Miracle

“ If, then, you tell the truth, if this stupendous revolution rests upon a comedy, if we must consider the partial miracles false which surround and explain the principal miracle, which precede and seem to prepare and open the way for the great miracle, what will be the result? You have not destroyed, and cannot destroy, the principal miracle: it has become still more miraculous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I learned years ago that it is the mystery in the miracle that makes it a stumbling block in the way of many. If you will analyze the miracle you will find just two questions in it: Can God perform a miracle? And, would He want to? The first question is easily answered. A God who can make a world can do anything He wants to with it. We cannot deny that God can perform a miracle, without denying that God is God. ”

“ The miracle of all miracles, my young friend, is the great moment which is revealed to all sinning, hapless mortals in their limited life, when the lord himself advances to meet the penitent, the indifferent, and creates his heart anew. This metamorphosis is more wonderful, incomprehensible, and more mysterious than all the overthrows of the laws of nature, which attract the eye searching for miracles, for here out of nothing something is brought forth, out of death, suddenly like a flash of lightining, life is created. ”

“ He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the man is diviner. But the very word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. ”

“ If but the miracle so easy to others were first performed, and the five thousand fed, then indeed might follow that still greater miracle, the earnest listening of the once turbulent multitude to the words of the Bread of Life. ”

“ A true miracle ought to be simply miraculous and wonderful, that is with and unto all. And such are those miracles, whose causes are hid from all, and therefore are those things that are done contrary to the order of nature, by the only virtue and power of the Almighty God. ”

“ An ancient miracle has come to bless and to replace an ancient enmity that came to kill. In gentle gratitude do God the Father and the Son return to what is Theirs, and will forever be. Now is the Holy Spirit's purpose done. ”

“ Here at length we gain a clearer conception of miracle. Life is the world's great magician,—life, so familiar, [86] yet so mysterious; so commonplace, yet so transcendent. No miracle is more marvellous than its doings witnessed in the biological laboratory, or more inexplicable than its transformation of dead matter into living flesh, its development of a Shakespeare from a microscopic bit of protoplasm. But its mysterious processes are too common for general marvel; we marvel only at the uncommon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was. ”

“ Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand; life itself is the miracle of miracles. ”

“ What prophet, what saint, is there who has not performed miracles? The miracle-seeker sees them daily and hourly. Do not the table-spirits belong to the order of miracles? All such miracles are equal in the eye of science ”

“ I feel inclined to shout for joy at the miracle—for it is a miracle—and I thank God and take courage. He does not let us see many results, but He lets us see just enough to help us to go forward. It is a help when what is clear and true to us begins to dawn upon another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Could we see a miracle from God, how would our thoughts be affected with an holy awe and veneration of his presence! But if we consider every thing as God’s doing, either by order or permission, we shall then be affected with common things, as they would be who saw a miracle. ”

“ Miracle as a divine intervention in the natural order, a more close and direct divine contact with the course of things than is the case in ordinary experience, they regard as the inseparable and necessary concomitant and proof of a divine Revelation. ”

“ If well meditated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression, in such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles,—the great inscrutable mystery of God. ”

“ This illustration very well defines the nature of a miracle: it is a manifestation of power new to experience, and counter to the current thought of the time, Miracles are therefore always in order, they always happen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are the miracle of miracles,—the great inscrutable mystery of God. ”

“ You remember that during the past year I gave you some account of our Saviour’s teaching, and of the principal events of His life. Now I shall tell you about some of the miracles He performed.
The word “Miracle” signifies simply—wonder: but there may, of course, be many wonderful events which are not miracles. As the word is used, a miracle means strictly an act by which the laws of nature are set aside: and though the wisest of us do not understand all nature’s laws, we should be able, I think, generally to distinguish 31 what was really a miracle from what was merely wonderful. ”

“ Synopsis.—Biblical miracles the effluence of extraordinary lives.—Life the world's magician and miracle worker; its miracles now termed prodigies.—Miracle the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life.—Life the ultimate reality.—What any man can achieve is conditioned by the psychical quality of his life.—Nothing more natural, more supernatural, than life.—The derived life of the world filial to the self-existent life of God, "begotten, not made."—Miracle, as the product of life, the work of God. ”

