Miracle, in the sense of violation of law, is simply impossible, because law is the expression of the essential nature and perfection of God. It is as impossible for God to perform a miracle in this sense as it is for him to lie, and for the same reason, viz., that it is contrary to his essential nature. In what sense, then, is a miracle possible? I answer, only as an occurrence or a phenomenon according to a law higher than any we yet know. If we define Nature as phenomena governed by physical and chemical laws and forces, then life becomes supernatural and miraculous—because higher than Nature as we define it. If we reduce the phenomena of life to law and include these also in our definition of Nature but limit it there, then the free, self-determined phenomena of reason become supernatural because above our definition of Nature. There may well be still other and higher modes of Divine activity, the law of which we do not and may never understand. These are above our present definition of Nature, and therefore to us supernatural or miraculous. But, even if miracles in the ordinary sense were possible, is it not evident that the ordinary processes of Nature are far more wonderful, more truly Godlike, than any such miracle?
V. Question of Design in Nature.
So, again, the question of design or purpose or mind in Nature is similarly solved. It has been said, it is continually now being said, that evolution has destroyed forever the teleological view of Nature—i. e., the idea of design in Nature. Yes, if we mean the man-like, cabinet-making, watch-making design of Paley and older writers—a separate petty design for each separate object. It has indeed destroyed this, but only to replace it by a far nobler conception—a truly Godlike design, a design embracing all space and running through all time, including and absorbing all possible separate designs and predetermining them by a universal law of evolution.
Or the same question may be put in another way as “Mind vs. Mechanics in Nature.” In the evolution of thought on this subject at first all was mind, but lawless, capricious, like our own. Then one department after another of Nature was reduced to mechanical, physical, necessary law, until all have been or will be or conceivably may be thus reduced, and mind seems driven out of Nature entirely. The friends of religion in despair cry out for at least some small corner left for mind. Thus I find in recent numbers of an English scientific periodical, “Nature,” a discussion concerning mind as one of the factors of evolution.[48] Is it not amusing, if it were not so sad?—God the Divine mind as one of the factors of evolution! The true solution is very simple. All is mind or none; so also all is mechanics or none. It is all mind through mechanics. It is all mechanics from the outside; it is all mind from the inside. To science all is mechanics; to theology all is mind. It is the duty of philosophy to reconcile these two opposites by the higher view that mechanics is but the mode of operation of the Divine mind. There is only one form of evolution, viz., human progress, in which mind—but the human, not the Divine mind—is one of the factors of evolution. But to think and speak thus of God in relation to Nature is to place him on the human plane. It is gross anthropomorphism.[49]
VI. Question of the Mode of Creation.
I might multiply examples almost without limit, of questions the solution of which depends on this one of the relation of God to Nature. I give one more—Creation.
The creation of the universe at once—in the beginning—out of nothing—and then rest ever since. This old anthropomorphic idea is now replaced by that of continuous creation—unhasting, unresting, by an eternal process of evolution. For if the universal law of gravitation is the Divine mode of sustentation of the universe, the no less universal law of evolution is the Divine process of creation.