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I.—Are Miracles Physically Possible?

f our outer life has its ups and downs, so much more is this the case with our inner life. Our friend All man was no exception to the rule. Heretofore he had been pumping Browne about miracles and giving up gradually, now one prejudice, now another, as his sound common sense, assisted by Browne's conversations, came to perceive how hollow and reasonless they were. But a few days back he had seen a placard on the walls announcing that a lecture would be delivered that evening at a certain mechanics' institute by George Rookson on miracles; and as the subject jumped with a strong current of his thoughts, he went to hear what the lecturer had to say about it. The lecture was temperate in tone; clear, and occasionally even eloquent; but its whole object was to prove that miracles were an impossibility, and the offspring of superstition. All man listened with both his ears; and the result was that he came home in a miserable state of mind, such as he had never known before, since first he came to the age of reason. For the lecturer had not spared Christianity; and the plentiful shafts of his sarcasm were most mercilessly aimed at the miracles of the Bible than even at what we may call ecclesiastical miracles. He had measured his audience beforehand, and knew he would have to deal with Protestants. The result on All man's mind was that cruel doubts would make themselves felt about the truth of the Bible and of the Christian religion. He was quite upset—miserable. The foundation of his faith had been for the moment undermined; and he found himself, of a sudden, closed round in more than Egyptian darkness.

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He could not shake off his depression the next day; and in the evening, when the Rev. Amminadab Gronout had called in as usual, to tea and muffins, it could not escape the suspicious observation of Mrs A. At length, just as the classic 'pine-apple rum' and hot water had been ordered, that amiable companion of his life turned round sharply upon him, exclaiming, 'Whatever has come over you, Solomon, my dear? You sit there saying nothing, and looking like the wicked who flee when no man pursueth. Whatever is it, Soly? Is it the glorious conviction at last that you are a miserable sinner—that all your righteousness is as filthy rags? Is it an awakening? Tell me, dearest?' 'Not exactly said Allman, provoked to forget his ordinary prudence in this very godly company; and adding, with a fierceness which approached a grin, 'I'm doubting whether Christianity is not all humbug; that's all.' 'The Lord in His mercy save us,' exclaimed the dame, now thoroughly alarmed. 'O Solomon, how has this come about? Who has been leading you astray into darkness and the shadow of death? Dearee me, its awful. Open up your poor heart to this excellent man of God; do, Allman.' Whether it was that the real sympathy of his wife moved him, or the thought passed across him that perhaps the pious Amminadab might be of some little help, is uncertain; but at all events, he came out with it like a man. 'Well, the truth is, I heard a man lecture last night on miracles, and he proved that miracles were absurd—a simple impossibility; and I don't see my way out of it. What would you have me do, sir?' The Rev. Amminadab Gronout, thus appealed to, paused in the act of stirring his Will-composed night-cap, and replied, in an oracular sort of whine: 'Poor sinner, I perceive that thou art in the slough of despond and in the pitfalls of unbelief; trust in Christ.' 'But that's just what I can't do,' retorts Allman; for if His miracles are a sham, how can I believe Him to be what He says He is?' The reverend gentleman's face became more majestic and merciless, as he re-marked : 'Even so do the carnal-minded deem who have not been called of God as was Abraham. The unregenerate man savoureth not of heavenly things. Go, unfortunate sinner; go in all thy blindness; go to Christ.' 'Cant and humbug!' muttered the enraged Allman, as, amidst a volcano of regenerate groans in duet, he flung himself out of the room, and slammed the door after him.

It must be confessed that our good friend was not in the most amiable frame of mind; nor did his sleeping over it make him much better. He was annoyed with himself; annoyed with those two simpletons at home; annoyed with everything around him. He couldn't stand it. It was no use trying to throw it off by plunging into business, for his thoughts would go back to the page 5 lecture; so, in a fit of despair, he locked up his cash-box, and hurried off to Browne, who happened to be in his sanctum reading. In rushed Allman with his hat on, threw himself into a chair, fixed his elbows on the table, and his head on his fists, and stared at Browne in moody silence.

Browne. Hallo, Allman I What's the matter? You look like an owl in an ivy-bush.

Allman. Don't plague me, Browne. I can't stand it to-day. I'm half-mad; and I've come to you to see if you can help me. I've tried Amminadab; and all I got for my pains was to find him out to be the consummate fool I always took him for. Hang him, he's enough to make a man an infidel, without anything else; and I don't want helping in that direction just at present; that's certain.

