Eight lectures on miracles

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Preface To First Edition

THE difficulty which attaches to Miracles, in the period of thought through which we are now passing, is one which is concerned not with their evidence, hut with their intrinsic credibility. There has risen in a certain class of minds an apparent perception of the impossibility of suspensions of physical law. This is one peculiarity of the present time: another is a disposition to maintain the disbelief of miracles upon a religious basis, and in connexion with a declared belief in the Christian revelation.

The following Lectures, therefore, are addressed mainly to the fundamental question of the credibility of Miracles; their use, and the evidences of them, being only touched on subordinately and collaterally. It was thought that such an aim, though in itself a narrow and confined one, was most adapted to the particular need of the day.

Preface To Second Edition 1

THE recent movement of thought in the direction of physical explanation of the Gospel miracles or the reference of them to unknown laws of nature, has exhibited more of philosophical sentiment than philosophical discrimination. The movement has originated in a wish to meet scientific objections to miracles as isolated and anomalous facts ; and the aim has been to reconcile miracles, or to shew that we have a right to expect and look forward to their reconciliation, with the claims of science. With this aim it was necessary that when writers spoke of the possibility of miracles being reconciled with the laws of nature, they should distinctly understand that they meant a reconciliation with the laws of nature in the scientific sense, — those laws which scientific men mean when they use this phrase. Unless there is a clear understanding on this point the whole labour of such an enquiry is thrown away. For how could the objections of physical science be met by even proving ever so clearly the possible consistency of miracles with natural law in a different sense from that in which physical science understands it ? But though it was so necessary that those who aimed at some reconciliation of miracles with the laws of nature, in order to meet the objections of science, should keep the scientific sense of natural law distinctly in their minds, this has not been done ; but the expression '•'law of nature" has been constantly used without any accurate or distinct meaning, and the result has been a considerable waste of speculating power. There has been the feeling that something must be done on this head, a general desire to satisfy scientific tests, and a disposition to give a guarantee that miracles if accepted shall only be accepted as in some way or other coming under natural law, and being instances of it. But when this wish came to reason ; when it came to deal with the question how this reduction of miracles to natural law was to be made out, there was a large interval between the desire felt, and the argumentative satisfaction of it ; and the speculative aim issued in much confusion and obscurity.

1 This preface includes the matter of some Notes of the First Edition.

Preface to Second Edition shew that it is not neIe s far V to P r e t S ? f° ^ ende ™o to events ; and have for That m,r,Zf "T^ M abs ^tely irregular assumed to be true , rnSZld ^T 4 "W*»»- »Pon which, instances oflaw BrU when IT T ° ' SyStem and would b *

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1 Ana logy, pt. i. ch.

Preface to Second Edition xi /-^

3. Mr. Babbage has suggested that a miracle may, for anything we know, be the result of the same original law of creation of which nature itself is ; the same mechanism which produces the order of nature, producing also the exception to it. And he has illustrated this conception by the analogy of a calculating engine, which produces by the same adjustment a regular succession of numbers, and then an exceptional insulated number, after which it takes up again the old succession. 1

Here, then, are three naturalizing rationales of miracles, i.e. which divest miracles in a certain sense of their anomalous and irregular character, and engraft them upon system and order ; — rationales which are serviceable and valuable as meeting the natural and reasonable desire, inherent in the human mind, for order and law in some sense, as necessarily attaching to all the works of God, and necessarily belonging to everything in the Universe. The human mind rejects total irregularity and eccentricity as an impossibility in the Universe as a whole ; and therefore in the case of any visibly anomalous event, such as a miracle, the human mind is committed to the discovery of some point of view in which the event in question is not an anomaly but a natural event ; and it is committed to shew that the point of view in which such an event is natural is paramount to and takes precedence of that point of view in which it is anomalous. The first position, then, that I have noticed is not a mere conjectural hypothesis, but it effects this object with respect to miracles by an argument which, upon the supposition of the existence of a personal Deity, is irresistible and incapable of refutation. For if there is a Being in the Universe which can suspend a law of nature, the power which suspends the law is evidently just as natural, and is just as much belonging to the Universe as the power which sustains it. Again, Butler's imaginary supposition, though it is no more than imaginary, is still important as shewing the possibilities of the case ; that there may be, for anything we know, certain miraculous dispensations going on in other worlds which would make the miraculous dispensation in this world one of a class or order of events, and in that light natural. Again, Mr. Babbage's hypothesis, by referring a miracle back to the original law of creation which produced the order of nature, naturalizes it in some sense. But though these rationales of miracles have for their object the naturalizing of miracles in some sense, it is evident when we examine them, that none of them are or profess to be physical explanations of miracles, i.e. reductions of them