“ And among historical events, piety as well as science assigns the name miracle, in the most pregnant sense, to those events which belong to the history of salvation, and, by their newness and uniqueness, introduce new stages into it, render legitimate its new instruments, or bring new features of redemption to our knowledge. ”

“ A miracle, according to the true meaning of the word, is something admirable; and agreeable to this, all is miracle. The stupendous order of nature, the revolution of a hundred millions of worlds around a million of suns, the activity of light, the life of animals, all are grand and perpetual miracles. ”

“ "Man is the miracle in nature. God
Is the ONE MIRACLE to man. Behold,
'There is a God,' thou sayest. Thou sayest well:
In that thou sayest all. To Be is more
Of wonderful, than being, to have wrought,
Or reigned, or rested. ”

“ The miracle acknowledges everyone as your brother and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God. Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. They thus correct, or atone for, the faulty perception of lack. A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack. Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness. ”

“ Your messages I hear, but faith has not been given;
The dearest child of Faith is Miracle. ”

“ One has often longed to see Him work as He worked of old, healing the sick by the word of His power, raising the dead. But when we see Him gathering one—and such a one!—from among the heathen to give thanks unto His holy Name and to triumph in His praise, one feels that indeed it is a miracle of miracles, and that greater than a miracle wrought on the body is a miracle wrought on the soul. ”

“ His swift compassion, His all-sufficient power to heal, and the conditions of receiving His healing, are all wrapped up in the words. Coming to the miracle itself, we may throw the narrative into three parts—the preliminaries, the miracle, and the abundant overplus.
I. Our Lord leads up to the miracle by forcing home on the minds of the disciples the extent of the need and the utter inadequacy of their resources to meet it, and by calling on them and the crowd for an act of obedience which must have seemed to many of them ludicrous. ”

“ and this is the highest, and greatest miracle, and mystery of God, [Pg 4] which hee ever discovered to mortall man. ”

“ Miracle, in some form or other, is regarded as the real basis of belief in God. At this stage people never ask themselves whether any spiritual truth, or indeed anything worth knowing, could possibly be communicated or authenticated by thaumaturgic exhibitions. ”

“ Miracles are seen in light.
I cannot see in darkness. Let the light of holiness and truth light up my mind, and let me see the innocence within.
Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one. ”

“ From these examples we may see what different definitions have been given of miracles, and that the definition is not so easy a thing as one might at first suppose. All depends on the point of view which we take. If we look only at the outward fact, a miracle is a wonderful event, a portent, something out of the common course of nature, and unparalleled in common human experience. ”

“ But if he could convince a single individual that he had wrought a miracle, or that he had power to do so, that moment his claims would be established, in that mind, as a commissioned agent from heaven: so certainly, and so intuitively, do the minds of men revere and expect miracles as the credentials of the Divine presence. ”

“ Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. All the threads of fantasy are gone. And what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers its perfection everywhere. ”

“ My imagination, my love and reverence and admiration, my sense of the miraculous, is not so excited by any event as by the remembrance of my youth. Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. ”

“ But miracle is distinguished from that mode of satisfying human wishes and needs which is in accordance with Nature and reason, in this respect, that it satisfies the wishes of men in a way corresponding to the nature of wishes—in the most desirable way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Miracles Why, who makes much of a miracle? ”

“ We may fairly dismiss entirely from our minds the question of miracle. Such a miracle is nowhere recorded in the bible, and it lies upon any one hardy enough to assert that the present diversity has a miraculous origin to show some kind of reasons for his faith, some kind of evidence for our conviction, and until this is done we have no reason to dwell on the first hypothesis. ”

“ Much stress is laid upon the form of the Gospel miracles; but as we have already shown, it is the actual resurrection of the dead, for instance, which is the miracle, and this is not affected by the more or less dramatic manner in which it is said to have been effected, or in which the narrative of the event is composed. Literary skill, and the judicious management of details, may make or mar the form of any miracle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Miracles are the natural effects of exceptional causes.
The immediate action of the human will on bodies, or at least this action exercised without visible means, constitutes a miracle in the physical order. ”