Browne. My dear friend, forgive me. I see there's something really the matter; if there's anything I can do—you know me, Allman, before now. What is it? Is anything wrong with the business?

Allman. Hang the business!

Browne. Allman, Allman, this will never do. Rouse your-self, and don't give way to ill-temper.

Allman. Don't mind me old fellow. I didn't mean it. But I'm everlastingly upset, and there's the long and short of it. I've been to hear a lecture against miracles, and I don't know whether I'm standing on my head or my heels. The Bible's gone; Christianity's gone; hope's gone. I don't know whether I'm not, after all, a highly-educated tadpole, and destined to go an eternal smash when I have said my last good-bye to the old gal and the kids, melting away like sugar into less than nothing; and that high-pressure Bedlamite, Gronout, shunts his chin athwart his stiff choker at me, and grunts out with the tone of a Pope—Go to Christ.

Browne. Oh, that's all, is it? Well, I shouldn't have gone to Amminadab, if I had been you.

Allman. Now just listen to the man. Here's a poor fellow become an infidel at one sitting, and he says. Is that all? Cool, very : And I shouldn't have gone to Amminadab! Of course not; only I was half cracked at the time.

Browne. Well, I am cool, old boy; because, with God's help, I don't think the infidel fit will last long with you. You are too earnest, and God is too good. But now, tell me, what were the arguments which seem to have had such a strong effect upon you? One at a time, you know; that's the proper way of doing business.

Allman. I declare I begin to breathe again. You're so calm and confident; just like those knowing doctors with nervous patients—'Now don't excite yourself; there's nothing very serious the page 6 matter; let me feel your pulse, please; now the tongue. That'll do.' Isn't that it, eh, Browne? Yes, it does decidedly give a fellow pluck. So now for the first dose. He began by saying that it wasn't at all certain whether there was a God or no; and, if there was one, we knew nothing about Him, and we couldn't know anything about Him; so we might just as well leave Him out of the question. That's how he began; and I think that was about enough for one gulp.

Browne. I am free to own that the lecturer has simplified his work considerably; for if God is left out of the question, there is no doubt that miracles are done for. You can't have a miracle if there is nobody to work one. But how your sound common sense, Allman, could lend an ear to such preposterous and groundless assertions puzzles me. What! Is the universal voice of mankind from the very beginning of no account? Is this fair world, in all its strength and beauty and order, a mere thing of chance? Are those stern judgments of conscience, that instinctive sense of right and wrong, those universal hopes and fears of the future, the mere phantoms of the individual imagination—the product, perchance, of a higher and developed electricity?

Allman. You are right there, Browne, sure enough. If there's no God, I don't for the life of me see how there can be anything else? If you are to have a watch, you must have your watchmaker. But I am more bothered about the other point. God is a pure spirit; and we cannot see, hear, feel, or know Him by any of the senses. He doesn't seem to interfere with our daily goings-on; at least, if He docs, He is as still as a mouse about it.

Browne. Did you ever sec, or hear, or feel Sir Christopher Wren, who planned St. Paul's, London? Did you ever know by any of your senses Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted so many beautiful portraits?

Allman. No; of course not. But then I can form a tolerably good idea of them from their buildings and pictures.

Browne. And cannot you do the same with our good God? I will say nothing of the supernatural order, because you would not quite understand me yet; and, besides, it would be out of place : but look around you upon the wonders of creation in the heavens above and earth beneath : the various, and all but num-berless orders of birds, beasts, fish, reptiles, insects; the plants, shrubs, trees; mountains, lakes, seas, rivers, fountains; do you not see power, beauty, order, skill? Look then within; you will find justice, wisdom, will, freedom, a moral law, a ruling conscience in your own soul. These tell me much indeed of Him Who made them. He is neither unknowable nor unknown to me. Surely, though we cannot comprehend all His excellence—for the limited cannot grasp the unlimited—yet we may confi- page 7 dently say to doubters and know-nothings, in the words of the motto in St. Paul's: 'If you want a monument, if you seek a revelation, look round about you'—and within you. You will find an image and likeness of the great Creator—imperfect though it be—in the mirror of His creation.

Allman. Just what I had in my head; only you have brought it out; as the schoolboy said to his master, who was jogging his memory at both ends by hints from book and cane. Of course, I can and do know a great deal about God in this way; for nobody can put into another what he hasn't got himself. So that all that is good, and beautiful, and strong, and wise, and perfect in created things must be at least equally in God. Yes, it's plain. That unknown and unknowable business is a simple bit of humbug, made to take in flats.

