Higher Modes of Divine Action. 35 hypothesis for an instant." The assertion must be met with thorough denial: most scientific thinkers, and of the highest mental power, accept both the possibility and the actuality of miracles. Consider the meaning of such over-confident assertion. It is that a miracle seems an event without a natural cause; we say "the cause is Divine, or may even be a hidden natural cause." A miracle is essentially incomprehensible, and so far as we can understand, an impossibility. We reply: It is the height of presumption to restrict Divine action to our own understood line of things, and then call our restriction "natural law.” The multiform revelations of an Omnipresent Power are not identifiable with nature, nor limited to it; for scientific enquiry, working independently of theology, has led to the conclusion that the dynamic phenomena of nature are a manifestation of an Omnipresent Power transcending nature; therefore, every real advance in knowledge is certain to make us acquainted with other and higher modes of Divine action. Can a man think out the creation of matter, or the eternity of matter, or the annihilation of matter, or explain the modus operandi of spirit on matter, or of matter on spirit, or of the persistence of energythat is, of energy without beginning or end? Even if he can, he is unable to subject the action of Absolute Being to his own analysis. If we know anything at all, it is that the vast synthesis of energies without us and within us are only known as they affect our consciousness. Who dreams that these are the only powers? The series of our conceptions are but the register of our experience, and generate beliefs, from which the component conceptions cannot be torn apart, consequently the universal belief in miracles is fundamental. Not only so, it is proof of an internal process or correspondence of our circumscribed being with the infinite reality; and this finite thinking, or conception, is specially that faculty which takes the impress of Divinity, and is the ground of all deep faith and solemn adoration. Our process of study,-1, The Divine autobiography, or image of Intelligence; 2, The existence of good and evil a real existence; 3, The world-wide consciousness of these as Good ་་་ the ground of our moral sense; 4, Religion as the universal conviction and witness; 5, Miracles as possible and actual; leads through various passages to inner chambers of investigationi. Is the universe self-existent, without beginning, eternal? ii. Is it self-made? iii. Was it created? The first is atheistic, and offers no solution of the mystery. It is wholly incapable of conception. To assert self-existence is the denial of causation, and when we deny causation we also deny commencement. We must add to the absolute impossibility of conceiving this the fact that we have to endow matter with all the powers of mind, and give to that which is dead all the properties of life; making matter, to all intents and purposes, God. Doing this we fall into the old heathen homage of nature, and worship Power-the phenomenal God. "To worship Power only," Dr Arnold said, "is devil worship." Another has said, "What can be more arrogant and unbecoming than for a man to think that he has a mind and understanding in him, but yet in the universe besides is no such thing; or that those things which, with the utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend, should be moved and managed without any reason at all."1 The second is pantheistic, and cannot by any symbolism pass into real conception. The nearest approach is to conceive potential existence passing into actual existence, or existence long remaining in one form, then suddenly, and of its own accord, passing into another form; but that involves the idea of a change without a cause, which is impossible. Moreover, whence the potential existence? This requires accounting for, just as the actual existence, so the same difficulties meet us; and there is no escape except this,--Nothing developed into something, or that the world of phenomena is practically the Deity, and is finite, which is absurd. The third hypothesis, theism, which involves creation by Divine agency, is adopted by the most, the best, and the greatest of mankind. "There is, I believe, no system of philosophy whatever in which that notion of a higher power than our own, which we mean by God, is wholly absent. The name may not be there, and even the formal idea of a God 1 "Cicero De Leg.," Lib. ii. may be specially denied, and yet the thing itself may remain, so inextricably is it bound up with all human experience." The creative process is not to be represented as a product of manufacture, though the proceedings of a human artificer vaguely symbolise a method by which the universe might be shaped, but as the ever-changing multiform revelation of an Omnipresent Power, who can in no wise be identified with its manifestations. The production of matter out of nothing is the real mystery; but as we are not only obliged to assume some cause, but also a first cause, or we cannot speak of causation, in that cause the conclusion is reached-the Godhead. In reality and strict reasoning every one of these suppositions, though verbally intelligible, is, through our limited capacity, incapable of actual cognition, and science cannot possibly give any explanation. We search for one in Scripture and find it. Having found it, science educates heart and intellect to love, reverence and partly understand it. John Locke says, "My right hand writes while my left is still; what causes rests in one and motion in the