Chapter I: Preliminary Considerations (1)

I. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God.

1. _Needs of man’s nature._ Man’s intellectual and moral nature requires, in order to preserve it from constant deterioration, and to ensure its moral growth and progress, an authoritative and helpful revelation of religious truth, of a higher and completer sort than any to which, in its present state of sin, it can attain by the use of its unaided powers. The proof of this proposition is partly psychological, and partly historical.

A. Psychological proof.—(_a_) Neither reason nor intuition throws light upon certain questions whose solution is of the utmost importance to us; for example, Trinity, atonement, pardon, method of worship, personal existence after death. (_b_) Even the truth to which we arrive by our natural powers needs divine confirmation and authority when it addresses minds and wills perverted by sin. (_c_) To break this power of sin, and to furnish encouragement to moral effort, we need a special revelation of the merciful and helpful aspect of the divine nature.

(_a_) Bremen Lectures, 72, 73; Plato, Second Alcibiades, 22, 23;
Phædo, 85—λόγου θείου τινός. Iamblicus, περὶ τοῦ Πυθαγορικοῦ βίου,
chap. 28. Æschylus, in his Agamemnon, shows how completely reason
and intuition failed to supply the knowledge of God which man
needs: “Renown is loud,” he says, “and not to lose one’s senses is
God’s greatest gift.... The being praised outrageously Is grave;
for at the eyes of such a one Is launched, from Zeus, the
thunder-stone. Therefore do I decide For so much and no more
prosperity Than of his envy passes unespied.” Though the gods
might have favorites, they did not love men as men, but rather,
envied and hated them. William James, Is Life Worth Living? in
Internat. Jour. Ethics, Oct. 1895:10—“All we know of good and
beauty proceeds from nature, but none the less all we know of
evil.... To such a harlot we owe no moral allegiance.... If there
be a divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her,
cannot possibly be its ultimate word to man. Either there is no
Spirit revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed
there; and, as all the higher religions have assumed, what we call
visible nature, or _this_ world, must be but a veil and
surface-show whose full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen
or _other_ world.”

(_b_) _Versus_ Socrates: Men will do right, if they only know the
right. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:219—“In opposition to the
opinion of Socrates that badness rests upon ignorance, Aristotle
already called the fact to mind that the doing of the good is not
always combined with the knowing of it, seeing that it depends
also on the passions. If badness consisted only in the want of
knowledge, then those who are theoretically most cultivated must
also be morally the best, which no one will venture to assert.” W.
S. Lilly, On Shibboleths: “Ignorance is often held to be the root
of all evil. But mere knowledge cannot transform character. It
cannot minister to a mind diseased. It cannot convert the will
from bad to good. It may turn crime into different channels, and
render it less easy to detect. It does not change man’s natural
propensities or his disposition to gratify them at the expense of
others. Knowledge makes the good man more powerful for good, the
bad man more powerful for evil. And that is all it can do.” Gore,
Incarnation, 174—“We must not depreciate the method of argument,
for Jesus and Paul occasionally used it in a Socratic fashion, but
we must recognize that it is not the basis of the Christian system
nor the primary method of Christianity.” Martineau, in Nineteenth
Century, 1:331, 531, and Types, 1:112—“Plato dissolved the idea of
the right into that of the good, and this again was
indistinguishably mingled with that of the true and the
beautiful.” See also Flint, Theism, 305.

(_c_) _Versus_ Thomas Paine: “Natural religion teaches us, without
the possibility of being mistaken, all that is necessary or proper
to be known.” Plato, Laws, 9:854, _c_, for substance: “Be good;
but, if you cannot, then kill yourself.” Farrar, Darkness and
Dawn, 75—“Plato says that man will never know God until God has
revealed himself in the guise of suffering man, and that, when all
is on the verge of destruction, God sees the distress of the
universe, and, placing himself at the rudder, restores it to
order.” Prometheus, the type of humanity, can never be delivered
“until some god descends for him into the black depths of
Tartarus.” Seneca in like manner teaches that man cannot save
himself. He says: “Do you wonder that men go to the gods? God
comes _to_ men, yes, _into_ men.” We are sinful, and God’s
thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways.
Therefore he must make known his thoughts to us, teach us what we
are, what true love is, and what will please him. Shaler,
Interpretation of Nature, 227—“The inculcation of moral truths can
be successfully effected only in the personal way; ... it demands
the influence of personality; ... the weight of the impression
depends upon the voice and the eye of a teacher.” In other words,
we need not only the exercise of authority, but also the
manifestation of love.

B. Historical proof.—(_a_) The knowledge of moral and religious truth possessed by nations and ages in which special revelation is unknown is grossly and increasingly imperfect. (_b_) Man’s actual condition in ante-Christian times, and in modern heathen lands, is that of extreme moral depravity. (_c_) With this depravity is found a general conviction of helplessness, and on the part of some nobler natures, a longing after, and hope of, aid from above.

Pythagoras: “It is not easy to know [duties], except men were
taught them by God himself, or by some person who had received
them from God, or obtained the knowledge of them through some
divine means.” Socrates: “Wait with patience, till we know with
certainty how we ought to behave ourselves toward God and man.”
Plato: “We will wait for one, be he a God or an inspired man, to
instruct us in our duties and to take away the darkness from our
eyes.” Disciple of Plato: “Make probability our raft, while we
sail through life, unless we could have a more sure and safe
conveyance, such as some divine communication would be.” Plato
thanked God for three things: first, that he was born a rational
soul; secondly, that he was born a Greek; and, thirdly, that he
lived in the days of Socrates. Yet, with all these advantages, he
had only probability for a raft, on which to navigate strange seas
of thought far beyond his depth, and he longed for “a more sure
word of prophecy”_ (2 Pet. 1:19)_. See references and quotations
in Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 35, and in
Luthardt, Fundamental Truths, 156-172, 335-338; Farrar, Seekers
after God; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 187.

