Chapter II (3)

It belongs to the _idea of God_, that we have to think of the sublimity of God over time and space, of his eternity and omnipresence, in such a way that God, in his being, life, and activity, does not stand _in_ time nor within any limits or differences of space, but absolutely above time and above all limits and differences of space; that he is _present_ in his world everywhere and at any time. He who objects to this, can only do it with weapons to which we have to oppose the objection which the adversaries of the Christian idea of God so often raise against it--namely, the objection of a rejectable _anthropomorphism_. In contesting the possibility of the idea of an uninterrupted presence of a personal and living God in the entire realm of the universe, the adversaries seem to permit themselves to be daunted by the difficulty which is offered to man in controlling the realms of his own activity. The greater such a realm, the more difficult becomes a comprehensive survey, the more the human influence has to restrict itself to the greater and more common and to neglect the little and single. The more removed is the past which helps to constitute the circumstances of the present, the greater is the human ignorance and oblivion; the more removed is the future, the greater is the human incapability of {350} influencing it decisively. Such measures ought to disappear, even in their last traces, when we reflect on God and divine activity. If once the idea is established for us of a living God, who is always present in the world created by him, and in whose "sight a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night," the final causal chain of causes and effects may be ever so long, and stretching over this course of the world from its beginning to its end; the single phenomena may be woven together of ever so many thousands and thousands of millions of different causal chains: we nevertheless see above them all the regulating hand of God from whom they all come, and who not only surveys and controls their texture in all its threads, but who himself arranged, wove, and made it. Such a view is not only more satisfactory to the religious need of man, but it also seems to us more scientific, than a view which traces everything back to a blind and dead cause, or even to no ultimate cause at all, and thinks it has entirely removed the last veil, if it pronounces the great word "causal law."

Now, while our _idea of God_ thus tells us that God has in his hand all causal chains in the world, and its million-threaded web in constant omni-surveying presence and in all-controlling omnipotence, our reflection on the _world_ and its substance and course also leads us from the _a posteriori_ starting-point of analytical investigation precisely to the same result; it even leads us to a still more concrete conception of this idea--namely, to the result, that not only the _causal chains, in their totality and in their web_, but also _all single links_ of these chains, {351} have their force and existence only by virtue of a transcendental, or what is the same, of a _metaphysical_, cause.

For if we analyze the single phenomena in the world, we certainly observe in the activity of their qualities and forces such a conformity to law, that, in our reflection on these phenomena, we can go from one phenomenon to the necessity of another as its cause or its effect, and thus form those particular causal chains and causal nets in whose arranged representation natural science consists. But that those qualities and forces exist and act precisely thus, and not otherwise, and why, we are no longer able to explain. We can only say: the material and the apparent is no longer their cause, but their effect; therefore, the cause of that which comes into existence lies beyond the phenomenon--_i.e._, in the transcendental, in the metaphysical.

This becomes evident in the _inorganic world_ and in those qualities which are common to all matter. Such common qualities of the latter are, for instance, cohesion and gravitation. That all matter has the quality of cohesion, we can only say because we observe it; but that it must be so, and why, we are not able to say. This becomes still more evident in gravitation. Gravitation is so decidedly an action in space, that it appears to us, together with cohesion, as precisely the bond which binds the entire material world together. Each single material atom is subject to its force; but how and why, and especially how and why matter acts upon the matter _in space_, physics can no longer tell us, but refers us to a metaphysical cause.

This dependence of each single being, and of all its qualities and forces, on a transcendental and {352} metaphysical cause of its existence, becomes most clear to us in the world of the _organic_, and especially in the transmission and development of organisms. _That_ individuals originate new individuals of their species; _that_ the fecundated germs, if the necessary conditions are present, develop themselves out of the first germ and egg-cell in continually progressive and distinct differentiations, each after its kind, into the full-grown condition, so that individuals endowed with a soul and intellectual life are also developed out of such beginnings;--these are facts which are continually repeated before our eyes, and men of science have not yet reached the end in pursuing the actual in these processes into its finest ramifications. But how it is that individuals _must_ transmit themselves--that the seeds and eggs _must_ have this force of germination and development--they have not yet been able to explain, and will never be able to do so. The word "inheritance," which is to solve the problem, is only a _name_ for the _fact_ which we observe, and for the regularity of its repetition; but for this fact of inheritance itself, we seek in vain a _physical_ explanation: we are referred to a _metaphysical_ cause. Thus, not only the _first_ origin of life on earth is an enigma to us (as we have seen in Part I, Book II, Chapter I, § 3), but organic life itself, in its whole existence and course, is a process which, at every step, and in every place of its course, remains to us in its last causes physically unexplained, and refers us to metaphysical causes.