other? Nothing but my will, a thought of my mind; my thoughts only changing, the right hand rests and the left hand moves. This is matter of fact which cannot be denied; explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step will be to understand creation." Professor Huxley, "Critiques and Addresses," states, "If anyone is able to make good the assertion that his theology rests upon valid evidence and sound reasoning, then it appears to me that such theology will take its place as a part of science." Verified theology is scientific. Can we show that our theology is verifiable, and, therefore, scientific? Try. No theory of phenomena, internal or external, can be framed. without postulating an absolute existence. We speak of this absolute existence in the singular number, because the order of manifestation throughout all mental phenomena is the same as throughout all material phenomena—there is unity. If the order of these manifestations, say, for example, "The Bible and its Critics," Sect. v., p. 193: Rev. Edward Garbet. 1 the complex and organised correspondence of the mind with its environment in arranging and combining various experiences received from without, and in adjusting new inner relations to new outer relations, is found to correlate with the moral facts of redemption and sanctification, and to produce the highest and purest morality, the experimental process verifying this must be scientific. If the other, or material order of manifestations, is given in an ancient book, written by a primitive, unscientific race at a time when men had little or no conception of that scientific generalisation which now arranges in correlated groups widely separated phenomena; and possessed little or no understanding of that natural adaptation of means to ends, of which the world is now known to be full; if, nevertheless, this book, claiming to have been dictated by the Spirit of the Almighty, gives such a formula of the origin and growth of things that science, however it steps in advance, does but more clearly explain and firmly rest in the ancient conception and revelation; it is clear that the process of verification is both theologic and scientific; and the integration of all natural forces into a single agency, one grand entity, God, is one of the grandest, yet primitive, conceptions of humanity, and the profoundest of scientific truths. Without revelation, taking science only for our guide, we run out the whole sounding line of human knowledge into the depths of nature, and find no bottom; we soar and soar in heavenly heights, but only to discover that there is something beyond, which, nevertheless, comes to us, is in us, and in everything around us, and then we go and sit with the dim-eyed old man, the genius of unbelief described by Coleridge, who, in his cold and dreary cave, “talked much and vehemently concerning an infinite series of causes and effects, which he explained to be a string of blind men, the last of whom caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next, and so on, till they were all out of sight; and that they walked infallibly straight, without making one false step, though all are equally blind." Glad to escape from unbelief, we endeavour now to obtain some conception of revelation and the account of creation, Language of the Bible. 39 by studying,-1, The manner or wording of the Divine narrative; 2, The truthfulness of the record. I. "The Bible has well nigh for ever seemed against the science of the day;" there are reasons for this disagreement. Had the account of creation accorded with the science propounded in heathen times, or as asserted in Greece and Rome, or even with that of our fathers during the last century, it would now be contemptuously rejected as utterly false. “A revelation of only so much astronomy as was known to Copernicus, would have seemed imperfect after the discoveries of Newton; and a revelation of the science of Newton would have appeared defective to La Place; a revelation of all the chemical knowledge of the eighteenth century would have been deficient in comparison with the information of the present day, as what is now known in this science will probably appear before the termination of another age.' "1 In language, our glorious old Bible remains as at the first, unchanged amidst changing interpretations. Only the meaning of the words, when they struck on the ears or flashed into the minds of the first auditors, has to be recovered, so that we may stand with Moses, with Isaiah, with the Apostles, to hear the words of God, and to fix our eyes on the Son of Man, who was "God manifest in the flesh." We remember that God's words and thoughts are a light not for one age, but for all ages; and that which seemed written for the old generation only, is for our admonition also; not in the words and forms used by physical science, for all past time, and nearly all men are unscientific; and not in philosophical order, but in a form, like seed, that may lie in any crevice of the heart, with power of growth to fill the whole understanding. It contains, within the outer body, a soul or inner life, which, while agreeing with the imperfection of our nature, raises us above it; and, in answer to the inarticulate cries of conscience, pours the wisdom of God into our every mode of thought and figure of speech. He who is susceptible of that inner life, and catches the spirit of it, finds lessons for childhood, strength for manhood, and is embued with the capabilities of heroes and prophets. Thousands know by actual exper1 66 "Geology and Mineralogy," vol. i. p. 14: Francis T. Buckland. |