03-Chapter 2. The Miracles and Nature
Chapter 2. The Miracles and Nature
Wherein, it may be asked, does the miracle differ from any event in the ordinary course of nature? For that too is wonderful; the fact that it is a marvel of continual recurrence may rob it, subjectively, of our admiration; we may be content to look at it with a dull incurious eye, and to think we find in its constant repetition the explanation of its law, even as we often find in this a reason for excusing ourselves altogether from wonder and reverent admiration;[1] yet it does not remain the less a marvel still. To this question some have replied, that since all is thus marvellous, since the grass growing, the seed springing, the sun rising, are as much the result of powers which we cannot trace or measure, as the water turned into wine, or the sick healed by a word, or the blind restored to vision by a touch, there is therefore no such thing as a miracle, eminently so called. We have no right, they say, in the mighty and complex miracle of nature which encircles us on every side, to separate off in an arbitrary manner some certain facts, and to say that this and that are wonders, and all the rest ordinary processes of nature; but rather we must confine ourselves to one language or the other, and entitle all miracle, or nothing. But this, however at first sight it may seem very deep and true, is indeed most shallow and fallacious. There is quite enough in itself and in its purposes to distinguish that which we call by this name, from all with which it is thus attempted to be confounded, and in which to be lost. The distinction indeed which is sometimes made, that in the miracle God is immediately working, and in other events is leaving it to the laws which He has established to work, cannot at all be admitted: for it has its root in a dead mechanical view of the universe, altogether remote from the truth. The clock-maker makes his clock, and leaves it; the ship-builder builds and launches his ship, and others navigate it; the world, however, is no curious piece of mechanism which its Maker constructs, and then dismisses from his hands, only” from time to time reviewing and repairing it; but, as our Lord says, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17); He “upholdeth all things by the word of his power”[2] (Heb 1:3). And to speak of “laws of God,” “laws of nature,” may become to us a language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes. Laws of God exist only for us. It is a will of God for Himself.[3] That will indeed, being the will of highest wisdom and love, excludes all wilfulness; it is a will upon which we can securely count; from the past expressions of it we can presume its future, and so we rightfully call it a law. But still from moment to moment it is a will; each law, as we term it, of nature is only that which we have learned concerning this will in that particular region of its activity. To say then that there is more of the will of God in a miracle than in any other work of his, is insufficient. Such an assertion grows out of that lifeless scheme of the world, whereof we should ever be seeking to rid ourselves, but which such a theory will only help to confirm and to uphold. For while we deny the conclusion, that since all is wonder, therefore the miracle commonly so called is in no other way than the ordinary processes of nature, the manifestation of the presence and power of God, we must not with this deny the truth which lies in this statement. All is wonder; to make a man is at least as great a marvel as to raise a man from the dead. The seed that multiplies in the furrow is as marvellous as the bread that multiplied in Christ’s hands. The miracle is not a greater manifestation of God’s power than those ordinary and ever-repeated processes; but it is a different [4] manifestation. By those other God is speaking at all times and to all the world; they are a vast unbroken revelation of Him. “The invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead” (Rom 1:20). Yet from the very circumstance that nature is thus speaking evermore to all, that this speaking is diffused over all time, addressed unto all men, that its sound is gone out into all lands, from the very constancy and universality of this language, it may miss its aim. It cannot be said to stand in nearer relation to one man than to another, to confirm one man’s word more than that of others, to address one man’s conscience more than that of every other man. However it may sometimes have, it must often lack, a peculiar and personal significance. But in the miracle, wrought in the sight of some certain men, and claiming their special attention, there is a speaking to them in particular. There is then a voice in nature which addresses itself directly to them, a singling of them out from the crowd. It is plain that God has now a peculiar word which they are to give heed to, a message to which He is bidding them to listen.[5] An extraordinary divine causality, and not that ordinary which we acknowledge every where and in everything, belongs, then, to the essence of the miracle; powers of God other than those which have always been working; such, indeed, as most seldom or never have been working before. The unresting activity of God, which at other times hides and conceals itself behind the veil of what we term natural laws, does in the miracle unveil itself; it steps out from its concealment, and the hand which works is laid bare. Beside and beyond [6] the ordinary operations of nature, higher powers (higher, not as coming from a higher source, but as bearing upon higher ends) intrude and make themselves felt even at the very springs and sources of her power.
