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THE MIRACLES OF JESUS, NEITHER

to interrupt, but to disclose the order of nature. And yet it certainly is an interruption of natural laws, if the order of our experience is synonymous with the order of nature. Upon this supposition too, if a body were now discovered in the depths of space, if its direction and size were ascertained, and it were found that it would in its course inevitably throw the whole solar system into the greatest confusion, it ought to be regarded as menacing the integrity of Nature. As well might the surge that dashes the canoe in fragments upon the rocks be so considered. True Science would not reason thus. It would find no faint consolation, under the awful prospect, in the sublime persuasion that a new development of the harmony of nature was at hand. In truth, it is now an established and indispensable principle in all inquiries into the physical world, to regard every new fact, when once fully attested, not as an interruption of natural laws, but as pointing to some law before unknown. It may infringe and throw into confusion all the little theories of man concerning the order of the Universe, rendering them altogether worthless. But it comes to reveal that order more clearly, to assist the human mind to approach nearer to the grand harmony of Nature.

Let us look now at the extraordinary facts related in the New Testament. At the word or the touch of Jesus, diseases vanished, the lame walked, the blind received sight, and the dead were raised. Such, for the most part, are the wonderful works ascribed to him. When these facts are considered, under all the circumstances under

DEPARTURES FROM NATURE NOR IMPOSSIBILITIES.

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which they are represented to have taken place, no man can affirm that they lie beyond the boundaries of possibility. They fall not, it is true, within the limits of our experience; but it cannot be maintained that they are impossible in the nature of things, because the nature of the things concerned is but very partially known. For the same reason, they cannot be pronounced interruptions of the laws of nature. Before we pronounce the resurrection of a dead man to life, startling as it may be, an absolute impossibility, or a departure from natural laws, we ought to know what life* is, and death; what the extent of the change to which we give this name, what are the relations between the body and the central principle of animation, the mind or soul, and how these relations are affected by what we call death. We are apt to fancy, that we know a great deal about these things. How very little do we absolutely know! We talk with a confidence, as groundless as it is unconscious, about the

"A savage, who saw the operation of a number of power-looms, weaving stockings, cease at once on the stopping of a wheel, might well imagine that the motive force was in the wheel; he could not know that it more immediately depended upon the steam, and ultimately upon a fire below a concealed boiler. The philosopher sees the fire which is the cause of the motion of this complicated machinery, so unintelligible to the savage; but both are equally ignorant of the Divine fire which is the cause of the mechanism of organised structures.”—(Sir H. Davy.)—Surely then, in the name of all philosophy, we should take care how we talk of impossibilities on the one hand, or violations of the laws of Nature on the other, in cases where life and its functions and phenomena are concerned.

160

WE KNOW NOT THE LIMITS

spirit's forsaking the body with the last breath, or of its slumbering in the dust for ages. But these are the merest human suppositions. Every one who admits the authority of Christianity, and knows how to separate its substance from its forms, must be perfectly aware that our religion establishes nothing respecting death, save that it is not the extinction of our being. How it affects the mode of our existence is a matter, upon which the constitution of our spiritual nature and the analogies of creation may throw more or less light, but we have no direct information. We cannot tell the precise moment at which the connexion of our being with its material frame is dissolved, and the influence of each over the other is irrevocably terminated. "The natural world," observes Dr. Channing, in the Lecture from which I have quoted, "contains no provisions or arrangements for reviving the dead. The sun and the rain, which cover the tomb with verdure, send no vital influence to the mouldering body. The researches of science detect no secret processes for restoring the lost powers of life." If, as the language implies, by the natural world is meant only the physical world, these assertions may be admitted. But the physical world is but a very small, and an inferior part of the actually existing and present world of nature. But if in the natural world here mentioned, is meant to be included the moral and intellectual, or spiritual system, which exists in mysterious union and intimate fellowship with the material creation, then I beg leave to say that these declarations are made without authority. For who has yet ex

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plored the spiritual world? Who hath scanned the laws of mind? Who hath weighed its mighty forces as in a balance? Who, for instance, will venture to set limits to the power of a mind of transcendent greatness, like that which was manifested in the humble form of the Man of Nazareth? These questions are not put blindly and at random. All will acknowledge-my respected friend, from whose views I presume to dissent, would be among the very last to deny—the existence and vastness of moral power. Is it not from the moral world that those demonstrations issue which create in us the deepest, divinest sentiment of power? Does not all other force fade into a vision in comparison with moral force? Does not every

our minds, that

thing intimate more or less directly to the central and sustaining energy of the Universe is of a spiritual nature; that He whom we call God, is God, Almighty and Everlasting, because He is a Spirit-a perfect mind, and in his spiritual essence, in his Rectitude, Love, and Wisdom is the hiding of his Power? I say again, then, that we are not at liberty to pronounce the restoration of a dead man to life, a natural impossibility, or a violation of nature, until we know what death is, and life; what the influence of the mind upon the body, and when that influence ceases, and, more than all, what are the limits of the power with which God may possess a mind of unequalled purity, wisdom and exaltation, like the mind of Jesus Christ, without any violation of the laws of its being. A phenomenon, the elements whereof are but so imperfectly known, purporting to

1

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WHAT MANNER OF MAN IS THIS,

take place through the agency of such a being as the man of Nazareth, is not to be regarded as essentially incredible on the one hand, nor as an interruption of the laws of Nature on the other, without-so I venture to conclude-a manifest disregard of the soundest principles of thought.

'Such a being as the Man of Nazareth! But what sort of a being was he?' is a question that will be asked. I admit, the exclamation of his disciples may well be repeated, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!" There are a great many kinds of men. There is an immense variety of human spirits. As one star differs from another star in glory, so does man differ from man. What different and amazing powers have been exhibited in different individuals! What an unconscious intuition into the mysteries of numbers in one, and into the workings of the human heart in another ! But Jesus Christ was such a man as has never existed before nor since. I grant this freely, fully. I can form no idea of an angelic existence, that transcends my conception of the moral elevation of his nature. I concede, also, with equal readiness, that there was nothing in the circumstances of the times at all ade

quate to the production of such a being. Then, it will be said, here was a miracle. It is a miracle-a mighty miracle; and I use this term not merely in the sense of a wonder, but as expressing a fact referrible to no law, depending upon no condition, save the pure Free-Will, the immediate Volition of the Everlasting Father. However common it may be to think otherwise, however plausible