III. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.
1. Definition of Miracle.
A. Preliminary Definition.—A miracle is an event palpable to the senses, produced for a religious purpose by the immediate agency of God; an event therefore which, though not contravening any law of nature, the laws of nature, if fully known, would not without this agency of God be competent to explain.
This definition corrects several erroneous conceptions of the miracle:—(a) A miracle is not a suspension or violation of natural law; since natural law is in operation at the time of the miracle just as much as before. (b) A miracle is not a sudden product of natural agencies—a product merely foreseen, by him who appears to work it; it is the effect of a will outside of nature. (c) A miracle is not an event without a cause; since it has for its cause a direct volition of God. (d) A miracle is not an irrational or capricious act of God; but an act of wisdom, performed in accordance with the immutable laws of his being, so that in the same circumstances the same course would be again pursued. (e) A miracle is not contrary to experience; since it is not contrary to experience for a new cause to be followed by a new effect. (f) A miracle is not a matter of internal experience, like regeneration or illumination; but is an event palpable to the senses, which may serve as an objective proof to all that the worker of it is divinely commissioned as a religious teacher.
For various definitions of miracles, see Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 302. On the whole subject, see Mozley, Miracles; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 285-339; Fisher, in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880, and Jan. 1881; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 129-147, and in Baptist Review, April, 1879. The definition given above is intended simply as a definition of the miracles of the Bible, or, in other words, of the events which profess to attest a divine revelation in the Scriptures. The New Testament designates these events in a two-fold way, viewing them either subjectively, as producing effects upon men, or objectively, as revealing the power and wisdom of God. In the former aspect they are called τέρατα, “wonders,” and σημεῖα, “signs,” (John 4:48; Acts 2:22). In the latter aspect they are called δυνάμεις, “powers,” and ἔργα, “works,” (Mat 7:22; John 14:11). See H. B. Smith, Lect. on Apologetics, 90-116, esp. 94—“σημεῖον, sign, marking the purpose or object, the moral end, placing the event in connection with revelation.” The Bible Union Version uniformly and properly renders τέρας by “wonder,”δυνάμις by “miracle,” ἔργον by “work,” and σημεῖον by “sign.” Goethe, Faust: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss: Das Unzulängliche wird hier Ereigniss”—“Everything transitory is but a parable; The unattainable appears as solid fact.” So the miracles of the New Testament are acted parables,—Christ opens the eyes of the blind to show that he is the Light of the world, multiplies the loaves to show that he is the Bread of Life, and raises the dead to show that he lifts men up from the death of trespasses and sins. See Broadus on Matthew, 175.
A modification of this definition of the miracle, however, is demanded by a large class of Christian physicists, in the supposed interest of natural law. Such a modification is proposed by Babbage, in the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, chap. viii. Babbage illustrates the miracle by the action of his calculating machine, which would present to the observer in regular succession the series of units from one to ten million, but which would then make a leap and show, not ten million and one, but a hundred million; [pg 118]Ephraim Peabody illustrates the miracle from the cathedral clock which strikes only once in a hundred years; yet both these results are due simply to the original construction of the respective machines. Bonnet held this view; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:591, 592; Eng. translation, 2:155, 156; so Matthew Arnold, quoted in Bruce, Miraculous Element in Gospels, 52; see also A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 129-147. Babbage and Peabody would deny that the miracle is due to the direct and immediate agency of God, and would regard it as belonging to a higher order of nature. God is the author of the miracle only in the sense that he instituted the laws of nature at the beginning and provided that at the appropriate time miracle should be their outcome. In favor of this view it has been claimed that it does not dispense with the divine working, but only puts it further back at the origination of the system, while it still holds God's work to be essential, not only to the upholding of the system, but also to the inspiring of the religious teacher or leader with the knowledge needed to predict the unusual working of the system. The wonder is confined to the prophecy, which may equally attest a divine revelation. See Matheson, in Christianity and Evolution, 1-26.
