ARE MIRACLES PRECLUDED BY THE LAWS OF NATURE?
IT has long been with infidels a standing argument against Christianity, that its miracles are contrary to the laws of nature, and therefore unworthy to be credited. The laws of nature, say they, are uniform; we never knew them vary; but we have often found human testimony false; hence, when the two are in conflict, we are bound as philosophers to reject the uncertain in favor of the certain. It becomes us therefore to inquire, What does nature teach? Has she any testimony to offer on this subject, and what is it? Has she made any laws that bind the action of the Eternal? We reply, Nature makes no laws. To make laws requires intelligence; but of this, nature is not possessed. She cannot tell why it would be better to impress upon the planets two forces than one; if she can, then she becomes mind, and is raised to the rank of divinity, an elevation which many would, no doubt, accord her, if by that means they could disprove the existence of a God. Nature has no laws except what God has given her. The term "laws of nature" appears to be a philosophical expression, invented for the purpose of avoiding any direct recognition of them as God's laws. So of the new phrase which Darwin has invented, "natural selection," as though nature selected such individuals and species as are best adapted to existing circumstances and conditions, and rejected the rest. Nature makes no selection. The phrase is an absurdity. The great discovery designated by its author, as "natural selection," is, in plain terms, simply this: that those races which are best adapted to the conditions of life, live, whilst those which are less adapted become extinct. We have not the least reason for supposing there is any such thing in the universe as force, except what comes from mind. One of the primary characteristics of matter is, that it is inert. It cannot move of itself, nor when put in motion, can it of itself cease from moving. The Almighty impresses upon a particle, or collection of particles, motion in a straight line, and were there no other force to counteract, these particles would move on in a right line forever. But he also impresses matter with gravitation, and forthwith suns and systems are imbued with a compound motion, projecting them in wonderful order through the orbits to which this union of forces confines them. The power to move the human frame comes from the mind. We have a certain portion of matter included within our physical organism, and connected with the mind by nerves and muscles through which that matter is controlled; and when we will that the hand should rise, it rises; or that the foot should fall, it falls. The power that we have over a hand, but in higher perfection, God has over every particle of matter in the universe. Every seed that germinates does so by means of force, impressed by the Creator; every winged ray of light is sent on its errand by God's hand; every hue that variegates the face of nature is an impress of his will. Man acts upon matter indirectly as well as directly; the motion which he communicates to the hand is transmitted to the implement which the hand wields, and is thus communicated to other bodies with which it comes in contact. God acts in like manner; his machines are at work throughout the whole system of nature. One of the most wondrous laws he has given her is that each organized form shall reproduce itself, like giving birth to like, from the hyssop under the wall to the cedar of Lebanon; from the mammoth to the animalcula; from nervous man to the senseless polyp. The same rule is extended to other than organic substances; anger begets anger; love begets love; smile begets smile; terror begets terror; virtue and vice spread their likeness wherever they can find objects to influence; the thoughts and opinions of one man reflect themselves in the thoughts and opinions of others; a pulsation of music multiplies itself through all the air; a single ripple becomes a thousand waves; flame spreads flame; disease propagates disease; so far as our knowledge extends, image mirrors image, throughout the whole extent of being. This is but one of the Creator's laws; he has made others of like universality in their application, and under them he has set the wheels of nature in motion. But will he never change their modes of operation? Will he never stop the machine? Will not the wheels be sometimes turned off the track in order to a special end? Interrogate nature on this point. What says reason? What says probability? What says analogy? Does not the mower's scythe sometimes make a balk in order to spare a bird's nest? If mind be the force which moves all this machinery we must expect there will be variations. Occasional deviation from established rules is the prerogative of intelligence. Without any actual evidence on the subject, it would be vastly more reasonable to suppose there would be special interferences with nature's laws, than that there would be none. That there should never be a miracle, would be the greatest miracle of all. It would lead almost inevitably, to the atheist's conclusion, that there is no God! Hence the importance of miracles, in any system of religion that is expected to secure credence. So far from a religion of miracles being repugnant to the common sense of mankind, we find that the inhabitants of all countries, when unsophisticated by science, are believers in supernatural interpositions of the Deity. The religious want in man's nature creates a necessity for something above and beyond the operation of physical causes. A supernatural religion man will have, must have, by the very constitution of his being. Infidels, atheists even, are obliged to resort to their superstitions as a substitute for the revelation they have discarded. Christianity can only be rejected from dislike to its doctrines. The miracles of the Old and New Testaments are certified