2. _Presumption of supply._ What we know of God, by nature, affords ground for hope that these wants of our intellectual and moral being will be met by a corresponding supply, in the shape of a special divine revelation. We argue this:

(_a_) From our necessary conviction of God’s wisdom. Having made man a spiritual being, for spiritual ends, it may be hoped that he will furnish the means needed to secure these ends. (_b_) From the actual, though incomplete, revelation already given in nature. Since God has actually undertaken to make himself known to men, we may hope that he will finish the work he has begun. (_c_) From the general connection of want and supply. The higher our needs, the more intricate and ingenious are, in general, the contrivances for meeting them. We may therefore hope that the highest want will be all the more surely met. (_d_) From analogies of nature and history. Signs of reparative goodness in nature and of forbearance in providential dealings lead us to hope that, while justice is executed, God may still make known some way of restoration for sinners.

(_a_) There were two stages in Dr. John Duncan’s escape from
pantheism: 1. when he came first to believe in the existence of
God, and “danced for joy upon the brig o’ Dee”; and 2. when, under
Malan’s influence, he came also to believe that “God meant that we
should know him.” In the story in the old Village Reader, the
mother broke completely down when she found that her son was
likely to grow up stupid, but her tears conquered him and made him
intelligent. Laura Bridgman was blind, deaf and dumb, and had but
small sense of taste or smell. When her mother, after long
separation, went to her in Boston, the mother’s heart was in
distress lest the daughter should not recognize her. When at last,
by some peculiar mother’s sign, she pierced the veil of
insensibility, it was a glad time for both. So God, our Father,
tries to reveal himself to our blind, deaf and dumb souls. The
agony of the Cross is the sign of God’s distress over the
insensibility of humanity which sin has caused. If he is the Maker
of man’s being, he will surely seek to fit it for that communion
with himself for which it was designed.

(_b_) Gore, Incarnation, 52, 53—“Nature is a first volume, in
itself incomplete, and demanding a second volume, which is
Christ.” (_c_) R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God,
228—“Mendicants do not ply their calling for years in a desert
where there are no givers. Enough of supply has been received to
keep the sense of want alive.” (_d_) In the natural arrangements
for the healing of bruises in plants and for the mending of broken
bones in the animal creation, in the provision of remedial agents
for the cure of human diseases, and especially in the delay to
inflict punishment upon the transgressor and the space given him
for repentance, we have some indications, which, if uncontradicted
by other evidence, might lead us to regard the God of nature as a
God of forbearance and mercy. Plutarch’s treatise “De Sera Numinis
Vindicta” is proof that this thought had occurred to the heathen.
It may be doubted, indeed, whether a heathen religion could even
continue to exist, without embracing in it some element of hope.
Yet this very delay in the execution of the divine judgments gave
its own occasion for doubting the existence of a God who was both
good and just. “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on
the throne,” is a scandal to the divine government which only the
sacrifice of Christ can fully remove.

The problem presents itself also in the Old Testament. In Job 21,
and in Psalms, 17, 37, 49, 73, there are partial answers; see _Job
21:7—_“Wherefore do the wicked live, Become old, yea, wax mighty
in power?” _24:1—_“Why are not judgment times determined by the
Almighty? And they that know him, why see they not his days?” The
New Testament intimates the existence of a witness to God’s
goodness among the heathen, while at the same time it declares
that the full knowledge of forgiveness and salvation is brought
only by Christ. Compare _Acts 14:17—_“And yet he left not himself
without witness, in that he did good, and gave you from heaven
rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and
gladness”; _17:25-27—_“he himself giveth to all life, and breath,
and all things; and he made of one every nation of men ... that
they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find
him”; _Rom. 2:4—_“the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance”;
_3:25—_“the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the
forbearance of God”; _Eph. 3:9—_“to make all men see what is the
dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God”;
_2 Tim. 1:10—_“our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and
brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.” See
Hackett’s edition of the treatise of Plutarch, as also Bowen,
Metaph. and Ethics, 462-487; Diman, Theistic Argument, 371.

We conclude this section upon the reasons _a priori_ for expecting a revelation from God with the acknowledgment that the facts warrant that degree of expectation which we call hope, rather than that larger degree of expectation which we call assurance; and this, for the reason that, while conscience gives proof that God is a God of holiness, we have not, from the light of nature, equal evidence that God is a God of love. Reason teaches man that, as a sinner, he merits condemnation; but he cannot, from reason alone, know that God will have mercy upon him and provide salvation. His doubts can be removed only by God’s own voice, assuring him of “redemption ... the forgiveness of ... trespasses” (Eph. 1:7) and revealing to him the way in which that forgiveness has been rendered possible.

Conscience knows no pardon, and no Savior. Hovey, Manual of
Christian Theology, 9, seems to us to go too far when he says:
“Even natural affection and conscience afford some clue to the
goodness and holiness of God, though much more is needed by one
who undertakes the study of Christian theology.” We grant that
natural affection gives some clue to God’s goodness, but we regard
conscience as reflecting only God’s holiness and his hatred of
sin. We agree with Alexander McLaren: “Does God’s love need to be
proved? Yes, as all paganism shows. Gods vicious, gods careless,
gods cruel, gods beautiful, there are in abundance; but where is
there a god who loves?”

