Age (Hastings' Dictionary)

1. The last section of this article must be See above, vol. f. p. 606%, art, Exvisia, t See vol. i. p. 234". tSee Sanday, /napiration, Ὁ. 414 f., and Gore, Bampton Lectures, p. 195 f., aud of, art. Jonau, above, vol. il, p. 751. 394 MIRACLE i, ἙἈἘςΞὠἐΞ-ς-ΞςἈ, -.ςς-ςκςς.- ὉἨῪΙ͵ far too brief for its subject, but something ought to be said of miracles recorded elsewhere than in the OT and NT, if our discussion of miracles in general is to be in any way complete. We have seen that the infant Church is described in Ac as having been favoured with miracles as well as with other gifts of the Spirit. When did these miracles cease in Christian history ? Many different opinions have been held, one branch at least of the Church believing that there has been no cessation and that miraculous powers are still in her possession, it being often urged, on the other hand, that they died with the apostolic company. ‘The chief reason alleged for this latter opinion is apparently based on the assumption that miracles are given only for evidential purposes, that their sole function is to certify the Divine character of revelation, and that when this has been sufticiently established their work is done, and that they may not be expected to continue. And, curiously enough but most un- reasonably, it has been assumed that the apostles could not have worked any miracle save those recorded in Scripture, or at least that no record of such could be trustworthy. Between these extreme views are to be ranked the great body of old English divines, e.g. Dodwell and Tillotson, who held that miracles were occasional in the Christian Church until the time of Constantine, when, Christianity being established by the civil power, it no longer needed such supernatural assistance. ‘Thus Fuller explains that ‘miracles are the swaddling clothes of the infant Churches’ ; and yet another view has commended itself to many, viz. that the power of working miracles extended to but not beyond the disciples upon whom the apostles conferred it by imposition of their hands. 2. According to Acts, the Divine powers promised by Christ to His Church were at least occasionally exercised, not only by the apostolic company but by other persons as well. It would not be sur- prising, therefore, if we found in the literature of the early 2nd cent. many references to miracles like those in Acts. And yet such references are few and scanty. Our records of the period are fragmentary, to be sure, but it is remarkable that they tell so little on the subject. With a few not- able exceptions, of which something is said further on, there is no trace up to the end of the 2nd cent. of any miraculous gift still existing in the primitive Church save those of prophecy and healing, including exorcism, both of which are frequently mentioned. (a) In Hermas (Mand. xi.) and in the Didaché the abuse of the grace of prophecy is spoken of, and a little later Justin (Dial. § 82) has the statement παρὰ yap ἡμῖν καὶ μέχρι νῦν προφητικὰ χαρίσματά ἐστιν. We observe here that the earliest notices of the power of prophecy imply also the presence of its counterieit, and indeed prophecy is, of all the Divine ‘gifts,’ that which would most easily lend itself to imposture. And Justin’s statement seems to imply his surprise that prophecy should have continued so long, for he says ‘even up to the pre- sent,’ from which we might gather that instances of genuine prophecy in his day and in his neigh- bourhood were not very numerous. (b) The gift of healing is also noted by Justin (Dial. § 39), though he does not give any instances within his own observation. Origen goes further (contra Celsum, iii. 24), and says that he has seen many persons rescued from delirium. But the com- monest exemplification of this gift was displayed in the expulsion of demons; exorcism is regarded quite as a thing of course by the 2nd cent. Fathers. Justin (Apol. ii. § 6, Dial. §§ 30, 76) and Ter- tullian (Apol. 23, 37, 48, de Idolol. 11, ete.) speak in extravagant terms as to the certainty with which demons could be expelled by the prayers of See Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 49. MIRACLE the faithful. They allege these powers to be the common property of all Christian people, and to be susceptible of exercise at any moment and on any occasion. This is going far beyond the language of the Gospels and Acts, but it is here sufficient to observe that phenomena of this sort are often explicable without any recourse to supernatural agency (see above, iv. ὃ 5). 3. Next, it is important to note that the early Fathers, although seeing the miraculous in the incidents of their daily life, place the miracles of the apostolic age on a pinnacle quite above the miracles of their own time. When we go to the 4th cent., we find Chrysostom saying that ‘all the men of his time together’ could not do as much as St. Paul’s handkerchief (de Sacerdot. iv. 6), and he implies that in his day there were no raisings from the dead (ef. Hom. in 1 Cor. vi.2). But, much earlier than this, Tertullian, after saying that the apostles had spiritual powers peculiar to themselves, adds ‘nam et mortuos suscitaverunt quod Deus solus ; et debiles redintegraverunt, quod nemo nisi Chris- tus’ (de Pud. ο. 21) —language which would be strange if such occurrences were even occasional in his day. And of the miracles of the apostolic age, Origen only says that traces (ἴχνη) remain in his time (contra Celsum, i. 2). We find then (i.) that by the end of the 2nd cent. there is a growing suspicion that miracles are dying out, (ii.) that such miracles as are recorded are generally re- garded as different in kind from those of the apostolic age, and (iii.) that in the earliest age of post-apostolic Christianity the ‘miracles’ are almost, without exception, of prophecy, healing, and exorcism. 