and shows us how easily men who break from the unity of divine tradition, and set up for themselves, can lose sight of God, and come step by step to worship the devil in his place. The thing seemed incredible, and we had some difficulty in taking the assertion of the Holy Scriptures literally, “All the gods of the gentiles are devils”; but since we see apostasy from the church running the same career, and actually inaugurating the worship of demons, actually exalting the devil above our Lord, the Mystery of Iniquity is explained, and the matter becomes plain and credible.
It is curious to see what has been the course of thought in the Protestant apostasy in regard to the class of facts in question. Having lost the power of exorcism with their loss of the true faith, the Protestant nations had no resource against the invasions of the spirits but to carry out the injunction of the Mosaic law, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch”—that is, a medium—“to live.” Hence we find their annals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries blackened with accounts of the trials and cruel punishments of persons suspected of witchcraft, sorcery, or dealings with the devil, especially in England, Scotland, and the Anglo-American colonies. Having no well-defined and certain criteria, as the church has, by which to determine the presence of Satan, many persons, no doubt, were put to death who were innocent of the offences of which they were accused. This produced a reaction in the public mind against the laws and against the execution of persons for witchcraft or dealing with the devil. This reaction was followed by a denial of witchcraft, or that the devil had anything to do with matters and things on earth, and a shower of ridicule fell on all who
believed in anything of the sort. Then came the general doubt, and then the denial of the existence of the devil and all infernal spirits, save in human nature itself. Finally came the spirit-manifestations, in which Satan is no longer regarded as Satan, but is held to be divine, and worshipped as God, by thousands and millions.
We must be excused from entering into any elaborate refutation of Mr. Owen’s blasphemous attempt to bring the Christian miracles under the general law, as he regards it, of spirit-manifestations. He has proved the reality of no such law, and if he had, the spirit-manifestations themselves would prove nothing more than a gale of wind, a shower of rain, a flash of lightning, or the growth of a spire of grass. Could we prove the Christian miracles to be facts in the order of nature, or show them as taking place by a general law, and not by the immediate act of God, and therefore no miracles at all, we should deprive them of all their importance. The value of the facts is not in their being facts, but in their being miraculous facts, which none but God can work. The author does not understand this, but supposes that he has won a victory for Christianity when he has proved the miracles as facts, but at the same time that they are no miracles.
It is clear from his pages that the author does not know what Christians understand by a miracle. He cites St. Augustine to prove that a miracle is something that may take place by some law of nature to us unknown, but St. Augustine, in the passage he cites, is not speaking of miracles at all; he is speaking of portents, prodigies, or extraordinary events, which the ignorant, and the superstitious ascribe to a supernatural agency; but which may, after all, however
wonderful, be produced by a natural cause, as in our days not a few believe to be the case with the spirit-manifestations themselves, and no doubt is the case with most of the wonders the spiritists relate. The devil may work portents or prodigies, but not miracles, because he has no creative power, and can work only with materials created to his hand.
It is necessary also to distinguish between what is simply superhuman and what is supernatural. Whatever is creature is in the order of nature. Nature embraces the entire creation—whatever exists that is not God or distinguishable from him. Whether the created powers are above man or below him in the scale of existence, they are equally natural, and so is whatever they are capable, as second causes, of doing. The angels in heaven, the very highest as the lowest, are God’s creatures, distinguishable from him, and therefore included in nature. The same must be said of the devils in hell, or the ghosts, if the spirits of the departed, and hence whatever they do is within the natural order. The devil is superior, if you will, by nature to man—for man is made little lower than the angels, and the devil is an angel fallen; he may know many things beyond human intelligence, and do many things beyond the power of man; but what the devil does, is, if superhuman, not in any sense supernatural, but as natural as what man himself does. We agree with Mr. Owen, though not for the same reason, that there is nothing miraculous in the spirit-manifestations, even supposing them to be facts, and therefore are of no value in relation to the truth or falsehood of Christianity as a revelation of and by the supernatural.
God alone, and what he does immediately by his direct act and immediate act, is supernatural. God
alone can work a miracle, which is a supernatural effect wrought without any natural medium, law, or agency, in or on nature, and is, as far as it goes, a manifestation of creative power.
Miracles do what portents, prodigies, spirit-rappings, etc., do not—they manifest the supernatural, or the existence of a real order above nature. They do not indeed directly prove the truth of the Christian mysteries, but they do accredit our Lord as a teacher sent from God. As Nicodemus said when he came by night to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that thou art come a teacher from God, for no man can do the miracles thou doest, unless God were with him,” God in the miracles accredits the teacher, and vouches for the truth of what he in whose favor they are wrought teaches. What our Lord teaches, then, is true. If he teaches that he is perfect God and perfect man in hypostatic union, then he is so, and then is to be believed, on his own word, whatever he teaches, for “it is impossible for God to lie.” The facts, then, are of no importance if not miracles. Hence the “natural-supernaturalism” of the Sartor Resartus is not only a contradiction in terms, but utterly worthless, as are most of the admired utterances of its author, and aid us not in solving a single problem for which revelation is needed.