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THE SCRIPTURES A REVELATION FROM GOD.

CHAPTER 1.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.

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, — lo>gou qei>ou tino>v , Iamblicus, peri> tou~ Puqagorikou~ bi>ou , 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?

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 anti-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” ( 1 Peter 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, 238 — “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 Psalm 1; 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 the 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”; Romans 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”; Ephesians 3:9 — “to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God”; 2 Timothy 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” ( Ephesians 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: Isaiah 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; Malachi 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 skepticism 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, 374-381; 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. (6) 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 the into the lions’ den, an angel seized Habbakuk 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 Ka„ba, 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 Phúnicians 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”; Romans 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; it’s 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 flowerpot, 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 God 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 Kings 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 te>rata, ‘wonders,’ and shmei~a ‘signs,’ ( John 4:48; Acts 2:22). In the latter aspect they are called duna>meiv, ‘powers,’ and e]rga, ‘works,’ ( Matthew 7:22; John 14:11). See H.B. Smith, Lect. on Apologetics, 90-116, esp. 94 — shmei~on, sign , marking the purpose or object, the moral end, placing the event in connection with revelation.”

The Bible Union Version uniformly and properly renders te>rav by ‘wonder,’ duna>miv by ‘miracle,’ e]rgon by ‘work,’ and shmei~on by ‘sign.’ Goethe, Faust: “Alles Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichniss: Das Unzulangliche 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. Babbage proposes such a modification. 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 also 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, ldeas 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, 143-160; Bushnell. Nature and Supernatural, 338-3 A; Smith’s and Hastings’ Diet, 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 religions 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 selfsame 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, 2:8 — “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 on 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 Pictionar; 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.” Psalm 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 within 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, Dogmn. 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 skepticism, 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 as 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 out 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; theme 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 Mend, 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 32deg Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.” Come, 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, be is present in nature while at the same the 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. 2Kings 6:5-7). Versus Flume, 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 cause 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 Isaiah 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 pieces 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 on the method of their operation whereby the will of God takes a new form of manifestation. Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 100 — “Spinoza leugnete ihre metaphysiche Moglichkeit, Hume ihre geschichtliche Erkennbarkeit, Kant ihre practische Brauchbarkeit, Schleiermacher ihre religiose 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; (2) 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: — 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. (e) This possibility of miracles becomes doubly sure to those who see in Christ none other than the immanent God manifested to creatures. The Logos or divine Reason who is the principle of all growth and evolution can make God known only by means of successive new impartations of his energy. Since all progress implies increment, and Christ is the only source of life, the whole history of creation is a witness to the possibility of miracle.

See A.H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-166 — “This conception of evolution is that of Lotze. That great philosopher, whose influence is more potent than any other in present thought, does not regard the universe as a plenum to which nothing can be added in the way of force. He looks upon the universe rather as a plastic organism to which new impulses can be imparted from him of whose thought and will it is an expression. These impulses, once imparted, abide in the organism and are thereafter subject to its law. Though these impulses come from within, they come not from that finite mechanism but from the immanent God. Robert Browning’s phrase, ‘All’s love but all’s law,’ must be interpreted as meaning that the very movements of the planets and all the operations of nature are revelations of a personal and present God, but it must not be interpreted as meaning that God runs in a rut, that he is confined to mechanism, that he is incapable of unique and startling manifestations of power. “The idea that gives to evolution its hold upon thinking minds is the idea of continuity. But absolute continuity is inconsistent with progress. If the future is not simply a reproduction of the past, there must be some new cause of change. In order to progress there must be either a new force, or a new combination of forces, and only some new force that causes the combination can explain the new combination of forces. This new force, moreover, must be intelligent force, if the evolution is to be toward the better instead of toward the worse. The continuity must be continuity not of forces but of plan. The forces may increase, nay; they must increase, unless the new is to be a mere repetition of the old. There must be additional energy imparted, the new combination brought about, and all this implies purpose and will. But through all there runs one continuous plan, and upon this plan the rationality of evolution depends. “A man builds a house. In laying the foundation he uses stone and mortar, but he makes the walls of wood and the roof of tin. In the superstructure he brings into play different laws from those which apply to the foundation. There is continuity, not of material, but of plan. Progress from cellar to garret requires breaks here and there, and the bringing in of new forces; in fact, without the bringing in of these new forces the evolution of the house would be impossible. Now substitute for the foundation and superstructure living things like the chrysalis and the butterfly; imagine the power to work from within and not from without; and you see that true continuity does not exclude but involves new beginnings. “Evolution, then, depends on increments of force plus continuity of plan.

New creations are possible because the immanent God has not exhausted himself. Miracle is possible because God is not far away, but is at hand to do whatever the needs of his moral universe may require. Regeneration and answers to prayer are possible for the very reason that these are the objects for which the universe was built, if we were deists, believing in a distant God and a mechanical universe, evolution and Christianity would be irreconcilable. But since we believe in a dynamical universe, of which the personal and living God is the inner source of energy, evolution is but the basis, foundation and background of Christianity, the silent and regular working of him who, in the fullness of time, utters his voice in Christ and the Cross.”

Lotze’s own statement of his position may be found in his Microcosmos, 2:479 sq. Professor James Ten Broeke has interpreted him as follows: “He makes the possibility of the miracle depend upon the close and intimate action and reaction between the world and the personal Absolute, in consequence of which the movements of the natural world are carried on only through the Absolute, with the possibility of a variation in the general course of things, according to existing facts and the purpose of the divine Governor.” 3. Probability of Miracles.

A. We acknowledge that, so long as we confine our attention to nature, there is a presumption against miracles. Experience testifies to the uniformity of natural law. A general uniformity is needful, in order to make possible a rational calculation of the future, and a proper ordering of life.

See Butler, Analogy, part ii, chap. ii; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ,