Two hundred years ago the only motive powers known to ocean navigators were wind and the ocean currents. Suppose at that time those old mariners had seen one of our modern ocean steamers running against both ocean currents and the wind, and, withal, making better speed, in spite of both wind and tide than the old sailing vessel could match even when running before the wind and the ocean currents in her favor. What would have been the effect on the mind of the old-time sailor? "It is a miracle!" he would have exclaimed; that is, it would have been an "effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things," "a derogation from recognized laws." But is such an effect to us who know something of the force of steam contrary to the laws of nature? No; it is simply the employment of forces in nature of which the old-time mariner was ignorant; and while it would have been a miracle to him, to us it is merely the application of a newly-discovered force of nature, and it is now so common that we cease to look upon it with wonder. So with the things that we in our ignorance call miracles—such as healing the sick, restoring the blind to sight, making the lame to walk, through exercise of faith; and the resurrection of the dead—instead of these things being in "derogation from recognized laws, we shall yet learn that they are done simply by the application of laws of which we are as yet in ignorance."[A] With man's limited knowledge of the laws of nature, how presumptuous it is in him to say that the healing of the sick or even the resurrection of the dead are in "derogation of the laws of nature," or that deviation from those few laws of nature with which he is acquainted will never happen, or is impossible! Better reasoners are they who, like George Rawlinson, say: "Miraculous interpositions on fitting occasions may be as much a regular, fixed, and established rule of his [God's] government, as the working ordinarily by what are called natural laws." In other words, what we in our ignorance call miracles, are to God merely the results of the application of higher laws or forces of nature not yet learned by man. Miracles are to be viewed as a part of the divine economy.

[Footnote A: "In the progress of science, all phenomena have been shown, by indisputable evidence, to be amenable to law, and even in the cases in which those laws have not yet been exactly ascertained, delay in ascertaining them is fully accounted for by the special difficulties of the subject; the defenders of miracles have adapted their argument to this altered state of things, by maintaining that a miracle need not necessarily be a violation of law. It may, they say, take place in fulfilment of a more recondite law, to us unknown.

"If by this it be only meant that the Divine Being, in the exercise of his power of interfering with and suspending his own laws, guides himself by some general principle or rule of action, this, of course, cannot be disproved, and is in itself the most probable supposition." ("Theism," in "Three Essays on Religion"—Mill,—pp. 223-4.)

Shedd treats upon the same theme and much in the same spirit; "The miracle is not contrary to all nature but only to nature as known to us," he represents the Apologists of early Christianity as saying, and then quotes a long and admirable passage from Augustine. ("History of Christian Doctrine," Vol. I, pp. 167-169.)]

3. The New Dispensation Committed to the Reign of Law: The Prophet of the New Dispensation, as we have seen, taught the doctrine of the reign of law in God's universe; and not alone in the physical or natural universe, but as well in the spiritual and moral phases of that universe.

In the revelation already quoted for the reign of law in the physical universe, he also says: "And again, verily I say unto you, that which is governed by law is also preserved by law, and perfected and sanctified by the same. That which breaketh a law, and abideth not by law, but seeketh to become a law unto itself, and willeth to abide in sin, and altogether abideth in sin, cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy, justice nor judgment. Therefore they must remain filthy still." And again he said: "There is a law irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world upon which all blessings are predicated; and when we obtain any blessing from God it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated."[A] The Prophet of the New Dispensation, then, the gospel of that dispensation, its Theology, stand committed to the sublime doctrine that the universe in every way is under the reign of law; and hence, in some way, the Atonement, by and through which man is redeemed; the necessity,—the absolute necessity—for it; the reason why that means, and that means alone, could bring redemption and put man in the way of salvation—all this must be by reason of the existence of some law by which the facts in the case are governed. These laws and an understanding of them are the object of our research.

[Footnote A: Doc. & Cov., Sec. 130:21,22.]

LESSON XV.

(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

THE EXORABLENESS[A] OF LAW.