We may accept Dorner's definition as adequate and satisfac tory. "Miracles are sensuously cognizable events, not compre hensible on the ground of the causality of Nature and the given system of Nature as such, but essentially on the ground of God's free action alone. Such facts find their possibility in the con stitution of nature and God's living relation to it, their necessity I in the aim of revelation, which they subserve" (System of Chr.
Doc. II. p. 161). By the first clause inward moral and religious changes due to the operation of the Spirit of God in man are excluded, and rightly so (see INSPIRATION). The negative aspect of miracles is that they are not explicable by the order of nature as we know it ; the positive that owing to their character we are led to refer them directly to the divine causality. When the ex istence of God is denied (atheism) or His nature is declared un knowable (agnosticism), or He is identified with nature itself (pantheism), or He is so distinguished from the world that His free action is excluded from the course of nature (deism), miracle is necessarily denied. It is only the theistic view of God as personal power—that is as free-will ever present and ever active in the world,—which leaves room for miracles. Although the possi bility of miracles is often confidently denied, such denial rests on an unproved assumption; since we do not know the continuity of nature so thoroughly as to be able to declare that this or that event is necessarily an interruption of it.
Lotze has shown, not only how the possibility of miracles can be conceived (Mikrokosmos III. 364) ; but even that the mode of the divine working may be made intelligible (op. cit. II. 54).
If we conceive God as personal, and His will as related to the course of nature analogously to the relation of the human will to the human body, then the laws of nature may be regarded as habits of the divine activity, and miracles as unusual acts which, while consistent with the divine character, mark a new stage in the fulfilment of the purpose of God.
The doctrine of Evolution, instead of increasing the difficulty of conceiving the possibility of miracle, decreases it ; for it pre sents to us the universe as an uncompleted process, and one in which there is no absolute continuity on the phenomenal side; for life and mind are inexplicable by their physical antecedents, and there is not only room for, but need of, the divine initiative, a creative as well as conservative co-operation of God with nature. Such an absolute continuity is sometimes assumed without war rant ; but Descartes already recognized that the world was no con tinuous process, "Tria mirabilia fecit Dominus; res ex nihilo, liberum arbitrium et hominem Deum." The theory of psycho
physical parallelism recognizes that while there is a correspondence between mental and material phenomena, changes in the mind and changes in the brain, the former cannot be explained by the latter, as the transition from the one to the other is unthinkable. William James distinguishes the transmissive function of the brain from the productive in relation to thought, and admits only the former, and not the latter (Human Immortality p. 32). Thus as life is transcendent and yet immanent in body, and mind in brain, and both utilize their organs, so God, transcendent and immanent, uses the course of nature for His own ends; and the emergence both of life and mind in that course of nature evi dences such a divine initiative as is assumed in the recognition of the possibility of miracles. For such an initiative there must be adequate reason; it must be prepared for in the previous process, and it must be necessary to further progress.
The proof of the possibility of miracle leads us inevitably to the inquiry regarding the necessity or the sufficient reason of miracles. The necessity of miracles is displayed in their connec tion with the divine revelation ; but this connection may be con ceived in two ways. The miracles may be regarded as the cre dentials of the agents of divine revelation, as by Butler (Analogy part II. Chap. vii). This view, however, is now generally aban doned, for it is recognized that acts of superhuman power, even if established by adequate historical evidence, do not necessarily certify their divine origin. Their moral quality must correspond with the character of God; and they must be connected with teaching which to reason and conscience approves itself divine. The miracle and the doctrine mutually illuminate one another. Accordingly, the credentials must also be constituents of the revelation, as the character of Jesus ever shines through His mira cles. The wonders and the powers are also signs. As God is the Saviour, and the chief end of the revelation is redemption, it is fitting that the miracles should be acts of divine deliverance from physical evil. This congruity of the miracle with divine truth and grace is the answer to Matthew Arnold's taunt about turning a pen into a pen-wiper or Huxley's about a centaur trotting down Regent Street.