But it is plain that a miracle of this sort lacks to a large degree the element of “signality”which is needed, if it is to accomplish its purpose. It surrenders the great advantage which miracle, as first defined, possessed over special providence, as an attestation of revelation—the advantage, namely, that while special providence affords somewarrant that this revelation comes from God, miracle gives full warrant that it comes from God. Since man may by natural means possess himself of the knowledge of physical laws, the true miracle which God works, and the pretended miracle which only man works, are upon this theory far less easy to distinguish from each other: Cortez, for example, could deceive Montezuma by predicting an eclipse of the sun. Certain typical miracles, like the resurrection of Lazarus, refuse to be classed as events within the realm of nature, in the sense in which the term nature is ordinarily used. Our Lord, moreover, seems clearly to exclude such a theory as this, when he says: “If I by the finger of God cast out demons” (Luke 11:20); Mark 1:41—“I will; be thou made clean.” The view of Babbage is inadequate, not only because it fails to recognize any immediate exercise of will in the miracle, but because it regards nature as a mere machine which can operate apart from God—a purely deistic method of conception. On this view, many of the products of mere natural law might be called miracles. The miracle would be only the occasional manifestation of a higher order of nature, like the comet occasionally invading the solar system. William Elder, Ideas from Nature: “The century-plant which we have seen growing from our childhood may not unfold its blossoms until our old age comes upon us, but the sudden wonder is natural notwithstanding.” If, however, we interpret nature dynamically, rather than mechanically, and regard it as the regular working of the divine will instead of the automatic operation of a machine, there is much in this view which we may adopt. Miracle may be both natural and supernatural. We may hold, with Babbage, that it has natural antecedents, while at the same time we hold that it is produced by the immediate agency of God. We proceed therefore to an alternative and preferable definition, which in our judgment combines the merits of both that have been mentioned. On miracles as already defined, see Mozley, Miracles, preface, ix-xxvi, 7, 143-166; Bushnell, Nature and Supernatural, 333-336; Smith's and Hastings' Dict. of Bible, art.: Miracles; Abp. Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884:193-221; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:541, 542.
B. Alternative and Preferable Definition.—A miracle is an event in nature, so extraordinary in itself and so coinciding with the prophecy or command of a religious teacher or leader, as fully to warrant the conviction, on the part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design of certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by him.
This definition has certain marked advantages as compared with the preliminary definition given above:—(a) It recognizes the immanence of God and his immediate agency in nature, instead of assuming an antithesis between the laws of nature and the will of God. (b) It regards the miracle as simply an extraordinary act of that same God who is already present in all natural operations and who in them is revealing his general plan. [pg 119] (c) It holds that natural law, as the method of God's regular activity, in no way precludes unique exertions of his power when these will best secure his purpose in creation. (d) It leaves it possible that all miracles may have their natural explanations and may hereafter be traced to natural causes, while both miracles and their natural causes may be only names for the one and self-same will of God. (e) It reconciles the claims of both science and religion: of science, by permitting any possible or probable physical antecedents of the miracle; of religion, by maintaining that these very antecedents together with the miracle itself are to be interpreted as signs of God's special commission to him under whose teaching or leadership the miracle is wrought.
Augustine, who declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,” defines the miracle in De Civitate Dei, 21:8—“Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.” He says also that a birth is more miraculous than a resurrection, because it is more wonderful that something that never was should begin to be, than that something that was and ceased to be should begin again. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 104—“The natural is God's work. He originated it. There is no separation between the natural and the supernatural. The natural is supernatural. God works in everything. Every end, even though attained by mechanical means, is God's end as truly as if he wrought by miracle.” Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 141, regards miracle as something exceptional, yet under the control of natural law; the latent in nature suddenly manifesting itself; the revolution resulting from the slow accumulation of natural forces. In the Windsor Hotel fire, the heated and charred woodwork suddenly burst into flame. Flame is very different from mere heat, but it may be the result of a regularly rising temperature. Nature may be God's regular action, miracle its unique result. God's regular action may be entirely free, and yet its extraordinary result may be entirely natural. With these qualifications and explanations, we may adopt the statement of Biedermann, Dogmatik, 581-591—“Everything is miracle,—therefore faith sees God everywhere; Nothing is miracle,—therefore science sees God nowhere.”
