“MIRACLES AND THE MIRACULOUS.”

Wairarapa Age, 1 March 1927, Page 6

“MIRACLES AND THE MIRACULOUS.”

ADDRESS BY REV. G. S. KING. We print below the first portion of an outline of an address or ’’Miracles and the Miraculous,” delivered by the Rev. (A S. King in the Lansdowne Church before an inter-denominational conference of the ministers of the Wairarapa. A second and concluding instalment will appear later:— Mr. King said: The subject of our study—” Miracles and the Miraculous’’ —is not one of the burning questions of cur day and that mainly because there has Been a gradual ro-approachnient between the parties in the controversies concerning the supernatural. There is, of course, a party of irreconcilables, mis-named ‘‘advanced thinkers,” who go much further than the most iconoclastic controversialist of last century in their antagonism to the Bible and the supernatural. These regard the Scriptures as a collection of Hebrew folk-lore, gathered in ancient documents which have been rather badly edited. Doctrines that were held throughout Christendom as great central truths of the Christian religion they regard as fit only for the very simple and the ignorant. To quote an example: the supernatural birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is spoken of as ‘‘a myth cribbed from extra-Christian sources, and as a matter of fact the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was as natural as any other birth and was not entirely free from scandal.” To such there is in religion neither spiritual nor supernatural elements, and they are frankly devoid of intoyest in the controversy of a past age. One is thankful to say, however, that such men arc not representative thinkers, they really belong to the latter half of tlie nineteenth century.

Even though the subject of our study is not a “burning question,” it is a subject that will repay us for the time spent in its study, for it must come again into prominence. -Men must return to God and only through that transformation of character and min I that for the individual, at least, is the greatest of all miracles can they come to Him.

lhe better understanding between the scientist and the theologian has been a great help forward towards th--> realisation of truth. Wo have come to see that there is an underlying unity of all knowledge. Different' departments ot knowledge cannot be held in separate eompartments of the mind. There is ,no radical distinction as between science and theology, in the facts with which they deal nor in the human powers that are brought to bear upon those facts, n»r yet in the methods ®f reasoning that are applied to them, theology now draws her data when she treats of the Being of God, from the phenomena of the natural world as well as from what used to be called spiritual souraes. Her data upon which she bases her conclusions are found in the Bible, in the pages iff philosophy and science and in the experiences of individuals. It may be that to some these proofs are insufficient and unsatisfactory, but there are no others. What we are trying to shew is that the scientist and the philosqfiher and the theologian are no more enemies but allies in the seareh for ultimate 'truth. Too long we on our port, feared to admit the value of the discoveries of science, lest our religion should suffer. We have now come to- see that in nature, as well as m the Bible, God is revealing Himself and the scientist, as he sees the wonderful precesses at work in nature, becomes more reverent and more apt to use the words ef an old scientist as recorded in the Bible, “Lo these are parts of His ways, but how little a por.ticn of them is known. ”

There are things beyond the knowledge of the investigates and therefore a priori denials of the possibility of arc unsound jlnd unscientific, and »re mertfly mental presumptions without foundations. It cannot 'be saifl dogmatically that miracles arc

contrary to nature. All that can with safety be said is that they are contrary to our present knowledge o<f nature. In the past the scientist spoke of the laws of nature a« excluding the possibility of miracles, but he spoke of laws as if they were causes, when thuy were only the statements of -the ways in which objects in nature were observed to a;t and inter-act upon one another. The truth is, a miracle'does not clash with any natural law. A simple illustration may be taken in the law of gravitation by which all things are drawn downwards toward the ground. If I raise my hand above my head, I do it by the intervention of a will superior to nature’s law, but my volition does not disturb the general law of nature. In nature herself there arc some things that are extremely like miracles. Water, as its temperature is lowered, increases in density so that the colder water always sinks to the bottom of the vessel, of the lake or the ocean. But at 4 degrees Centigrade the law is reversed and instead of sinking it rises to the surface. If this miracle did no“; happen, then the seas would freeze from the bottom upwards and the teeming life of the ocean would be destroyed and our earth would become as the moon. The scientist is rendering a great service to religion and to the theologian by observing and expounding the works of God in nature, and if it were not that our minds are dulled by custom and familiarity, the ordered sequence of the seasons and all nature’s multitudinous activities would awaken faith? and adoration in our hearts that might be fitly expressed in the words of Scripture, ‘‘The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.” fTo he concluded.)