distinguish true miracles from false or diabolical ones. This could only be found in the moral character of the work or the beneficent tendencies of the accompanying doctrine; and the Fathers were thus for several reasons induced to disparage mere signs or external displays of power, and to appeal to the doctrine to prove the miracles on which it was ostensibly based. This, however, was to refer the entire question of revelation to the paramount adjudication of conscience, implying a subordination of external to internal criteria obviously very dangerous to dogmatical theology; and Protestant theology was obliged to lay the more stress on the primitive miracles in proportion as it repudiated later ones. This latter tendency became still stronger where Protestantism was driven from its originally assumed basis in the pretended support of the "inner witness;" and the Socinians and Arminians, who first discarded the resource, found themselves in the awkward dilemma of being compelled, in their supernatural assumptions, to insist especially on the very postulate which their reason led them, as far as possible, to extenuate and abridge.

But it was only through the more perfect development of philosophy in modern times that men became emboldened entirely to deny the reality and possibility of miracle. The revolution of thought was gradual. The possibility could not be denied so long as nature was deemed to be capriciously animated, or to be dependent on a capricious will external to it. There was an interval of transition between the magical and the truly scientific view of nature, which was occupied by “natural magic; a name indicating that intermediate state of thought when superstition begins to give way to curiosity, and when nature is found to be, to a certain extent, empirically subject to human control, though as yet very imperfectly accessible to human intelligence. Even under these circumstances, however, the Aristotelian Pomponatius

asserted nature's general immutability and the relativity of pretended miracles.1

But it was Spinoza who first clearly exposed the irreconcileable nature of the conflict between theology and philosophy on this vital subject. The impossibility of miracle might be argued in two ways; either as a postulate of reason, or as an inference from uniform experience. The general result of the speculations of the Renaissance had been to widen the gulf already opened by nominalistic scepticism between theology and science, by creating a definitive dualism of the spiritual and material, and separating the teleological aspect of nature from the mechanical or scientific. The severance resulted from rash efforts to effect union; and so long as it continued, an arbitrary external teleology sustained the notion of miracle, in spite of the general admission of nature's provincial uniformity. It was impossible to contemplate the universe without a God; equally so to deny to such a Being the power of occasional interference; and hence "occasionalism" availed itself of the opportunity to overleap the pretended barrier by assuming one department of nature at least, i.e., the phenomena of the human soul, to be a series of incessant miracles. Science, however, was gradually closing up the crevices or seeming blanks affording openings for miraculous interpolations; and a new relation between the contrasted spheres gradually arose from the time when man despairing of a direct influence over living nature by his will, addressed himself to study it as a dead thing, or chain of causation, to be analysed and controlled by his reason. A new intellectual empire tending evidently to universality was then founded within the sphere of those ascertained uniformities of coexistence and succession which by an allowable, though not absolutely perfect, analogy were called "laws of nature,"

осса

1 De Incantationibus-"Non sunt miracula quia sunt totaliter contra naturam, sed pro tanto dicuntur miracula quia insueta."

beyond which unexplained phenomena, however provisionally anomalous and perplexing, seemed only as an unoccupied territory awaiting appropriation; so that in this way the probability of miracles became infinitely attenuated, while the presumption of nature's undeviating uniformity, growing continually with the growth of knowledge, presented itself to the educated mind with increasing, and at last overwhelming force. Yet so long as the world was thought to be governed by the will of an external Ruler, its uniformity would necessarily be still in a measure contingent and dependent on the character of that Ruler: scientific induction could never be made absolutely complete, nor miracles pronounced to be absolutely impossible. But the outstanding possibility was excluded by the argument of Spinoza, that in the view of reason there cannot be two crossing and contending wills or principles in God; that nature's law is itself the continuous manifestation and accomplishment of necessary and immanent perfection; and that to suppose anything really contradicting this perfection, or performed by the Deity in opposition to it, were to make Him contradict Himself. Miracles could therefore be admitted only in a subjective or notional sense. The notion arose from considering God and nature as two separate agencies operating exclusively of each other; so that nature's action meant divine repose, and divine activity a suspension of the laws of nature. If both powers be recognised as acting necessarily and unitedly, miracle ceases to have any objective meaning, and is really only a showy costume invented to disguise the inanity of human ignorance. The vulgar presumptuously change their real ignorance into a pretence of positive knowledge; first, by denying the existence of a natural cause, and then gratuitously assuming a supernatural one. Miracle thus sinks into the general category of the natural; it is a mere myth, a name or mental hallucination mistaken for a reality;