If we finally see in all these inorganic and organic processes a striving towards ends--and we must see it, as soon as we in general observe order, the category of higher and lower, and the appearance of the higher on {353} the basis of the lower--we are, with all our teleological observations, again referred to the metaphysical, and still more decidedly to the goal-setting metaphysical; and a metaphysical which sets and reaches goals is nothing else than that in philosophic language which in the language of religion we call a living _Creator_ and _Ruler of the world_ and the activity of his _providence_.

From still another side, the knowledge of the world, even in a scientific way, leads us to the acknowledgment of a divine providence which controls with absolute freedom every process in every place and in every moment of the world's course. We see continually, in the midst of nature, and in its causal course conformable to law, something supernatural, transcendental, and metaphysical, acting decisively upon the course of nature; and that is the _free activity of man_. Every man carries in the freedom of the determinations of his will something transcendental and metaphysical in himself, which we can call natural only when we mean by nature the summary of all that which exists, but which we have to call supernatural when we mean by nature the summary of that which belongs to the world of phenomena in its traceable causes as well as in its traceable effects. The scale of life-activities, from the lowest arbitrary motions, from the impulses and instincts of the animal up to the highest moral action of the will of man, shows us in indistinct transitions all stages which lead from the natural to the supernatural, until, in the ethical and religious motives of man, we arrive at superphysical (_i.e._, supernatural) motives which daily and hourly invade the natural, and in this invasion consciously and unconsciously use the forces of nature {354} and their activity, conformable to law, and in spite of their metaphysical and transcendental origin, from the moment of their activity, join the natural causal connection of the world's course. This observation of an invasion of the physical by the supernatural, as it continually takes place in the free action of man, leads us in a triple way to the acknowledgment of an action of divine providence upon the course of the world.

In the first place, this observation shows us, in a very direct way, points where the free disposition of God acts determinatingly upon the course of things, and where this action becomes accessible to our observation. These points are the human personalities, in so far and inasmuch as they permit themselves to be influenced and determined by the will of God in the ethical and religious motives of their action, and, when these motives become actions, determinately act upon the course of things.

In the second place, this observation further leads, by way of two conclusions, to the acknowledgment of a divine providence.

One conclusion is the following: If there exist in the world free and intelligent beings which, through their free determinations, guided by reflection, decisively act upon the course of nature, and if these beings, on account of these very qualities of freedom and intelligence, occupy the highest stage among the creatures which we know, the last metaphysical cause of their existence must also have qualities which are able to produce such free and intelligent beings--at least the qualities of freedom and intelligence in the highest degree. And this highest metaphysical cause which produces free and intelligent personalities in the world, can at least be no {355} more dependent upon the entire world, whose author it is, than those personalities are dependent upon that realm in the world in which they have their existence. We call such a metaphysical cause, to which we have to ascribe freedom and intelligence in the highest degree, God; and we call its free position in reference to the world, the government of the world, or providence.

The other conclusion leads us to the acknowledgment of a connection of providence with conformability to law in the actions of all forces and qualities in the world. It is the same conclusion to which we had to refer in Chap. I, § 6, but which now, as we draw from theism the conclusion of the acknowledgment of a special divine providence, falls with increased weight into the scale. It is the following: On the one hand, we observe in the processes of the world a striving towards ends; on the other, we know in the world itself only one single creature which acts according to aims, which sets itself its ends and reaches them with freely chosen means. This one creature is man. Now man can, as we pointed out in Chap. I, § 6, choose and use the means with which he wishes to reach his ends, only because he can rely on the conformity to the end in view and the regularity in the effect of all the qualities and forces of things. If he could not rely on them, he certainly could set himself ends; but the reaching of them he would have to leave to the play of chance. Now if we see, on the one side, that the only creature known to us which sets itself ends is able to reach these ends by virtue of inviolable conformity to law in the forces and effects of its means, and if we see, on the other, that in the course of the world ends are also reached, and that at the same time {356} all secondary causes which lead to these ends act with a necessity conformable to law, we certainly are right in drawing the conclusion that the highest metaphysical cause of all things--we now say, the living God--has so prepared the whole universe that his free but regular and systematic goal-setting and end-reaching action upon the course of all things rests, as a whole as well as in detail, directly upon the conformity to law of all forces and their effects.