Miracles are never considered by the Scripture writers as infractions of law. Bp. Southampton, Place of Miracles, 18—“The Hebrew historian or prophet regarded miracles as only the emergence into sensible experience of that divine force which was all along, though invisibly, controlling the course of nature.” Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 4:117—“The force of a miracle to us, arising from our notion of law, would not be felt by a Hebrew, because he had no notion of natural law.” Ps. 77:19, 20—“Thy way was in the sea, And thy paths in the great waters, And thy footsteps were not known”—They knew not, and we know not, by what precise means the deliverance was wrought, or by what precise track the passage through the Red Sea was effected; all we know is that “Thou leddest thy people like a flock, By the hand of Moses and Aaron.” J. M. Whiton, Miracles and Supernatural Religion: “The supernatural is in nature itself, at its very heart, at its very life; ... not an outside power interfering with the course of nature, but an inside power vitalizing nature and operating through it.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 35—“Miracle, instead of spelling ‘monster’, as Emerson said, simply bears witness to some otherwise unknown or unrecognized aspect of the divine character.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:533—“To cause the sun to rise and to cause Lazarus to rise, both demand omnipotence; but the manner in which omnipotence works in one instance is unlike the manner in the other.”
Miracle is an immediate operation of God; but, since all natural processes are also immediate operations of God, we do not need to deny the use of these natural processes, so far as they will go, in miracle. Such wonders of the Old Testament as the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, the partings of the Red Sea and of the Jordan, the calling down of fire from heaven by Elijah and the destruction of the army of Sennacherib, are none the less works of God when regarded as wrought by the use of natural means. In the New Testament Christ took water to make wine, and took the five loaves to make bread, just as in ten thousand vineyards to-day he is turning the moisture of the earth into the juice of the grape, and in ten thousand fields is turning carbon into corn. The virgin-birth of Christ may be an extreme instance of parthenogenesis, which Professor Loeb of Chicago has just demonstrated to take place in other than the [pg 120]lowest forms of life and which he believes to be possible in all. Christ's resurrection may be an illustration of the power of the normal and perfect human spirit to take to itself a proper body, and so may be the type and prophecy of that great change when we too shall lay down our life and take it again. The scientist may yet find that his disbelief is not only disbelief in Christ, but also disbelief in science. All miracle may have its natural side, though we now are not able to discern it; and, if this were true, the Christian argument would not one whit be weakened, for still miracle would evidence the extraordinary working of the immanent God, and the impartation of his knowledge to the prophet or apostle who was his instrument.
This view of the miracle renders entirely unnecessary and irrational the treatment accorded to the Scripture narratives by some modern theologians. There is a credulity of scepticism, which minimizes the miraculous element in the Bible and treats it as mythical or legendary, in spite of clear evidence that it belongs to the realm of actual history. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:295—“Miraculous legends arise in two ways, partly out of the idealizing of the real, and partly out of the realizing of the ideal.... Every occurrence may obtain for the religious judgment the significance of a sign or proof of the world-governing power, wisdom, justice or goodness of God.... Miraculous histories are a poetic realizing of religious ideas.” Pfleiderer quotes Goethe's apothegm: “Miracle is faith's dearest child.” Foster, Finality of the Christian Religion, 128-138—“We most honor biblical miraculous narratives when we seek to understand them as poesies.” Ritschl defines miracles as “those striking natural occurrences with which the experience of God's special help is connected.” He leaves doubtful the bodily resurrection of Christ, and many of his school deny it; see Mead, Ritschl's Place in the History of Doctrine, 11. We do not need to interpret Christ's resurrection as a mere appearance of his spirit to the disciples. Gladden, Seven Puzzling Books, 202—“In the hands of perfect and spiritual man, the forces of nature are pliant and tractable as they are not in ours. The resurrection of Christ is only a sign of the superiority of the life of the perfect spirit over external conditions. It may be perfectly in accordance with nature.” Myers, Human Personality, 2:288—“I predict that, in consequence of the new evidence, all reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the resurrection of Christ.” We may add that Jesus himself intimates that the working of miracles is hereafter to be a common and natural manifestation of the new life which he imparts: John 14:12—“He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.”