II. Marks of the Revelation man may expect.

1. _As to its substance._ We may expect this later revelation not to contradict, but to confirm and enlarge, the knowledge of God which we derive from nature, while it remedies the defects of natural religion and throws light upon its problems.

Isaiah’s appeal is to God’s previous communications of truth: _Is.
8:20—_“To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not
according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.” And
Malachi follows the example of Isaiah; _Mal. 4:4—_“Remember ye the
law of Moses my servant.” Our Lord himself based his claims upon
the former utterances of God: _Luke 24:27—_“beginning from Moses
and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the
scriptures the things concerning himself.”

2. _As to its method._ We may expect it to follow God’s methods of procedure in other communications of truth.

Bishop Butler (Analogy, part ii, chap. iii) has denied that there
is any possibility of judging _a priori_ how a divine revelation
will be given. “We are in no sort judges beforehand,” he says, “by
what methods, or in what proportion, it were to be expected that
this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us.” But
Bishop Butler somewhat later in his great work (part ii, chap. iv)
shows that God’s progressive plan in revelation has its analogy in
the slow, successive steps by which God accomplishes his ends in
nature. We maintain that the revelation in nature affords certain
presumptions with regard to the revelation of grace, such for
example as those mentioned below.

Leslie Stephen, in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1891:180—“Butler
answered the argument of the deists, that the God of Christianity
was unjust, by arguing that the God of nature was equally unjust.
James Mill, admitting the analogy, refused to believe in either
God. Dr. Martineau has said, for similar reasons, that Butler
‘wrote one of the most terrible persuasives to atheism ever
produced.’ So J. H. Newman’s ‘kill or cure’ argument is
essentially that God has either revealed nothing, or has made
revelations in some other places than in the Bible. His argument,
like Butler’s, may be as good a persuasive to scepticism as to
belief.” To this indictment by Leslie Stephen we reply that it has
cogency only so long as we ignore the fact of human sin. Granting
this fact, our world becomes a world of discipline, probation and
redemption, and both the God of nature and the God of Christianity
are cleared from all suspicion of injustice. The analogy between
God’s methods in the Christian system and his methods in nature
becomes an argument in favor of the former.

(_a_) That of continuous historical development,—that it will be given in germ to early ages, and will be more fully unfolded as the race is prepared to receive it.

Instances of continuous development in God’s impartations are
found in geological history; in the growth of the sciences; in the
progressive education of the individual and of the race. No other
religion but Christianity shows “a steady historical progress of
the vision of one infinite Character unfolding itself to man
through a period of many centuries.” See sermon by Dr. Temple, on
the Education of the World, in Essays and Reviews; Rogers,
Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 374-384; Walker, Philosophy of the
Plan of Salvation. On the gradualness of revelation, see Fisher,
Nature and Method of Revelation, 46-86; Arthur H. Hallam, in John
Brown’s Rab and his Friends, 282—“Revelation is a gradual
approximation of the infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of
finite humanity.” A little fire can kindle a city or a world; but
ten times the heat of that little fire, if widely diffused, would
not kindle anything.

(_b_) That of original delivery to a single nation, and to single persons in that nation, that it may through them be communicated to mankind.

Each nation represents an idea. As the Greek had a genius for
liberty and beauty, and the Roman a genius for organization and
law, so the Hebrew nation had a “genius for religion” (Renan);
this last, however, would have been useless without special divine
aid and superintendence, as witness other productions of this same
Semitic race, such as Bel and the Dragon, in the Old Testament
Apocrypha; the gospels of the Apocryphal New Testament; and later
still, the Talmud and the Koran.

The O. T. Apocrypha relates that, when Daniel was thrown a second
time into the lions’ den, an angel seized Habakkuk in Judea by the
hair of his head and carried him with a bowl of pottage to give to
Daniel for his dinner. There were seven lions, and Daniel was
among them seven days and nights. Tobias starts from his father’s
house to secure his inheritance, and his little dog goes with him.
On the banks of the great river a great fish threatens to devour
him, but he captures and despoils the fish. He finally returns
successful to his father’s house, and his little dog goes in with
him. In the Apocryphal Gospels, Jesus carries water in his mantle
when his pitcher is broken; makes clay birds on the Sabbath, and,
when rebuked, causes them to fly; strikes a youthful companion
with death, and then curses his accusers with blindness; mocks his
teachers, and resents control. Later Moslem legends declare that
Mohammed caused darkness at noon; whereupon the moon flew to him,
went seven times around the Kaāba, bowed, entered his right
sleeve, split into two halves after slipping out at the left, and
the two halves, after retiring to the extreme east and west, were
reunited. These products of the Semitic race show that neither the
influence of environment nor a native genius for religion
furnishes an adequate explanation of our Scriptures. As the flame
on Elijah’s altar was caused, not by the dead sticks, but by the
fire from heaven, so only the inspiration of the Almighty can
explain the unique revelation of the Old and New Testaments.

