58 MIRACLE, LAW, EVOLUTION. 
water of thelake. Up toa certain point, all was natural, 
the hungry fish voraciously seizing the sinking coin, the 
line, the fisherman. The one thing needed to complete 
the transaction, the omniscience which notes the fall of a 
sparrow, was supplied by Christ. The disciples did the 
rest. They took the money and paid the tribute. 
When He raised the dead child, He brought back life 
and health, but He commanded those present to give her 
food. She got life from Him, but strength she was to 
get in the ordinary way. 
When He restored Lazarus to his sisters, He bade the 
Jews standing around roll the stoneaway from the tomb. 
Then they reached their limit. At this instant of abso- 
lute helplessness, when nature and man could do nothing, 
He interposed and gave life to the dead body, but it was 
the living Lazarus himself that walked out of the sepul- 
chre, and it was those standing by who loosed him from 
the grave clothes. Christ’s exercise of miraculous power, 
here also, was confined to the one thing law could not do, 
the restoration of life. 
All the other miracles, so far as we can judge from the 
very brief records, are marked by the same characteristic. 
Hence, I think, we may conclude that the divine 
method in miracle-working was to do only that which 
Nature, with her laws and powers, could not do, and 
then to let her do the rest. What was already in exist- 
ence was invariably used, as far as it could be applied, 
and to this was added only that which was necessary to 
complete the transaction. 
Hence it seems reasonable to infer that, in His work 
as Creator, He used whatever was nearest to His purpose, 
and exerted power above Nature only to do what she 
could not. As to the rest, He left it to the outworking 
of natural causes. 
Now for the application. 
The world of to-day contains many thousand species 
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