powder, the production of magnified images of any object, the phenomena of mineral and animal magnetism, are miracles in one age, but common things in the next. Such wonders prove only the skill of the performer. Science each year adds new wonders to our store. The master of a locomotive steam-engine would have been thought greater than Jupiter Tonans or the Elohim thirty centuries ago.
3. To take the third hypothesis. There is no antecedent objection, nor metaphysical impossibility in the case. Finite Man not only does not, but cannot understand all the modes of God's action; all the laws of His Being. There may be higher beings, to whom God reveals himself in modes that we can never know, for we cannot tell the secrets of God, nor determine à priori the modes of his manifestation. In this sense a miracle is possible. The world is a perpetual miracle of this sort. Nature is the Art of God; can we fully comprehend it? Life, Being, Creation, Duration, do we understand these actual things? How then can we say to the Infinite, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; there are no more ways wherein thy Being acts?[1] Man is not the measure of God. Let us use the word in this latter sense.
II. Did Miracles occur in the case of Jesus?
This question is purely historical; to be answered, like all other historical questions, by competent testimony. Have we testimony adequate to prove the fact?
- ↑ See Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, Phila. 1841, p. vii. xxvi. and Sir John Herschel's Letter to Mr Lyell therein, p. 212; Vestiges of Nat. Hist. of Creation, p. 145, et seq. Pascal has some remarkable speculations on Miracles; Pensées, P. II. Art. 16, ed. Paris, 1839, p. 323, et seq. He defines a miracle as an effect which exceeds the natural force of the means employed to bring it about. The non-miracle is an effect which does not exceed the force, p. 342. He adds, they who effect cures by the invocation of the Devil, work no miracle, for that does not exceed the Devil's natural power! A fortiori, it is impossible for God to work a miracle. Leibnitz has some strange remarks on this subject scattered about in his disorderly writings. See what he says in reply to M. Bayle, Théodicée, Pt. III. § 248-9. See too p. 776, ed. Erdmann. See the acute remarks of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, Pt. I. qu. 101, et seq. See Theol. Quartal Schrift (Tübig.) for 1845, p. 265, et seq.; C. F. Ammon, Nova Opuscula theologica, Gött. 1803, p. 157, et seq. See Gazzaniga, Praelections theologicæ, &c., Venet. 1803, 9 vols. 4to., Vol. I. Diss. ii. c. 7, p. 71, et seq.
