INFL UENCE OF MODERN SCIENCE UPON BELIEF IN MIRACLES. 231 



PHILOSOPHY. 



THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN SCIENCE UPON BELIEF IN 



MIRACLES. 



BY C. C. KIMBALL, D. D. , KANSAS CITY, MO. 



This is an important and interesting topic. If, as is claimed, the tendency 

 of modern science is to exalt natural law to a pitch of rigidity, who makes all 

 miracles incredible, and reasonable people are to be denied the privilege of con- 

 templating what they regard as the best authenticated fact in history — the resur- 

 rection of Christ — then Christianity is disproved, and the church of Christ certain 

 to dissolve and perish. 



Will the progress of scientific knowledge lead to this result ? 



To discuss a topic like this, without accurate definitions, is wasted labor. 

 Without clear-cut definitions we are like persons standing on cloud capped moun- 

 tains. We can see scarcely so far as our feet ; but with the sharp definitions, the 

 clouds are torn away and we can see both earth and heaven. 



In order to understand the supernatural, we must first inquire 



WHAT IS THE NATURAL ? 



It is that which God does by a usual, settled and regular procedure. It is 

 the habitual way of God in the world about us. Unless God's methods were 

 uniform, life would be confused and intolerable. If, for example, vaporizing 

 water by heat would not always, but only occasionally, generate force, who would 

 build a locomotive or a railway. 



If water, falling on the wheel, would only now and then cause it to revolve, 

 who would build the mill beside the rapidly descending stream ? 



If we did not know at any time whether fire would warm or freeze us, con- 

 fusion would follow. But depending as we can on the settled ways of God, which 

 we call the laws of nature — gravitation, heat, light and the like, we have a sure 

 basis for industry and civilization. 



WHAT IS THE SUPERNATURAL ? 



It is not God's settled and regular procedure, on which society and industry 

 rest so securely, but his exceptional, unusual and special action in human affairs, 

 interrupting for good reason the regular sequence of cause and effect. God was 

 perfectly free to create the universe and assign to it fixed and regular laws. He 

 is equally free, when he sees occasion, to break in upon the arrangement which 

 he has adopted. To compare great things with small, a business man habitually 

 walks to his office every morning. It is the habit or law of his life ; but, one 

 morning he breaks the law and goes down town in a carriage. He had satisfac- 

 tory reasons for walking, and at last, he has equally satisfactory reasons for riding 



