264 



THE EEV. CHANCELLOE LIAS^ M.A.^ ON 



be observed, however, that the modification of the argument 

 for Christiauity, which has been found so absohitely necessary 

 of late in various departments of theological thought, does 

 not necessarily involve, as some have hoped and others have 

 feared, a surrender of any part of the Christian position. 

 Thus in the case of miracles, if it could be proved beyond a 

 doubt that they were not, and could not be, violations or 

 suspensions of the laws of nature, not one single presumption 

 would be thus raised against the fact of their occurrence. 

 The confutation would apply simply to the customary 

 definitions of them. In days when scientific principles were- 

 unknown, it was by no means surprising that unscientific 

 explanations should be given of observed facts. If, in days 

 of scientific knowledge, those explanations have to be aban- 

 doned, it Avould not only be illogical, but highly absurd to 

 contend that the alleged facts themselves Avere thereby 

 disproved. An unscientific explanation of miracles when 

 discovered no more compels us to abandon our belief that 

 they occurred than the utterly mistaken conceptions in 

 relation to physical science before the days of Bacon and 

 Newton involves, when discarded, an abandonment of our 

 belief in the reality of phenomena. Thus the question of the- 

 credibility of miracles remains exactly where it was, and it 

 must be discussed now, as ever, on historical grounds. The 

 modern apologist for miracles has only to modify his argu- 

 ment so far as to meet the a priori assumptions of the impossi- 

 bility of their occurrence, and to explain their nature on 

 sound scientific principles. 



Accordingly, in the volume to which I have referred, I 

 endeavoured first of all to frame a theoiy of miracles which 

 was not incompatible with the principles of science. It is 

 obvious that if such a theory can be found, the whole attack 

 from the scientific side is repulsed, and the argument resumes 

 its original form — that of an examination of the credibility 

 of testimony. I therefore abandoned the language of earlier- 

 apologists, which described a miracle as a " violation or- 

 suspension of the laws of nature," because we have no^ 

 evidence before us that it is anything of the kind. I defined a 

 miracle as " an exception to the observed order of nature,, 

 brought about by God in order to reveal His will or purpose," 

 Hoxo brought about I did not presume to say, because nobody 

 can possibly know how it was done, and if we did know how 

 it was done it would cease to be a miracle. I then proceeded 

 to discuss the scientific objections to the miraculous. These- 



