SECTION II.
Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never understand one another. "Miraculum res miranda, prodigium, portentum, monstrum."—Miracle, something admirable; prodigy, implying something astonishing; portentous, bearing with it novelty; monster, something to show ("à montrer") on account of its variety. Such are the first ideas that men formed of miracles.
As everything is refined and improved upon, such also would be the case with this definition. A miracle is said to be that which is impossible to nature. But it was not considered that this was in fact saying all miracle is absolutely impossible. For what is nature? You understand by it the eternal order of things. A miracle would therefore be impossible in such an order. In this sense God could not work a miracle.
If you mean by miracle an effect of which you cannot perceive the cause, in that sense all is miracle. The attraction and direction of the magnet are continual miracles. A snail whose head is renewed is a miracle. The birth of every animal, the production of every vegetable, are miracles of every day.
But we are so accustomed to these prodigies, that they have lost their name of admirable—of miraculous. The Indians are no longer astonished by cannon.
We have therefore formed for ourselves another idea of a miracle. It is, according to the common opinion, what never has happened and never will happen. Such is the idea formed of Samson's jawbone of an ass; of the conversation between the ass and Balaam, and that between a serpent and Eve; of the chariot with four horses that conveyed away Elijah; of the fish that kept Jonah in its belly seventy-two hours; of the ten plagues of Egypt; of the walls of Jericho, and of the sun and moon standing still at mid-day, etc.
In order to believe a miracle, it is not enough merely to have seen it; for a man may be deceived. A fool is often called a dealer in wonders; and not merely do many excellent persons think that they have seen what they have not seen, and heard what was never said to them; not only do they thus become witnesses of miracles, but they become also subjects of miracles. They have been sometimes diseased, and sometimes cured by supernatural power; they have been changed into wolves; they have travelled through the air on broomsticks; they have become both incubi and succubi.
It is necessary that the miracle should have been seen by a great number of very sensible people, in sound health, and perfectly disinterested in the affair. It is above all necessary, that it should have been solemnly attested by them; for if solemn forms of authentication are deemed necessary with respect to transactions of very simple character, such as the purchase of a house, a marriage contract, or a will, what particular and minute cautionary formalities must not be deemed requisite in order to verify things naturally impossible, on which the destiny of the world is to depend?
Even when an authentic miracle is performed, it in fact proves nothing; for Scripture tells you, in a great variety of places, that impostors may perform miracles, and that if any man, after having performed them, should proclaim another God than that of the Jews, he ought to be stoned to death. It is requisite, therefore, that the doctrine should be confirmed by the miracles, and the miracles by the doctrine.
Even this, however, is not sufficient. As impostors may preach a very correct and pure morality, the better to deceive, and it is admitted that impostors, like the magicians of Pharaoh, may perform miracles; it is in addition necessary, that these miracles should have been announced by prophecies.