SYNOPSIS.--A clearer conception of miracle approached.--Works of
Jesus once reputed miraculous not so reputed now, since not now
transcending, as once, the existing range of knowledge and
power.--This transfer of the miraculous to the natural likely to
continue.--No hard and fast line between the miraculous and the
non-miraculous.--Miracle a provisional word, its application
narrowing in the enlarging mastery of the secrets of nature and
life.
At this point it seems possible to approach a clearer understanding of
the proper meaning to attach to the generally ill-defined and hazy term
_miracle_.[27] Matthew Arnold's fantastic illustration of the idea of
miracle by supposing a pen changed to a pen-wiper may fit some miracles,
especially those of the Catholic hagiology, but, if applied to those of
Jesus, would be a caricature. In the New Testament a reputed miracle is
not any sort of wonderful work upon any sort of occasion, but an act of
benevolent will exerted for an immediate benefit,[28] and transcending
the then existing range of human intelligence to explain and power to
achieve. The historic reality of at least some such acts performed by
Jesus is acknowledged by critics as free from the faintest trace of
orthodox bias as Keim: "The picture of Jesus, the worker of miracles,
belongs to the first believers in Christ, and is no invention."
It has already been noted that a considerable number of the then reputed
miracles of Jesus, particularly his works of healing, do not now, as
then, transcend the existing range of knowledge and power, and
accordingly are no longer reputed miraculous. And one cannot reasonably
believe that a limit to the understanding and control of forces in
Nature and mind that now are more or less occult has been already
reached. It is, therefore, not incredible that some of the mighty works
of Jesus, which still transcend the existing limits of knowledge and
power, and so are still reputed miraculous, and are suspected by many as
unhistorical, may in some yet remote and riper stage of humanity be
transferred, as some have already been, to the class of the
non-miraculous and natural.
Dr. Robbins, Dean of the General Theological Seminary, New York, after
remarking that "the word _miracle_ has done more to introduce confusion
into Christian Evidences than any other," goes on to say: "To animals
certain events to them inexplicable are signs of the presence of human
intelligence and power. To men these miracles of Christ are signs of
divine intelligence and power. But how is miracle to be differentiated
from other providential dealings of God? Not by removing him further
from common events. Abstruse speculations concerning the relation of
miracles to other physical phenomena may be safely left to the
adjustment of an age which shall have advanced to a more perfect
synthesis of knowledge than the present can boast."[29]
The truth to which such considerations conduct is, that no hard and fast
line can be drawn between the miraculous and the non-miraculous. To the
untutored mind, like that of the savage who thought it miraculous that a
chip with a message written on it had talked to the recipient, the
simplest thing that he cannot explain is miraculous: "_omne ignotum pro
mirifico_," said Tacitus. As the range of knowledge and power widens,
the range of the miraculous narrows correspondingly. Some twenty years
since, the International Sunday-school Lessons employed as a proof of
the divinity of Christ the reputedly miraculous knowledge which he
evinced in his first interview with Nathanael of a solitary hour in
Nathanael's experience.[30] Since then it has been demonstrated[31] by
psychical research that the natural order of the world includes
telepathy, and the range of the miraculous has been correspondingly
reduced without detriment to the argument for the divinity of Christ,
now rested on less precarious ground.
Under such conditions as we have reviewed a miracle cannot always be one
and the same thing. Miracle must therefore be defined as being what our
whole course of thought has suggested that it is: in general, an elastic
word; in particular, a provisional word,--a word whose application
narrows with the enlarging range of human knowledge[32] and power which
for the time it transcends; a word whose history, in its record of
ranges already transcended, prompts expectation that ranges still beyond
may be transcended in the illimitable progress of mankind. Professor Le
Conte says that miracle is "an occurrence or a phenomenon according to a
law higher than any yet known." Thus it is a case of human ignorance,
not of divine interference.
On the other hand, we must believe that the goal of progress is a flying
goal; that human attainment can never reach finality unless men cease to
be. And so all widening of human knowledge and power must ever disclose
further limitations to be transcended. There will always be a _Beyond_,
in which dwells the secret of laws still undiscovered, that underlie
mysteries unrevealed and marvels unexplained. This will have to be
admitted, especially, by those to whom the marvellous is synonymous
with the incredible. We have not been able to eviscerate even these
prosaic and matter-of-fact modern times of marvels whose secret lies in
the yet uncatalogued or indefinable powers of the mysterious agent that
we name _life_: witness many well verified facts recorded by the Society
for Psychical Research.[33] How, then, is it consistent to affirm that
no such marvels in ancient records are historical realities? Nay, may it
not be true that the ancient days of seers and prophets, the days of
Jesus, days of the sublime strivings of great and lonely souls for
closer converse with the Infinite Spirit behind his mask of Nature,
offered better conditions for marvellous experiences and deeds than
these days of scientific laboratories and factories, and world-markets
and world-politics?