Yet when we say that it is of the very essence of the miracle that it should be thus “a new thing” it is not with this denied that the natural itself may become miraculous to us by the way in which it is timed, by the ends which it is made to serve. It is indeed true that aught which is perfectly explicable from the course of nature and history, is assuredly no miracle in the most proper sense of the word. Yet still the finger of God may be so plainly discernible in it, there may be in it so remarkable a convergence of many unconnected causes to a single end, it may so meet a crisis in the lives of men, or in the onward march of the kingdom of God, may stand in such noticeable relation with God’s great work of redemption, that even while it is plainly deducible from natural causes, while there were such, perfectly adequate to produce the effects, we yet may be entirely justified in terming it a miracle, a providential, although not an absolute, miracle. Absolute it cannot be called, since there were known causes perfectly capable of bringing it about, and, these existing, it would be superstition to betake ourselves to others, or to seek to disconnect it from these. Yet the natural may in a manner lift itself up into the miraculous, by the moment at which it falls out, by the purposes which it is made to fulfil. It is a subjective wonder, a wonder for us, though not an objective, not a wonder in itself.
Thus many of the plagues of Egypt were the natural plagues of the land,[7] —these, it is true, raised and quickened into far direr than their usual activity. In itself it was nothing miraculous that grievous swarms of flies should infest the houses of the Egyptians, or that flights of locusts should spoil their fields, or that a murrain should destroy their cattle. None of these visitations were or are unknown in that land; but the intensity of all these plagues, the manner in which they followed in dread succession on one another, their connexion with the word of Moses which went before, with Pharaoh’s trial which was proceeding, with Israel’s deliverance which they helped onward, the order of their coming and going, all these do entirely justify us in calling them “the signs and wonders of Egypt,” even as such is the scriptural language about them (Psa 78:43; Acts 7:36). It is no absolute miracle to find a coin in a fish’s mouth (Mat 17:27), or that a lion should meet a man and slay him (1Ki 13:24), or that a thunderstorm should happen at an unusual period of the year (1Sa 12:16-19); and yet these circumstances may be so timed for strengthening faith, for punishing disobedience, for awakening repentance, they may serve such high purposes in God’s moral government, that we at once range them in the catalogue of miracles, without seeking to make an anxious discrimination between the miracle absolute and providential.[8] Especially have they a right to their place among these, when (as in each of the instances alluded to above) the final event is a sealing of a foregoing word from the Lord; for so, as prophecy, as miracles of his foreknowledge, they claim that place, even if not as miracles of his power. Of course concerning these more than any other it will be true that they exist only for the religious mind, for the man who believes that God rules, and not merely in power, but in wisdom, in righteousness, and in love; for him they will be eminently signs, signs of a present working God. In the case of the more absolute miracle it will be sometimes possible to extort from the ungodly, as of old from the magicians of Egypt, the unwilling confession, “This is the finger of God” (Exo 8:19); but in the case of these this will be well nigh impossible; since there is always the natural solution in which they may take refuge, beyond which they will refuse, and beyond which it will be impossible to compel them, to proceed. But while the miracle is not thus nature, so neither is it against nature. That language, however commonly in use, is yet wholly unsatisfactory, which speaks of these wonderful works of God as violations of a natural law. Beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which we know, they are, but not contrary to it. Nor let it be said that this distinction is an idle one; so far from being idle, Spinoza’s whole assault upon the miracles (not his real objections, for they lie much deeper, but his assault[9]) turns, as we shall see, upon the advantage which he has known how to take of this faulty statement of the truth; and, when that has been rightly stated, becomes at once beside the mark. The miracle is not thus unnatural, nor can it be; since the unnatural, the contrary to order, is of itself the ungodly, and can in no way therefore be affirmed of a divine work, such as that with which we have to do. The very idea of the world, as more than one name which it bears testifies, is that of an order; that which comes in then to enable it to realize this idea which it has lost, will scarcely itself be a disorder. So far from this, the true miracle is a higher and a purer nature, coming down out of the world of untroubled harmonies into this world of ours, which so many discords have jarred and disturbed, and bringing this back again, though it be but for one mysterious prophetic moment, into harmony with that higher.[10] The healing of the sick can in no way be termed against nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed was against the true nature of man, that it is sickness which is abnormal, and not health. The healing is the restoration of the primitive order. We should term the miracle not the infraction of a law, but behold in it the lower law neutralized, and for the time put out of working by a higher; and of this abundant analogous examples are evermore going forward before our eyes. Continually we behold in the world around us lower laws held in restraint by higher, mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by moral; yet we say not, when the lower thus gives place in favour of the higher, that there was any violation of law, or that anything contrary to nature came to pass;[11] rather we acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swallowing up the law of a lesser.