to us by an amount of evidence unequalled in any other department of human history. Writers in defense of Christianity have portrayed and argued these evidences with such clearness and force, that nothing further in this direction can be desired. And yet there will, no doubt, be skeptics till the day when the Son of man shall appear in the clouds of heaven. Men who claim to be philosophers profess their inability to accept the Scripture miracles. They would not be so averse to a belief in the special exercise of omnipotent power, if it were only exerted on great occasions. They would allow that the Creator may have started the primordial germs of vegetable and animal life; they would admit the reasonableness of his setting the worlds in motion; they would feel no strong repugnance to the idea of a general divine government through the operation of natural causes; but a special providence, a universality and minuteness of direction that includes the sparrow's fall, a positive interference with the course of nature for the sake of rewarding or punishing, advancing or preventing the purposes of mankind; above all, the bestowment of supernatural power on mortals, in answer to faith and prayer, the connection, through an atoning Mediator and an intercommunicating Spirit, of man with his Maker; these are doctrines incomprehensible to the carnal man, whose only life is the life of the flesh, who has no spiritual experience, who "receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can know them, because they are spiritually discerned." It is here that our treatises in defense of Christianity fail; and fail they always must, to a greater or less degree, not through the imperfection of evidence, but through the lack of spiritual perception, the blind eye, and the deaf ear, and the pulseless heart of the dead sinner to whom the reasoning is addressed. The church must rely for its power, not on proofs82and arguments, but on present spiritual experience. It is the living faith of the living members of Christ's living spiritual body that can lay hold on heavenly promises, bring down heavenly power, and scatter heavenly influences through an unbelieving world. The conversion of sinners is as really the result of supernatural interposition as the raising of the dead to life. With Christ and his apostles the pardon of sins stood on the same footing as other supernatural gifts. The mighty Healer not only said, "Rise and walk," but also, "Thy sins be forgiven thee!" The word that healed and the word that saved were one. "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and if he has committed sins they shall be forgiven." It cannot be that the power of faith is obsolete. It cannot be that Christ and his apostles would have insisted with such earnestness upon the importance of faith, if it were not to be connected with spiritual heavenly gifts to the end of time. Faith was a leading subject in all our Lord's discourses. His life was a continued example of its perfect exercise. He spoke to the tossing waves, and every crested billow felt the instant check of an omnipotent rein. Come, said he to Peter, and the sea became solid to his tread. Money was wanted, and the magnetic thread that stretches from the Creator's throne to the remotest atom of the universe, draws the fish with his treasure to Peter's hook. Bear no more fruit, said he to the fig-tree, and the life force that sent up rich juices through trunk, and branch, and leaf, ceased its play. It was not as man, but as God, that he spoke, thought the disciples. Nay, said the Master, ye also, if ye have faith, can do not only the same, but even greater things. It is impossible for us to read Paul's enumeration, in the eleventh of Hebrews, of what faith has done, without feeling that the saints of old knew something of a power with God which Christians at the present day have in a great measure lost. Nearly all these instances of faith were attended by supernatural tokens of divine favor; the acceptance of Abel's offering; the translation of Enoch; the preservation of Noah; the miraculous interpositions in favor of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and Moses. Faith cried, and the waters opened; faith blew the ram's horn, and unseen forces scattered the city walls; Samson prayed, and a spiritual influence strung every nerve with a superhuman strength; prophets were permitted to look into futurity; women received their dead restored to life; through faith persecuted saints "stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong." This is the very faith of which the Apostle is speaking, when he tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. Then Christians must all possess it. They may have it in different degrees, but if they are without it, the Scriptures pronounce them earthly, sensual, having not the Spirit. Only the living Christian is properly prepared to resist the assaults of infidelity. He has the witness within himself; the supernatural inflowing of the divine life. This is the best of all evidence. While the merely intellectual believer is perpetually weighing human testimony, harassed with doubt and anxiety, lest some new discovery of geology, or astronomy, or history, should be found to conflict with the sacred record, he that has the Spirit feels no such perturbation; no speculations or reasonings of philosophers can shake the basis of his faith, for it rests on personal experience; he can as soon be persuaded that his physical life is a dream or a delusion, as that the higher life infused into his soul by the Spirit of holiness, is not a blessed and divine reality. He has not only the inward consciousness of a joyous communion with heaven, but he occasionally experiences in the course of his pilgrimage, direct and unmistakable answers to prayer, such as bring with them the same evidence of supernatural interposition as did the miracles of old.—Am. Baptist.