Browne. But, remember, you were taken in for the moment yourself, Allman; so don't be too hard on flats. However, I think we may leave that point now, and charitably suppose that there is a God, and that we may know something about Him; just for the sake of argument, you know.

Allman. Now, don't be sarcastic; as the young dandy said to the chimpanzee.

Browne. Well, what was the lecturer's next proof that miracles were an impossibility?

Allman. Why, he said, so far as I could understand him, that the movements of Nature were not like those of a watch or of any other dead machine, which were given from without; for they proceed from her own inner life. Hence they are her own property so to speak : and as her life or action is not free, she cannot change, and her laws are in consequence unalterable. What do you say to that?

Browne. In the first place I deny that the movement of the watch is from without except! in its commencement, for during the twenty-four hours its movement is its own. Furthermore, I maintain that as in the machine the original movement comes from without, so is it in the things of Nature. There is a difference, I own, between them; but not here. But let us bring it down to common sense.

Allman. That's just the thing I want. I like things plain. None of your algebra for me, with its a×b—c. What can you get by adding two letters together? I can understand seven shillings added to nine; you can do that, and it's in the way of business.

Browne. Well, then, I say Nature was cither created, made by God, or it was not.

Allman. I suppose those chaps would say it was not.

Browne. Then Nature is God Himself,

Allman. Why so?

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Browne. Because then it would be self-existent, and that is the great characteristic of God.

Allman. I don't see that plainly. Suppose the world was from everlasting?

Browne. That would make no difference.

Allman. No difference! But then it would be as old as God, equal to Him.

Browne. We know that it is not so; but just for argument's sake let us suppose it. The world would then certainly be as old as God, if we may use such a term, but not equal. God would always be first.

Allman. I can't take that in at all; for how could one be first if they were both always running together?

Browne. God would not be first in order of time; but He would still be first in two ways at least. He would be first in order of nature. I will show you what I mean by an illustration. Suppose that at the very moment Eve was created she had miraculously given birth to a son. In that case there would have been no first in order of time; but Eve would have been first in order of nature.

Allman. Why?

Browne. Because the son would have essentially depended on Eve for his life; whereas Eve, on the other hand, would not have had the slightest dependence on her son.

Allman. I see; that makes it very plain. What a head you have! as the frog said to the tadpole. But now for the second difference.

Browne. Well, God would be first in His life; for His life would be real eternity, unchanging—the entire possession of full being; whereas the creature's duration would be successive, like numbers are; and would still be measured, as now, by time; only it would be time a little changed from what it is now.

Allman. I think I see now that the eternity of the world would make no difference; so now let us suppose that Nature is God : for the lecturer said something like that. I think it was this, that Nature may be God gradually developing Himself. What say you to that?

Browne. Why, I say it is a most audacious piece of nonsense; for if God could develop Himself, He wouldn't be God. Either before this development He needed development or not. If He needed it, He couldn't be God, for God is perfect. If He didn't need it, it was folly, and God is Wisdom. In neither case could He be God, because God is unchangeable.

Allman. But let us send that development about its business. Couldn't Nature be God as she is? I am only putting it to you, Browne, to get clearer ideas about it, for I begin to see how that lecturer humbugged me.

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Browne. What a worse than brutish absurdity! Just hold out your hand, my dear fellow.

(Allman did as he was bid, and Browne dipped a pencil into a glass of water that was by his side, and let fall a drop into his friends hand.)

Allman. What on earth are you about? Are you a Baptist, that you want to douse me again?

Browne. You see that drop of water on your hand? If you add to it billions upon billions of drops, will you ever make it oil or stone?

Allman. Browne, it's my decided opinion that you're docketed for Bedlam. They say your Cathedral in London is quite convenient to it. Of course the number of drops couldn't change the nature of the water, any more than if you muster a large army of soldiers, like it was in the late wars, the men would change into monkeys. I say, old fellow, you're trifling with one's common sense.

Browne. Yet that is precisely what you have just wished me in all seriousness to suppose. For what is Nature? Is it not the collection of all the things you perceive by your senses? And do not all these things begin and end?

Allman. No; the stars, sun, and moon don't.

Browne. I beg your pardon. According to the most approved modern theory, these heavenly bodies are formed out of nebular matter, and the work is now going on. But if they can begin, it is plain they can end.