The observation of a free action of the human personality upon the course of things, once more leads us back to a reflection on the _idea of God_. For if we have reason to acknowledge a _freedom_ of the determinations of human will--and the consciousness of ethical responsibility will be a proof of this freedom which cannot be invalidated by any contrary reflection--the question comes up: _how is this freedom of a creature reconcilable with the idea of God?_ Far be it from us to claim to have found a solution of these last and most important problems of the human mind. For all meditations on them but lead to antinomies in the presence of which we dare not churn to remove all difficulties of reflection still less to solve the difficulties by pursuing only one chain of reasoning and ignoring the other. The way of science leads rather to mere _compromises_, and these compromises consist in the fact, that on every side of our observations or arguments we look for and adhere to that which results for us in incontestable fact or indispensable postulate, and that we adhere to all results or postulates thus found even when we are no longer able to trace their unity and harmony back to their last sources. Now if, on the one hand, our idea of {357} God is established as a self-testimony of God to our ethical consciousness and as a result of our teleological reasoning, and if, on the other, is established the fact of the world and of its processes going on conformably to law, and likewise the fact of human freedom and its actions upon the course of things, and finally the fact of the admission of the human will and action into a higher teleology which is superior to human will, and which, in the history of mankind, of individuals, and nations, reaches its higher ends, now by affirming, now by denying, human will; then we have simply to account for all these facts as mere _facts_, and the scientific attempt at pursuing them into their inner connection is nothing else but a more or less successful compromise. We have to be satisfied with these indications, for the further discussion of them would lead us far beyond the task of the present publication. We shall only point out the fact, that precisely the knowledge of the image of God in man shows us the way to the knowledge of how it is conceivable that God can create personalities through whose freedom of will he relatively limits the absoluteness of his own will.

In all our discussions hitherto, the scientific basis of a faith in the possibility of an _answer to prayer_ has been evident. All reasons for a divine providence, also speak with the same force of persuasion for the hearing of our prayers, as soon as the _idea of being a child of God_ has become an integral part of our idea of God. And this idea--the idea of God as the father, and of a relationship of love between the divine and the human personalities--is so much a part of the Christian idea of God, that it belongs to its very essence. Only one {358} consideration might offer scientific difficulties to our faith in the hearing of prayer: namely, if God hears the prayers of his children, in the course of time new motives for his action present themselves to him; now, is it reconcilable with the idea of God, that God makes himself in any such way dependent on that which first appeared in time, and on the changing moods of the creature? But this difficulty is precisely the same which we met, when acknowledging human freedom and its reconcilableness with a divine providence; and we have tried to indicate above the path which leads to its solution.

It is the principal idea which penetrates all our reasoning about the relation of God and the world--namely, the idea of a _teleology in the world_--which is to lead us to a correct conception of the _miracles_ and their reconcilableness with a mechanism of nature and with the Darwinistic ideas of development. In the much discussed contest about the problem of miracles, clearer results would certainly have been attained, if one had questioned more closely what the record of the Christian religion means by miracles, and what position, according to it, these miracles have to take in the order of the world and in the divine plan of salvation; and after having satisfied himself as to this position, had further asked what position they take in reference to our exact science and our theistic view of the world. Instead of doing this, we have often enough seen friend and foe of the idea of miracles, as soon as the question was even touched upon, at once set to work with the insufficient conceptions of old rationalism and supernaturalism, and thus raising objections and attempting solutions which could satisfy nobody. Especially every inadequate idea {359} which was put forth by the advocates of faith in miracles, was gladly accepted by its adversaries; for thereby they were furnished with a caricature of the idea of miracles, the tearing to pieces of which was an easy and agreeable sport to them.

The very ideas of the _natural_ and the _supernatural_ are a category which is to be treated with caution. When discussing the question of divine providence, we have seen that, with every free act of the will of man springing from an ethical motive, something supernatural invades the natural, so that in every normal human life we always see supernatural and natural by the side of and in one another.

The distinction between the _direct_ and the _indirect action or invasion of God_ is also to be used with great caution and restriction. For where we are no longer able to find secondary causes, who can assert that God no longer uses any? Where the realm of visible causes ceases and that of the invisible begins, who can exclude secondary causes? And on the other hand, where God acts directly, who can deny the concurrence of his direct presence and his direct action, or reduce the value of that which was indirectly produced?