4, The exceptional cases remain to be mentioned, (a) Eusebius records (JTF iii. 39) that Papias re- lated that in his time a man rose from the dead, as he had heard from the daughters of Philip the Evangelist, and that Justus Barsabbas was once delivered from the effects of drinking poison. The former of these occurrences may relate to some such occurrence as the raising of Dorcas (Ac 9°), which the daughters of Philip may have witnessed, and the latter is not related in sufficient detail to enable us to draw any conclusion from it (cf. Mk 1015). But it is significant that Papias’ account seems to have been silent as to miracles which came within his own observation. The occur- rences he mentioned were in the apostolic age, and he does not profess to speak as an eye-witness. (b) The often quoted statement of Irenzus is more difficult to explain or to explain away. He speaks of prophecy, healing, and exorcism as im- possible in heretical circles, but as common in the Church, and he adds, ‘ Yea, even the dead were raised and abode with us many years’ (ἡγέρθησαν kal παρέμειναν σὺν ἡμῖν ἱκανοῖς ἔτεσι, adv. Her. 11. xxxii.). All that can be said about this is that no specific instance is produced ; the language is rhetorical, and the statement occurs in the middle of a polemic against heretics. Nor are we furnished with details. Further, when Irenzeus passes from the mention of the more common miracula to speak of raising the dead, the tense is suddenly and un- expectedly changed. Healing, exorcism, and pro- phecy, these are matters of present experience for him ; but he speaks of resurrections from the dead in the past tense. Even the words quoted hardly mean more than that such events happened within living memory. Now Ireneus was a disciple of Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of St. John, so that if we view his statement thus it will not appear so extraordinary. The inference, in shoré, from the whole passage is that the major miracles no longer happened —an inference which is con- firmed by all the available evidence. See further, Mozley, Miracles, p. 295. MIRACLE MIRACLE 399 5. But if the miraculous powers of the Church miracles are grotesquely absurd and utterly devoid seem to have grown less and less as the 2nd cent. went on, it must also be remembered that miracles of the most astounding character abound in the records of ecclesiastical history from the 4th cent. onward. On what grounds, it may be asked, do we reject these? Or must we reject them? Is there any reason why these should be rejected and those of the NT accepted? and on what principles is such differentiation to be made ? 6. It is plain, at the outset, that miracles are always possible to the believer in God, and again that there is always a presumption against them to one who believes that God governs the world by general laws. ‘This fact, that His rule is uni- form for the most part, is what gives to miracles their signal character, their character as signs, and so forbids us to see ‘miracle’ in the ordinary activities of Providence. They are σημεῖα, and are therefore a priori unlikely to be of everyday oc- currence. And the remarkable economy in the use of miracle displayed both in the OT and in the NT confirms us in the conviction that there is an antecedent probability against them as a general rule. This antecedent improbability may be over- come by the special circumstances of the case (as we have pointed out is true of the miracles of Christ), or by the strength of the evidence which may be adduced ; bit normally it has considerable force. Further, supposing true miracles occur, nothing is more certain than that they will provoke imitation and imposture, and will encounter the rivalry of a host of false ones. Pascal goes so far as to say that the existence of the false neces- sarily points to the existence of the true as their antecedent cause, without which they would never have gained a footing. We need not accept this dictum in its integrity, but there is this of truth in it, that it shows on the one hand how unscientific it is summarily to reject the evidence for a given occurrence, merely because somewhat similar evi- dence has proved misleading in other cases; and, on the other hand, that we must always allow for a readiness to believe in miracle arising from previous (real or imaginary) experience of such interpositions of Divine favour. We say then, first, that while we do not in the least feel bound to reject medieval or modern miracles, we start with a determination to test the evidence for them very severely. If we draw conclusions as to the history of the Christian Church from what we read in the OT of the history of the Jewish Church, we shall expect to find miraculous interposition very rarely exhibited, and then only at great national crises, and not merely for the warning and instruc- tion of individual souls. 7. This same law of Divine economy will bid us also to exclude from the category of miracles such events as may reasonably be referred to natural causes. Visions or voices which may be resolved into false perceptions or deceptions of the senses must be so classed. The extraordinary phenomena which are recorded as having accompanied the martyrdoms of Polyecarp,t of Savonarola, of Hooper, may readily enough be explained as the operation of physical forces, a little exaggerated perhaps by pious enthusiasm. Stories like that of the Thundering Legion and the rain which followed the prayers of the Christian host may be true in the main, although the events of which they tell are not necessarily miracles in any other sense than that in which every answer to prayer is a miracle (see above, i. § 15). In other cases the recorded phenomena are too like the tricks of a thaumaturgist for sober piety to recognize in them the finger of God; and in many the alleged oni Pensées, ii, 235 (ed, Faugéres), + See Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, τι. 1. 