24 THE REIGN OF LAW. 



as well as a more comprehensive view to regard 

 it as operating by subordination and evolution 

 rather than by ' interference ' or ' violation.' Ac- 

 cording to this view, the idea of Law is so far 

 from being contravened by the Christian miracles, 

 that it is taken up by them and made their very 

 basis. They are the expression of a Higher 

 Law, working out its wise ends among the lower 

 and ordinary sequences of life and history. These 

 ordinary sequences represent nature — nature, 

 however, not as an immutable fate, but a plastic 

 medium through which a Higher Voice and Will are 

 ever addressing us, and which, therefore, may be 

 wrought into new issues when the Voice has a new 

 message, and the Will a special purpose for us." * 



It is well worthy of remark, that Locke, who 

 laid great stress on the Christian miracles, as 

 attesting the authority of those who wrought 

 them, declines, nevertheless, to adopt the com- 

 mon definition of that in which miraculous 

 agency consists. " A miracle then," he says, -f- 

 " I take to be a sensible operation, which, be- 



* Beginning Life, Sec, pp. 85, 86. By John Tulloch, D.D. 

 T A Discourse on Miracles. 