Moreover, the often-returning conceptions of a _breaking of the laws of nature_, or the compromises which were made between a breaking and a non-breaking of the laws of nature by assuming a "supernatural acceleration of the process of nature," were still more misleading. In the whole world, infinitely many higher and lower forces act according to laws and order. In every process, a part of the forces which in the single case surround it, become active, and thereby hinder {360} another part from its activity. But the laws of this other part of forces are not thereby invalidated or broken. When a man acts with moral freedom, from mere moral motives, the highest of the conceivable forces over which we have control comes into direct action upon the natural. But therewith those forces, with their laws, which would have been active if another motive had determined him, are not yet overcome, but only hindered from their activity in exactly the same way as one part of forces can be active and another not, where mere mechanical actions take place. Thus, in miracles, no law of nature is overcome, but only a force which otherwise would have been active according to the law of its activity, is for the time hindered from action by another force becoming active. Moreover, through the conscious and unconscious connection of the idea of irregularity and lack of plan with the idea of miracles, not only the idea of a God who works miracles, but also that of a personal Creator and Ruler of the world, in general, has come into discredit. For that reason, Häckel, for instance, when he attacks the Christian idea of creation, never fails to speak of the "capricious arbitrariness" of the Creator; and Oskar Schmidt also speaks of the "caprice" of the God of Christians.

With these criticisms, which we have made in reference to the treatment of the question of miracles, we certainly have undertaken only to characterize the superficial skirmishing which took place between the two opposing views of the world, but not the labors of more recent theological science. But that skirmish has made, like all superficiality, the most noise in the world; and since the adversaries of the faith in {361} miracles endeavored almost exclusively to reflect in this manner, and almost ignored the deeper deductions of theological science, they succeeded in making the idea of miracles almost the most dreaded object of antipathy to modern education, and many of those who feel that the conceptions of traditional dogmatics are in need of revision, and religion and science of a reconciliation, endeavor to find that revision and reconciliation especially in the fact, that religion gives up miracles. On the other hand, _theology as science_, in its main advocates, long ago gave up these insufficient and misleading categories and conceptions, and established a conception of miracles which can easily be received into the science of the processes of nature, as well as into our reasoning about God and the divine. The first who adopted this mode of treatment, is one of the pioneers of more recent positive theology, and of a theology still uninfluenced by science--Karl Immanuel Nitzsch. It is certainly interesting to read what this man, as early as 1829, said, in the first edition of his "System der Christlichen Lehre" ("System of Christian Doctrine"), and also in the succeeding edition printed without alteration. He says, on page 64: "The miracles of revelation are, in spite of all objective supernaturalness, derived from their central origin, _something really conformable to law_: partly in relation to the higher order of things to which they belong and which is also a world, a nature in its kind, and acts upon the lower in its way; partly in reference to the similarity to common nature which they retain in any way; partly on account of their teleological perfection; and they must not only be expected as the homogeneous phenomenon from the inner miracle of {362} redemption, from the standpoint of perfect Christian faith, but also by virtue of the union between spirit and nature, be looked upon _as the natural in its kind_." In these words we find the fruitful germs of a sound dogmatic development which the idea of miracles has found on the part of more recent theology.

Let us, in the first place, try to keep free from all preconceived, correct or incorrect, opinions, and ask how the miracles appear to us, when they present themselves with a claim to acknowledgment as integral parts of a divine revelation of salvation, namely, in the religion of redemption and its record. In regard to their name, they appear to us in the Holy Scriptures as amazing bright processes, as great deeds and signs; and in regard to their nature, as signs which are destined to call the attention of man to the government in grace and in judgment of a living God, to the salvation of redemption which God gives to man, and to the human instruments which he uses for that purpose. Now, in a view of the world which, like the Biblical, so decidedly sees a revelation of God in all that which takes place, in a view of the world to which everything natural has also, as a work of God, its supernatural cause, and everything supernatural, at present, or in the future, is transposed again into nature and history, not only all those above rejected conceptions of miracles lose their significance, but all remaining conceptions with which one otherwise tries to distinguish the miracles from all that is not miraculous, or to classify the different species of miracles, also diminish in importance, as do also all those distinctions of direct and indirect actions of God--the distinctions of relative and absolute, of subjective and objective miracles: and there {363} remains hut a single inviolable kernel and central point of the Biblical conception of miracles, and that is the above mentioned _teleological character_ of miracles. Indeed, we are not willing to reject all these logical distinctions and investigations as worthless: they have helped to render clear our conceptions and ideas, and they still help. But a deeper investigation of the idea of miracles and its relation to a scientific knowledge of the world may perhaps finally lead our more developed reflection back to the fact that we find the quintessence and the nature of miracles only where the pious people of the Bible found it. And this quintessence of miracles consists precisely in their _teleological nature_, and not at all in the fact that they cannot be explained physically: it consists in the fact that miracles are _signs_ through which God manifests himself and his government over man, and actually shows the latter that _he_ wishes to bring him to the pursuit of perfection by the way of redemption. Ritschl, in an essay which appeared in the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie," as early as 1861, pointed out this decidedly teleological character of Biblical miracles and the indifference shown by pious men in the Bible as to the question whether these deeds and signs can be explained naturally or not.

