MIRACLES.
W
WHATis a miracle? A miracle is not, as Hume defined it, “somethingcontrary to the laws of nature,” but something above the laws of nature, or something that the laws of nature, in their legitimate and ordinary operations, could not produce. For instance, the laws of nature, in their legitimate and ordinary operations, from parents, can produce offspring, and bring them to manhood and womanhood. But the laws of nature, in their legitimate course of operation, never produced a man and a woman, without parents, or never brought into existence a man and a woman, at sufficient maturity to care for themselves and live, without parents. No law of nature, in its legitimate and ordinary course of operation, brought Adam and Eve into existence, at maturity, and without parents. In other words, no law or laws of nature, in their legitimate and ordinary operation, ever began the human race. In the plainest terms, no law of nature ever produced a human being without parents. In other words, it is not a miracle for children to come from parents, but it was a miracle to create the first human pair. All who admit that the human race ever had a beginning, must admit that it began by miracle. It is not a miracle for an oak to produce an acorn, nor for an acorn to produce an oak; but it is a miracle to produce anoak without an acorn, and equally a miracle to produce an acorn without an oak. The laws of nature, in the legitimate and ordinary course of their operation, never produced an acorn without an oak, or an oak without an acorn. The first acorn, or the first oak, was, unquestionably, a miracle. The first man was a miracle. The second man, the Lord from heaven, was a miracle. Isaac, the child of promise, and the only son of Abraham, as Jesus was the child of promise, and the only begotten of the Father, was a miracle. To sum all up, and express it in one sentence, everything,—every species of animal, insect and vegetable, began by miracle. The laws of nature create nothing, give us no new species or kind, but simply propagate and perpetuate that which was given by miracle at first. By the established laws of nature, the human race have been propagated and perpetuated, but the human race had its commencement in miracle.
The laws of nature never raised a man from the dead, instantaneously gave hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, or sight to the blind. No laws of nature can heal a leper in an instant, multiply “five loaves and a few small fishes,” till the amount will be sufficient to feed five thousand persons, leaving “twelve baskets full of fragments,” or enable men to speak in some fifteen or seventeen languages, never studied or learned in the ordinary way. A miracle may suspend laws of nature for the time being, do something above them, or something that they never perform; but to be a miracle at all, something must be done above all human art, device or ability, and something which we know thelaws of nature, in their legitimate course, and ordinary operation, never perform. When anything of this kind occurs, we know that it could not have taken place without foreign and direct interposition. This is a miracle; it is above and superior to all human art or device; above and superior to any thing ever done by the laws of nature, as well as different from anything they ever do.