Alfred Ernest Garvie

“ The closed and hard circle of mechanical necessity is not immediately accessible to the miracle-working fiat, nor does it need to be; but the inner nature of that which obeys its laws is not determined by it but by the meaning of the world. ”

“ The existence of physical evil, and still more of moral evil, forbids the assumption without qualification that the real is the rational. God in nature as well as history is fulfilling a redemptive as well as perfective purpose, of which these miracles are appropriate signs. It is an unwarranted idealism and optimism which finds the course of nature so wise and so good that any change in it must be regarded as incredible. ”

“ The divine agency is recognized as combining and controlling, but not as producing, in the teleological notion of miracles. “In miracle no new powers, instituted or stimulated by God’s creative action, are at work, but merely the general order of nature” ”

“ Thus as life is transcendent and yet immanent in body, and mind in brain, and both utilize their organs, so God, transcendent and immanent, uses the course of nature for His own ends; and the emergence both of life and mind in that course of nature evidences such a divine initiative as is assumed in the recognition of the possibility of miracles. ”

“ The proof of the possibility of miracle leads us inevitably to the inquiry regarding the necessity of miracle. The necessity of miracles is displayed in their connexion with the divine revelation; but this connexion may be conceived in two ways. The miracles may be regarded as the credentials of the agents of divine revelation. ”

“ An attempt has been made to discover a natural law which will explain some at least of the miracles of Jesus. “In one respect alone,” says Matthew Arnold, “have the miracles recorded by the evangelists a more real ground than the mass of miracles of which we have the relation. Medical science has never gauged, perhaps never enough set itself to gauge the intimate connexion between moral fault and disease. ”

“ When the existence of God is denied (atheism) , or His nature is declared unknowable (agnosticism) , or He is identified with nature itself (pantheism) , or He is so distinguished from the world that His free action is excluded from the course of nature (deism) , miracle is necessarily denied. ”

“ But what he emphasizes is on the one hand the close connexion between the conception of miracles and the belief in divine providence, and on the other the compatibility between miracles and the order of nature. He declines to regard miracles as divine action contrary to the laws of nature. ”

“ The moral therapeutics consists in the influence of a powerful will over others. Harnack accepts this view. “We see that a firm will and a convinced faith act even on the bodily life and cause appearances which appeal to us as miracles. ”

“ The miraculous germs always exist alongside other germs in a sort of sheath, like hidden springs in a machine, and emerge into the light when their time comes.” Similar is the view of Paracelsus and Jerome Cardan, who “suppose a twofold world, existing one in the other ”