The profit which we derive from this reverting to the Biblical conception of the idea of miracles is by no means small.

In the first place, we help to establish the full recognition of that direct religious consciousness and sensation which is not only characteristic of the pious men of Scripture, but which yet characterizes all genuine religiousness; and this consists in the fact that the religious man sees {364} _miracles of God in all that turns his attention to God's government_,--in the sea of stars, in rock and bush, in sunshine and storm, in flower and worm, just as certainly as in the guidance of his own life and in the facts and processes of the history of salvation and of the kingdom of the Lord. In this idea of miracles, the essential thing is not that the phenomena and processes are inconceivable to him--although certainly in all that comes into appearance there is still an incomprehensible and uncomprehended remainder. For a form of nature, _e.g._, which turns his attention to a creator, is of course a miracle, even if he is able to look upon it with none other eye than that of the unlearned: but it even then remains a miracle,--nay, it is increased to a still greater miracle, if he has learned to contemplate and investigate it with all the auxiliary means of science. A hearing of his prayers remains a miracle, whether or not he is able to perceive the natural connection of the process in which he sees his prayers answered, or even to trace it back to the remotest times which preceded his prayers. The events and facts of the history of salvation remain miracles to him, whether the history of nature and the world offers to him auxiliary means of explaining them or not. The pious man, therefore, does not find the essential characteristic of miracles in their relative inconceivableness, but in the fact that they refer him to a living God who stands above this process, whether perceived or unperceived in its relative causal connection, and unites it with the course of things in order to reach his ends and to manifest himself to man. Now, in our attempt at a scientific reproduction of the idea of miracles, if we return to that Biblical conception, we see no longer in this just {365} mentioned religious conception of miracles a pious sophistry which avoids the difficulty of the idea, or a child-like _naïveté_ worthy of being partly envied and partly pitied, which does not at all see the difficulties and remains on the child-stage of Biblical conceptions; but we only perceive in it a confirmation and fulfilment of that profound and beneficent word of our Lord: "Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." Of course, piety as well as science makes _distinctions_ among miracles. The former separates the _mere products and processes of nature_ which, through what is explicable as well as what is inexplicable in their qualities and processes, point to an almighty and all-wise Creator, and thereby become miracles to the religious view of the world, from the _historical events_ which, by their newness and uniqueness, and by their pointing toward divine ends, manifest God and his teleological government to man, and calls them miracles in a still more specific sense than science does. And among historical events, piety as well as science assigns the name miracle, in the most pregnant sense, to those events which belong to the _history of salvation_, and, by their newness and uniqueness, introduce new stages into it, render legitimate its new instruments, or bring new features of redemption to our knowledge. Our religiousness has the greatest and deepest interest in this history: for it is the history of the leading back of man into communion with God by the way of redemption; and therefore the events of this history are precisely those miracles upon which our deepest religious interest is concentrated. But in spite of all these distinctions in degree, that natural relationship and that {366} common character of the miraculous between the miracles of nature, the miracles of the history of man, and the miracles of the history of salvation, remain established; and we render a service to religious consciousness, as well as to the scientific conception of the idea of miracles, if by returning to the Biblical idea of miracles, as we propose, we make a more comprehensive definition of miracles possible.

Another advantage which we derive from returning to the Biblical idea of miracles consists in the fact that it preserves us from the _magical_ and necromantic in our conceptions of miracles; that it allows us a _grouping of miracles according to value_, which corresponds with the idea of God and of the divine government as well as with the idea of miracles itself; and that in the presence of all single relations of miracles it summons us to _criticise_ and _investigate the real state of the case_. For the nature of miracles does not consist in the inconceivable--at least not in the planless and arbitrary,--but in the fact that they call the attention of man to God and his government; and this leads to the reverse of all that is magical and necromantic, because the magical is unworthy of the idea of God and contradicts all the other self-testimony of God. Now if the nature of miracles consists in the fact that they call my attention to God and his government, an event will become a miracle to me, and increase its value, in the degree in which it refers me to God and his government, and especially in the degree in which it refers me to that government of God which is the most important to me--namely, to the action of God in me and mankind, with which he is bringing about his ends in salvation; {367} but in the degree in which an event loses this character, it becomes to me an event without miraculous or religious significance. This gives a quite definite grouping of miracles according to value, from those which belong to the central manifestations of the divine plan of salvation and way of redemption, to those which lie in the extreme periphery of religious interest. It is a grouping which corresponds with the idea of God just as much as with the idea of miracles; while all other divisions or groupings of miracles according to value, which might take their principle of division and their weight from the greater or smaller conceivableness of the causal connection, from the greater or smaller difference of a miraculous event from all other events, are indifferent in reference to the idea of God, and change the centre of gravity in the idea of miracles. Besides, if these miracles are to be real signs to me which refer me to God, his government, and his ways of salvation, they must, in the first place, in order to secure my conviction, be real events and facts and not mere falsifications and fictions; and this point leads us to the duty and right of criticising and investigating actual circumstances. In presence of all Biblical and non-Biblical miracles, we have the full right and the full duty of using criticism in reference to the confirmation of actual circumstances, and where the latter cannot be established with certainty, the question is in order whether the related event is really of such a character as to legitimate itself as a sign of God and his government. In the preceding section, we have had occasion to use this principle in reference to the investigation of that event which, next to the coming of the Redeemer, offers itself to us as the {368} central miracle of the history of salvation and redemption: namely, in reference to the history of the resurrection of the Lord.

