05.01.01 - Miracles and the Manner of Divine Action

(1) Miracles and the Manner of Divine Action

Sometimes, with a view to avoid the objection of an effect being produced without an adequate cause, miracle is spoken of as the action of a higher law on a lower.” The objection to such a definition is that it restricts miracle to the order and forces of nature, to the exclusion of the intervention of an intelligent personal God, with Whom it attempts to dispense. Accept a personal God, and you have an adequate Cause, and miracle at once becomes a possibility. The main defect in the treatment of miracles is the attempt to explain the modus operandi, or the method of the Divine action in miracles. It is of this method we are largely ignorant, and from any thing we know God can work with or without intermediate agencies. He can use natural laws and forces to work His pleasure, or He can bring into action unknown laws and forces, or make an unknown use of a known law; or directly and immediately of His own will and power effect His own purpose. All that miracle requites is that it is the work of God, the result of a Divine activity, and is wrought for a worthy purpose. The How of the accomplishment is of small importance, but the fact is all important.