What is a Miracle.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 14, 3 April 1902, Page 6

What is a Miracle.

In regard to the discussion of miracles which frequently runs its course in a way that is not always clear, the words of the Rev Father Gerard, S.J., on this subject, may serve to keep all in the right path if they be remembered. A miracle, he says, is an occurrence due to a power beyond the forces or nature and for which the laws of nature cannot account. Thus the laws of nature cannot account for the restoration of a dead man to life. Supposing this to occur, it must be a miraole. The possibility of miracleß is vehemently denied by infidel philosophers, on the ground that there is no such preternatural power as is required to work them. But the study of nature itself demonstrates the existence of a power beyond nature and its exercise. As we have seen, the first impulse given to the forces of nature must have been a miraole, being nowise in accordance with the laws of nature and beyond the power of her forces. So, too, the first beginning of life. If nature can get life only from a living parent ; the first appearance of life was miraculous. There must, therefore, exist a power capable of doing what nature cannot do, and as it has certainly onoe acted, there is no impossibility that it should act again. The question of miracles reaolves itself, therefore, into one of the evidence on which they rest. If we have sufficient evidence that one has been worked, we cannot refuse co admit it on the priori ground that it is impossible.