1 Ninth Bridgwater Treatise, ch. viii.

xii Preface to Second Edition

to laws of nature in the scientific sense of that term. In no case is the order npon which they engraft miracles, the order of the actual physical world of which we have experience.

1. The first position asserts the supremacy of the higher law of the Divine Power over the subordinate laws of visible nature. The order in which a miracle is inserted then by this position is obviously and by the very terms of the statement a spiritual and invisible order, not a physical or visible one.

The same rationale of the naturalness of a miracle is sometimes expressed by another formula, for which we are indebted to Brown, that a miracle is not contrary to the law of cause and effect, but is only an effect produced by the introduction of a new cause. And this formula of Brown's has been put in an amended form by some writers, who urge that in a miracle there is no violation or suspension of the laws of nature, which go on but are neutralized or counteracted by a higher law. But it is evident that the naturalness which is gained for a miracle by either of these explanations, is not a naturalness, or a conformity to the laws of nature, in the scientific sense ; because the point upon which the naturalness of a fact turns in science, is not whether that fact has a cause simply, but whether it has a uniform or constant cause, i.e. whether it has the same antecedent by which it has been invariably attended in other cases. It is nothing to the scientific man to be told that the rolling away of the stone from the door of the sepulchre was in itself a natural fact which could have been effected by human machinery, and that the cause alone was supernatural ; because the character of the cause or antecedent is the very point of the question in his eye. Had the stone been rolled away by machinery, no fact could have been more natural ; but if it was rolled away without the application of any human force, the fact w T as then unaccompanied by its ordinary and constant antecedent, and was therefore not a natural fact in the scientific sense. Nor does the amended form of the formula of Brown make the slightest difference on this head. It does not signify in the eye of the man of science how we describe the substitution of another and a different antecedent of an event, for its ordinary and regular one ; whether we say that the law of nature was in that case suspended, or continued but was neutralized by a higher law ; he looks only to the fact itself of a strange antecedent. Was sight recovered by means of medical treatment, or by the restoring force of time ? that was a natural fact, because these are ordinary antecedents of recovery. Was it recovered by the word of a person ? it was then not a natural fact, because it occurred not with its ordinary, but with a new and strange antecedent.

Preface to Second Edition xiii

It is quite true that we see laws of nature any day and any hour neutralized and counteracted in particular cases, and yet do not look upon such counteractions as other than the most natural events : but it must be remembered that, where this is the case, the counteracting agency is as ordinary and constant an antecedent in nature as the agency which it counteracts. The agency of the muscles and the agency of the magnet are as ordinary as the agency of gravitation which they both neutralize. Medicine is as ordinary an agent as the disease which it resists. The action of salt is as constant a cause in nature as the putrefaction which it retards. All these facts then are natural. But where the counteracting power to a law of nature is an unknown power, a power not in nature, then the counteraction or neutralization of a law of nature is not a natural fact, being deprived of its ordinary and constant antecedent, and coupled with another and a new antecedent. The elevation of a body in the air by the force of an arm, is a counteraction indeed of the law of gravitation, but it is a counteraction of it by another law as natural as that of gravity. The fact therefore is in conformity with the laws of nature. But if the same body is raised in the air without any application of a known force, it is not a fact in conformity with natural law. In all these cases the question is not whether a law of nature has been counteracted, for that does not constitute a fact contradictory to the laws of nature ; but whether it has been counteracted by another natural law. If it has been, the conditions of science are fulfilled. But if a law of nature has been counteracted by a law out of nature, it is of no purpose, with a view to naturalize scientifically that counteraction of a law of nature, to say that the law of nature has been going on all the time, and only been neutralized not suspended or violated. These are mere refinements of language, which do not affect the fact itself, that a new conjunction of antecedent and consequent, wholly unlike the conjunctions in nature, has taken place. The laws of nature have in that instance not worked, and an effect contrary to what would have issued from those laws has been produced. This is ordinarily called a violation or suspension of the laws of nature ; and it seems an unnecessary refinement not to call it such. But whatever name we give to it, the fact is the same ; and the fact is not according to the laws of nature in the scientific sense .

