Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

show that, in so far as these terms have any meaning at all, they are simply evasions, not solutions, of a difficulty. Dr. Trench is quite sensible of the danger in which the definition of miracles places them, and how fatal to his argument it would be to admit that they are contrary to the order of nature. "The miracle," he protests, "is not thus unnatural; nor could it be such, 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 archbishop in this, however, is clearly arguing from nature to miracles, and not from miracles to nature. He does not, of course, know what miracles really are, but as he recognizes that the order of nature must be maintained, he is forced to assert that miracles are not contrary to nature. Hé repudiates the idea of their being natural phenomena, and yet attempts to deny that they are unnatural. They must either be the one or the other. The archbishop, besides; forgets that he ascribes miracles to Satan as well as to God. Indeed, that his distinction is purely imaginary, and inconsistent with the alleged facts of Scriptural miracles, is apparent from Dr. Trench's own illustrations. The whole argument is a mere quibble of words to evade a palpable dilemma. Dr. Newman does not fall into this error, and more boldly faces the difficulty. He admits that the Scripture miracles "innovate upon the impressions which are made upon us by the order and the laws of the natural world ;" and that walking on the sea, or the resurrection of the dead, is a plain reversal of its laws."3

[ocr errors]

1 Notes on Miracles, p. 15.

Two Essays on Scripture Miracles, &c., p. 154.

* Ib., p. 158.

Take, for instance, the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Five thousand people are fed upon five barley loaves and two small fishes: "and they took up of the fragments which remained twelve baskets full." Dr. Trench is forced to renounce all help in explaining this miracle from natural analogies, and he admits: "We must simply behold in the multiplying of the bread" (and fishes?) "an act of Divine omnipotence on His part who was the Word of God,-not, indeed, now as at the first, of absolute creation out of nothing, since there was a substratum to work on in the original loaves and fishes, but an act of creative accretion." It will scarcely be argued by any one that such an "act of Divine omnipotence" and "creative accretion" as this multiplication of five baked loaves and two small fishes is not contrary to the order of nature. For Dr. Trench has himself pointed out that there must be interposition of man's art here, and that "a grain of wheat could never by itself, and according to the laws of natural development, issue in a loaf of bread."4

Undaunted by, or rather unconscious of, such contradictions, the archbishop proceeds with his argument, and with new definitions of the miraculous. So far from being disorder of nature, he continues with audacious precision: "the true miracle is a higher and a purer

1 Matt. xiv. 20.

2Notes on Miracles, p. 274 f.

3 Dr. Newman referring to this amongst other miracles as "a far greater innovation upon the economy of nature than the miracles of the Church upon the economy of Scripture," says: "There is nothing, for instance, in nature at all to parallel and mitigate the wonderful history of the multiplication of an artificially prepared substance, such as bread." Two Essays, p. 157 f.

4 Notes on Miracles, p. 274.

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." In that "higher and purer nature" can a grain of wheat issue in a loaf of bread? We have only to apply this theory to the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes to perceive how completely it is the creation of Dr. Trench's poetical fancy.

These passages fairly illustrate the purely imaginary and arbitrary nature of the definitions which those who maintain the reality and supernatural character of miracles give of them. That explanation is generally adopted which seems most convenient at the moment, and none ever passes, or, indeed, ever can pass, beyond the limits of assumption. The favourite hypothesis is that which ascribes miracles to the action of unknown law. Archbishop Trench naturally adopts it: "We should see in the miracle," he says, "not the infraction of a law, but the neutralizing of a lower law, the suspension of it for a time by a higher;" and he asks with indignation, whence we dare conclude that, because we know of no powers sufficient to produce miracles, none exist. "They exceed the laws of our nature; but it does not therefore follow that they exceed the laws of all nature."2 It is not easy

1 Notes on Miracles, p. 13.

2 Notes on Miracles, p. 16. Canon Liddon writes on the evidential purpose of miracles and their nature, as follows: "But how is man enabled to identify the Author of this law within him" (which the highest instincts of the human conscience derive from the Christian Revelation and the life of Christ), "perfectly reflected as it is, in the Christ, with the Author of the law of the Universe without him? The answer is, by miracle. Miracle is an innovation upon physical law,—or at least a suspension of some lower physical law by the intervention of a higher one,

VOL. I.

D

to follow the distinction here between "our nature" and "all nature," since the order of nature, by which miracles are judged, is, so far as knowledge goes, universal, and we have no grounds for assuming that there is any other.

The same hypothesis is elaborated by Dr. Mozley. Assuming the facts of miracles, he proceeds to discuss the question of their "referribleness to unknown law,” in which expression he includes both "unknown law, or unknown connexion with known law."

Taking first the supposition of unknown connection with known law, Dr. Mozley argues that, as a law of nature, in the scientific sense, cannot possibly produce single or isolated facts, it follows that no isolated or exceptional event can come under a law of nature by direct observation, but, if it comes under it at all, it can only do so by some explanation, which takes it out of its isolation and joins it to a class of facts, whose recurrence indeed constitutes the law. Now Dr. Mozley admits that no explanation can be given by which miracles can have an unknown connexion with known law. Taking the largest class of miracles, bodily cures, the correspondence between a simple command or prophetic notification and the cure is the chief characteristic of miracles, and distinguishes them from mere marvels.

-in the interests of moral law. The historical fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead identifies the Lord of physical life and death with the Legislator of the Sermon on the Mount. Miracle is the certificate of identity between the Lord of Nature and the Lord of Conscience,--the proof that He is really a Moral Being who subordinates physical to moral interests. Miracle is the meeting-point between intellect and the moral sense, because it announces the answer to the efforts and yearnings alike of the moral sense and the intellect; because it announces revelation." Some Elements of Religion, Lent Lectures, 1870. H. P. Liddon, D.D., Canon of St. Paul's, 1872, p. 74 f.

[blocks in formation]

No violation of any law of nature takes place in either the cure or the prophetic announcement taken separately, but the two, taken together, are the proof of superhuman agency. Dr. Mozley concludes that no physical hypothesis can be framed accounting for the superhuman knowledge and power involved in this class of miracles, supposing the miracles to stand as they are recorded in Scripture.1

Dr. Mozley then shifts the inquiry to the other and different question, whether miracles may not be instances of laws which are as yet wholly unknown.2 This is generally called a question of "higher law," -that is to say, a law which comprehends under itself two or more lower or less wide laws. And the principle would be applicable to miracles by supposing the existence of an unknown law, hereafter to be discovered, under which miracles would come, and then considering whether this new law of miracles, and the old law of common facts, might not both be reducible to a still more general law which comprehended them both. Now a law of nature, in the scientific sense, caunot exist without a class of facts which comes under it, and in reality constitutes the law; but Dr. Mozley of course recognizes that the discovery of such a law of miracles would necessarily involve the discovery of fresh miracles, for to talk of a law of miracles without miracles would be an absurdity. The supposition of the discovery of such a law of miracles, however, would be tantamount to the supposition of a future new order of nature, from which it immediately follows that the whole supposition is irrelevant and futile as regards the present question.*

1

1 Bampton Lectures, 1865, pp. 145–153. 3 lb., p. 154 f.

2 lb., pp. 153–159. 4 lb., p. 156.

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »