WHAT IS A MIRACLE ?
THII EDITOR OF TER " EIPRITrATOR.1
SIR,—Mr. Arthur Brook, writing in the Spectator of June 27th, says that " Christianity, in bearing witness to certain miraculous events, is not pledged to any theory of the miraculous." This is no doubt true. But is any theory of the miraculous possible ? It seems to me of the nature of a miracle that it cannot be brought under any theory. I would define it, in Browning's words, though perhaps with a meaning somewhat differeht from his, aa-
"a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo, they are !"
Mr. Brook further says :—" To the saints [he means to the believers] of all ages, the natural is supernatural, and the supernatural is natural." It is natural that "the will that can" create the worlds should afterwards reveal himself to their inhabitants by miracle ; and to those who believe in God as firmly as they believe in the laws of Nature, it is easier to imagine Him working directly in miracle than through the means of the powers of Nature. This, I suppose, is what Mr. Brook means by his epigrammatic and rhetorical phrases.
I am not sure that I know what the doctrine of the Mass is, but I regard the truth of Christ abiding with his Church as a truth of that purely spiritual order where the distinction of natural and miraculous does not arise. Miracle, as I conceive it, occurs where the agencies of the invisible and spiritual world enter into the world of natural law.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