2. The imaginary hypothesis of Bishop Butler is only an imaginary one, and therefore it is not one of which physical science can take any cognizance. The claim of physical science is that miracles should be reconciled with the actual order of nature, of which we have i_ - i - ~ i l

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Preface to Second Edition xv rnitting laws of nature under which they came ; that is to say, could we imagine that it was found out by observation that miracles, thougli exceptions, were recurring exceptions, and exceptions which recurred with the same invariable antecedents. Could we suppose, amid the apparent irregularity and disorder which marked the occurrence of miracles in the world, that traces of such a law as this could be made out ; and that these exceptions to the order of nature, were, as exceptions, uniform and regular ; in that case miracles would have been as truly brought under the laws of nature as the regular course of nature is. But the remark is obvious that no such intermitting law of miracles is seen in nature ; and it may be remarked further, that could we imagine such a law in existence, we could only imagine it by imag inin g also at the same time an alteration of the present order of nature. Such a conception would involve this result. For the recurrence, with whatever intervals, of miracles as, e.g. resurrections from the dead with regularity and uniformity, or with the same invariable antecedents, would constitute a new order of nature. 1

2. The other mode of reconciling miracles with the laws of nature in the scientific sense, is the construction of some hypothesis which, if true, would bring them out of their apparent isolation, strip them of their apparent eccentricity, and reduce them to the head of known classes of facts. This has been done, and is constantly being done, with respect to eccentric natural phenomena. Explanations are constructed which solve the apparent anomaly and irregularity, and shew how the extraordinary effect may have been in reality owing to well-known laws acting under unwonted circumstances. And if the explanations are admissible, these eccentric phenomena stand hypothetically under the head of natural law. Can the same thing be done then with respect to miracles ? The answer is, that this must depend on what the miracles are. We have the miracles of Scripture before us. "We are also in possession of science with its large powers and resources for the construction of hypotheses and explanations. Can any scientific hypothesis be constructed which would bring the miracles of Scripture, the greater and more stupendous as well as the lesser ones, under natural law. It must be admitted, that considering what

1 The analogy of the arithmetical machine fails Avith reference to a physical law of miracles, there being no intermitting law of miracles in nature answering to the intermitting law of numbers in the machine. The machine upon the same adjustment, always produces the same exceptional number ; which therefore belongs to the law of the machine. But there is no regularity in. the recurrence of miracles corresponding to this regularity in the recurrence of the exceptional number.

xvi Preface to Second Edition some of the Scripture miracles are, such, an expectation is chimerical : that the nature of the anomalies is such that no scientific hypothesis is conceivable which can subjugate them, strip them of physical singularity, and reduce them to natural facts. Does the assemblage of miracles which gathers round our Lord, commencing with His birth, carried on in His ministry, and terminating in His Resurrection and Ascension, admit of any conceivable physical solution ?

It must be seen that the impediment to the reconciliation of miracles with the laws of nature in the scientific sense, arises from the special character of that sense, from the peculiarity of the scientific definition of the laws of nature. The scientific sense of "laws of nature" is a particular restricted sense, it does not go outside of or take in anything but absolute physical facts, regarded as uniformly recurrent, or recurring with the same antecedents. Can the miracles of Scripture be reduced to this head \ Recent reconciling speculation has by an ambiguous use of the term " laws of nature" concealed the point of the question, and prevented persons from seeing what the real problem which they had proposed to themselves was.

