Philosophical Results of Denial of Miracles [pp. 85-94]

PHILOSOPHICAL RESULTS OF A DENIAL OF
MIRACLES.
N antecedent conviction against miracles is taking such strong
possession of some minds as to preclude all historical proof.
Others, not willing perhaps positively to reject them, are disturbed by them, and find no satisfactory place for them in their
own faith. The tap-root of this prejudgment is science, the
scientific conception of the physical world as an unbroken continuity of law. This conception once in the process of formation, and daily verified by labors of research, cannot be easily
checked. In proportion as science is felt to be coextensive with
knowledge, and its very type, will miracles be found in the way
of any articulate, complete system of thought. Many difficulties may be found in the philosophical and in the historical proof
of miracles, but these are not the real seat of the scepticism;
they themselves have arisen in part from it. It is because miracles are felt to be such preposterous, such impossible things, that
the proof of them is so hard to be attained. Till this adverse
presumption is in some way weakened, any discussion of the
facts of the Bible narrative carries but little weight with it.
Miracles, say the adverse critics, are not to be haggled over in
detail; they are to be at once rejected.
It is certain that this unbelief has penetrated our Christian
faith in many ways, and to many depths, and that the conflict
between it and the opposed faith in the supernatural is of the
most radical nature. These adverse conceptions of what constitutes order and beauty in the universe do not admit of reconciliation. Logically one or the other must triumph, and historically they are moving on together with that hourly and
pervasive strife out of which victory and defeat are at length to