The Hebrews saw God in conscience. For the most genuine expression
of their life we “must look beneath the surface, in the soul,
where worship and aspiration and prophetic faith come face to face
with God” (Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 28). But the Hebrew
religion needed to be supplemented by the sight of God in reason,
and in the beauty of the world. The Greeks had the love of
knowledge, and the æsthetic sense. Butcher, Aspects of the Greek
Genius, 34—“The Phœnicians taught the Greeks how to write, but it
was the Greeks who wrote.” Aristotle was the beginner of science,
and outside the Aryan race none but the Saracens ever felt the
scientific impulse. But the Greek made his problem clear by
striking all the unknown quantities out of it. Greek thought would
never have gained universal currency and permanence if it had not
been for Roman jurisprudence and imperialism. England has
contributed her constitutional government, and America her manhood
suffrage and her religious freedom. So a definite thought of God
is incorporated in each nation, and each nation has a message to
every other. _Acts 17:26_—God “made of one every nation of men to
dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their
appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation”; _Rom.
3:12—_“What advantage then hath the Jew?... first of all, that
they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” God’s choice of the
Hebrew nation, as the repository and communicator of religious
truth, is analogous to his choice of other nations, as the
repositories and communicators of æsthetic, scientific,
governmental truth.

Hegel: “No nation that has played a weighty and active part in the
world’s history has ever issued from the simple development of a
single race along the unmodified lines of blood-relationship.
There must be differences, conflicts, a composition of opposed
forces.” The conscience of the Hebrew, the thought of the Greek,
the organization of the Latin, the personal loyalty of the Teuton,
must all be united to form a perfect whole. “While the Greek
church was orthodox, the Latin church was Catholic; while the
Greek treated of the two wills in Christ, the Latin treated of the
harmony of our wills with God; while the Latin saved through a
corporation, the Teuton saved through personal faith.” Brereton,
in Educational Review, Nov. 1901:339—“The problem of France is
that of the religious orders; that of Germany, the construction of
society; that of America, capital and labor.” Pfleiderer, Philos.
Religion, 1:183, 184—“Great ideas never come from the masses, but
from marked individuals. These ideas, when propounded, however,
awaken an echo in the masses, which shows that the ideas had been
slumbering unconsciously in the souls of others.” The hour
strikes, and a Newton appears, who interprets God’s will in
nature. So the hour strikes, and a Moses or a Paul appears, who
interprets God’s will in morals and religion. The few grains of
wheat found in the clasped hand of the Egyptian mummy would have
been utterly lost if one grain had been sown in Europe, a second
in Asia, a third in Africa, and a fourth in America; all being
planted together in a flower-pot, and their product in a
garden-bed, and the still later fruit in a farmer’s field, there
came at last to be a sufficient crop of new Mediterranean wheat to
distribute to all the world. So God followed his ordinary method
in giving religious truth first to a single nation and to chosen
individuals in that nation, that through them it might be given to
all mankind. See British Quarterly, Jan. 1874: art.: Inductive
Theology.

(_c_) That of preservation in written and accessible documents, handed down from those to whom the revelation is first communicated.

Alphabets, writing, books, are our chief dependence for the
history of the past; all the great religions of the world are
book-religions; the Karens expected their teachers in the new
religion to bring to them a book. But notice that false religions
have scriptures, but not Scripture; their sacred books lack the
principle of unity which is furnished by divine inspiration. H. P.
Smith, Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration, 68—“Mohammed
discovered that the Scriptures of the Jews were the source of
their religion. He called them a ‘book-people,’ and endeavored to
construct a similar code for his disciples. In it God is the only
speaker; all its contents are made known to the prophet by direct
revelation; its Arabic style is perfect; its text is
incorruptible; it is absolute authority in law, science and
history.” The Koran is a grotesque human parody of the Bible; its
exaggerated pretensions of divinity, indeed, are the best proof
that it is of purely human origin. Scripture, on the other hand,
makes no such claims for itself, but points to Christ as the sole
and final authority. In this sense we may say with Clarke,
Christian Theology, 20—“Christianity is not a book-religion, but a
life-religion. The Bible does not give us Christ, but Christ gives
us the Bible.” Still it is true that for our knowledge of Christ
we are almost wholly dependent upon Scripture. In giving his
revelation to the world, God has followed his ordinary method of
communicating and preserving truth by means of written documents.
Recent investigations, however, now render it probable that the
Karen expectation of a book was the survival of the teaching of
the Nestorian missionaries, who as early as the eighth century
penetrated the remotest parts of Asia, and left in the wall of the
city of Singwadu in Northwestern China a tablet as a monument of
their labors. On book-revelation, see Rogers, Eclipse of Faith,
73-96, 281-304.

3. _As to its attestation._ We may expect that this revelation will be accompanied by evidence that its author is the same being whom we have previously recognized as God of nature. This evidence must constitute (_a_) a manifestation of God himself; (_b_) in the outward as well as the inward world; (_c_) such as only God’s power or knowledge can make; and (_d_) such as cannot be counterfeited by the evil, or mistaken by the candid, soul. In short, we may expect God to attest by miracles and by prophecy, the divine mission and authority of those to whom he communicates a revelation. Some such outward sign would seem to be necessary, not only to assure the original recipient that the supposed revelation is not a vagary of his own imagination, but also to render the revelation received by a single individual authoritative to all (compare Judges 6:17, 36-40—Gideon asks a sign, for himself; 1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah asks a sign, for others). But in order that our positive proof of a divine revelation may not be embarrassed by the suspicion that the miraculous and prophetic elements in the Scripture history create a presumption against its credibility, it will be desirable to take up at this point the general subject of miracles and prophecy.

III. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.

