Miracle (Christianity)

“ The bulk of the people reject miracle. But what a large minority is still left who absolutely crave for it, let the records of Theosophy and many another miraculous religion show. Miracle satisfies a craving, an instinct, that nothing else will meet. It is curious to note how the inclusion of miracle in religion varies inversely with the inclusion of conduct. With the Latins miracle is most, the Latin Christianity is the most miraculous of all religions, and therein conduct is least. ”

“ A miracle is never looked for but it comes. [16]
No man can say there was not something at the bottom of the Christian “miracles,” and of witchcrafts and possessions; I doubt not something not yet fully understood; but to suppose, on such evidence, that God departed from the usual law of the world, in these cases, is not very rational, to say the least; to make such a belief essential to Christianity is without warrant in the words of Christ.
But now admitting in argument that Jesus wrought all the miracles alleged; that his birth and resurrection were both miraculous ”

“ That which is objectively miracle, or miraculous power, is subjectively faith; miracle is the outward aspect of faith, faith the inward soul of miracle; faith is the miracle of mind, the miracle of feeling, which merely becomes objective in external miracles. ”

“ And though the book mainly confines itself to its proper subject, the antecedent question of credibility, some of the most striking remarks in it relate to the way in which the purpose of miracles is visible in those of Christianity, and has been served by them. A miracle is an instrument—an instrument without which revelation is impossible ”

“ The issue does not concern individual miracles, even so important a miracle as the Virgin Birth. It really concerns all miracles. And the question concerning all miracles is simply the question of the acceptance or rejection of the Saviour that the New Testament presents. Reject the miracles and you have in Jesus the fairest flower of humanity who made such an impression upon His followers that after His death they could not believe that He had perished but experienced hallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from the dead ”

“ Faith, love, hope, are the Christian Trinity. Hope has relation to the fulfilment of the promises, the wishes which are not yet fulfilled, but which are to be fulfilled; love has relation to the Being who gives and fulfils these promises; faith to the promises, the wishes, which are already fulfilled, which are historical facts.
Miracle is an essential object of Christianity, an essential article of faith. But what is miracle? ”

“ There is the clearest proof that Christ's disciples were in this general rivalry—this universal miracle-working mêlée.
Two things very necessary to be accomplished, in the estimation of the apostles, were, first, to show that Christ outdid the heathen Gods, and even the prophets, in the display of the wonder-exciting miraculous power, and thus proved his divinity; and second, that the prophecies had been fulfilled in his coming and his practical life. And there is reason to believe all the New Testament miracles are founded on and grew out of prophecy. ”

“ The positive, essential significance of miracle is therefore that the divine nature is the human nature. Miracles confirm, authenticate doctrine. What doctrine? Simply this, that God is a Saviour of men, their Redeemer out of all trouble, i.e., a being corresponding to the wants and wishes of man, and therefore a human being. What the God-man declares in words, miracle demonstrates ad oculos by deeds. ”

“ Christ's miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body—and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands—that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in the ordinary. ”

“ That the crowning miracle of all the miracles summed up in the New Testament, after the miracle of the blind seeing, and the lame walking, and the restoration of the dead to life, was the miracle that the poor had the Gospel preached to them. ”

“ Thy life, full of virtues, presented a perpetual miracle. Many miracles and signs indeed we saw, but of these thou thoughtest little. Greater to thee was the joy that Christ Himself should acknowledge thy merits and virtues than that men should observe thy miracles. ”

“ But the same may now be also said of the popular theology which rests the Bible's authority and the Christian religion on miracle. To a great many persons this is tantamount to stopping their use of the Bible and of the Christian religion; for they have made up their minds that what is popularly called miracle never does really happen, and that the belief in it arises out of either ignorance or mistake. ”

“ But a miracle, in my belief, has been wrought in inspiring four men to give, within the compass of their brief narratives, such a picture of the life and work and teaching, of the death and resurrection, of the Son of man as to illuminate all human existence for the future, and to enable men "to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and believing to have life through his name." ”

“ As God is the Saviour, and the chief end of the revelation is redemption, it is fitting that the miracles should be acts of divine deliverance from physical evil. This congruity of the miracle with divine truth and grace is the answer to Matthew Arnold’s taunt about turning a pen into a pen-wiper or Huxley’s about a centaur trotting down Regent Street. The miracles of Jesus—the relief of need, the removal of suffering, the recovery of health and strength—reveal in outward events the essential features of His divine mission. ”

“ But in the New Testament the essential thing is the revelation of Jesus Christ. For this too, then, if one values it, one's great wish must in like manner be to make it independent of miracle, if miracle is a stay which one perceives, as more and more we are all coming to perceive it, to be not solid. ”

“ Instead of dwelling upon the "supreme importance of the purely spiritual in our faith," he warned his hearers against dropping off any of the miraculous integument of their religion. "Christianity is essentially miraculous, and falls to the ground if miracles be impossible." ”

“ A miracle is a sign of one’s having advanced to such a degree of spirituality as to enable him to rise above material consciousness and its limitations, which are called laws. The consciousness that knows no evil will perform miracles. The early Christians did great works. These works were the ‘signs following,’ and attested their knowledge of the allness of God. A miracle is simply a proof of God. ”

“ There is no such natural connection between faith and the working of a miracle as that the latter is only possible in conjunction with the former. And the exceptions show us that Jesus Christ was not so limited as that men's unbelief could wholly prevent the flow of His love and His power. ”

