Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-06-15
MIRACLES AND LAW.
Nothing Impossible or Improbable
in the Marvellous Facts
SET DOWN IN THE SCRIPTURES.
The Superiority Of the Supreme Will Re-
fected in Human Will.
ONE MIRACLE THAT is UNDIspUTED
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH. ]

inference as to prayer. Since God Is, prayer
is both helpful and efectual. 1t is helpful
because it is the act of communion with
God. In prayer God and the soul meet. It
is effectual because it receives an answer.
The answer may be spiritual blessing or q
material blessing. The relation of prayer to
spiritual blessings is expressed in the word
readiness" Prayer is the reaching forth
of our hands to meet Gods hand. And since
God cannot grant spiritual blessings where
they are not desired, prayer for spiritual
things is necessary. The relation OF prayer
to material blessings is expressed in the
word recognition. God always does what
is best. Whether we pray or not, he will
do that. Right prayer is always prefaced
by the desire that Gods will alone may be
done. It is not an endeavor to change the
will of God. It is recognition, an e1-
preston, realization of mans dependence
upon God. 1t asks no other answer than
the perfect fulfllment of Gods wise will.
We come to-day to the inference as to
miracles. A miracle is q marvellous thing,
wrought by the direct will of God for a
moral purpose. There are many marvellous
things in the world, but a miracle differs
from all others in what precedes it and what
follows it. It is preceded by direct act OF
God, which is its cause. 1t is followed BY a
moral or religious lesson, which is its effect.
A miracle is not q contradiction of the laws
of nature. It is the result of the working of
q law higher than any that we know, and
corresponding to the working of the human
will. The miraculous is the result of the
entrance into natural law of the will of God.
THE SWAY OF NATURAL LAWS.
It is a part of our intellectual duty to
minimize the miraculous. God is forever
working in the world, and according to
methods which are SO orderly that we call
them law. 1t has been only by little and
little that Gods orderly working has come
10 be understood. It was thought at first
that everything was extraordinary. But
step by step, that which men have con-
s1dered to be miraculous has come to be
recognized as under law. 1t is no longer
thought, for example, that comets are signs
set in the sky to herald some divine vista
tion of disaster. Gradually, year by year,
the miraculous has been minimized.
With this minimizing of the miraculous
all good people ought to be in sympathy,
because we want to know the truth about
God, and nothing less than that. We are not
behaving reverently toward Him if we try to
make out that in case where He really
worked only in an ordinary way, He worked
in some extraordinary and miraculous way.
What we want to know is how God really
works. 1t is only the truth which is rever-
ent. which is worthy of God, which is genu-
inely orthodox. Falsehood and mistake in
this matter of the miraculous have entered
into history as superstition, witchcraft and
miserable delusions from which this mini
mizing of the miraculous has set us free.
We ought TO sympathize with all honest en-
deavors to discover how God really works.
would not have this sYmpa hy with
drawn, even when this criticism of the
miraculous enters the pages of the Bible.
Here, too-here, of all places-we want the
truth. If there is any way of explaining
anything here otherwise than by miracle, we
want to know it. IT there is any mistake
about the suns standing still at the COM
mand OF Hebrew captain, or any clearing
away of that difficulty Gas there is) we want
to know it.
NOT ALL IS GOLD THAT GLITTERs.
The minimizing of the miraculous is an
honest search after the real truth about God.
And with all such seeking we ought to be
in sympathy. L would not for a moment
claim that all which seems miraculous in
Holy. Scripture is miraculous. Christ's
miracles OF healing, for example, have
countless anaIogies in medical experience.
We are only beginning to understand
little OF the marvellous influence of the mind
over the body. One of these days we may
learn that higher law, which Christ knew,
which will make this whole class of
miracles" as natural and orderly as the
courses of the comets.
The point at which we decline to follow
some minimizing of the miraculous is that
place in the path where the road turns off
toward universal denial. So far as this
alleged miracle, or that. is concerned we are
perfectly ready, if truth suggests, to affirm
that this particular miracle never happened.
But to make that into universal PROPOSE
tion and to declare that miracles never
happen" is quite another thing. Even into
this comprehensive denial we would be
quite ready to follow if truth would lead the
way. But truth, as we interpret it, stops
this side OF that. The denial of
the miraculous, as it appears to us, goes in
the face of probability of reason, and of
fact.
There are three forms in which the denial
of the miraculous may be stated. It may be
declared that the miraculous Q) is impossi-
BILE, or (2) that it is improbable, or (3) that
it is unverihable.
Is the miraculous impossible? It will not
take US long to set a reasonable negative
after that question.
MIRACLES CERTAINLY POSSIBLE.
Remember that the first promises in all
our arguments in these latter articles is the
fact of the existence of God. We are con-
sidering certain inferences which follow from
the truth that God is. Now the attack
upon the miraculous which is made bv those
uho dopu ifa itu ic
the word claw" But what is Law? It is
simply Gods ordinary way of working God
deals SO orderly and uniformly with the
world of nature that we can predict the
future from the past. There are some men
who are SO punctual that people can set their
watches by them. But there is nothing
which compels the uniformity of this order.
The past does not bind the future. It is
true that all things are so 1ntertwisted, SO
dependent each upon another, so held in
balance by this which we call law, that any
loosing OF law, and, still more, any breaking
Of Law, would hurry the whole creation into
chaos. But no intelligent theologisn will
think OF maintaining that the miraculous is
either the breaking or even loosing of law. 1t |
is simply the entrance of higher law. God |
cannot contradict Himself, but God can
deal differently with the world if He will.
The best illustration of the miraculous is |
the making OF the human will. We live in |
the midst OF the world of law, but we are
every moment shaping, guiding and direct
ing the action of law. Will uses law. II |
your child asks you to lift him up, must |
you answer, MY child, that is forbidden
by law. the law of gravltation is all the
lime pulling you down." You can, by your
will, put different law in operation and |
yet your child on your shoulder. The
is simply the devine will shap- |
ng, guiding and directing law, just as the |