516. of that character of σημεῖα which all true miracles have as revelations of the Divine will and purpose. 8. Next, in an overwhelmingly large number of the cases which remain, both of medixval and modern miracles, the evidence is entirely insuffi- cient. There is no @ priori probability in their favour, and very inadequate a posteriori testimony. In how few cases, outside the NT, have we got the evidence of the agent who is supposed to have worked the miracles! And it is to be feared that many stories of miracles worked by saints may be accounted for by the misguided piety of their biographers. All too soon in the Church’s history a false criterion of sanctity grew up. It was sup- posed that the measure of a man’s goodness was the amount of miraculous power by which his preaching was aided. Now from the belief that the man who works miracles must be a good man, the transition is easy to the converse inference. This man was a good man, hence he must have worked miracles, and so it can be no harm to write down a few in his biography. He must have worked, if not these particular wonders, at least others very like them.t We thus find that the further removed in time the saint is from his biographer, the more is his life embellished with legend and glorified with miracle. We distrust the medi#val records on these grounds. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, we say. No criticism of this sort can be applied to the miracles of the NT; for here we have contemporary testimony of the principal persons concerned, and the miraculous is as prominent in the earlier as in the later canonical writings. 9. It is a suspicious circumstance that many of these medieval miracles happened so opportunely for the triumph of a particular party or the glorification of a particular individual. In one sense, indeed, it is very far from suspicious to read that a miracle came at the right moment, i.e. for the support of God’s truth, but in another sense it is suspicious. If men are anxiously expecting a sign from heaven to guarantee the piety of a doubt- ful undertaking or the suecess of a hazardous cause, it is very likely that they will see the finger of God in what is really only the operation of His ordinary laws, and it is not improbable that they may be the dupes of unscrupulous persons who play upon their prejudices. 10. All these qualifications being made, a re- siduum of recorded cases is left, which it is diffi- cult to explain. Men will view them differently, according to their predispositions. But it is not too much to say that no recorded occurrences in recent centuries seem to bear the character of σημεῖα in at all the same degree as the miracles of the Gospel, whether we have regard to the general circumstances under which they were worked, or the results, moral and spiritual, which were conse- quent upon men’s belief in them. Quite apart from the adequacy or inadequacy of the evidence brought forward in their favour, or the possibility of ‘natural? explanations, alleged miracles such as the apparition of the Blessed Virgin at La Salette, and the cures of pilgrims at the shrine which has been built at the spot, are lacking in the dignity and moral grandeur of the miracles of the Gospel. Whatever may be thought about them, it is plain that even if these and their like are really to be traced to the intervention of the Divine merey which loves to reward a simple faith (and it does not seem to us that the evidence is sufficient to establish such a conclusion), yet they do not serve as vehicles of revelation as the miracles * See Mozley, Miracles, p. 150. + Newman lays down a principle very like this (University Sermons, p. 345). 396 MIRIAM of the Gospel did. They may be θαύματα, δυνάμεις, τέρατα, but they are not σημεῖα of a new spiritual message to mankind, which it sorely needed to learn. And this is the essential characteristic of the miracles of the Christ. On the whole subject of this article cf. Jesus CuRkIstT, in vol. ii. p. 624-628 ; and see NATURAL, NATURE, PROPHECY, SIGN. Lirerature.—The subject has been treated by innumerable writers, but the following books are among the most important, and are easily accessible: Origen, contra Celsum; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, τ. ex. ; Spinoza, Tractatus Theo- logico-politicus, de miraculis (on the negative side); Pascal, Pensées ; Butler, Analogy; Hume, Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding, x. (on the negative side) ; Paley, 2vi- dences; Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise ; Trench, Notes on the Miracles ; J.B. Mozley, Bampton Lectures ; Lange, Life of Christ, ii, pp. 96-172 (Eng. tr.); J. S. Mill, Three Essays on Religion (negative); Duke of Argyll, The Reign of Law; Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma and God and the Bible (on the negative side); Supernatural Religion (negative); Temple, Bampton Lectures; Westcott, Introduction to Study of Gospels, Pie Gospel of the Resurrection, and The Gospel of Life; Brace, The Chief End of Revelation, and The Miracu- lous Element in the Gospels; Newman, Two Essays on Mira- cles; E. A. Abbott, Philomythus (a reply to the last) ; Boedder, Natural. Theology; Mlingworth, Divine Immanence; A. T. Lyttelton, Hulsean Lectures. J. H. BERNARD.