Well, who believes in it nowadays? If it had been five hundred years ago, it might have been different, but in our educated age—no, we know better now! Science has spoken with the assurance of an expert and said: No miracles happen! Everything adheres to certain stringent laws; our researches have proved this, and the miracle has never existed except in the brains of undeveloped ignorant individuals.
Nevertheless we maintain in the church of the Lord that the miracle is a fact—as concrete a reality as was—the French revolution. The miracle does not thrive on the recognition of science, nor does it collapse before the shots which science fires against it. But when we maintain this, some people pityingly shrug their shoulders or smile haughtily while they sneer: How backward you people are! You certainly are not well posted in regard to the development and the intelligence of the age.
Let us see if speech of this kind cannot be effectively met so that we as Christians may retain our faith and still be developed and intelligent people.
1. The Miracle and Nature
If we ask infidel science how everything originated, it answers: Through evolution! The world has developed during millions of years. But if we ask further: Whence and from what? You yourselves claim that nothing originates in nothing, then this world must, according to your own postulates, have originated in something, for your own fundamental claim is that it cannot have risen out of nothingness.
To this the general answer is that perhaps there was a small beginning, a protoplasm from which all things grew. But if there has been such a protoplasm, it certainly is an unprecedented miracle. Never at any later time has anyone beheld such a protoplasm through which an entire world arose, and in that case all existence is based upon a miracle. This has only been assigned to as remote a time as possible, and even though one had not freed himself of the miracle, it was not irritatingly present as a constant probability in the evolution of the world. For, to admit that an Almighty God created everything from the very beginning is synonymous with admitting the fact of the miracle as a constant probability. It is impossible for us to conceive that the Almighty at the time of the Creation should have so exhausted His powers that He now faces His creations as one who is utterly powerless. If His omnipotence made all things, then He must still be able, through that very omnipotence, to interfere, to mend and to increase, because in His wisdom He realizes that it so serves the promotion of his eternal plans.
Yes, but the miracle is contrary to nature, it is said.
Let us see! When Jesus at the marriage at Cana in Galilee turned water into wine, a miracle happened, and many believed in Him.
Water into wine! Is that really contrary to nature? Is it not the very same thing that happens in nature every summer when the water of the soil is absorbed into the tender roots of the vine and passes through its branches, finally becoming wine in the grapes? The turning of water into wine is no change which rests upon violation of the laws of nature. In nature this happens in accordance with those plans which are the guiding laws of the powers of nature. At Cana in Galilee it happened in another way, but the same thing was accomplished: Water became wine! There is unity in the achievement. Is there not also an inner harmony between the powers working according to plans and laws in nature, and those which work untrammeled through the miracle? I think that we here are facing a unity in those powers—a relationship as intimate as between the Father and His only begotten Son who rests in His arms. And when we witness other miracles in which this unity becomes invisible to us, I certainly do not think it is because the unity is absent, but just because we are too shortsighted to perceive it. But then the miracle is, after all, not contrary to nature when looked at profoundly.