We append a number of opinions, ancient and modern, with regard to miracles, all tending to show the need of so defining them as not to conflict with the just claims of science. Aristotle: “Nature is not full of episodes, like a bad tragedy.” Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well, 2:3:1—“They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.” Keats, Lamia: “There was an awful rainbow once in heaven; We know her woof, her texture: she is given In the dull catalogue of common things.” Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 334—“Biological and psychological science unite in affirming that every event, organic or psychic, is to be explained in the terms of its immediate antecedents, and that it can be so explained. There is therefore no necessity, there is even no room, for interference. If the existence of a Deity depends upon the evidence of intervention and supernatural agency, faith in the divine seems to be destroyed in the scientific mind.” Theodore Parker: “No whim in God,—therefore no miracle in nature.” Armour, Atonement and Law, 15-33—“The miracle of redemption, like all miracles, is by intervention of adequate power, not by suspension of law. Redemption is not ‘the great exception.’ It is the fullest revelation and vindication of law.” Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“Redemption is not natural but supernatural—supernatural, that is, in view of the false nature which man made for himself by excluding God. Otherwise, the work of redemption is only the reconstitution of the nature which God had designed.” Abp. Trench: “The world of nature is throughout a witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of the same root, and being constituted for this very end. The characters of nature which everywhere meet the eye are not a common but a sacred writing,—they are the hieroglyphics of God.” Pascal: “Nature is the image of grace.”President Mark Hopkins: “Christianity and perfect Reason are identical.” See Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 97-123; art.: Miracle, by Bernard, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. The modern and improved view of the miracle is perhaps best presented by T. H. Wright, The Finger of God; and by W. N. Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of Science, 336.
2. Possibility of Miracle.
An event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature. This is evident from the following considerations:
(a) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and transcended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and chemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended or annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in accomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to themselves.
By nature we mean nature in the proper sense—not “everything that is not God,” but “everything that is not God or made in the image of God”; see Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 258, 259. Man's will does not belong to nature, but is above nature. On the transcending of lower forces by higher, see Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, 1:88. James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 23—“Is it impossible that there should be unique things in the world? Is it scientific to assert that there are not?” Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 406—“Why does not the projecting part of the coping-stone fall, in obedience to the law of gravitation, from the top of yonder building? Because, as physics declares, the forces of cohesion, acting under quite different laws, thwart and oppose for the time being the law of gravitation.... But now, after a frosty night, the coping-stone actually breaks off and tumbles to the ground; for that unique law which makes water forcibly expand at 32° Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.” Gore, Incarnation, 48—“Evolution views nature as a progressive order in which there are new departures, fresh levels won, phenomena unknown before. When organic life appeared, the future did not resemble the past. So when man came. Christ is a new nature—the creative Word made flesh. It is to be expected that, as new nature, he will exhibit new phenomena. New vital energy will radiate from him, controlling the material forces. Miracles are the proper accompaniments of his person.” We may add that, as Christ is the immanent God, he is present in nature while at the same time he is above nature, and he whose steady will is the essence of all natural law can transcend all past exertions of that will. The infinite One is not a being of endless monotony. William Elder, Ideas from Nature, 156—“God is not bound hopelessly to his process, like Ixion to his wheel.”
(b) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature, and produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish, while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still operates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the water—for the axe still has weight (cf. 2 K. 6:5-7).