1. Definition of Miracle.

A. Preliminary Definition.—A miracle is an event palpable to the senses, produced for a religious purpose by the immediate agency of God; an event therefore which, though not contravening any law of nature, the laws of nature, if fully known, would not without this agency of God be competent to explain.

This definition corrects several erroneous conceptions of the miracle:—(_a_) A miracle is not a suspension or violation of natural law; since natural law is in operation at the time of the miracle just as much as before. (_b_) A miracle is not a sudden product of natural agencies—a product merely foreseen, by him who appears to work it; it is the effect of a will outside of nature. (_c_) A miracle is not an event without a cause; since it has for its cause a direct volition of God. (_d_) A miracle is not an irrational or capricious act of God; but an act of wisdom, performed in accordance with the immutable laws of his being, so that in the same circumstances the same course would be again pursued. (_e_) A miracle is not contrary to experience; since it is not contrary to experience for a new cause to be followed by a new effect. (_f_) A miracle is not a matter of internal experience, like regeneration or illumination; but is an event palpable to the senses, which may serve as an objective proof to all that the worker of it is divinely commissioned as a religious teacher.

For various definitions of miracles, see Alexander, Christ and
Christianity, 302. On the whole subject, see Mozley, Miracles;
Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 285-339; Fisher, in
Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880, and Jan. 1881; A. H. Strong, Philosophy
and Religion, 129-147, and in Baptist Review, April, 1879. The
definition given above is intended simply as a definition of the
miracles of the Bible, or, in other words, of the events which
profess to attest a divine revelation in the Scriptures. The New
Testament designates these events in a two-fold way, viewing them
either subjectively, as producing effects upon men, or
objectively, as revealing the power and wisdom of God. In the
former aspect they are called τέρατα, “wonders,” and σημεῖα,
“signs,”_ (John 4:48; Acts 2:22)_. In the latter aspect they are
called δυνάμεις, “powers,” and ἔργα, “works,”_ (Mat 7:22; John
14:11)_. See H. B. Smith, Lect. on Apologetics, 90-116, esp.
94—“σημεῖον, sign, marking the purpose or object, the moral end,
placing the event in connection with revelation.” The Bible Union
Version uniformly and properly renders τέρας by “wonder,” δυνάμις
by “miracle,” ἔργον by “work,” and σημεῖον by “sign.” Goethe,
Faust: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss: Das
Unzulängliche wird hier Ereigniss”—“Everything transitory is but a
parable; The unattainable appears as solid fact.” So the miracles
of the New Testament are acted parables,—Christ opens the eyes of
the blind to show that he is the Light of the world, multiplies
the loaves to show that he is the Bread of Life, and raises the
dead to show that he lifts men up from the death of trespasses and
sins. See Broadus on Matthew, 175.

A modification of this definition of the miracle, however, is
demanded by a large class of Christian physicists, in the supposed
interest of natural law. Such a modification is proposed by
Babbage, in the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, chap. viii. Babbage
illustrates the miracle by the action of his calculating machine,
which would present to the observer in regular succession the
series of units from one to ten million, but which would then make
a leap and show, not ten million and one, but a hundred million;
Ephraim Peabody illustrates the miracle from the cathedral clock
which strikes only once in a hundred years; yet both these results
are due simply to the original construction of the respective
machines. Bonnet held this view; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:591,
592; Eng. translation, 2:155, 156; so Matthew Arnold, quoted in
Bruce, Miraculous Element in Gospels, 52; see also A. H. Strong,
Philosophy and Religion, 129-147. Babbage and Peabody would deny
that the miracle is due to the direct and immediate agency of God,
and would regard it as belonging to a higher order of nature. God
is the author of the miracle only in the sense that he instituted
the laws of nature at the beginning and provided that at the
appropriate time miracle should be their outcome. In favor of this
view it has been claimed that it does not dispense with the divine
working, but only puts it further back at the origination of the
system, while it still holds God’s work to be essential, not only
to the upholding of the system, but also to the inspiring of the
religious teacher or leader with the knowledge needed to predict
the unusual working of the system. The wonder is confined to the
prophecy, which may equally attest a divine revelation. See
Matheson, in Christianity and Evolution, 1-26.

But it is plain that a miracle of this sort lacks to a large
degree the element of “signality” which is needed, if it is to
accomplish its purpose. It surrenders the great advantage which
miracle, as first defined, possessed over special providence, as
an attestation of revelation—the advantage, namely, that while
special providence affords _some_ warrant that this revelation
comes from God, miracle gives _full_ warrant that it comes from
God. Since man may by natural means possess himself of the
knowledge of physical laws, the true miracle which God works, and
the pretended miracle which only man works, are upon this theory
far less easy to distinguish from each other: Cortez, for example,
could deceive Montezuma by predicting an eclipse of the sun.
Certain typical miracles, like the resurrection of Lazarus, refuse
to be classed as events within the realm of nature, in the sense
in which the term nature is ordinarily used. Our Lord, moreover,
seems clearly to exclude such a theory as this, when he says: “If
I by the finger of God cast out demons”_ (Luke 11:20)_; _Mark
1:41—_“I will; be thou made clean.” The view of Babbage is
inadequate, not only because it fails to recognize any immediate
exercise of _will_ in the miracle, but because it regards nature
as a mere _machine_ which can operate apart from God—a purely
deistic method of conception. On this view, many of the products
of mere natural law might be called miracles. The miracle would be
only the occasional manifestation of a higher order of nature,
like the comet occasionally invading the solar system. William
Elder, Ideas from Nature: “The century-plant which we have seen
growing from our childhood may not unfold its blossoms until our
old age comes upon us, but the sudden wonder is natural
notwithstanding.” If, however, we interpret nature dynamically,
rather than mechanically, and regard it as the regular working of
the divine will instead of the automatic operation of a machine,
there is much in this view which we may adopt. Miracle may be both
natural and supernatural. We may hold, with Babbage, that it has
natural antecedents, while at the same time we hold that it is
produced by the immediate agency of God. We proceed therefore to
an alternative and preferable definition, which in our judgment
combines the merits of both that have been mentioned. On miracles
as already defined, see Mozley, Miracles, preface, ix-xxvi, 7,
143-166; Bushnell, Nature and Supernatural, 333-336; Smith’s and
Hastings’ Dict. of Bible, art.: Miracles; Abp. Temple, Bampton
Lectures for 1884:193-221; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:541, 542.

