cases are always likely to be attended with extraordinary measures; and the regularity of the movements and operations of nature may answer all its purposes, though something supernatural be performed on the first publication of such a religion as the Christian" (Hey, "Lectures on Divinity," I. xv. 13). "The incongruity, the anomaly, would be if they were not there; if the salvation of the souls of men were to be brought about by no higher means than those which minister to their bodily appetites and material comforts" (Mansel, “Essay on Miracles"). Miracles and natural processes are somewhat akin. It seems reasonable to think that were our powers so enlarged that we looked into the essence of things, and discerned their real causes, we should find that miracles are the rule, not the exception. Miracles on earth may be nature in heaven; but we have not that sight, we walk by faith. Evidence, of whatever kind, is never so overwhelmingly convincing as to destroy the power of our will freely to determine. When our will is Godward, miracles are not regarded as prodigies of the kingdom of Nature, but fitting splendours for the kingdom of Grace; not wrought for sake of the physical universe, but for the moral beings within. When science is ennobled by faith: then faith means eyesight and insight. The divorce of æthereal from sublunary things is disallowed: marvels are seen to be reciprocal, and to exist in both. The rainbow, formed in the sky out of a dripping cloud, is made here below with a jet of water; so in reasonable use of mental power, we ascend, by increasing heights of conception, until we attain a spiritual view of God; and, by strenuous faithful effort to realize His holiness in our life, we form an approximately true image of Him in our soul. As lower processes of thought and imagery conduct poetic genius to high flights of which other men are incapable; "The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;" SHAKESPEARE. so can sacred genius be elevated to the seer's transcendental vision: natural processes are akin to the Supernatural. It is more reasonable to believe (even taking the materialist view-"Nature governs everything") that the intellectual and moral character of early men was impressed and developed by means of supernatural training; than that they possessed, intuitively, without any training, that high understanding of Spiritual and Divine Mysteries which later men have not been able to attain. We are naturally and reasonably led to spiritual and divine mysteries by the linking and blending of external things with our own inner action: as the Magi to the Messiah by a star; as Peter, a fisherman, by fish. We think of human love in its purity, of fatherhood in highest excellency, and thence arise to conceptions of the Divine Nature. Men who feel that they ought to love God, yet do not love Him, should think of Him as the perfection or concentration of all that is most noble, lovely, admirable. It is easy to work for such a Being and with such a Being. He sheds light down into the murkiest depths of our existence; and He gives, and we use outward acts to conduct us, as by a sign, to the inner and spiritual. Preserved in battle when all around are slain, rescued from a storm in which all our comrades perished, we are devoutly conscious of a Providence. Take this experience :-We walk along the cliff of some rock-bound coast; and, as we look down at the waves breaking far below, the sunny play and our own health and strength place human aspirations in harmony with beautiful nature. Then, as we think that one false step would cast us where not all the skill of men could save, a feeling grows that we are under the care of Him who rules the world. Months or years afterwards, when asleep, or walking through crowded streets, our imagination pictures the rock-bound coast, sea beneath with musical rhythm in the breakers, and memory cries— "There is more than preservation in all this: thou art a very child of God." No adequate scientific explanation -many have been attempted-can be given as to the origin of such thoughts in ancient days, and their continuance in modern times, unless it takes outward realities as a material platform by means of which our inner nature seeks, finds, and rejoices in the Source of both. The more accurate our thought the deeper is our conviction that if we accept cheerfully and manfully our work, we are blessedly connected with the mystery of things unseen. The road towards true faith, and reverence for God's kingdom, is not to peak and pine, but to go right on about our business as the birds and flowers do. Cowards, old Odin held, go to the very bottom of Hela-pool, and by no other means than of becoming brave at last do they rise out of that everlasting bog. Men who whine, as if the world were not good enough for them, and those who sink lower and lower in unfathomable slime, will surely go whither they oughtthe fittest place for them; indeed, it would be a very bad thing for them to go where they ought not. Our being here, when rightly understood, affords the strongest possible reason for assumption that we shall ere long, be somewhere else. To the able man this world is not dumb, and plainly shows that nature is working upward and developing higher forms. Woe to him who is unnatural, looks not up, takes not heart! The truly genuine men "Bate not a jot of heart or hope, It is utter unreason to say that belief in miracles is unreasonable: the blending of common things without us with the thoughts within us, reveals a whole world of miracle. It seems reasonable, and part of natural fitness and harmony, that external things should co-operate with our internal action; so that by advice of each we acquire the Reason or Cause of both. Now this operation, the blending of the inner and outer, while a perfectly natural linking, is not less transcendental and inexplicable in its reality, than the linking, of which we are equally conscious, that gives real and high cognition of the Supernatural or Universal. Lord Bacon partly expressed the thought, "God hath framed the mind of man as a glass capable of the universal world (joying to receive the signature thereof) as the eye is of light." A really great man loves at first sight, and would gladly reproduce, whatever is tender and true. Good words awake in us a sense both of the morally and physically beautiful. Whatever is chivalrous and high-minded seems to assure our hearts that both for the bodies and souls of men forms of life, far nobler and fairer than any now possessed, will come. The divine drudgery of doing good in dens of darkness and sloughs of filth prophecy of that "One far-off Divine event, Toward which the whole creation moves." The world is not mere show and seeming, though it teems with perplexities, as to the unconscious activity of reason in nature. Every puzzle is a beneficent parable for our intellect. There was at least something of truth in the thought of St. Francis of Assisi, that the whole of nature is a choir of God's angelic ministers.* Any way it gives a touch of genius, so that even apparently dry scientific mechanical processes have life in them. Every one of the ends subserved by mechanical, chemical, vital processes, conditions some other; becomes, in turn, further means; until we rise from brute force and cunning to manly strength and intelligence-to love, morality, worship. Music suggests other and higher harmonies than those of sound.† Seed-time and harvest tell, even though we refuse to listen, of other sowing, other reaping. The host of heaven speaks in terrible accents to some; yet to most the heavenly vision is of Beings. Ventum ... * Thought of S. Francis of Assisi. S. Francis, "Cantico de la Creature, Comunemente detto de lo Frate Sole:" "Lauderis, Domine, Deus meos, propter omnes creaturas tuas et specialiter propter honorabilem fratrem nostrum Solem . . . propter sororem Suam propter fratrem propter sororem nostram Mortem," etc. "Patris Francisci Vita," a St. Bonaventura, ch. viii. sec. 5: "Creaturas quantumlibet parvas fratris vel sororis appellabat nominibus pro eo, quod eos secum unum habere sciebat principium. Illos tamen viscerosius amplexabatur et dulcius, quæ Christi mansuetudinem piam similitudine prætendunt, et Scripturæ sacrosanctæ significationem figurant.” † S. Augustine: "Musica ad indicandam divinæ gubernationis harmoniam hominibus concessa est." |