13 
ceeds: “Having settled that the EssENCE of the miracle consists in 
the contranatural op the supernatural, we are now prepared to investi- 
gate its apologetic worth.” He distinctly mentions this department to 
be another question: “The question to be answered is briefly this— 
Is the miracle, in itself, from its own intrinsic character, a sufficient. cre- 
dential of a Divine inspiration or a Divine commission?” This is the 
second question: the first was, ““What is the miracle?” He feels no 
preparation to “investigate” the second, until he has “settled” the jirst. 
Hence he escaped giving a multifarious definition, and its logical con- 
sequences. This second question Dr. Thornwell ‘‘answers in the affir- 
mative.” Remarking upon his definition, he says: “Leave out the 
notion of these secondary causes, and there can be no miracle.” Nota 
bene, “the notion’”’—the abstract idea—not the concrete presence: ‘‘can 
be no miracle’—when ?—at the moment of “creation from nothing in 
the first instance”? not only; but also at any subsequent period in the 
whole history of the material universe ;—‘there CAN BE NO miracle.” 
Clearing the way for his definition, cautiously feeling his way for ‘the 
peculiarity of the miracle,” he remarks: “He [Trench] explains the 
terms by which miracles are distinguished in Scripture, but these terms 
express only the effects upon our own minds, the purposes for which, 
and the powers by which, they are wrought, and the operations them- 
selves—the effect, the end, the cause—but they do not single out that 
in the phenomenon by which it becomes a wonder, a sign, » power, or 
a work.” Still farther feeling his way, he says: “The scriptural term 
which gives us the nearest insight into the real nature of the miracle is 
precisely the one of which Dr. Trench speaks most slightingly—the 
word wonder. It is true that every wonder is not a miracle, but every 
miracle is a wonder. The cause of wonder is the unexpectedness of an 
event; and the specific difference of the miracle is, that it contradicts 
that course of nature which we expected to find uniform.” Then, hav- 
ing thus discriminated between that which is and that which is not; 
having assigned “wonder” to a position as “effect,” and perceiving that, 
as point of view, it afforded the “nearest insight into the real nature,” 
he announces in clearness, beauty, and severest simplicity the result: “It 
is an event either above or opposed to: secondary causes.’ (Collected 
Writings, Vol. 3, pages 228-233.) Evidently he did not drag into the 
inner essence the “effect” and the ‘nearest’ point of view; his logical 
instinct taught him to leave these where they belonged—amongst the 
externals. That which was an accidental and common property would 
not serve to define—to differentiate. Hence the ante bellum Professor’s 