B. Alternative and Preferable Definition.—A miracle is an event in nature, so extraordinary in itself and so coinciding with the prophecy or command of a religious teacher or leader, as fully to warrant the conviction, on the part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design of certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by him.

This definition has certain marked advantages as compared with the preliminary definition given above:—(_a_) It recognizes the immanence of God and his immediate agency in nature, instead of assuming an antithesis between the laws of nature and the will of God. (_b_) It regards the miracle as simply an extraordinary act of that same God who is already present in all natural operations and who in them is revealing his general plan. (_c_) It holds that natural law, as the method of God’s regular activity, in no way precludes unique exertions of his power when these will best secure his purpose in creation. (_d_) It leaves it possible that all miracles may have their natural explanations and may hereafter be traced to natural causes, while both miracles and their natural causes may be only names for the one and self-same will of God. (_e_) It reconciles the claims of both science and religion: of science, by permitting any possible or probable physical antecedents of the miracle; of religion, by maintaining that these very antecedents together with the miracle itself are to be interpreted as signs of God’s special commission to him under whose teaching or leadership the miracle is wrought.

Augustine, who declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,”
defines the miracle in De Civitate Dei, 21:8—“Portentum ergo fit
non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.” He says also
that a birth is more miraculous than a resurrection, because it is
more wonderful that something that never was should begin to be,
than that something that was and ceased to be should begin again.
E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 104—“The natural is God’s work.
He originated it. There is no separation between the natural and
the supernatural. The natural is supernatural. God works in
everything. Every end, even though attained by mechanical means,
is God’s end as truly as if he wrought by miracle.” Shaler,
Interpretation of Nature, 141, regards miracle as something
exceptional, yet under the control of natural law; the latent in
nature suddenly manifesting itself; the revolution resulting from
the slow accumulation of natural forces. In the Windsor Hotel
fire, the heated and charred woodwork suddenly burst into flame.
Flame is very different from mere heat, but it may be the result
of a regularly rising temperature. Nature may be God’s regular
action, miracle its unique result. God’s regular action may be
entirely free, and yet its extraordinary result may be entirely
natural. With these qualifications and explanations, we may adopt
the statement of Biedermann, Dogmatik, 581-591—“Everything is
miracle,—therefore faith sees God everywhere; Nothing is
miracle,—therefore science sees God nowhere.”

Miracles are never considered by the Scripture writers as
infractions of law. Bp. Southampton, Place of Miracles, 18—“The
Hebrew historian or prophet regarded miracles as only the
emergence into sensible experience of that divine force which was
all along, though invisibly, controlling the course of nature.”
Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 4:117—“The force of a miracle to us,
arising from our notion of law, would not be felt by a Hebrew,
because he had no notion of natural law.” _Ps. 77:19, 20—_“Thy way
was in the sea, And thy paths in the great waters, And thy
footsteps were not known”—They knew not, and we know not, by what
precise means the deliverance was wrought, or by what precise
track the passage through the Red Sea was effected; all we know is
that “Thou leddest thy people like a flock, By the hand of Moses
and Aaron.” J. M. Whiton, Miracles and Supernatural Religion: “The
supernatural is in nature itself, at its very heart, at its very
life; ... not an outside power interfering with the course of
nature, but an inside power vitalizing nature and operating
through it.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 35—“Miracle,
instead of spelling ‘monster’, as Emerson said, simply bears
witness to some otherwise unknown or unrecognized aspect of the
divine character.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:533—“To cause the sun to
rise and to cause Lazarus to rise, both demand omnipotence; but
the manner in which omnipotence works in one instance is unlike
the manner in the other.”

Miracle is an immediate operation of God; but, since all natural
processes are also immediate operations of God, we do not need to
deny the use of these natural processes, so far as they will go,
in miracle. Such wonders of the Old Testament as the overthrow of
Sodom and Gomorrah, the partings of the Red Sea and of the Jordan,
the calling down of fire from heaven by Elijah and the destruction
of the army of Sennacherib, are none the less works of God when
regarded as wrought by the use of natural means. In the New
Testament Christ took water to make wine, and took the five loaves
to make bread, just as in ten thousand vineyards to-day he is
turning the moisture of the earth into the juice of the grape, and
in ten thousand fields is turning carbon into corn. The
virgin-birth of Christ may be an extreme instance of
parthenogenesis, which Professor Loeb of Chicago has just
demonstrated to take place in other than the lowest forms of life
and which he believes to be possible in all. Christ’s resurrection
may be an illustration of the power of the normal and perfect
human spirit to take to itself a proper body, and so may be the
type and prophecy of that great change when we too shall lay down
our life and take it again. The scientist may yet find that his
disbelief is not only disbelief in Christ, but also disbelief in
science. All miracle may have its natural side, though we now are
not able to discern it; and, if this were true, the Christian
argument would not one whit be weakened, for still miracle would
evidence the extraordinary working of the immanent God, and the
impartation of his knowledge to the prophet or apostle who was his
instrument.

