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arrive at any clear conception of a miracle unless we have a wide acquaintance 
with nature — 
Mr. Reddie. May I interrupt the Reverend Doctor ? I think we had 
better assume that we do know something about nature, and discuss 
miracles ; or I do not see when we shall draw our arguments to a close. 
The Chairman. — I am exceedingly interested in what I am hearing ; but 
perhaps Dr. Irons will be kind enough to bring his argument more to the 
subject of miracles, for time presses. 
Rev. Dr. Irons. — I feel there is justice in Mr. Reddie’s suggestion, that 
the course on which my mind was entering, might take further time than is 
convenient to-night. I will now, therefore, confine my observations to a 
narrower compass. I was saying we cannot understand a miracle, unless we 
form to ourselves an idea of what we mean by nature ; and here seems to me 
to be the great difficulty in which this whole discussion is involved. People 
assume that a miracle is a violation of a law of nature. That is somewhat 
premature. Why may it not please Almighty God to perform other actions 
more astonishing and more surprising than anything apparently yet per- 
formed by Him ? Miracles may or may not be what they seem to us to be, 
“ violations of the law of nature,” but I shrink from saying that God violates 
His own laws ; I do not like that way of putting it. He performs, let me 
rather say, supernatural things ; but any being who performed a wonderful 
thing, if greater, wiser, and mightier than myself, would seem to me to 
be doing something surprising — in other words, a miracle ; and we are not 
in a position to say how far what is so 1 done is a violation of natural 
law, or whether, if it be so, it is not also in conformity with some 
higher law. I will now condense ill a sentence or two the practical conclu- 
sion to which this argument should lead. A Divine revelation, we may be 
sure, will speak for itself. We believe God has given two revelations : we 
acknowledge that God has spoken by Moses and Christ. There are the 
Jewish and the Christian revelations. Let any man look now at the Jewish 
people, he there will see what a standing miracle that people is. I defy any 
one to study their history, without feeling there is something more in that 
history than is the result of natural causes. It is a miracle. There is a 
real revelation. It is a miracle quite apart from the miracle of 
the Red Sea, or others that were wrought, as recorded in the Old 
Testament. The language itself, the existing Jewish nation and insti- 
tutions, are absolutely supernatural. You cannot look in the face of 
the people at this day — they are living like the burning bush, unconsumed 
from age to age — without feeling that God really did a supernatural thing in 
taking that family and stamping a character upon it for Himself and for 
us. They may deny revelation, or own it ; there they move, and wherever 
they exist, they tell that God has done it. So also the Christian revelation. 
I do not appeal for its proof to any one of the recorded miracles of the New- 
Testament ; I appeal to the thing itself*. There was (the world said) a young 
man, a Galilean, put to death in the reign of Tiberius. In the reign of Con- 
stantine, that young Jewish peasant was wovshijypcd , — worshipped through- 
