Vaughan's object to show, that as the physical is ever, so far as our knowledge extends, made subservient to the moral in the divine administration, "to "contradict," to "violate," to "reverse," if you please, a physical law for a moral reason, may be as much an act of wisdom as the origination of that law; and in place of bespeaking a contradiction or inconsistency in the mind of Deity, as the argument now under examination supposes, it may be only a new indication of the immutability of the divine purpose in seeking the highest ends by the best means, subordinating, with this view, the less to the greater, the material to the spiritual.' (p. 89.) This is an answer to such objections to the miraculous as are founded on the immutability of God. But this would be no sufficient answer to Hume and his followers. They have no need to deny the possibility of a miracle per se, but they deny that any strength of testimony can be sufficient to prove it. This objection regards the miracle entirely as a régas. It is not only unconformable to experience, but contrary to it. Hume cannot but believe much that is wonderful-much that is unconformable to experience.

'I own,' he says, 'there may possibly be miracles or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony; though perhaps it will be impossible to find any such in all the records of history. Thus, suppose all authors, in all languages agree, that from the first of January, 1600, there was a total darkness over the whole earth for eight days; suppose that the tradition of this extraordinary event is still strong and lively among the people; that all travellers who return from foreign countries bring us accounts of the same tradition, without the least variation or contradiction. It is evident that our present philosophers, instead of doubting the fact, ought to receive it as certain, and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived. The decay, corruption, and dissolution of nature is an event rendered probable by so many analogies, that any phenomenon which seems to have a tendency towards that catastrophe, comes within the reach of human testimony, if that testimony be very extensive and uniform.' 8

as

Hume thus admits that a miracle may be proved, and holds that, after all, it might be traced to merely natural causes. Now it is just here that Dr. Vaughan meets and answers him, and, we believe, with complete success. A mere suppose' is quite sufficient here, for the onus probandi is upon the sceptic. The New Testament miracles may be merely the result of giving a

f See on this point some very valuable remarks in ‘The Journal of Sacred Literature,' New Series, p. 114 et seqq.

Hume, Essays,' vol. ii. pp. 131, 132. Ed. 1788.

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particular direction to natural causes.' If this be possible (and he must be a bold man who would deny it at least in the imperfect state of our knowledge of natural agencies, which leaves it always possible that some of the physical antecedents may have been hidden from us'), then a miracle must, by Hume's own admission, be believed, and its causes investigated. Such investigation may connect it with some brilliant generalisation of science, or it may connect it, and connect it as a foundation, with a system of religion. This depends upon the view we may be compelled to take, not of the repas, but of the Suvaus, a point not touched by Hume nor influenced in any degree by his objections. Dr. Vaughan's account of what a miracle is not, or of what a miracle may be, can be neither intended nor used as a definition for all purposes; it is, however, abundantly sufficient and altogether necessary for the purposes of his argument.

We would define a miracle in its relation to man, with which alone we are concerned, to be-an effect involving the exercise of superhuman power or wisdom in a manner different from that which is involved in the ordinary laws of nature. The ordinary growth of a tree involves the exercise of superhuman power or wisdom, but is excluded, with all parallel cases, from the miraculous by the last clause of our definition, and its first clause does not assume that God only can work what is to man a miracle, for this obviously stands in need of proof. The essence of the miraculous is rather in manner than in matter. A blind man may be healed by the removal of cataract, and the cure may be an achievement of surgical skill. The very same man might have been healed without the knowledge even of the cause of his blindness, and without any knowledge or use either of medicine or surgery; and the cure, though in itself the very same thing, would in this latter case have been a miracle. If the turning of water into wine at the word of Christ were (as Dr. Cumming asserts) a mere shortening of the ordinary process, it would be still an effect, involving the exercise of superhuman power or wisdom in a manner different from that which is involved in the ordinary laws of nature. We have in this definition endeavoured to avoid what we must regard as the error committed by Mr. Trench, without committing that which is its opposite extreme. In directing special attention to a view of miracles which will bring them into harmony with the perfections of God and the sublime laws of the universe, he has done essential service. But it is of a merely negative character. He not only fails to exhibit, but actually diverts our mind from that characteristic of a miracle which alone gives it (objectively considered) any positive value in Christian evidences, and which is found in the fact that it cannot be accounted for by

VOL. VI.-NO. XI.

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That

the operation of the ordinary laws of what to us is nature. these may be subsumed under the laws of a nature higher than ours is doubtless a fact too much overlooked; but it is one of very small value in this argument, except for the demolition of objections which depend for all their strength on a confounding of the moral with the physical. From this confusion Mr. Trench has not wholly escaped. Hence alone arises his difficulty in admitting such definitions of a miracle as would call it a violation of,' or 'contrary to,' nature. Indeed, these distinctions of praeter, super, contra naturam, are just those which were so carefully and so beautifully elaborated by the divines of the thirteenth century. Mr. Trench, though familiar with their writings, has not improved upon their clearness.

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Abelard regarded nature in its highest sense as the realisation of the divine idea, as the carrying out of that great and all-comprehensive plan which was in the mind of God and in his counsels from eternity. In relation, therefore, to the divine reason and omnipotence, abstractly considered, nothing is miraculous. But among the effects of God's omnipotence are to be distinguished those to which the powers and laws originally placed in the creation would be adequate, and those which evidence the introduction into the creation of new powers. This last is what is intended by the supernatural. Nature, considered in itself, is thus measured by the Divine Omnipotence, and of course excludes the miraculous; but nature in relation to us-the ordinary course of nature -is identical with the laws and powers introduced originally into the creation, and admits the supernatural. Miracle, therefore, is merely relative to a given system, or a given view of

nature.