[12] Thus, when I lift my arm, the law of gravitation is not, as far as my arm is concerned, denied or annihilated; it exists as much as ever, but is held in suspense by the higher law of my will. The chemical laws which would bring about decay in animal substances still subsist, even when they are checked and hindered by the salt which keeps those substances from corruption. The law of sin in a regenerate man is held in continual check by the law of the spirit of life; yet is it in his members still, not indeed working, for a mightier law has stepped in and now holds it in abeyance, but still there, and ready to work, did that higher law cease from its more effectual operation. What in each of these cases is wrought may be against one particular law, that law being contemplated in its isolation, and rent away from the complex of laws, whereof it forms only a part. But no law does stand thus alone, and it is not against, but rather in entire harmony with, the system of laws; for the law of those laws is, that where powers come into conflict, the weaker shall give place to the stronger, the lower to the higher. In the miracle, this world of ours is drawn into and within a higher order of things; laws are then at work in the world, which are not the laws of its fallen condition, for they are laws of mightier range and higher perfection; and as such they claim to make themselves felt, and to have the preeminence and predominance which are rightly their own.[13] A familiar illustration borrowed from our own church-system of feasts and fasts may make this clearer. It is the rule here, that if the festival of the Nativity fall on a day which was designated in the ordinary calendar for a fast, the former shall displace the latter, and the day shall be observed as a festival. Shall we therefore say that the Church has awkwardly contrived two systems which here may, and sometimes do, come into collision with one another? and not rather admire her more complex law, and note how in the very concurrence of the two, with the displacement of the poorer by the richer, she brings out her sense that holy joy is a loftier thing even than holy sorrow, and shall at last swallow it up altogether?[14]
It is with these wonders which have been, exactly as it will be with those wonders which we look for in regard of our own mortal bodies, and this physical universe. We do not speak of these changes which are in store for this and those, as violations of law. “We should not speak of the resurrection of the body as something contrary to nature; as unnatural; yet no power now working upon our bodies could bring it about; it must be wrought by some power not yet displayed, which God has kept in reserve. So, too, the great change which is in store for the outward world, and out of which it shall issue as a new heaven and a new earth, far exceeds any energies now working in the world, to bring it to pass (however there may be predispositions for it now, starting points from which it will proceed); yet it so belongs to the true idea of the world, now so imperfectly realized, that when it does take place, it will be felt to be the truest nature, which only then at length shall have come perfectly to the birth. The miracles, then, not being against nature, however they may be beside and beyond it, are in no respect slights cast upon its ordinary and everyday workings; but rather, when contemplated aright, are an honouring of these, in the witness which they render to the source from which these also originally proceed. For Christ, healing a sick man with his word, is in fact claiming in this to be the lord and author of all the healing powers which have ever exerted their beneficent influence on the bodies of men, and saying, “I will prove this fact, which you are ever losing sight of, that in Me the frontal power which goes forth in a thousand gradual cures resides, by this time only speaking a word, and bringing back a man unto perfect health;”— not thus cutting off those other and more gradual healings from his person, but truly linking them to it.[15] So again when He multiplies the bread, when He changes the water into wine, what does He but say, “It is I and no other who, by the sunshine and the shower, by the seed-time and the harvest, give ’food for the use of man; and you shall learn this, which you are always in danger of unthankfully forgetting, by witnessing for once or for twice, or, if not actually witnessing, yet having it rehearsed in your ears for ever, how the essences of things are mine, how the bread grows in my hands, how the water, not drawn up into the vine, nor slowly transmuted into the juices of the grape, nor from thence exprest in the vat, but simply at my bidding, changes into wine. The children of this world ’sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense to their drag,’ but it is I who, giving you in a moment the draught of fishes which you had yourselves long laboured for in vain, will remind you who guides them through the ocean paths, and suffers you either to toil long and to take nothing, or crowns your labours with a rich and unexpected harvest of the sea.”— Even the single miracle which wears an aspect of severity, that of the withered fig-tree, speaks the same language, for in that the same gracious Lord is declaring, “These scourges of mine, wherewith I punish your sins, and summon you to repentance, continually miss their purpose altogether, or need to be repeated again and again; and this mainly because you see in them only the evil accidents of a blind nature; but I will show you that it is I and no other who smite the earth with a curse, who both can and do send these strokes for the punishing of the sins of men.” And we can quite perceive how all this should have been necessary.[16] For if in one sense the orderly workings of nature reveal the glory of God (Psa 19:1-6), in another they, hide that glory from our eyes; if they ought to make us continually to remember Him, yet there is danger that they lead us to forget Him, until this world around us shall prove—not a translucent medium, through which we behold Him, but a thick impenetrable veil, concealing Him wholly from our sight. Were there no other purpose in the miracles than this, namely to testify the liberty of God, and to affirm the will of God, which, however it habitually shows itself in nature, is yet more than and above nature, were it only to break a link in that chain of cause and effect, which else we should come to regard as itself God, as the iron chain of an inexorable necessity, binding heaven no less than earth, they would serve a great purpose, they would not have been wrought in vain. But there are other purposes than these, and purposes yet more nearly bearing on the salvation of men, to which they serve, and to the consideration of these we have now arrived.[17]
Footnotes
[1] See Augustine, Be Gen. ad Lit. 12:18; Be Civ. Dei, 21:8, 3; and Gregory the Great (Horn. xxvi. in Evang.): Quotidiana Dei miracula ex assiduitate viluerunt. Cf. Cicero, Be Nat. Deor. 2:38.