“ Besides, those who reject the resurrection of Christ as impossible are compelled to accept an equally astounding moral miracle—the miracle, I mean, that those who had the best means of ascertaining the truth and every possible inducement to ascertain it should all have been deceived, and that this deception should have been the most fruitful source of good, not only to them, but to the whole world. ”

“ His birth, His ministrations, and His resurrection, all involve the miraculous, and the change which His religion works in the human heart is a continuing miracle. Eliminate the miracles and Christ becomes merely a human being and His gospel is stript of divine authority. ”

“ Yet, while it is running after folly, it is blind to the most extraordinary fact, the most stupendous miracle that ever took place, although it goes on right before its eyes and is open to every kind of proof. It cannot see the miracle of Jesus in the world to-day, the miracle beside which all the works He did in His lifetime sink into insignificance. ”

“ Depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles, but of the soul to perceive such as are allowed us still, that makes us push all the sanctities into the far spaces we cannot reach. The devout feel that wherever God's hand is, there is miracle: and it is simply an indevoutness which imagines that only where miracle is, can there be the real hand of God. ”

“ For this reason formal miracles are, as a rule, not to be expected from the efficacy of prayer. God ordained the world and its course in such a manner, that mankind in general and each individual in particular can be provided, without the intervention of a miracle, with all things necessary for their temporal and eternal welfare. ”

“ And yet Jesus for his curing the sore Eyes of a poor Man with an Ointment, must be had in veneration for a divine and miraculous Operator, as much as if by the breath of his Mouth he had removed an huge Mountain!
A Miracle, if I mistake not the Notion of our Divines about it, is a supernatural Event, or a Work out of the Power of Nature or Art to effect. ”

“ The belief in a miracle presupposes faith. It is the faith which sustains the miracle, and not the miracle the faith. Jesus is to men the incomparable moral and spiritual magnitude which he is, not on the evidence of some unparalleled things physical which it is alleged he did. ”

“ When you recross the threshold of this church, you must go forth believers, either in a miracle of folly, a miracle of treachery, or a miracle of mercy and love. Mankind must appear before you [225] either as a regenerated, a deceived, or an idolatrous creation. ”

“ Instead of a few evidential miracles taking place at one epoch of history, and filling the world with surprise at such novel and exceptional phenomena, we find miracles represented as taking place in all ages and in all countries. The Gospel miracles are set in the midst of a series of similar wonders which commenced many centuries before the dawn of Christianity, and continued without interruption fifteen centuries after it. ”

“ A miracle may make some impressions on the judgment, by demonstrating the power of [283] a present Deity, and of his direct agency in its production, but it cannot renew the heart, and inspire the soul with the love of God, with a hatred of sin, and a hope of glory. The miracles of the first ages were merely the credentials of the teachers, and were given as a solemn confirmation, once for all, of the divinity of the new dispensation, which they were commissioned to establish; but they were not the ordained means of conversion. The apostle Paul performed miracles but seldom ”

“ Miracles, or these extraordinary manifestations of the power of God, are not for the unbeliever; they are to console the Saints, and to strengthen and confirm the faith of those who love, fear, and serve God, and not for outsiders. ”

“ I have put you 133on your guard: do not believe in these signs and these wonders until thou shalt see the Son of Man. The miracles of false prophets do not prove the truth of what they say.
For all these reasons, Jesus abstained, as often as possible, from working miracles, but He could not always resist the pleadings of the sorrowful, and often His pity did not wait for the request. For a miracle is an attribute of faith, and His faith is infinite, and that of the believers very great. ”

“ The particular form of Jesus' miracles depended upon his own inscrutable will; but all of the miracles revealed him as the Master of the world. He who had made the world in the beginning could still put forth the same creative power. A miracle, as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature, is a manifestation of the creative, as distinguished from the providential, power of God. ”

“ And these disciples professed to work miracles themselves and believed that they did work them. It is of course true that they had no strictly scientific conception of a miracle, and would often have called by that name what was in reality extraordinary but not miraculous. And it is true too that, if we take each miracle by itself, there is but one miracle, namely our Lord's Resurrection, for which clear and unmistakeable and sufficient evidence is given. ”

“ Now that the smoke of the battle has cleared away, while many tragedies are disclosed, it does not appear that the Churches have been weakened by the strife or have yielded any essential truth or conviction. The belief in God, and in his creation and government of the world,488 the incarnation of God in Christ, the miracle for which Christ stands, and pre-eminently the miracle of His resurrection—in a word, the supernatural interpretation of life, remains unshaken. ”

“ But the Pharisees, desirous of distinguishing themselves by a more scrupulous and literal observance of the law than others, gave the tithes of mint, anise, and cummin,” Matt. xxiii, 23. Christ reproved them because that, while they were so precise in these lesser matters, they neglected the more essential commandments of the law, and substituted observances, frivolous and insignificant, in the place of justice, mercy, and truth.
MIRACLES. A miracle, in the popular sense, is a prodigy, or an extraordinary event, which surprises us by its novelty. ”

“ For as there is nothing to affect you in a miracle, but as it is the action of God, and bespeaks his presence; so when you consider God, as acting in all things, and all events, then all things will become venerable to you, like miracles, and fill you with the same awful sentiments of the divine presence. ”

“ But if God is in heaven and His Church upon earth, why shouldn't there be miracles? Moreover, nearly all the saints are credited with having performed miracles. Their lives are little more than records of miracles they have performed. ”