expressing only by the difference of phrase man's ignorance of natural causes. Even were there any meaning in saying that a phenomenon having no natural cause is caused by God, it would be impossible, continued Spinoza, for us to see or assert it to be so; to do this conclusively would require an absolutely exhaustive knowledge of natural causes; since otherwise there must always remain a certain possibility that the supposed miracle may after all have been caused naturally. But considering that such knowledge is altogether beyond our reach, it follows that, even supposing miracles to be objectively possible, they cannot by us be recognized.1

Spinoza proceeded to shew that miracle, far from satisfactorily establishing belief in the existence of an infinite Being, tends, on the contrary, to unsettle it, as contradicting those universal ideas or laws through which alone such a Being can be apprehended by us. He also explained the natural origin of the miraculous narratives in the Bible, shewing that they arose in great measure from the inexact and figurative mode of expression usual among the Hebrew writers; particularly their habit of ascribing naturally-produced events directly to the first cause, and the universal tendency of men to mingle their own impressions and erroneous judgments with statements of fact, especially where the facts are above their comprehension and complicated with religious interests.

But these inferences were too much in advance of prevailing prejudice to be immediately accepted; and the more conciliatory philosophy of Leibnitz, though later in date,

1 Spinoza had argued, in corresponding with Oldenburg, that to adduce miracles in proof of religion was only to explain the obscure by the more obscure, to cite our ignorance as a source of knowledge. And when Oldenburg asked in reply whether modesty does not require us to believe that God can do things transcending human comprehension, Spinoza rejoined that modesty equally requires us to admit that there is much surpassing our comprehension in nature; and that since we cannot without arrogance presume to determine how far its forces extend, or what transcends the limits of its power, it is better, in presence of an allegation which we can neither explain nor admit, not to talk of miracles, but to suspend our judgment.

took precedence of that of Spinoza in popular estimation. The views of Leibnitz were really not less opposed to common belief than those of Spinoza; but they were less clearly and consistently stated; they had a double aspect, and seeming to flatter theological prejudice with a shew of compromise, became, in conjunction with the coarser theory of Locke,1 the basis of that mongrel production of brass without and clay within called "modern supernaturalism. The theory of "pre-established harmony" really excluded that of intervention; but then the phraseology of interference was overtly preserved, and a pretence of orthodoxy maintained by the hypothesis of "preformation," and by the revived distinction of "supernatural" and "unnatural." Miracles, say the advocates of "preformation," are part of nature's original plan, though appearing phenomenally as exceptions; and

Locke, while assigning paramount supremacy to reason, admits a "possible. enlargement of reason" by means of a revelation proved to be from God by testimony or other evidence.

2 When, at the outset of modern philosophy, matter and mind had been separated, and nature as it were provisionally killed for the purposes of scientific analysis, a consideration of the phenomena of man's intellectual life soon shewed the necessity of at least partially reanimating it. "Occasionalism” was the first coarse expedient adopted for this purpose; it made man's mental life a continued miracle, a series of galvanic jerks or interferences on the part of God. But miracle is only a confession of ignorance, a negation of philosophy: it were more rational and honest to confess that ignorance at once, and to say that matter and mind actually coexist and co-operate, though we know not how; that the supposed separation of the two substances is a gratuitous hypothesis; and that if God be invoked to reunite them when separated, we may as well deny the separation, and believe with Spinoza that all things are naturally one in God. In short, the pantheistic immanency of God is the last word of philosophy and reason; but then the peculiar God of theology vanishes; and there are several essential religious ideas,-such as freedom and moral responsibility,—usually connected with the notion of a personal God,— with which the idea of immanency seems at first sight to militate. Here' Leibnitz strives to serve two masters, and to make an apportionment between reason and philosophy. His dynamical theory is formed to unite matter and mind, while his "pre-established harmony" resolves the "Deus ex machinâ of Occasionalism into an immanent energy or instinct implanted from the beginning in nature, so that individual existences are like a series of clocks originally adjusted to each other, and going infallibly alike. But then, after having thus combined God with the universe, he again inconsistently assigns. to Him a separate individuality and personality as Creator, etc., etc., at the same time claiming for Him an omnipresence inconsistent with personality.