Allman. Bother! I suppose I must give up the stars, then. Well, go on.

Browne. Do not all things change? Do not all things go on from rude beginnings to perfection? Do not they then decay? Is there not constant succession? So, then, out of a multitude of finites you make an infinite; out of a multitude of changeables you make an unchangeable; out of a multitude of imperfect things you make one infinitely perfect; out of a multitude of things of time you make an eternal. And how do you do it, forsooth? By gluing them all together! So you add to the absurdity by constituting out of an innumerable host the most perfect individual unity. Not only so; but you jumble together brute matter, vegetable, animal, and human life; and you transform this precious conglomerate into Him who must be pure spirit, infinitely simple, infinitely wise. I wonder who are the fittest inmates of Bedlam, they or I.

Allman. Hip, hip, hip, hoorah!—once more, hoorah! By jingo, Browne, you ought to have been in Parliament. Well, seriously, I must say you've settled that part of the business thoroughly. Their God is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, made up of gold, silver, iron, and miry clay. He's a regular hotch-potch.

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Browne. Well, what else did this lecturer say?

Allman. Oh, let me see. Yes, I have it; he said that if there was a God, He didn't trouble Himself about Nature; He may have made it, if you like; but having done that, He left it to shift for itself. But that seems to me to be pitching it a little too strong. Besides, he never attempted to prove his assertion.

Browne. Prove it! I should just think not. Why, it is opposed to the plainest teaching of common sense! If Nature required a God to form it, it requires a God to preserve it; for the preservation of a thing is its continued creation. Let us imagine that a watch could speak; and after the watchmaker had put it together, it should say,' Thank you very much for what you have done; now you may go about your business, for I have no further need of you. I can regulate myself, wind myself up, set myself by the Exchange, repair myself'—what would you think of master watch?

Allman. Wo, you old English Plato; I have you now. You said a little while ago that the watch could go on by itself for the twenty-four hours. That tells against you rather than for you, it seems to me.

Browne. I am not beaten yet friend. For the watchmaker doesn't create, he only puts together; and he does not give motion to the wheels; he only uses the powers of motion which God has given to matter for his purpose. So necessary is God's presence and action to create being and motion of whatever kind, that, as a priest told me, you can prove by reason that if He were to absent Himself, so to say, the whole thing would collapse. We require, he told me, God's present aid even to lift our arm, or draw a breath, or think a thought. You know the old saying, that a comparison is always lame in one of its limbs.

Allman. My dear Browne, what a fearful idea that doctrine of yours gives one of God's presence! I seem to understand better now what you once said to me, that good Catholics should always be living in another world.

Browne. Yes, there is something quite overpowering in the Presence of God, when you pause to realise it. For He is, first of all present in us by the ceaseless workings and co-operation of His omnipotence and most loving providence. Then he is present by His infinite wisdom everywhere in this creation :'Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked, and opened unto the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do' (Heb. iv. 13). Lastly, He is omnipresent by the necessity of His own essential Being; for there is no place where God is not. You see, by the mere contrast, how impossible it is even to imagine God deserting His creation for one single instant. The inevitable result would be a universal annihilation.

Allman. I see what you mean. It is most true, and that page 11 helps me to anticipate your answer to my next point. This lecturer said that the laws of Nature were immutable; that God Himself, supposing Him to exist, could not change them. What say you to that?

Browne. Well, we will see. First tell me what you mean by law.

Allman. I'm shut up; as the donkey said when they popped him into the pound. You say what it is.

Browne. By a law, then, I understand a settled order, imposed by one that has authority for the general good.

Allman. Very well; I don't see anything to object to in that. But what can you make out of it?

Browne. Why, I think it is plain, from the very idea of law, if I have explained it rightly, that a law supposes a lawgiver—some one, that is, who has authority to impose his rule on others.

Allman. That's as true as Gospel. But what of that?

Browne. Well, if this lawgiver has power to make the order, I think it is pretty plain that he has power to unmake it.

Allman. Certainly, that is as plain as A B C. And I don't know what they'd do when Parliament sits if it wasn't; for most of their time is taken up with repealing laws they made the last session, or else in dressing them up in a new set of clothes.

Browne. If, then, there are laws of Nature, there must have been a lawgiver, who can be no other than God. If therefore God has, in His infinite Wisdom, constituted a definite order in His creation, it follows that He has the absolute power of changing that order, or suspending it, on occasion, according to His good pleasure. Hence it follows that He can work a miracle; so it isn't impossible after all.

