It has sometimes been asked, whether Miracles are a sufficient evidence of the interposition of the Deity? under the idea that other causes, besides divine agency, might be assigned for their production. This is obviously the reverse objection to that I have as yet considered, which was founded on the assumption that they could be referred to no known cause whatever. After showing, then, that the Scripture Miracles may be ascribed to the Supreme Being, I proceed to show that they cannot reasonably be ascribed to those other causes which have been sometimes assigned for them, for instance, to unknown laws of nature, or to the secret agency of Spirits.
1. Now it is evidently unphilosophical to attribute them to the power of invisible Beings, short of God; because, independently of Scripture (the truth of which, of course, must not be assumed in this question), we have no evidence of the existence of such beings. Nature attests, indeed, the being of a God, but not of a race of intelligent creatures between Him and Man. In assigning a Miracle, therefore, to the influence of Spirits, an hypothetical cause is introduced merely to remove a difficulty. And even did analogy lead us to admit their possible existence, yet it would tend rather to disprove than to prove their power over the visible creation. They may be confined to their own province, and though superior to Man, still may be unable to do many things which he can effect; just as Man in turn is superior to birds and fishes, without having, in consequence, the power of flying or of inhabiting the water 1.
Still it may be necessary to show that on our own principles we are not open to any charge of inconsistency. That is, it has been questioned, whether, in admitting the existence and power of Spirits on the authority of Revelation, we are not in danger of invalidating the evidence upon which that authority rests. For the cogency of the argument from Miracles depends on the assumption, that interruptions in the course of nature must ultimately proceed from God; which is not true, if they may be effected by other beings without His sanction. And it must be conceded that, explicit as Scripture is in considering Miracles as signs of divine agency, it still does seem to give created Spirits some power of working them; and even, in its most literal sense, intimates the possibility of their working them in opposition to the true doctrine 2. With a view of meeting this difficulty, some writers have attempted to make a distinction between great and small, many and few Miracles; and have thus inadvertently destroyed the intelligibility of any, as the criterion of a divine interposition 3. Others, by referring to the nature of the doctrine attested, in order to determine the author of the Miracle, have exposed themselves to the plausible charge of adducing, first, the Miracle to attest the divinity of the doctrine, and then, the doctrine to prove the divinity of the Miracle 4. Others, on the contrary, have thought themselves obliged to deny the power of Spirits altogether, and to explain away the Scripture accounts of demoniacal possessions, and the narrative of our Lord’s Temptation 5. Without, however, having recourse to any of these dangerous modes of answering the objection, it may be sufficient to reply, that since, agreeably to the antecedent sentiment of reason, God has adopted Miracles as the seal of a divine message, we believe He will never suffer them to be so counterfeited as to deceive the humble inquirer. Thus the information given by Scripture in nowise undoes the original conclusions of Reason; for it anticipates the objection which itself furnishes, and by revealing the express intention of God in miraculous displays, guarantees to us that He will allow no interference of created power to embarrass the proof thence resulting, of His special interposition 6. It is unnecessary to say more on this subject; and questions concerning the existence, nature, and limits of spiritual agency will find their place when Christians are engaged in settling among themselves the doctrines of Scripture. We take it, therefore, for granted, as an obvious and almost undeniable principle, that real Miracles, i.e., interruptions in the course of nature, cannot reasonably be referred to any power but divine, because it is natural to refer an alteration in the system to its original author, and because Reason does not inform us of any other being but God exterior to nature; and lastly, because in the particular case of the Scripture Miracles, the workers of them confirm our previous judgment by expressly attributing them to Him.
2. A more subtle question remains, respecting the possible existence of causes in nature, to us unknown, by the supposed operation of which the apparent anomalies may be reconciled to the ordinary laws of the system. It has already been admitted that some difficulty will at times attend the discrimination of miraculous from merely uncommon events; and it must be borne in mind that in this, as in all questions from which demonstration is excluded, it is impossible, from the nature of the case, absolutely to disprove any, even the wildest, hypothesis which may be framed. It may freely be granted, moreover, that some of the Scripture Miracles, if they stood alone, might reasonably be referred to natural principles of which we were ignorant, or resolved into some happy combination of accidental circumstances. For our purpose, it is quite sufficient if there be a considerable number which no sober judgment would attempt to deprive of their supernatural character by any supposition of our ignorance of natural laws, or of exaggeration in the narrative. Raising the dead and giving sight to the blind by a word, feeding a multitude with the casual provisions which one individual among them had with him, healing persons at a distance, and walking on the water, are facts, even separately taken, far beyond the conceivable effects of artifice or accident; and much more so when they meet together in one and the same history. And here Hume’s argument from general experience is in point, which at least proves that the ordinary powers of nature are unequal to the production of works of this kind. It becomes, then, a balance of opposite probabilities, whether gratuitously to suppose a multitude of perfectly unknown causes, and these, moreover, meeting in one and the same history, or to have recourse to one, and that a known power, then miraculously exerted for an extraordinary and worthy object. We may safely say no sound reasoner will hesitate on which alternative to decide. While, then, a fair proportion of the Scripture Miracles are indisputably deserving of their name, but a weak objection can be derived from the case of the few which, owing to accidental circumstances, bear at the present day less decisive marks of supernatural agency. For, be it remembered (and it is a strong confirmatory proof that the Jewish and Christian Miracles are really what they profess to be) that though the miraculous character of some of them is more doubtful in one age than in another, yet the progress of Science has made no approximation to a general explication of them on natural principles. While discoveries in Optics and Chemistry have accounted for a host of apparent miracles, they hardly touch upon those of the Jewish and Christian systems. Here is no phantasmagoria to be detected, no analysis or synthesis of substances, ignitions, explosions, and other customary resources of the juggler’s art 7. But, as before, we shall best be able to estimate their character in this respect by contrasting them with other occurrences which have sometimes been considered miraculous. Thus, too, a second line of difference will be drawn between them and the mass of rival prodigies, whether religious or otherwise, to which they are often compared.
A Miracle, then, as far as it is an evidence of Divine interposition, being an ascertained anomaly in an established system, or an event without assignable physical cause, those facts, of course, have no title to the name—