[2] Augustine: Sunt qui arbitrantur tantummodo mundum ipsum factum a Deo; cetera jam fieri ab ipso mundo, sicut ille ordinavit et jussit, Deum autem ipsum nihil operari. Contra quos profertur ilia sententia Domini, Pater meus usque adhuc operatur, et ego operor..... Neque enim, sicut a structurâ aedium, cum fabricaverit quis, abscedit; atque illo cessante et absente stat opus ejus; ita mundus vel ictu oculi stare potent, si ei Deus regimen suum subtraxerit. So Melancthon (In loc. de Creatione): Infirmitas humana etiamsi cogitat Deum esse conditorem, tamen postea imaginatur, ut faber discedit a navi exstructâ et relinquit earn nautis; ita Deum discedere a suo opere, et relinqui creaturas tantum propriae gubernationi; haec imaginatio magnam caliginem offundit animis et parit dubitationes.
[3] Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 21:8): Dei voluntas natura rerum est.
[4] Augustine (Serm. ccxlii. 1): In homine carnali tota regula intel-ligendi est consuetudo cernendi. Quod solent videre credunt: quod non solent, non credunt.... Majora quidem miracula sunt, tot quotidie homines nasci qui non erant, quam paucos resurrexisse qui erant; et tamen ista miracula non consideratione comprehensa sunt, sed assiduitate viluerunt. Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral, vi. 15.
[5] All this is brought out in a very instructive discussion on the miracle, which finds place in Augustine’s great dogmatic work, De Trinit. iii. 5, and extends to the chapters upon either side, being the largest statement of his views upon the subject which anywhere finds place in his works: Quis attrahit humorem per radicem vitis ad botrum et vinum facit, nisi Deus, qui et homine plantante et rigante incrementum dat? Sed cum ad nutum Domini aqua in vinum inusitatâ, celeritate conversa est, etiam stultis fatentibus, vis divina declarata est. Quis arbusta fronde et flore vestit solemniter, nisi Deus? Verum cum floruit virga sacerdotis Aaron, collocuta est quodam modo cum dubitante humanitate divinitas.... Cum fiunt ilia continuato quasi quodam fluvio labentium manantiumque rerum, et ex occulto in promptum, atque ex prompto in occultum, usitato itinere transeuntium, naturalia dicuntur: cum vero admonendis hominibus inusitatâ mutabilitate ingeruntur, magnalia nominantur.
[6] Not, as we shall see the greatest theologians have always earnestly contended, contra naturam, but prater naturam and supra naturam.
[7] See Hengstenberg, Die Bücher Moses und Agypten, pp. 93-129.
[8] The attempt to exhaust the history of our Lord’s life of miracles By the. supposition of wonderful fortuitous coincidences is singularly self-defeating. These might do for once or twice; but that such happy chances should on every occasion recur, what is this for one who knows even but a little of the theory of probabilities? not the delivering the history of its marvellous element, but the exchanging one set of marvels for another. If it be said that this was not mere hazard, what manner of person then must we conclude Him to be, whom nature was always thus at such pains to serve and to seal?
[9] Tract. Theol. Pol. vi. De Miraculis.
