tells us that the moment Peter's faith failed him he began to sink, thus proving that the power of gravitation was not suspended for a moment. The only thing necessary was the presence of some force capable of neutralizing its action on Peter's body, precisely in the same way as it is constantly neutralized by ourselves whenever we lift a weight from the ground. In whatever way the miracle was performed it is clear that the suspension of the force of gravitation formed no portion of it.

Equally gratuitous is the affirmation that the performance of certain miracles must have involved an act of creative power. As far as we have any hints in the New Testament, it is clear that its authors did not suppose that the performance of a miracle was attended by an act of creation. Thus in the miracle of turning the water into wine, the wine was not produced in the empty jars, but an express direction was given to fill them first with water, and then the water was converted into wine. Of the mode of effecting it we are not informed; but there is nothing to imply that the performance of this miracle added one ounce to the weight of the globe. The jars were filled with water, and the water became wine. God slowly produces the grape out of substances already existing, of which water is the chief, by a set of elaborate combinations of the forces of the Universe. The grapes are gathered by man, and then subjected by him to the action of another set of forces more or less under his control, and by these are converted into wine. This process we think nothing wonderful, because we habitually witness it. In the case of the miracle He turned the water into wine in some other way, by the use of forces of which we have had no prior experience; but there is nothing to imply that in this operation He violated or suspended any force or law of the Universe, or created one particle of matter which was not already in existence. I make this last observation because it is this supposed creation of matter in certain miracles, thereby adding to the weight of the globe, which endangers our coming in collision

with physical science. The same observations are applicable to the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. All the materials were at hand, either in the earth, the air, or the water. The ordinary action of God's Providence makes bread and fish in one way: in a miracle He produces them in another. In the former case we understand some portion of the process, though the remainder is buried in profound darkness. In the latter the whole process is

hidden from our view.

Another striking phenomenon in the miracles of the New Testament, pointing to a similar result, is the remarkable economy in the exercise of miraculous power displayed in them. Ordinary means are invariably had recourse to where they are sufficient to effect the end in view; and where they are adequate, miracle is never invoked. Thus, in the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus, the stone is ordered to be removed by human hands; and after the dead man was recalled to life the grave-clothes are directed to be removed by the same agency. So again, after the miracle wrought on Jairus' daughter, Our Lord, who is described as having miraculously fed the multitudes, directs the parents to furnish her with food. Whatever was the nature of the divine intervention in these miracles it was clearly limited to the smallest possible extent. This economy in the use of miracle forms one of the remarkable characteristics which distinguish those of the New Testament from those of all other miraculous narratives. In the case of the resurrection of Lazarus a forger would hardly have been able to refrain from ordering the stone to roll back of itself; still less would it have occurred to such a person to direct that a child just raised from the dead should be furnished with a supply of food.

But by far the greater number of the miracles of the New Testament were wrought, not on dead matter, but on the living organisms of the human body. Of the mode of action of no force which comes under human observation are we more profoundly ignorant than of the vital ones, or

of the mode or extent in which mind can act on matter. In this region, therefore, it is quite clear that a Being who is thoroughly acquainted with the vital forces, and holds them in His hand, can work miracles without any disturbance of the forces, laws, or order of nature.

In several of the Old Testament miracles the affirmation of the active presence of what have been designated second causes, or in other words the known forces of the Universe, as the means through which they were accomplished, is direct. Thus the miracles of the dividing of the Red Sea, and of the supply of quails, are asserted to have been effected through the agency of a wind blowing in a particular direction. A similar affirmation is made respecting several of the plagues of Egypt. A similar principle, though less obvious, may be detected in other miracles. All these instances prove that the introduction of a particular theory of the mode of the divine action into the conception of a miracle is entirely uncalled for by anything which is asserted in the pages of the Old or the New Testament. Nor can it be shown, on any grounds of solid reason, to be necessary.

The whole theory that miracles must be contrary to nature, and that their performance must involve violations or suspensions of its laws and forces, arises out of a practical denial that God is everywhere every moment energizing in nature; in fact it involves the assumption that the Universe is a huge machine, outside which the Creator, if there be a Creator at all, exists-a machine which He has once contrived and set in motion, and will go on for ever grinding out results by the never ceasing activity of its forces, without any further exercise of His power. To such a conception of the Universe a miracle becomes a special intervention of the Creator, interrupting the order of its working, and consequently an indication of His presence in that from which He had previously retired.* Such a con

* Such a view of the Universe (undoubtedly a very popular one at the present day among scientific men) is involved in the conception

ception of God differs wholly from the God of the Bible, which contains the only worthy theistic conception of Him, not only as the Creator of the Universe, a skilful mechanist and chemist, but as the Father of those beings whom he has created. Christian theism affirms that God is not only a Being who exists independently of the Universe, but that in Him we live, and move, and exist; that the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the compass of the world and they that dwell therein; and that all its forces and energies are the manifestations of His ceaseless activity. What we designate the forces of nature, and miracles, are alike manifestations of God, the latter differing from the former, not in the degree of power which they exhibit, nor in the fact that He is more present when He works a miracle than He is in the active energies of those forces in the midst of which we daily live, but in the fact that a miracle is an event fitted to awaken attention by a special manifestation of intelligent purpose, and stamped with the indications of it. As such it constitutes a onμetov, and possesses an evidential value.

of a miracle as the effect of the introduction of a higher law. (See Mozley's Bampton Lectures, Lecture VI.) The whole idea involves the confusion between the conceptions of law and force which I have already referred to, as well as the mechanical view of the Universe as a bare machine in which He is not immanent, but to the action of which He stands outside.

LECTURE II.

"I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me."-JOHN VIII. 18.

Ar the conclusion of the last Lecture I offered some general considerations for the purpose of showing that the argument from miracles ought to occupy a less prominent place among the evidences of Christianity than that which has been assigned to it in our modern apologetic works. The proper function which they discharge in relation to the Christian argument is a matter of such deep importance, that before I proceed to deal with the reconstructive portion of it, I must endeavour to estimate their proper value. While doing so, I must ask you to bear in mind the distinction which I have laid down between the word "Miracle" in its ordinary acceptation as an extraordinary occurrence in the physical Universe, and those manifestations of a superhuman power in the moral and spiritual world, which I have designated moral miracles.

I shall assume as the foundation of my argument, that it is an established philosophic truth, that the forces which energize in the moral and spiritual world, act in conformity with moral laws no less than those which dominate in the physical Universe with physical ones. As, therefore, an event which manifests purpose, for the origin of which the known forces of the physical Universe are unable to account, is a physical miracle; so an event in the moral Universe, of the origin of which the forces energizing in man can give