Undaunted by, or rather unconscious of, such contradictions, the archbishop proceeds with his argument, and with new definitions of the miraculous. So far from being disorder of nature, he continues with audacious precision: "the true miracle is a higher and a purer nature coming down out of the world of untroubled harmonies into this world of ours, which so many discords have jarred and disturbed, and bringing this back again, though it be but for one mysterious prophetic moment, into harmony with that higher."(1) In that "higher and purer nature" can a grain of wheat issue in a loaf of bread? We have only to apply this theory to the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes to perceive how completely it is the creation of Dr. Trench's poetical fancy.
These passages fairly illustrate the purely imaginary and arbitrary nature of the definitions which those who maintain the reality and supernatural character of miracles give of them. That explanation is generally adopted which seems most convenient at the moment, and none ever passes, or, indeed, ever can pass, beyond the limits of assumption. The favourite hypothesis is that which ascribes miracles to the action of unknown law. Archbishop Trench naturally adopts it: "We should see in the miracle," he says, "not the infraction of a law, but the neutralizing of a lower law, the suspension of it for a time by a higher;" and he asks with indignation, whence we dare conclude that, because we know of no powers sufficient to produce miracles, none exist. "They exceed the laws of our nature; but it does not therefore follow that they exceed the laws of all nature."(2) It is not easy to follow the distinction here between "our nature" and "all nature," since the order of nature, by which miracles are judged, is, so far as knowledge goes, universal, and we have no grounds for assuming that there is any other.
The same hypothesis is elaborated by Dr. Mozley. Assuming the facts of miracles, he proceeds to discuss the question of their "referribleness to unknown law," in which expression he includes both "unknown law, or unknown connexion with known law."(1)
Taking first the supposition of (unknown) connection with known law, Dr. Mozley argues that, as a law of nature, in the scientific sense, cannot possibly produce single or isolated facts, it follows that no isolated or exceptional event can come under a law of nature by direct observation, but, if it comes under it at all, it can only do so by some explanation, which takes it out of its isolation and joins it to a class of facts, whose recurrence indeed constitutes the law. Now Dr. Mozley admits that no explanation can be given by which miracles can have an unknown connexion with known law. Taking the largest class of miracles, bodily cures, the correspondence between a simple command or prophetic notification and the cure is the chief characteristic of miracles, and distinguishes them from mere marvels.
No violation of any law of nature takes place in either the cure or the prophetic announcement taken separately, but the two, taken together, are the proof of superhuman agency. Dr. Mozley concludes that no physical hypothesis can be framed accounting for the superhuman knowledge and power involved in this class of miracles, supposing the miracles to stand as they are recorded in Scripture.(1)
Dr. Mozley then shifts the inquiry to the other and different question, whether miracles may not be instances of laws which are as yet wholly unknown.(2) This is generally called a question of "higher law,"—that is to say, a law which comprehends under itself two or more lower or less wide laws. And the principle would be applicable to miracles by supposing the existence of an unknown law, hereafter to be discovered, under which miracles would come, and then considering whether this new law of miracles, and the old law of common facts, might not both be reducible to a still more general law which comprehended them both. Now a law of nature, in the scientific sense, cannot exist without a class of facts which comes under it, and in reality constitutes the law; but Dr. Mozley of course recognizes that the discovery of such a law of miracles would necessarily involve the discovery of fresh miracles, for to talk of a law of miracles without miracles would be an absurdity.(3) The supposition of the discovery of such a law of miracles, however, would be tantamount to the supposition of a future new order of nature, from which it immediately follows that the whole supposition is irrelevant and futile as regards the present question.(4)
For no new order of things could make the present order different, and a miracle, could we suppose it becoming the ordinary fact of another different order of nature, would not be less a violation of the laws of nature in the present one.(1) Dr. Mozley also rejects this explanation.
We pause here to remark that, throughout the whole inquiry into the question of miracles, we meet with nothing from theologians but mere assumptions, against which the invariability of the known order of nature steadily opposes itself. The facts of the narrative of the miracle are first assumed, and so are the theories by which it is explained. Now, with regard to every theory which seeks to explain miracles by assumption, we may quote words applied by one of the ablest defenders of miracles to some conclusion of straw, which he placed in the mouth of an imaginary antagonist in order that he might refute it: "But the question is," said the late Dean of St. Paul's, "not whether such a conclusion has been asserted, as many other absurdities have been asserted, by the advocates of a theory, but whether it has been established on such scientific grounds as to be entitled to the assent of all duly cultivated minds, whatever their own consciences may say to the contrary."(2) Divines are very strict in demanding absolute demonstrations from men of science and others, but we do not find them at all ready to furnish conclusions of similar accuracy regarding dogmatic theology.
Immediately after his indignant demand for scientific accuracy of demonstration, Dr. Mansel proceeds to argue as follows: In the will of man we have the solitary instance of an efficient cause, in the highest sense of the term, acting among the physical causes of the material world, and producing results which could not have been brought about by any mere sequence of physical causes. If a man of his own will throw a stone into the air, its motion, as soon as it has left his hand, is determined by a combination of purely material laws; but by what law came it to be thrown at all? The law of gravitation, no doubt, remains constant and unbroken, whether the stone is lying on the ground, or moving through the air, but all the laws of matter could not have brought about the particular result without the interposition of the free will of the man who throws the stone. Substitute the will of God for the will of man, and the argument becomes applicable to the whole extent of Creation and to all the phenomena which it embraces.(1)
It is evident that Dr. Mansel's argument merely tends to prove that every effect must have a cause, a proposition too obvious to require any argument at all. If a man had not thrown the stone, the stone would have remained lying on the ground. No one doubts this. We have here, however, this "solitary instance of an efficient cause acting among the physical causes of the material world," producing results which are wholly determined by material laws,(2) and incapable of producing any opposed to them. If, therefore, we substitute, as Dr. Mansel desires, "the will of God" for "the will of man," we arrive at no results which are not in harmony with the order of nature. We have no ground whatever for assuming any efficient cause acting in any other way than in accordance with the laws of nature. It is, how-fever, one of the gross fallacies of this argument, as applied to miracles, to pass from the efficient cause producing results which are strictly in accordance with natural laws, and determined by them, to an assumed efficient cause producing effects which are opposed to natural law. The restoration to life of a decomposed human body and the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes are opposed to natural laws, and no assumed efficient cause conceivable to which they may be referred can harmonize them.
Dr. Mozley continues his argument in a similar way. He inquires: "Is the suspension of physical and material laws by a Spiritual Being inconceivable? We reply that, however inconceivable this kind of suspension of physical law is, it is a fact. Physical laws are suspended any time an animate being moves any part of its body; the laws of matter are suspended by the laws of life."(l) He goes on to maintain that, although it is true that his spirit is united with the matter in which it moves in a way in which the Great Spirit who acts on matter in the miracle is not, yet the action of God's Spirit in the miracle of walking on the water is no more inconceivable than the action of his own spirit in holding up his own hand. "Antecedently, one step on the