Allman. I own that is just what I thought. But the lecturer quoted some big-wig or other, whom he seemed to make a great fuss about, as saying that the phrase, 'a law of Nature,' is, strictly speaking, an incorrect expression; so that, according to him, your argument, which—to do him justice,—he brought forward, breaks down; because it is built up on a simple metaphor.

Browne. Be it so. But it is a metaphor common to every civilised language, as I am told. How is that, if there is no truth at the bottom of it? Is, then, a universal thought a lie? But—to pass this by—what is this so-called law of Nature, if it is not really a law? I will answer my own question. It is a settled order in everything that our senses perceive. Thus turnip-seed always results in turnips, dogs produce dogs; leaves always fall in winter, and fresh leaves appear again in spring. After June the days begin to get shorter, and after December they begin to get longer. Now where did that order come from?

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Allman. I suppose they would say from the things them-selves.

Browne. Is not that the height of absurdity? Has a geranium the thought or power to pass on its own particular nature to its offspring? What is to prevent the seed of the geranium develop-ing into an apple-tree? Surely, if there is order, there must be a mind to conceive, and a power to preserve that order; and that mind and power must be outside the things that are ordered or arranged; since the order for stalls their existence. Nothing can order itself before it exists.

Allman. But some of them say it may happen by a sort of fate or chance.

Browne. Chance, indeed! Put billions on billions of the letter A in a bag, as many of the letter B, and so on, to the end of the alphabet—shake them together and empty them out, alternately, to the day of judgment, if you like—would chance ever compose one play of Shakespeare, or fate either, for the matter of that? And if chance did it once, could it do it a hundred times, or even twice? What fools men become, when they would be wiser than God!

Allman. True for you there! But I say, Browne, that lecturer made a remark on this point which I couldn't see the way to answer. He said that the fact was enough for us; we couldn't get further. Our senses teach us that an acorn always becomes an oak, and that frost freezes water. That's certain; but as for the why and the wherefore, we could know nothing; and it is folly to bother ourselves about it.

Browne. A very modest invitation to reduce ourselves to a level with brute beasts, and to make good our title of being nothing better than sublimated apes. I will say nothing of the wondrous consistency that makes the senses infallible, at the expense of consciousness and the understanding. But here is the beauty of it. If we know, can know, nothing but the facts, physical science is all moonshine. For how many facts have we observed ourselves? How often, for instance, have you seen turnip-seed become turnips—you yourself, I mean, Allman? And if you had seen it a million times—whereas I doubt whether you have seen it twice—how are you to tell that the million-and-oneth time it may not grow up into hemlock? What is there reasonably to assure us that the bread of to-day may not be strychnine to-morrow? Mere facts live in the past and present only; of themselves they are no prophets.

Allman. I see that clearly. Of mere facts you can never make a rule; so there could be no real knowledge, not even of the things necessary for life. Well, we have come to a pretty pass, if that's it. I go to the baker's for a loaf of bread—a quartern. He gives it to me over the counter. Says I, 'Are page 13 you sure it's bread?' 'Rather, says he. 'Why?' says I. 'Because I made it myself out of the flour,' says he. 'Flour, thinks I to myself; 'how does he know? It may be arsenic; there's no telling.' Well, that would be a pleasant state of things. It would all be as dangerous as mushrooms and horse-radish.

Browne. You see, Allman, everybody must be everything in our times. If these respectable gentlemen would keep to their skeletons, and leave philosophy and theology to those whose business it is, the world would be happier, and they would be more useful to their fellows. But such modesty is only to be found in company with true wisdom.

Allman. You're right, old fellow. Now, then, for the lecturer's other arguments.

Browne. Not to-day, Allman. We have worked both our heads at this as much as is good for us.

Allman. So be it, then. Well, I must say you have taken a weight off my mind, Browne. I feel quite a different sort of bird from what I was when I came here just now. I tell you what it seems to me; men are very foolish to put themselves in the way of all this blather um skite, unless they have thought much on such things. It's like those foolish fellows who put their heads into the lion's mouth for show, and take their chance of his keeping his jaws stretched. I think it's better to let well alone, and not be over-curious about new-fangled notions, unless they happen to be in our own line of business. Good-bye, old fellow. Thanks to you, I go home a happy man.

Browne. No, Allman. Let me change that phrase of yours. 'Thanks to God.' God bless you!