MIRACLE, anything wonderful, beyond human power, and deviating from the common action of nature, a supernatural event. The term is particularly associated with the supernatural factors in Christianity. To the Lat. miraculum correspond Gr.
7ipas in the New Testament, and Heb. x c (Exod. xv. I i ; Dan. xii. 6) in the Old Testament. Other terms used in the New Testament are ainict,uts "with reference to the power residing in the miracle worker" (cf. Deut. iii. 24 and m', Num. xvi. 3o), and crin.LeCov "with reference to the character or claims of which it was the witness and guarantee" (cf. nini Exod. iv. 8) ; that the power is assumed to be from God is shown by the phrases rvelq..tart 0€01) (Matt. xii. 28; cf. Luke iv. i8) and (Sway Nob (Luke xi. 2o).
The two conceptions once common in the Christian church, that on the one hand miracles involved an interference with the forces and a suspension of the laws of nature, and that, on the other hand, as this could be effected only by divine power, they served as credentials of a divine revelation, are now generally abandoned. As regards the first point, it is now generally held that miracles are exceptions to the order of nature as known in our common experience ; and as regards the second, that miracles are constitu ent elements in the divine revelation, deeds which display the divine character and purpose; that they are signs and not merely seals of truth. Various theories have been advanced which en deavour to discover the means by which the exceptional occurrence is brought about; but the explanation is merely hypothetical, and we are not helped in conceiving the mode of the divine activity in the working of miracles. The important consideration from the religious standpoint is that God's activity should be fully recognised.
An attempt has been made to discover a natural law which will explain some at least of the miracles of Jesus. Matthew Arnold (Literature and Dogma, pp. 143-144) and Harnack (Das W esen des Cliristentums, p. i8) ascribe the healing miracles to the com manding influence of so great a personality as Jesus. While recent
psycho-therapy (auto- or hetero-suggestion) lends some support to the theory it may be pointed out : that the nature or cos mical miracles—feeding of the five thousand, stilling of the storm, withering of the fig-tree—are as well attested as the miracles of healing; (2) that many of the diseases, the cure of which is re ported, are of a kind with which moral therapeutics could not effect anything (see Dr. R. J. Ryle in Hibbert Journal V. 586) ; (3) that Christ never failed to ascribe His power to the Father dwelling in Him. Should medical research prove that organic diseases as well as functional disorders, dependent on neurotic conditions, yield to such treatment, Jesus' use of the method in anticipation of this long development of medical science, would demand explanation. Even if it be shown that in His healing acts He was in His compassion for man, and confidence in God bringing into play hitherto unsuspected resources in Himself or in others, His transcendence personally of His age and surround ings would remain.
An attempt is made to get rid of the distinctive nature of miracle when the exceptionalness of the events so regarded is reduced to a new subjective mode of regarding natural phenom ena. H. E. G. Paulus dismisses the miracles as "exaggerations or misapprehensions of quite ordinary events." A. Ritschl has been unjustly charged with this treatment of miracles. But what he emphasizes is on the one hand the close connection between the conception of miracles and the belief in divine providence, and on the other the compatibility between miracles and the order of nature. He declines to regard miracles as divine action contrary to the laws of nature. So for Schleiermacher "miracle is neither explicable from nature alone, nor entirely alien to it." What both Ritschl and Schleiermacher insist on is that the belief in miracles is inseparable from the belief in God, and in God as immanent in nature, not only directing and controlling its ex istent forces, but also as initiating new stages consistent with the old in its progressive development.