We have by no means the wish to avoid _difficulties_ which meet us, when trying to bring miracles, and especially the specific and pregnant miracles of the history of salvation, into harmony with our scientific knowledge of the world: only we can no longer admit that these difficulties consist in the inconceivableness or in the supernaturalism of miracles. For to the religious view of the world--which traces equally the explicable as well as the inexplicable back to God, which even derives the natural from the supernatural causality of God--neither the occasional inexplicability nor the supposed supernaturalness of an event can be that which makes the event a miracle. But an event in the history of salvation becomes a miracle from the fact that something _extraordinary_, something _new_, happens in it, which by its newness and its extraordinary character presents itself to man as the manifestation of certain divine _ends in salvation_, and can be explained _at first sight_, but only at first sight, from nothing else than from the service which it renders to the plan of redemption. Whether afterwards these extraordinary and new features can or cannot be perceived in their natural connection, or explained out of it, does not at all change anything in the miraculous character of the event, as soon as it has _once_ had the before-mentioned effect. The only task and the only difficulty which meets us in the question of miracles, is to show that such extraordinary and new things really happen, and to bring the reality and possibility of such new things into our perception of the {369} causal connection of the course of the world, conformable to law. But it ceases to be a difficulty, so soon as we acknowledge a teleology in the course of the world and a teleology in the history of mankind, and especially as soon as we acknowledge that teleology in the history of mankind which, by the way of the divine means of redemption, leads man back to God. Where there are no ends, nothing can happen which calls the attention of men to these ends; nor, indeed, can anything new happen; for nothing prevails in more absolute sovereignty to all eternity than the maxims _causa æquat effectum_ and _effectus æquat causam_. But where ends are appointed and reached, something new also happens; and every new thing refers to its end. For each step leading nearer such an end is something new, and refers, as soon as we compare it with preceding steps, to the end towards which it strives. All ends to which the course of things refers us, are to the religious view of the world ends which are appointed by God; all means which serve to reach the ends, are means which God created and chose; and every phenomenon and every event which manifests this teleological government of God to our mind, is a miracle to us. Now this whole course of the world is interwoven with such new things, in events which manifest to us, now more clearly, now more dimly, the striving of the course of the world towards an end, because the latter is really striving towards an end. Even prehistoric times show us new things which, from a scientific and historical point of view, we have to place in the line of the course of the world; and from a religious point of view, in the line of miracles. The first appearance of organic life on earth was new, and indicated new ends; the first {370} appearance of each single species of animals and plants was new; new, also, and indicating the highest end of creative life, was the first appearance of man. All these things we call _miracles_ of creation; and we especially place the creative miracle of the appearance of man on a level with the greatest miracles of which we have knowledge, and use the name miracle for all before mentioned newly appearing formations, whether or not we are able to explain those originations from the preceding connection of the course of nature and its forces. Now, in the history of mankind, where the intellectual and ethical motives of that which happens become active, where also the greatest ends which come up for consideration are spiritual and ethical ends, where man himself acts freely according to ends, and where, therefore, human and divine teleology come alternately into play, the manifestation of a striving toward an end, in which religious consciousness immediately sees also ends and means of God, is repeated in an eminent degree. Every event which brings about a progress in the history of mankind as well as of individuals, is as to this side something new, extraordinary, teleological: _i.e._, a miracle to the religious mode of contemplation; and this miracle is the greater as is more important the end under consideration, and the greater and the more decisive the step towards this end which the event accomplishes. Now, if we recognize the return of mankind into a communion with God as the highest goal of the general and individual history of mankind, and if we find in the latter facts which lead to this goal, then these facts are the great central miracles of history. As such, the facts of redemption present {371} themselves with all that for which it once prepared the way; and, now that it has come, leads to full and complete perfection--and among them all, the coming, the person, and the history of Jesus Christ, stands as central fact and central miracle in the midst of all events in the history of salvation, and forms the central point of all religious interest. We see how unjust it is when one urges, as an objection to a belief in miracles, that it assigns to God arbitrary and capricious actions. We call the manifestations of divine teleology miracles. But striving towards an end and conformity to a regular plan is not arbitrariness or caprice, but the contrary; and the greater our estimate of the highest cause of all things, the greater will appear to us the conformity to a plan and to law of all which presents itself as miracles in the course of events. There is perhaps one objection which is about as equally unjust as the objection of caprice; and that is the objection that faith in miracles, in teaching a belief in supernatural things, lends to introduce into the course of events something which is against nature. But since miracles, as a sign of divine teleology, manifest ends for which nature also is prepared, and through which the fallen nature of man, fallen by sin, is again restored; and since to the religious view of the world all natural phenomena and processes expressly rank among miracles, the faith in miracles teaches the contrary of an opposition to nature. It is incontestible--and will become still clearer and more certain to us through all farther investigation of the subject--that the acknowledgment of the idea of miracles as a necessary and a justified part of religiousness {372} stands and falls with the acknowledgment of a teleological view of the world.