It must be observed, too, that it is not only the physical occurrence itself which in the case of these miracles has to be reduced to the order of nature, but the physical occurrence as corresponding to and fitting in with a command, an announcement, a whole set of pretensions on the part of the person who is the agent or the centre of them. Should the question e.g. ever be raised, whether the miracle of our Lord's Resurrection was a fact ultimately referrible to natural law ; the fact about which the question would lie, i.e. about which we should have to enquire whether it might be ultimately natural or not, would be, not the simple resurrection of a man from the dead, but that resurrection as coinciding with the whole nature, mission and office of Christ, His whole character, life and ministry, as well as with the previous announcements of the event. It is impossible not to see, even when the occurrence itself is of the most marvellous kind, how immensely this correspondence to a notification and adaptation to a whole set of circumstances add to the supernaturalness of the miracle, and to its inexplicableness upon natural grounds. Because all this points, upon the argument of design or coincidence, to a special interposition of God, as distinguished from unknown physical causation. Those circumstances of a miracle which distinguish it from an isolated marvel are also great evidences of its supernatural character. No physical explanation of it as an isolated marvel is an explanation of those circumstances which distinguish it from a marvel.

Indeed, if we consider what a miracle in the religious sense is, that

Preface to Second Edition xvii

it is in its very nature and design something special, something in apparent contradiction to the order of nature, and that it would not answer all its purposes unless it was ; what reason can there be why such designed apparent exception to physical order should be in reality all the time an instance of physical order? If there is indeed no power in the universe equal to suspending the laws of nature, such a conclusion is wanted ; but if there is — and a miracle in the religious sense assumes such a power — why should there be this reversal of the appearance by the reality? Why should the physical exception follow physical regularity ? The special act be a uniformly recurrent act ? What is the meaning of such an appended condition ? And why should a miraculous interposition of the Deity not only agree with natural law in the universal sense, which in the reason of the case it must do, but also satisfy a particular restricted and technical sense of natural law assigned to the term in physical science ?

The authority of Bp. Butler has been quoted for the hypothesis of the referribleness of miracles to unknown laws of nature ; but this is a misinterpretation of his meaning, as a reference to his whole argument will shew : —

" If the natural and the revealed dispensation of things are both from God, if they coincide with each other and together make up one scheme of Providence; our being incompetent judges of one, must render it credible that we may be incompetent judges also of the other; since upon experience the acknowledged constitution and course of nature is found to be greatly different from what, before experience, we should have expected; and such as men fancy there lie great objections against: this renders it beforehand highly credible that they may find the revealed dispensation likewise, if they judge of it as they do of the constitution of nature, very different from expectations formed beforehand, and liable in appearance to great objections; objections against the scheme itself, and against the degrees and manners of the miraculous interpositions by which it was attested and carried on. . . .

" If this miraculous power was indeed given to the world to propagate Christianity and attest the truth of it, we might, it seems, have expected, that other sort of persons should have been chosen. to be invested with it ; or that these should, at the same time, have been endued with prudence ; or that they should have been continually restrained and directed in the exercise of it : i.e. that God should have miraculously interposed, if at all, in a different manner or higher

b xviii Preface to Second Edition

degree. But, from the observations made above, it is undeniably evident, that we are not j adges in what degrees and manners it were to have been expected He should miraculously interpose ; upon supposition of His doing it in some degree and manner." (Analogy, Part II. ch. iii.)

" The credibility, that the Christian dispensation may have been, all along, carried on by general laws, no less than the course of nature, may require to be more distinctly made out. Consider then, upon what ground it is we say, that the whole common course of nature is carried on according to general fore-ordained laws. We know indeed several of the general laws of matter : and a great part of the natural behaviour of living agents is reducible to general laws. But we know in a manner nothing, by what laws, storms and tempests, earthquakes, famine, pestilence, become the instruments of destruction to mankind. And the laws, by which persons born into the world at such a time and place, are of such capacities, geniuses, tempers ; the laws, by which thoughts come into our mind, in a multitude of cases : and by which innumerable things happen, of the greatest influence upon the affairs and state of the world ; these laws are so wholly unknown to us, that we call the events, which come to pass by them, accidental : though all reasonable men know certainly, that there cannot in reality be any such thing as chance ; and conclude, that the things which have this appearance are the result of general laws, and may be reduced into them. It is then but an exceeding little way, and in but a very few respects, that we can trace up the natural course of things before us to general laws. And it is only from analogy that we conclude the whole of it to be capable of being reduced into them ; only from our seeing that part is so. It is from our finding that the course of nature, in some respects and so far, goes on by general laws, that we conclude this of the rest. And if that be a just ground for such a conclusion, it is a just ground also, if not to conclude, yet to apprehend, to render it supposable and credible, which is sufficient for answering objections, that God's miraculous interpositions may have been, all along in like manner, by general laws of wisdom. Thus, that miraculous powers should be exerted, at such times, upon such occasions, in such degrees and manners, and with regard to such persons, rather than others ; that the affairs of the world, being permitted to go on in their natural course so far, should, just at such a point, have a new direction given them by miraculous interpositions ; that these interpositions should be exactly in such degrees and respects only ; all this may have been by general laws. These laws are unknown indeed to us : but no more unknown than the laws from