This view of the miracle renders entirely unnecessary and
irrational the treatment accorded to the Scripture narratives by
some modern theologians. There is a credulity of scepticism, which
minimizes the miraculous element in the Bible and treats it as
mythical or legendary, in spite of clear evidence that it belongs
to the realm of actual history. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig.,
1:295—“Miraculous legends arise in two ways, partly out of the
idealizing of the real, and partly out of the realizing of the
ideal.... Every occurrence may obtain for the religious judgment
the significance of a sign or proof of the world-governing power,
wisdom, justice or goodness of God.... Miraculous histories are a
poetic realizing of religious ideas.” Pfleiderer quotes Goethe’s
apothegm: “Miracle is faith’s dearest child.” Foster, Finality of
the Christian Religion, 128-138—“We most honor biblical miraculous
narratives when we seek to understand them as poesies.” Ritschl
defines miracles as “those striking _natural_ occurrences with
which the experience of God’s special help is connected.” He
leaves doubtful the bodily resurrection of Christ, and many of his
school deny it; see Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of
Doctrine, 11. We do not need to interpret Christ’s resurrection as
a mere appearance of his spirit to the disciples. Gladden, Seven
Puzzling Books, 202—“In the hands of perfect and spiritual man,
the forces of nature are pliant and tractable as they are not in
ours. The resurrection of Christ is only a sign of the superiority
of the life of the perfect spirit over external conditions. It may
be perfectly in accordance with nature.” Myers, Human Personality,
2:288—“I predict that, in consequence of the new evidence, all
reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the resurrection of
Christ.” We may add that Jesus himself intimates that the working
of miracles is hereafter to be a common and natural manifestation
of the new life which he imparts: _John 14:12—_“He that believeth
on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works
than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.”

We append a number of opinions, ancient and modern, with regard to
miracles, all tending to show the need of so defining them as not
to conflict with the just claims of science. Aristotle: “Nature is
not full of episodes, like a bad tragedy.” Shakespeare, All’s Well
that Ends Well, 2:3:1—“They say miracles are past; and we have our
philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things
supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of
terrors, ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we
should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.” Keats, Lamia: “There
was an awful rainbow once in heaven; We know her woof, her
texture: she is given In the dull catalogue of common things.”
Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 334—“Biological and psychological
science unite in affirming that every event, organic or psychic,
is to be explained in the terms of its immediate antecedents, and
that it can be so explained. There is therefore no necessity,
there is even no room, for interference. If the existence of a
Deity depends upon the evidence of intervention and supernatural
agency, faith in the divine seems to be destroyed in the
scientific mind.” Theodore Parker: “No whim in God,—therefore no
miracle in nature.” Armour, Atonement and Law, 15-33—“The miracle
of redemption, like all miracles, is by intervention of adequate
power, not by suspension of law. Redemption is not ‘the great
exception.’ It is the fullest revelation and vindication of law.”
Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“Redemption is not natural but
supernatural—supernatural, that is, in view of the false nature
which man made for himself by excluding God. Otherwise, the work
of redemption is only the reconstitution of the nature which God
had designed.” Abp. Trench: “The world of nature is throughout a
witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand,
growing out of the same root, and being constituted for this very
end. The characters of nature which everywhere meet the eye are
not a common but a sacred writing,—they are the hieroglyphics of
God.” Pascal: “Nature is the image of grace.” President Mark
Hopkins: “Christianity and perfect Reason are identical.” See
Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 97-123; art.: Miracle, by Bernard,
in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. The modern and improved view
of the miracle is perhaps best presented by T. H. Wright, The
Finger of God; and by W. N. Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of
Science, 336.

2. Possibility of Miracle.

An event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature. This is evident from the following considerations:

(_a_) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and transcended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and chemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended or annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in accomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to themselves.

By nature we mean nature in the proper sense—not “everything that
is not God,” but “everything that is not God or made in the image
of God”; see Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 258, 259. Man’s will
does not belong to nature, but is above nature. On the
transcending of lower forces by higher, see Murphy, Habit and
Intelligence, 1:88. James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel,
23—“Is it impossible that there should be unique things in the
world? Is it scientific to assert that there are not?” Ladd,
Philosophy of Knowledge, 406—“Why does not the projecting part of
the coping-stone fall, in obedience to the law of gravitation,
from the top of yonder building? Because, as physics declares, the
forces of cohesion, acting under quite different laws, thwart and
oppose for the time being the law of gravitation.... But now,
after a frosty night, the coping-stone actually breaks off and
tumbles to the ground; for that unique law which makes water
forcibly expand at 32° Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of
cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its
temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.” Gore,
Incarnation, 48—“Evolution views nature as a progressive order in
which there are new departures, fresh levels won, phenomena
unknown before. When organic life appeared, the future did not
resemble the past. So when man came. Christ is a new nature—the
creative Word made flesh. It is to be expected that, as new
nature, he will exhibit new phenomena. New vital energy will
radiate from him, controlling the material forces. Miracles are
the proper accompaniments of his person.” We may add that, as
Christ is the immanent God, he is present in nature while at the
same time he is above nature, and he whose steady will is the
essence of all natural law can transcend all past exertions of
that will. The infinite One is not a being of endless monotony.
William Elder, Ideas from Nature, 156—“God is not bound hopelessly
to his process, like Ixion to his wheel.”

