MIRACLE, a term_commonly applied to certain marvelous works (healing the sick, raising the dead, changing of water into wine, etc.), ascribed in the Bible to some of the ancient prophets, and to Jesus Christ, and one or two of his followers. It signifies simply that which is wonderful—a thing or a deed to be wondered at, being derived directly from the Latin miraculum, a thing unusual—an object of wonder or surprise. The same meaning is the governing idea in the term applied in the New Testament to the Christian miracles, terns, a marvel, a portent; besides which, we also find them desig nated dunamenis, powers, with a reference to the power residing in the miracle-worker; and semeia, signs, with a reference to the character or pretensions of which they were assumed to be the witnesses or guarantees. Under these different names, the one fact recognized is a deed done by a man, and acknowledged by the common judgment of men to exceed man's ordinary powers; in other words, a deed supernatural, above or beyond the common powers of nature, as these are understood by men.
In the older speculations on the subject, a miracle was generally defined to be a vio lation or suspension of the order of nature. While, on the one hand, it was argued (as by Home) that such a violation or suspension was absolutely impossible and incredible; it was maintained, on the other, that the Almighty, either by his own immediate agency, or by the agency of others, could interfere with the operation of the laws of nature, in order to secure certain ends, which, without that interference, could not have been secured, and that there was nothing incredible in the idea of a law being suspended by the person by whom it had been made. The laws of nature and the will or providence of God were, in this view, thus placed in a certain aspect of opposition to each other, at 'points here and there clashing, and the stronger arbitrarily asserting its superiority. Such a view has, with the advance of philosophical opinion, appeared to many to be 'inadequate as a theory, and to give an unworthy conception of the divine character.
The great principle of law, as the highest conception not only of nature but of divine Providence, in all its manifestations, has asserted itself more dominantly in the realm of thought, and led to the rejection of the apparently conflicting idea of " interference" implied in the old notion of miracle. Order in nature, and a just and uncapricions will in God, were felt to be first and absolutely necessary principles. The idea of miracle, accordingly, which seems to be now most readily accepted by the advocates of the Chris tian religion, has its root in this recognized necessity.
All law is regarded as the expression, not of a lifeless force, but of a perfectly wise and just will. All law most develop itself through natural phenOmena; but it is not identified with or bound down to any necessary series of these. If we admit the main spring of the universe to be a living will, then we may admit that the phenomena through which that will, acting in the form of law, expresses itself, may vary without the will varying or the law being broken. We know absolutely nothing of the mode of operation in any recorded miracle; we only see certain results. To affirm that these results are either impossible iu themselves, or necessarily violations of natural law, is to pronounee a judgment on imperfect data. We can only say that. under an impulse which we must believe proceeds•from the divine will, in which all law exists, the phenomena which we have been accustomed to expect have not followed on their ordinary conditions. But from our point of view we cannot affirm that the question as to luny this happens is one of interference or violation; it is rather, probably, one of higher and lower action. The miracle may be hut the expression of one divine order and beneficent will in a new shape—the law of a greater freedom, to use the words of Trench, swallowing up the law of a lesser.