All Modes of Divine Action Miraculous. 43 amount of testimony suffices to make him entertain the hypothesis for an instant." The assertion must be met with thorough denial: most scientific thinkers, and of the highest mental power, accept both the possibility and the actuality of miracles. Consider the meaning of such over-confident assertion. It is that a miracle seems an event without a natural cause; we say the cause is Divine, or may even be a hidden natural cause. "A miracle is essentially incomprehensible, and so far as we can understand, an impossibility." We reply-It is the height of presumption to restrict Divine action to our own understood line of things, and then call our restriction "natural law." Indeed, it is utterly absurd to contend that the so-called natural is the only and universal order of things, that there is nothing beyond, nothing preternatural, which is able to enter the order of things with which we are acquainted. "Naturæ conditor nihil in miraculis contra natura fecit, sed tantum contra illam consuetudinem quæ nobis innotuit.” The multiform revelations of an Omnipresent Power are not all identifiable with physical nature, nor limited to it; for scientific inquiry, working independently of theology, has led to the conclusion that the dynamic phenomena of Nature are a manifestation of an Omnipresent Power transcending Nature; therefore, every real advance in knowledge is certain to make us acquainted with new modes of Divine action. In fact, we know, so far as such things can be known, that the present order of things arose out of one wholly different, when energies such as now exist were not in operation. Can a man think out the creation of matter, or the eternity of matter, or the annihilation of matter, or explain the modus operandi of spirit on matter, or of matter on spirit, or of the persistence of energy—that is, of energy without beginning or end? Even if he can, he is unable to subject the action of Absolute Being to his own analysis, limit it within his own line of things, or deny Divine interference. If we know anything at all, it is that the vast synthesis of energies without us and within us are only known as they affect our consciousness. Who dreams that these are the only powers? The series of conceptions are the register of our experience, and generate beliefs in the more startling experiences of other men, from which the component assenting consciousness of men generally cannot be torn apart; consequently, belief in miracles is fundamental. The belief is proof of an attempted internal correspondence of our circumscribed being with the Infinite; and this power of thinking, or conception, is the ground of all deep faith and solemn adoration. Our process of study-1, The Divine autobiography, or image of Intelligence; 2, The existence of good and evil a real existence; 3, The world-wide consciousness of these as the ground of our moral sense; 4, Religion as the universal conviction and witness; 5, Miracles as possible and actualleads through various passages to inner chambers of investigation-i. Is the universe self-existent, without beginning, eternal? ii. Is it self-made? iii. Was it created? The first is atheistic, and offers no solution of the mystery. It is wholly incapable of conception. To assert self-existence is the denial of causation, and when we deny causation we also deny commencement. We must add to the absolute impossibility of conceiving this the fact that we have to endow matter with all the powers of mind, and give to that which is dead all the properties of life; making matter, to all intents and purposes, God. Doing this we fall into the old heathen homage of Nature, and worship Power-the phenomenal God. "To worship Power only," Dr. Arnold said, "is devil worship." Another has said-"What can be more arrogant and unbecoming than for a man to think that he has a mind and understanding in him, but yet in the universe besides is no such thing; or that those things which, with the utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend, should be moved and managed without any reason at all." 1 1 The second is pantheistic, and cannot by any symbolism pass into real conception. The nearest approach is to conceive potential existence passing into actual existence, or existence long remaining in one form, then suddenly, and of its own accord, passing into another form; but that involves 1 "Cicero De Leg." lib. ii. Hypotheses as to Origin of Things. 45 the idea of a change without a cause, which is impossible. Moreover, whence the potential existence? This requires accounting for, just as the actual existence, so the same difficulties meet us; and there is no escape except this-Nothing developed into something, or the world of phenomena is practically the Deity, who is finite, which is absurd. The third hypothesis, theism, which involves creation by Divine agency, is adopted by the most, the best, the greatest of mankind. "There is, I believe, no system of philosophy whatever in which that notion of a higher power than our own, which we mean by God, is wholly absent. The name may not be there, and even the formal idea of a God may be specially denied, and yet the thing itself may remain, so inextricably is it bound up with all human experience."1 The creative process is not to be represented as a product of manufacture, though the proceedings of a human artificer vaguely symbolise a method by which the universe might be shaped, but as the ever-changing multiform revelation of an Omnipresent