(_b_) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature, and produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish, while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still operates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the water—for the axe still has weight (_cf._ 2 K. 6:5-7).

_Versus_ Hume, Philos. Works, 4:130—“A miracle is a violation of
the laws of nature.” Christian apologists have too often
needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume’s
definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support
the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts
upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet’s word, make the iron
to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it. But this last is
miracle. See Mansel, Essay on Miracles, in Aids to Faith, 26, 27:
After the greatest wave of the season has landed its pebble high
up on the beach, I can move the pebble a foot further without
altering the force of wind or wave or climate in a distant
continent. Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 471;
Hamilton, Autology, 685-690; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 445; Row,
Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 54-74; A. A. Hodge:
Pulling out a new stop of the organ does not suspend the working
or destroy the harmony of the other stops. The pump does not
suspend the law of gravitation, nor does our throwing a ball into
the air. If gravitation did not act, the upward velocity of the
ball would not diminish and the ball would never return.
“Gravitation draws iron down. But the magnet overcomes that
attraction and draws the iron up. Yet here is no suspension or
violation of law, but rather a harmonious working of two laws,
each in its sphere. Death and not life is the order of nature. But
men live notwithstanding. Life is supernatural. Only as a force
additional to mere nature works against nature does life exist. So
spiritual life uses and transcends the laws of nature” (Sunday
School Times). Gladden, What Is Left? 60—“Wherever you find
thought, choice, love, you find something that is not under the
dominion of fixed law. These are the attributes of a free
personality.” William James: “We need to substitute the _personal_
view of life for the _impersonal_ and _mechanical_ view.
Mechanical rationalism is narrowness and partial induction of
facts,—it is not _science_.”

(_c_) In all free causation, there is an acting without means. Man acts upon external nature through his physical organism, but, in moving his physical organism, he acts directly upon matter. In other words, the human will can _use_ means, only because it has the power of acting initially _without_ means.

See Hopkins, on Prayer-gauge, 10, and in Princeton Review, Sept.
1882:188. A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 311—“Not Divinity
alone intervenes in the world of things. Each living soul, in its
measure and degree, does the same.” Each soul that acts in any way
on its surroundings does so on the principle of the miracle.
Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350—“The making of all events miraculous
is no more an abolition of miracle than the flooding of the world
with sunshine is an extinction of the sun.” George Adam Smith, on
_Is. 33:14—_“devouring fire ... everlasting burnings”: “If we look
at a conflagration through smoked glass, we see buildings
collapsing, but we see no fire. So science sees results, but not
the power which produces them; sees cause and effect, but does not
see God.” P. S. Henson: “The current in an electric wire is
invisible so long as it circulates uniformly. But cut the wire and
insert a piece of carbon between the two broken ends, and at once
you have an arc-light that drives away the darkness. So miracle is
only the momentary interruption in the operation of uniform laws,
which thus gives light to the ages,”—or, let us say rather, the
momentary change in the method of their operation whereby the will
of God takes a new form of manifestation. Pfleiderer, Grundriss,
100—“Spinoza leugnete ihre metaphysische Möglichkeit, Hume ihre
geschichtliche Erkennbarkeit, Kant ihre practische Brauchbarkeit,
Schleiermacher ihre religiöse Bedeutsamkeit, Hegel ihre geistige
Beweiskraft, Fichte ihre wahre Christlichkeit, und die kritische
Theologie ihre wahre Geschichtlichkeit.”

(_d_) What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what the chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to accomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God dwells in and controls the universe. If man’s will can act directly upon matter in his own physical organism, God’s will can work immediately upon the system which he has created and which he sustains. In other words, if there be a God, and if he be a personal being, miracles are possible. The impossibility of miracles can be maintained only upon principles of atheism or pantheism.

See Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, 19; Cox, Miracles, an
Argument and a Challenge: “Anthropomorphism is preferable to
hylomorphism.” Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in a New Light, ch. 1—“A
miracle is not a sudden blow struck in the face of nature, but a
use of nature, according to its inherent capacities, by higher
powers.” See also Gloatz, Wunder und Naturgesetz, in Studien und
Kritiken, 1886:403-546; Gunsaulus, Transfiguration of Christ, 18,
19, 26; Andover Review, on “Robert Elsmere,” 1888:303; W. E.
Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, 1888:766-788; Dubois, on Science
and Miracle, in New Englander, July, 1889:1-32—Three postulates:
(1) Every particle attracts every other in the universe; (2) Man’s
will is free; (3) Every volition is accompanied by corresponding
brain-action. Hence every volition of ours causes changes
throughout the whole universe; also, in Century Magazine, Dec.
1894:229—Conditions are never twice the same in nature; all things
are the results of will, since we know that the least thought of
ours shakes the universe; miracle is simply the action of will in
unique conditions; the beginning of life, the origin of
consciousness, these are miracles, yet they are strictly natural;
prayer and the mind that frames it are conditions which _the Mind_
in nature cannot ignore. _Cf.__ Ps. 115:3—_“our God is in the
heavens: He hath done whatsoever he pleased” = his almighty power
and freedom do away with all _a priori_ objections to miracles. If
God is not a mere _force_, but a _person_, then miracles are
possible.