Of a like character were the distinctions drawn by Alexander of Hales between the potentia activa and susceptiva, the possibilitas activa and passiva of nature. The former of these would indicate, in the language of Abélard, the original laws or powers by which Nature can work out her own results or the results themselves; the latter (potentia or possibilitas passiva), what God may do through Nature, or make Nature do, by new laws and powers. In this latter sense miracles are impossible. Exactly to the same effect are the distinctions of Thomas Aquinas. Nothing, according to him, can happen contrary to the order of the world as it proceeds from the primal cause, for that order has its ground in God. But if we look at the order of the world as it is grounded in the cosmical chain of causes and effects, then God may bring something to pass præter ordinem rerum; for he is not limited to this series of causes and effects.' We need not multiply examples. Mr. Trench's error lies here; that he has failed

to see, or at least clearly to indicate, that, viewed in relation to the higher nature of which he speaks, a miracle is impossible; and he has saved this important ally of Christianity, not only by defeating certain of her most dangerous adversaries, but by removing her altogether from the field of conflict. Dr. Cumming has all Mr. Trench's mistakes, with some few also of his own.

It would be a strange and valuable book that should set forth the precise relation of truth to error, their near kindred and mutual helpfulness. How often is error but a mutilated or exaggerated truth! Of how much truth should we have been long ignorant, and contentedly careless, if error had not forced upon us its discovery and true value! We owe, in great measure, to the enemies of Christianity our appreciation of her sublimest truths and strongest defences.

The possibility of the Christian miracles involves no other assumption than the existence of a personal God, and of a sufficient reason for their being wrought; their certainty, i. e. the proof that they have been wrought, depends upon certain canons of historical criticism, which would carry us far beyond our space. We can scarcely afford even a passing reference to Hume, whose arguments are to be considered in this connection. The best answer he can receive, we think, has been furnished in part by himself in his Essay on Liberty and Necessity.' There are laws of nature in the department of Ethics and Metaphysics as truly and as constantly operative as in Chemistry and Physiology; and, in Hume's own use of the terms, it is as contrary to experience that the sort and amount of testimony upon which we believe the Christian miracles should be untrustworthy, as that the miracles themselves should be real facts of history.

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We come then to the question, What do miracles attest? Let us hear Dr. Wardlaw on this point.i If a man announces himself as having been commissioned by God to propound a certain doctrine, or system of doctrines, as from Him, and for the truth of his commission and his communication appeals to works such as no power but that of God can effect; if upon his making this appeal these works are instantly and openly done at his bidding, there is no evading of the conclusion that this is a divine interposition, at the moment, in attestation of the authority he claims, and of the truth of what is declared. The professed divine ambassador says, "This is from God;" and God, by the instant intervention of the miracle, sets his seal to it-says, as by a voice

from heaven, if not even more decisively, "It is from me!" The sole questions requiring to be answered, in order to the legitimacy of the conclusion, are these two, "Is the work one which God alone can do?" and "Is it actually done?" If these questions are settled in the affirmative, there is no reasonable ground on which the conclusion can be withstood.'-(p. 43.)

With the latter portion of this paragraph we most cordially agree. Let us come to the question, 'Is the work one which God alone can do?' We would remark, that whatever may be right as the result of such inquiry, yet, for the purposes of it, it is a palpable 'petitio principii' to assume that a miracle can be wrought only by the power of God. And here we must again quote Dr. Wardlaw's own words. If it be inconceivable that the blessed God should give attestation by his own direct agency to anything false, in any way, for any end, or for however short a time, the same great general principles equally forbid the supposition of his allowing a real miracle to be wrought in sanction of falsehood by the instrumental agency of another. Let it be remembered that on the minds of those before whose eyes the miracle is wrought, the effect is the same, whether the agency be direct or indirect, immediate or instrumental. When the appeal is made to HIS NAME, and is avowedly designed to substantiate a claim to his authority, his permitting any real miracle, in such circumstances, to be performed, would be the very same thing as if He himself, by his own power, directly effected it; just as, for what is done in our name, not ostensibly merely, but with our admitted concurrence, we become, when it is in our power to hinder it, as really responsible as if we did it ourselves.'-(p. 188.)

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Now all this is very well in theory, but it is altogether opposed to the facts of every day's experience. We might say, The same great principles forbid the supposition of God's allowing anything whatever to be done in sanction of falsehood by the instrumental agency of another.' Our notions of God's character are in opposition, not to anything that may be done' in itself, but to this as an attestation of falsehood. How does it come to pass that there is any falsehood to attest? Is not this just the old difficulty of the origin and existence of evil? To say nothing of the inconsistency of the author of Christian Ethics' (and of a part also of his treatise on miracles) basing any argument whatever upon our knowledge of God's character apart from revelation, what we know of the Almighty both from nature and the Bible is this above most else, that he will not be involved in all the responsibilities of any position in which man may desire and attempt to place him. What he may permit is wholly different from what he enjoins, and from what he does. If not, then we