[10] Augustine (Con. Faust, lvi. 3): Contra naturam non incongrue dicimus aliquid Deum facere, quod facit contra id quod novirnus in natura. Hanc enim etiam appellamus naturam, cognitum nobis cursum solitumque naturae, contra quern cum Deus aliquid facit, magnalia vel mirabilia nominantur. Contra illam vero summam naturae legem a notitiâ remotam sive impiorum sive adhue infirmorum, tam Deus nullo modo facit quam contra seipsum non facit. Cf. Tract. Theol. Pol. vi. De Miraculis. xxix. 2; and De Civ. Dei, xxi. 8. The speculations of the great thinkers of the thirteenth century, on the subject of miracles, and especially on this part of the subject, are well brought together by Neander (Kirch. Gesch. vol. v. pp. 910-925).
[11] See a very interesting discussion upon this subject in Augustine, De Gen. ad Lit. vi. 14-18.
[12] When Spinoza affirmed that nothing can happen in nature which opposes its universal laws, he acutely saw that even then he had not excluded the miracle, and therefore, to clench the exclusion, added—aut quod ex iisdem [legibus] non sequitur. But all which experience can teach us is, that these powers which are working in our world will not reach to these effects. Whence dare we to conclude, that because none which we know will bring them about, so none exist which will do so? They exceed the laws of our nature, but it does not therefore follow that they exceed the laws of all nature.. If the animals were capable of a reflective act, man would appear a miracle to them, as the Angels do to us, and as the animals would themselves appear to a lower circle of organic life. The comet is a miracle as regards our solar system; that is, it does not own the laws of our system, neither do those laws explain it. Yet is there a higher and wider law of the heavens, whether fully discovered or not, in which its motions are included as surely as those of the planets which stand in immediate relation to our sun.
[13] “In remarkable words the author of The Wisdom of Solomon (xix. 6) describes how at the passage of the Red. Sea all nature was in its kind moulded and fashioned anew (ἡ κτίσις πάλιν ἄνωθεν διετυποῦτο), that it might serve God’s purposes for the deliverance of his people, and punishment of his enemies (cf. xi, 16, 17); and Sedulius (Carm. Pasch, i. $5):
Subditur omnis
Imperiis natura tuis; rituque soluto
Transit in adversas jussu dominante figuras.
[14] Thus Aquinas, whose greatness and depth upon the subject of miracles I well remember once hearing Coleridge exalt, and painfully contrast with the modern theology on the same subject (Sum. Theol. pars i. qu. 105, art. 6): A quâlibet causa derivator aliquis ordo in suos effectus, cum quaelibet causa habeat rationem principii. Et ideo secundum multiplicationem causarum multiplicantur et ordines, quorum unus continetur sub altero, sicut et causa continetur sub causa. Unde causa superior non continetur sub ordine causae inferioris, sed e converse Cujus exemplum apparet in rebus humanis. Nam ex patrefamiliâs dependet ordo domûs, qui continetur sub ordine civitatis, qui procedit a civitatis rectore: cum et hie contineatur sub ordine regis, a quo totum regnum ordinatur. Si ergo ordo rerum consideretur prout dependet a primâ causa, sic contra rerum ordinem Deus facere non potest. Si enim sic faceret, faceret contra suam praescientiam aut voluntatem aut bonitatem. Si vero consideretur rerum ordo, prout dependet a quâlibet secundarum causarum, sic Deus potest facere prater ordinem rerum; quia ordini secundarum causarum ipse non est subjectus; sed talis ordo ei subjicitur, quasi ab eo procedens, non per necessitatem naturae, sed per arbitrium voluntatis; potuisset enim et alium ordinem rerum instituere.
[15] Bernard Connor’s Evangelium Medici, seu Medicina Mystica, London, 1697, awakened some attention at the time of its publication, and drew down many suspicions of infidelity on its author (see the Biographie Universelle under his name). I have not mastered the book, as it seemed hardly worth while; but on a slight acquaintance, my impression is that these charges against the author are without any ground. The book bears on this present part of our subject.
[16] Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. Exodus 4): [Deus] reservans opportune inusitata prodigia, quae infirmitas hominis novitati intenta meminerit, cum sint ejus miracula quotidiana majora. Tot per universam terrain arbores creat, et nemo miratur; arefecit verbo unam, et stupefacta sunt corda mortalium.... Hoc enim miraculum maxime adtentis cordibus inhaerebit, quod assiduitas non vilefecerit.
[17] J. Müller (Be Mirac. J. G. Nat. et Necess. par. i. p. 43): Etiamsi nullus alius miraculorum esset usus, nisi ut absolutam illam divinae voluntatis libertatem demonstrent, humanamque arrogantiam, imraodicae legis naturalis admirationi junctam, compescant, miracula haud temere essent edita.