We certainly do not indulge in the foolish hope that with the deductions of this section we should be able suddenly to win over any of the decided adversaries of faith in providence and miracles. For, as we have had occasion to remind the reader, the acknowledgment or the non-acknowledgment of God and his living government in the world is not the result of this or that reflection and chain of conclusions, but rather an ethical action of the centre of human personality in which God discovers himself in his self-manifestation. Now, if this centre, in the freedom of its decision, has once denied the acknowledgment of God and his government, then the intellectual actions of the soul offer themselves to this atheistic and anti-theistic standpoint, and build up atheistic systems in which the ideas of providence and miracles naturally find no place. Thus system is opposed to system, although the one is not able to overcome the other. For the last and deepest power of conviction lies, neither for one nor the other system, in its chains of conclusions, in its superstructure, but in its foundation, its standpoint, and its principles; and the choosing of one or the other standpoint, the theistic or atheistic, is an ethical action which precedes methodical reasoning--or if it takes place at the same time or precedes it, has still deeper motives than those of more or less clear forms of mere reasoning. But we believe, and we wish and hope in our modest way to have shown by our present investigation, that the standpoint of faith also has its logical and justified science, and that it is able to appreciate the {373} world of the real more universally and candidly, and offers to logical reasoning fewer and less important difficulties, than the systems of atheism.

We have now discussed all the essential and direct points of contacts between Christianity and the theory of evolution. But a remaining part, still more closely related to the centre of the Christian view of the world, yet offers some indirect points of contact which demand treatment.

§ 5. _The Redeemer and the Redemption. The Kingdom of God and the Acceptance of Salvation._

As soon as it is once an established fact that an evolution theory of the origin of man as a merely scientific theory permits all the valuable qualities of man, when they have once come into existence, to show themselves undiminished in their entire greatness and importance, and must so permit them, then the whole Christian view of the world, of the Redeemer, his person, his course of redemption, and his work, remains entirely untouched by all these scientific theories of evolution. Yet the Biblical representation, the orthodox perception, and the actual history of the Redeemer and his work, present us with some evidences which are rather in sympathy than in antipathy with these scientific theories. First, the long preparation for his birth, which began immediately after the fall of man and stretched over at least four thousand years, perhaps over a much longer period, the special preparation of his human genealogy, the selection, separation, and guidance of the ancestor and of the people of Israel, of the tribe, the family, and finally of the mother of Jesus--all these are manifestly {374} just as favorable to the idea of evolution as they would have been to the idea of a sudden creation of man out of nothing, if Christ, the second Adam, had come into existence by a sudden creation. Moreover, the Redeemer himself was wholly subject to the ordinary laws of development of the human individual, and was, from his annunciation and conception, developed entirely like man in the long process of evolution from the egg and its still absolutely indifferent spiritual worth through all the imperceptible stages of development before and after the birth up to the full age of man. Likewise the result of his course of salvation, redemption, and entrance into the kingdom of God, underwent the same process of gradual development. It began with a few disciples, and was slowly propagated; it has to-day reached but a small part of mankind, and even where it took root, it sees infinitely many things by its side which it has not yet been able to penetrate with its leaven:--facts which have much more elective affinity with the scientific ideas of development than with those of sudden creations.

