion, and whose friends accompanied him in his walks lest he should doubt the reality of a precipice and so walk off its edge to his own ruin.

Hume’s arguments failed to satisfy his own mind. Hear his own words speaking of his speculations: "They have so wrought upon me and heated my brain that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favor shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me, and on whom have I any influence, and who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty."

It partly refutes Hume’s view of miracles to show how he came to hold it. His theology compelled his skepticism; his denial of miracles was necessary unless he gave up his philosophy. To one who believes in a personal God, who may for good reasons interfere with nature’s ordinary processes, miracles are not incredible; but an Atheist, Pantheist or Deist must deny the possibility of miracles. For if, behind and above nature, there be no intelligent, divine, controlling hand, the very existence of the universe depends on the absolute uniformity of nature’s laws and processes. Mr. Hume was a Deist. He traced the various effects of nature to a uniform series of causes: no interruption could be supposed to occur, for there would be nothing to restore order and harmony. It is well to have provision for that extra pressure in the water works, if there be an intelligent person there, to determine when to gear on the spare machinery, and to disconnect it when the need of it ceases: but, if the machine should have no brain behind it, it would not do to allow such extra pressure, for the machine cannot restore itself to its ordinary and uniform working and to have fourfold pressure when the hydrants are closed would destroy both machinery and distributing pipes. For Hume to admit miracles would be to admit a personal God back of a nature’s enginery, an engineer whose power and intelligence first fixed the uniformity of nature’s ordinary workings, and who if he chooses to bring some new force to bear, can disconnect it when his purpose is answered. Hume’s argument against miracles was not simply the result of candid reasoning, but a manufactured theory invented to fit into his deistical philosophy.

I am prepared to prove that his dishonesty in the matter lies even deeper, in a deliberate determination to oppose the claims of the religion of Christ. I quote his own words, that it may be seen how he contradicts himself. After boldly saying that "a miracle supported by any human testimony is more properly a subject of derision than of argument," he says, "I own that there may possibly be miracles of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony;" and then imagines a case of miracle, so attested by competent witness that philosophers ought to receive it as certain. And then mark how he sneaks out as by a trap door, lest he be caught in his own admissions. "But should this miracle be ascribed to a new system of religion, men in all ages have been so imposed on by ridiculous stories of that kind that this very circumstance would be a full proof of the cheat!"

Verily, a Daniel come to judgment! Here is a learned man, a prince among skeptics, who says in one breath that "no kind of testimony for any kind of miracle can possibly amount to a probability, much less to a proof:" then, in another breath, concedes that "there may be miracles of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony, and be received by philosophers as certain;" and, yet in another breath, hastens to say that if such miracle be used as a sign of a divine religion we must again reject it! The jewel of consistency evidently burns very dimly in the diadem of this deist: a miracle cannot possibly be credible, yet it may be credible; and again even a credible miracle may be also incredible! The fact is Mr. Hume was bound to overthrow Christianity, and he would hesitate at no violation of logical consistency, or moral candor, to avoid giving the religion of the Bible a show of support. If one should descend to such unfairness in dealing with religious doubts and difficulties, he would be met, and deserve to be, by a pelting hail of hisses.

Let one guard be put about what has been said, to prevent perversion. Some, in arguing for the truth of Revelation, start by proving miracles to be credible, and inferring the doctrine to be divine because so sanctioned. But this is by no means the whole truth. Our Lord himself did not seek to force a faith or even conviction upon the minds of men whose hearts were hostile to Him and his work. If a man, by his bondage to his philosophy, or to an accusing conscience, or to selfish interests, is predisposed and determined not to see that Christianity is of God, no amount of evidence will convince him. Sight does not reach a shut eye, which is for all purposes of seeing, a blind eye. The heart makes the theology.

If a man comes to the Bible with open eye he will find two influences operating together to produce conviction. First he will find such truth and such a person there as dispose him to expect divine credentials: and then he will find divine credentials disposing him to believe the truths and the person to be all that they claim, essentially divine; the written word and the living word of God. And many an examiner of Scripture scarce knows which way conviction first takes hold of his mind, that Christ must be a divine being; whether from his teaching and life; or because His wonderful works reveal His divinity. You stand in sunlight and you are at the same moment dazzled by its brightness and thrilled by its warmth. Whether you were conscious of light or heat first, you scarce know. You approach the Bible; there breaks upon you a sense that you are walking in light: if there be truth anywhere it is here. You find a record of miraculous signs, confirming the teachings of the book of God. Whether the signs lead you to look at the truth, or the truth leads you to expect the signs, you cannot tell.

"It becomes easier to believe in the miracles, because of our personal faith in Him as a being of whom such extraordinary deeds might be reasonably expected, than to believe in Him primarily on the ground of His having exercised miraculous powers." Some have been drawn to the cradle of this wonderful child by seeing His star in the east, and being prepared to find the Holy One, by the signs that herald him. Others first found Him at the cross, and, when the precious drops fell on them with cleansing, healing power, could well believe the story of the magi.

We have no hope of convincing a skeptic simply by miracles. But, if in a candid spirit any man will search the Scriptures, he shall find that they testify of Christ, that Christ is a witness unto Himself. There have been those who, like Gilbert West and Lyttleton, have started to lay hands on Him as an impostor, but who approaching Him through the paths of Scripture study have, when their eyes rested full on His blessed person, seen the divinity flash forth even through the veil of humanity, and, like the soldiers in the garden, have gone backward and fallen to the ground. They started to oppose: they stopped to espouse and embrace.

Every study of the Bible is a study of the evidences of Christianity. The Bible is itself the greatest miracle of all, and the Son of God more wonderful than any of the wonders that confirm His claims. The believer feels this in every fibre of his being. Rob me of miracles and of prophecy: you have not robbed me of Him. Before Him I bow, because of what He is. The morning star pales and fades at sunrise. There is a glory, in the presence of which all else is dim. And if you will come and stand in the radiance of that presence, with eye unveiled by willful hostility to light, and wait there until you are bathed in the glory, filled and thrilled by the love and life that come in the same beam with the light, you shall need no starry miracles to herald the morning, and assure you that He, who can impart to you the knowledge of God and the peace of God, can be no other than the Sun of Righteousness!