Preface to Second Edition xix

whence it is, that some die as soon as they are born, and others live to extreme old age ; that one man is so superior to another in understanding ; with innumerable more things, which, as was before observed, we cannot reduce to any laws or rules at all, though it is taken for granted they are as much reducible to general ones as gravitation. Now, if the revealed dispensations of providence and miraculous interpositions be by general laws, as well as God's ordinary government in the course of nature, made known by reason and experience, there is no more reason to expect that every exigence as it arises should be provided for by these general laws of miraculous interpositions, than that every exigence in nature should by the general laws of nature ; yet there might be wise and good reasons that miraculous interpositions should be by general laws, and that these laws should not be broken in upon, or deviated from, by other miracles." (Ibid. chap, iv.)

Butler, then, is meeting objections to the scheme and evidence of Christianity ; and, among the rest, " objections against the degrees and manners of the miraculous interpositions by which it was attested or carried on." And one answer by which he meets these objections is, that " Christianity is a scheme or constitution imperfectly comprehended;" and that therefore, in our ignorance of the mode in which God's miraculous interpositions have been conducted, there is nothing against the supposition that they have been all along conducted by " general laws." Upon which supposition, he observes, the apparent defects in the exercise of these miraculous powers and the objects answered by them may be satisfactorily accounted for ; because " there is no more reason to expect that every exigence as it arises should be provided for by these general laws of miraculous interpositions, than that every exigence in nature should by the general laws of nature."

We now come to that point of the argument at which Butler is misapprehended; i.e. where he is supposed to refer miracles to unknown laws of nature, whereas his mention of the laws of nature is for a very different purpose. Having made the supposition of miraculous interpositions being " by general laws of wisdom," although these laws are unknown to us, he confirms that supposition by a reference to the unknown laws of nature by which we are surrounded on all sides. Our ignorance, he says, of the general laws of miraculous interpositions, is no reason that there may not be such laws ; for we are ignorant of many of the laws of natural phenomena, " storms, tempests, earthquakes, famine, pestilence ; " and yet we are certain that those events do take place in obedience xx Preface to Second Edition

to certain laws. The unknown laws of nature are introduced, not as being the laws by which miracles take place, but as furnishing a parallel to those laws, upon the point of being unknown, which is a characteristic common to both. He does not say that the laws by which miracles take place are physical laws as those are by which earthquakes and pestilences take place ; but that our ignorance of the physical laws by which earthquakes and pestilences occur is a precedent for our being ignorant of the general laws of wisdom by which miracles occur ; which laws may exist notwithstanding, and have governed those interpositions all along. The common ground is not the identity of the laws under which extraordinary natural phenomena and miraculous interpositions come, but the similarity of the ignorance of the laws in both cases.

Such is the meaning of Butler. The " general laws of miraculous interpositions " and the general laws of nature are two different sets of laws in the argument ; but the one supplies a ground for a supposition respecting the other ; the existence of unknown laws of nature shews the possibility of there being unknown laws of miraculous interpositions. "Why, the objector asks, if God has interposed miraculously, have not these interpositions been more general, and more effectual ? Why have not miraculous corrections been applied more largely to the faults and omissions which are inherent in the operation of the laws of nature, as being general laws, directed to the general as distinguished from private and individual advantage? The answer of Butler is, that these miraculous interpositions themselves may, for anything we know, have been all along conducted by general laws ; and thus that the benefit from them, may have been limited by the same cause which has limited the benefit of the laws of nature.