Finally, precisely the same analogy forces itself upon us in the Christian doctrine of the way of salvation. The work of the Holy Spirit in the human individual is nothing less than a new birth; its aim is the revival of the entire man, in mind, soul, and body. In most men, this work takes place by a slow process, advancing step by step. This gradual course is even the rule in Christianized nations; although a decisive change of mind often enough, though by no means always, takes place in marked epochs of the inner history of life. And in all Christians--even in those whose conversion takes place by a sudden awakening, like that of Paul--the {375} transformation of the entire man into the similarity of Christ, and the full restoration of the image of God, is certainly a process of development, and must await its completion in the resurrection. This view is also confirmed by the Lord's parable of the seed, growing up imperceptibly.

Every believing Christian knows these facts, and judges and acts according to them: therefore, when in the realm of nature, which God certainly submitted to the free investigation of the human mind, he meets similar views, what right has he to protest against them as being hostile to religion?

§ 6. _Eschatology._

In our discussion of the preceding questions, we have seen that an entirely neutral, not to say friendly, relationship is taking place between religion and the theories of development, which will continue so long as the latter keep within the limits of their proper realm, the perception of nature; and that a hostile relation takes place, and anti-religious attacks are to be guarded against, only when a disbelieving system of metaphysics, which has grown on other ground, in an uncalled-for way, tries to connect itself closely with the theory of descent. This is in an eminent degree the case with the great eschatological hopes of Christianity. The evolution theory so exclusively contents itself with the attempts at perceiving the causal circumstances of organisms in the _present_ world, that it does not at all wish to, and cannot, express itself concerning the _end_ and _goal_ of the world and the laws and circumstances which may reign in a _future æon_, and that it gives free scope to every perception of the ultimate which might come from another source. {376}

On the other hand, Christian eschatology is alone able to do most essential service to the evolution theory, in case it should be verified, by giving an answer to questions to which the evolution theory tends more decidedly than any other scientific theory--namely, to the questions as to _the end of the world and mankind_, with such distinctions as no philosophy which treats of the doctrines of nature, is able to give, although natural science itself demands the answer to these questions the more peremptorily, the higher the points of view are to which it leads us.

The world shows to every investigating eye a development, whether we have to take this development as descent or as successive new creation; and therefore we shall take, in the following discussion, the idea of development in this broad sense which comprises all conceivable attempts at explanation. All nature--its most comprehensive cosmic realms as well as the realms of its smallest organisms--together with the corporeal, psychical, and spiritual nature of man, shows a _harmony_, a _conformity to the end in view_, and a _striving toward an end_ of its development, the denial of which will certainly not add to the laurels which transmit the scientific fame of our present generation to posterity. Now, what is this end? The answer which we receive from those who reject Christian eschatology, may be given by two scientific antipodes: by Strauss and Eduard von Hartmann. Strauss takes sides with those who reject all striving toward an end in nature; and his answer to the question (which still asserts itself in his system of the world), is: eternal circular motion of the universe, death of all individuals and of all complexes of individuals, even of {377} mankind. Eduard von Hartmann, on the other hand, is filled by the knowledge of the teleological, but he rejects the hope of Christians and the end which offers itself to him in the place of the rejected end of Christian hope, is destruction--destruction of all individuals and destruction of the world. In view of such ends, is not the Christian's hope _the_ answer which not only satisfies the deepest ethical and religious need, but also all heights and depths of the most faithful, most devoted, and most enlightened investigation of nature?

Finally, we have still another eschatological conclusion to mention and reject; a conclusion which is drawn from this theory by the advocates of the evolution theory. It opens the perspective into a future development of still higher beings out of man. _In abstracto_, we can naturally make no objection to the possibility of such a development, as soon as we once accept the evolution theory; but we have to object to the supposition of such a process _in infinitum_. For such a process would certainly be interrupted by the final destruction of the globe; and in case the mechanico-naturalistic view of the world should be right, this destruction would be only the more cruel as would be more highly organized the beings which should find their destruction in this inevitable catastrophe. Moreover, as we have repeatedly seen, a development _in infinitum_ suffers from a self-contradiction: for development involves an end, and this end must certainly have been once reached. Now, if we have reason to assume that this end has been reached in the development of the inhabitants of the globe, by the creature being in the image of God and his child, and that it is also reached in fallen man through redemption {378} and its perfection, then the idea of development, it is true, allows and postulates a relative development of mankind, so long as this takes place within the limits of the now valid laws of the universe,--a development towards the perfection of this likeness to God and filial relationship; but that idea of development has no longer an influence that would lead to the production of new beings which should be more than man.

With the foregoing, we believe that we have discussed all essential points of the relation between religion and Darwinism; and we now proceed to the last part of our investigation.

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_B. THE DARWINIAN THEORIES AND MORALITY._