Power, who is in no wise to be identified with the manifestations. The production of matter out of nothing is the real mystery; but as we are not only obliged to assume some cause, but also a first cause, or we cannot speak of causation, we say " all things are of God"-" nihil in hoc mundo fieri potest, nisi vel faciente vel permittente Deo "-and in that cause the conclusion is reached-the Godhead. In strict reasoning every one of the three suppositions, though verbally intelligible, is, through our limited capacity, incapable of actual cognition, and science cannot give any explanation. We search for one in Scripture and find it. Having found it, science educates heart and intellect to love, reverence, and partly understand it. John Locke says— "My right hand writes while my left is still; what causes rest in one and motion in the other? Nothing but my will, a thought of my mind; my thoughts only changing, the right hand rests and the left hand moves. This is matter of fact which cannot be denied; explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step will be to understand creation." " 1 "The Bible and its Critics," sect. v. p. 193: Rev. Edward Garbett. Professor Huxley, "Critiques and Addresses," states "If any one is able to make good the assertion that his theology rests upon valid evidence and sound reasoning, then it appears to me that such theology will take its place as a part of science." Verified theology is scientific: our theology is verifiable, therefore scientific. Proceed to further verification. No theory of phenomena, internal or external, can be framed without postulating an absolute existence. We speak of this absolute existence in the singular number, because the order of manifestation throughout all mental phenomena is the same as throughout all material phenomena-there is unity. If the order of these manifestations, say, for example, the complex and organised correspondence of the mind with its environment in arranging and combining various experiences received from without, and in adjusting new inner relations to new outer relations, is found to correlate with the moral facts of redemption and sanctification, and to produce the highest and purest morality, the verifying experimental process is scientific. If the other, or material order of manifestations, is given in an ancient book, written by a primitive race at a time when men had little or no conception of that scientific generalisation which now arranges in correlated groups widely separated phenomena, and possessed little or no understanding of that natural adaptation of means to ends, of which the world is now known to be full; if, nevertheless, this book, claiming to have been dictated by the Spirit of the Almighty, gives such a formula of the origin and growth of things that science, however it steps in advance, does but more clearly explain the ancient conception and revelation; the process of verification is both theologic and scientific. The integration of all natural forces into a single agency, one grand entity, God, is the grandest conception of humanity, the profoundest of scientific truths. "One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves." In Memoriam. Without revelation, taking science only for our guide, we Wording of the Divine Narrative. 47 run out the whole sounding line of human knowledge into the depths of Nature and find no bottom; we soar and soar in heavenly heights, but only to discover that there is something beyond, which, nevertheless, comes to us, is in us, and in everything around us. Then, because physical knowledge fails to explain the mystery, we go and sit with the dim-eyed old man, the genius of unbelief, described by Coleridge, who, in his cold and dreary cave, "talked much and vehemently concerning an infinite series of causes and effects, which he explained to be a string of blind men, the last of whom caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next, and so on, till they were all out of sight; and that they walked infallibly straight, without making one false step, though all were equally blind." Glad to escape from such dreary unbelief, we endeavour now to obtain some conception of revelation and the account of creation by studying-1, The manner or wording of the Divine narrative; 2, The truthfulness of the record. 1. The Manner or Wording of the Divine Narrative. "The Bible has well-nigh for ever seemed against the science of the day;" there are reasons for this disagreement. Had the account of creation accorded with the science propounded in heathen times, or as asserted in Greece and Rome, or even with that of our fathers during the last century, it would now be contemptuously rejected as utterly false. "A revelation of only so much astronomy as was known to Copernicus, would have seemed imperfect after the discoveries of Newton; and a revelation of the science of Newton would have appeared defective to Laplace; a revelation of all the chemical knowledge of the eighteenth century would have been deficient in comparison with the information of the present day, as what is now known in this science will probably appear before the termination of another age."1 If to this we add that, always and everywhere, despite the obvious disagreement, the ablest and most scientific of our race saw something in the narrative which convinced them of a real though hidden agreement with the truth-when the truth should be known; of a true science that would "Geology and Mineralogy," vol. i. p. 14: Francis T. Buckland. |