like, but the fact is we know nothing of the mode of miraculous operation, and rather reveal our ignorance than any thing else, by our definitions in this as in many other matters. All that we really apprehend is a change of natural conditions under some supernatural impulse. What appears "reversal" or "violation" to us, may seem any thing but this to a more comprehensive vision than ours.

The stoutest advocate of interference can mean nothing more than that the Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of nature, that a new issue arises on given circumstances. The ordinary issue is supplanted by a higher issue. This seems an appropriate way of expressing the character of the change wrought. But in any case, the essential facts before us are a certain set of phenomena, and a higher Will moving them. How moving them? is a question for human definition, but the answer to which does not, and can not, affect the Divine meaning of the change. Yet when we reflect that this higher Will is every-where reason or wisdom, it seems a juster, as well as a more comprehensive view, to regard it as operating by subordination and evolution rather than by "interference" or "violation." We know but a little way. It is not for us to measure our knowledge against God's plans, but rather to

take these plans as the interpreters and guides of our knowledge. And seeing how far his "miraculous interpositions" have entered into human history, and constituted its most powerful elements in the education of the human race, it seems certainly the humble as well as the wise inference which is suggested in Butler's guarded words, that these interpositions may have been all along in like manner—as God's common providential interpositions-" by general laws of wisdom."

According to this view the idea of law is so far from being contravened by the Christian miracles, that it is taken up by them and made their very basis. They are the expression of a higher Law working out its wise ends among the lower and ordinary sequences of life and history. These ordinary sequences represent nature-nature, however, not as an immutable fate, but a plastic medium through which a higher Voice and Will are ever addressing us, and which therefore may be wrought into new issues when the voice has a new message, and the will a special purpose for us.

The advantage of such a view is not only that it fits better into the conclusions of modern thought, but that it really purifies the idea of miracle, and sets it before us in its only true light and importance. It is not a mere prodigy

or wonder which we can not explain, but it is every-where a "revelation" or sign-the manifestation of a beneficent or wise purpose, and not a mere arbitrary exercise of power. It is the indication of a higher kingdom of life and righteousness subordinating the lower for its good, bringing it into obedience to its own improvement and blessing. There is a higher kingdom and a lower kingdom-a kingdom of nature and physical sequences, and a kingdom of spirit and free agency. "And this free

agency, straight out of the ultimate springs of the Spirit, seems to give," it has been said, "the true conception of the supernatural. Nature is the sphere and system of God's self-prescribed method of reliable evolution of phenomena; but above and beyond nature he is spirit, including nature, indeed, as part of its expression, but, instead of being all committed to nature, transcending it on every side, and opening a life of communion with the spirits that can reflect himself. All is thus his agency; nature his fixed will-spirit his free will." And the miracle emerges when the latter is seen to traverse the former, when the higher kingdom is seen to witness itself among the ordinarily unchanging phenomena of the lower.

Miracle is, therefore, truly a revelation of character as well as an exhibition of power.

So.

It is the Divine Will coming forth to the immediate gaze of man, pushing back, as it were, the intervolved folds of the physical, so that we may see there is a moral spring behind it, and making known some high purpose in doing The idea of interference for the mere sake of interference, or even of the mere assertion of might to subdue or overawe the mind, is not that suggested. Rather it is the idea of a higher plan and truth unfolding themselves, of a Will which, while leaving nature, as a whole, to its established course, must yet witness to itself as above nature, and show its glory in the instruction and redemption of creatures that are more than nature, although having their present being amid its activities.*

"The one grand and essential distinction between the miracles of Scripture and the operations of so-called laws is the personal and sensible interposition of the Supreme Creator evidencing to man his supremacy over nature, and his providential care of man by such manifestations of direct power as none but the Supreme Creator could possess. This is what Christianity must maintain; all other questions may be set aside. Nature is that course of operations in the world before us in which the Divine Will is working continually and perpetually, but to us secretly, and, as science will assert, uniformly, immutably. Besides that there is another course very deeply entwined with it, in which the hand and the presence of God are made known to us by a distinct series of rare and extraordinary operations. Yet they both make up one whole, are both as much parts of one consistent and harmonious system as the grand ellipses of the moon, and its occasional mutations and deflections, are features of one predetermined orbit."Quarterly Review, October, 1861.

IV.

REVELATION.

HEN we turn to contemplate the historical revelation of the supernatural in Scripture we find that it answers to the idea already suggested. It is not a series of isolated wonders, but a coherent manifestation of Divine purpose, culminating in a Divine Personality, who came to bear witness of a higher kingdom and truth.

What is the Scriptural representation? Beginning with the fall of God's free and intelligent creation from an estate of holiness and happiness to an estate of sin and misery, it unfolds, at first in faint and vague outline, but with an increasing particularity and brightness as time passes on, a remedial or redeeming purpose toward the fallen. The evolution of this purpose, in adaptation to the varying necessities of human nature, is the great function of Scripture. Passing through the forms of what have been called the patriarchal, the Mosaic, the prophetical dispensations, the purpose brightens on us as we descend the course of sacred tradi