Versus Hume, Philos. Works, 4:130—“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.”Christian apologists have too often needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume's definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet's word, make the iron to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it. But this last is miracle. See Mansel, Essay on Miracles, in Aids to Faith, 26, 27: After the greatest wave of the season has landed its pebble high up on the beach, I can move the pebble a foot further without altering the force of wind or wave or climate in a distant continent. Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 471; Hamilton, Autology, 685-690; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 445; Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 54-74; A. A. Hodge: Pulling out a new stop of the organ does not suspend the working or destroy the harmony of the other stops. The pump does not suspend the law of gravitation, nor does our throwing a ball into the air. If gravitation did not act, the upward velocity of the ball would not diminish and the ball would never return. “Gravitation draws iron down. But the magnet overcomes that attraction and draws the iron up. Yet here is no suspension or violation of law, but rather a harmonious working of two laws, each in its sphere. Death and not life is the order of nature. But [pg 122]men live notwithstanding. Life is supernatural. Only as a force additional to mere nature works against nature does life exist. So spiritual life uses and transcends the laws of nature” (Sunday School Times). Gladden, What Is Left? 60—“Wherever you find thought, choice, love, you find something that is not under the dominion of fixed law. These are the attributes of a free personality.” William James: “We need to substitute the personal view of life for the impersonal and mechanical view. Mechanical rationalism is narrowness and partial induction of facts,—it is not science.”
(c) In all free causation, there is an acting without means. Man acts upon external nature through his physical organism, but, in moving his physical organism, he acts directly upon matter. In other words, the human will can use means, only because it has the power of acting initially without means.
See Hopkins, on Prayer-gauge, 10, and in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:188. A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 311—“Not Divinity alone intervenes in the world of things. Each living soul, in its measure and degree, does the same.” Each soul that acts in any way on its surroundings does so on the principle of the miracle. Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350—“The making of all events miraculous is no more an abolition of miracle than the flooding of the world with sunshine is an extinction of the sun.”George Adam Smith, on Is. 33:14—“devouring fire ... everlasting burnings”: “If we look at a conflagration through smoked glass, we see buildings collapsing, but we see no fire. So science sees results, but not the power which produces them; sees cause and effect, but does not see God.” P. S. Henson: “The current in an electric wire is invisible so long as it circulates uniformly. But cut the wire and insert a piece of carbon between the two broken ends, and at once you have an arc-light that drives away the darkness. So miracle is only the momentary interruption in the operation of uniform laws, which thus gives light to the ages,”—or, let us say rather, the momentary change in the method of their operation whereby the will of God takes a new form of manifestation. Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 100—“Spinoza leugnete ihre metaphysische Möglichkeit, Hume ihre geschichtliche Erkennbarkeit, Kant ihre practische Brauchbarkeit, Schleiermacher ihre religiöse Bedeutsamkeit, Hegel ihre geistige Beweiskraft, Fichte ihre wahre Christlichkeit, und die kritische Theologie ihre wahre Geschichtlichkeit.”
(d) What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what the chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to accomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God dwells in and controls the universe. If man's will can act directly upon matter in his own physical organism, God's will can work immediately upon the system which he has created and which he sustains. In other words, if there be a God, and if he be a personal being, miracles are possible. The impossibility of miracles can be maintained only upon principles of atheism or pantheism.
See Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, 19; Cox, Miracles, an Argument and a Challenge: “Anthropomorphism is preferable to hylomorphism.” Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in a New Light, ch. 1—“A miracle is not a sudden blow struck in the face of nature, but a use of nature, according to its inherent capacities, by higher powers.”See also Gloatz, Wunder und Naturgesetz, in Studien und Kritiken, 1886:403-546; Gunsaulus, Transfiguration of Christ, 18, 19, 26; Andover Review, on “Robert Elsmere,”1888:303; W. E. Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, 1888:766-788; Dubois, on Science and Miracle, in New Englander, July, 1889:1-32—Three postulates: (1) Every particle attracts every other in the universe; (2) Man's will is free; (3) Every volition is accompanied by corresponding brain-action. Hence every volition of ours causes changes throughout the whole universe; also, in Century Magazine, Dec. 1894:229—Conditions are never twice the same in nature; all things are the results of will, since we know that the least thought of ours shakes the universe; miracle is simply the action of will in unique conditions; the beginning of life, the origin of consciousness, these are miracles, yet they are strictly natural; prayer and the mind that frames it are conditions which the Mind in nature cannot ignore. Cf. Ps. 115:3—“our God is in the heavens: He hath done [pg 123]whatsoever he pleased” = his almighty power and freedom do away with all a priori objections to miracles. If God is not a mere force, but a person, then miracles are possible.
(e) This possibility of miracles becomes doubly sure to those who see in Christ none other than the immanent God manifested to creatures. The Logos or divine Reason who is the principle of all growth and evolution can make God known only by means of successive new impartations of his energy. Since all progress implies increment, and Christ is the only source of life, the whole history of creation is a witness to the possibility of miracle.
See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-166—“This conception of evolution is that of Lotze. That great philosopher, whose influence is more potent than any other in present thought, does not regard the universe as a plenum to which nothing can be added in the way of force. He looks upon the universe rather as a plastic organism to which new impulses can be imparted from him of whose thought and will it is an expression. These impulses, once imparted, abide in the organism and are thereafter subject to its law. Though these impulses come from within, they come not from the finite mechanism but from the immanent God. Robert Browning's phrase, ‘All's love, but all's law,’ must be interpreted as meaning that the very movements of the planets and all the operations of nature are revelations of a personal and present God, but it must not be interpreted as meaning that God runs in a rut, that he is confined to mechanism, that he is incapable of unique and startling manifestations of power.
“The idea that gives to evolution its hold upon thinking minds is the idea of continuity. But absolute continuity is inconsistent with progress. If the future is not simply a reproduction of the past, there must be some new cause of change. In order to progress there must be either a new force, or a new combination of forces, and the new combination of forces can be explained only by some new force that causes the combination. This new force, moreover, must be intelligent force, if the evolution is to be toward the better instead of toward the worse. The continuity must be continuity not of forces but of plan. The forces may increase, nay, they must increase, unless the new is to be a mere repetition of the old. There must be additional energy imparted, the new combination brought about, and all this implies purpose and will. But through all there runs one continuous plan, and upon this plan the rationality of evolution depends.
“A man builds a house. In laying the foundation he uses stone and mortar, but he makes the walls of wood and the roof of tin. In the superstructure he brings into play different laws from those which apply to the foundation. There is continuity, not of material, but of plan. Progress from cellar to garret requires breaks here and there, and the bringing in of new forces; in fact, without the bringing in of these new forces the evolution of the house would be impossible. Now substitute for the foundation and superstructure living things like the chrysalis and the butterfly; imagine the power to work from within and not from without; and you see that true continuity does not exclude but involves new beginnings.
“Evolution, then, depends on increments of force plus continuity of plan. New creations are possible because the immanent God has not exhausted himself. Miracle is possible because God is not far away, but is at hand to do whatever the needs of his moral universe may require. Regeneration and answers to prayer are possible for the very reason that these are the objects for which the universe was built. If we were deists, believing in a distant God and a mechanical universe, evolution and Christianity would be irreconcilable. But since we believe in a dynamical universe, of which the personal and living God is the inner source of energy, evolution is but the basis, foundation and background of Christianity, the silent and regular working of him who, in the fulness of time, utters his voice in Christ and the Cross.”
Lotze's own statement of his position may be found in his Microcosmos, 2:479 sq.Professor James Ten Broeke has interpreted him as follows: “He makes the possibility of the miracle depend upon the close and intimate action and reaction between the world and the personal Absolute, in consequence of which the movements of the natural world are carried on only through the Absolute, with the possibility of a variation in the general course of things, according to existing facts and the purpose of the divine Governor.”