(with Schleiermacher) makes miracles, on the side on which they are effects, incorporate themselves in the existing worldsystem, denies as concerns their genesis all creaturely secondcauses in the case of miracles in the most eminent sense, calling them absolute miracles. He does not shrink from the expression, that in them God "plays the magician.” 1 This would be incompatible with the personal creature only, not with impersonal Nature. In the case of such miracles, no conflict can arise with Nature. Conflict is only possible where there is contact, but here no contact takes place. In the production of such miracles the creature does not concur at all, nor consequently the law of Nature. But, on the other hand, Rothe makes these creative acts of God (e.g. in producing the gradual series of beings) "conditioned," or condition themselves by the already existent, although the causative power is not in them, but in God's creative causality alone. But in this again a contact with already existent Nature and its law seems to be conceded, and it would still be necessary to show that this contact of creative causes need not imply conflict with natural law. In this respect the following suggestion of his is important: In order that the self-enclosed character of the laws of Nature may not exclude the intervention of God with His absolute causality, but that Nature may be and really remain absolutely dependent on Him, although not a limit to Him, God must needs impart to the laws of Nature the same breadth and elasticity, so to speak the same power of giving way, which is everywhere the condition of the undisturbed working of a piece of mechanism, even of the organic. In this respect Lotze has effected a better harmony with natural law. From natural laws he goes back to Nature, which for him is no immoveable finished whole. On the contrary, in it he distinguishes the inner force or inner essence and the phenomenon, which is the effect of the inner force or essence, although the effect incorporates itself in the although God, by virtue of His absolute causality, without its assistance generates in it separate new elements (but perfectly homogeneous with it)." As examples, he adduces the miracle at Cana, the multiplication of loaves, but especially Christ's person itself.

1 P. 99.

2 P. 97.

3 Mikrokosmus, II. 50 ff. 1858. Similarly Köstlin, Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol. 1864, p. 259 ff.

system of Nature and its laws, and only by doing this becomes a datum obvious to sense. Natural laws are mere abstractions from the functions of the forces, no forces by themselves.1 The forces ever operate in accordance with their nature and constitution, and to this we must go back. But this nature of theirs is not eternally the same. The world is a living organism. Supposing a disturbance anywhere to occur, all the parts are sympathetically affected, and labour to supply healing and compensation. They feel in general the influence of the world's condition at the moment, and modify their operation accordingly, in harmony with the spirit of the world's progress and the kind of operation which it demands. They operate in combination with new quantitative modifications, for the same quantity of force need not unchangeably inhere in the element. The inner condition of things being changed, the result of the law is changed; but the law itself retains its efficiency, the modification of force experienced entering with perfect plasticity into the system of Nature. Now this inner modificability of forces leaves an open space, on which "the power that commands in the name of the spirit of the world is able to exercise its influence;" for the individual element stands in relation not merely with other individual elements, but with the unity of the infinite, supreme world-cause. A self-enclosed hard circle of mechanical necessity would not be directly accessible to a miracle-working command. But God's power need not change or reverse the laws. He can accomplish the desired result by changing the inner condition of things or forces. That supreme unity-the power commanding in the name of the spirit of the worldcan produce miraculous effects by influencing the forces. The inner nature of the forces is under the control not of mechanical necessity but of the supreme power, such as directs and conducts them to the desired goal. This mode of representation commends itself on the ground that it does not make God perform His miracles within the sensuous, law-regulated world from without, but by directing and modifying the forces from within, by which means the new, divinely caused element 1 Köstlin, ut supra.

The operative element in Nature is substances and forces, not laws. These are mere formulæ for the operation of the (then existing) forces.

combines more closely with the already existing system of Nature and its laws. This conduces to the world's unity demanded by the "spirit"—the teleological idea of the supreme personal world-cause. Nevertheless, if the distinctions in the living beings, called forth by God, are not merely quantitative and therefore evanescent in character, it will not suffice to limit the modificability of substances merely to the "quantity" of their force. Rather, the modificability of the lower substances, by whose existence the creative causal activity conditions itself within the course of the world, must also be defined as receptiveness of the lower for the higher.1 Moreover, not merely is there good ground for supposing a direct, modifying, or creative intervention of God for the purpose of realizing the entire world-idea, not simply for remedying any disturbance that has occurred, but, moreover, the providential direction of the movements of the forces, instead of being effected by Nature alone, may originate in direct divine action.

3. The possibility of miracle in general we have seen, in respect of God and Nature. But we have to distinguish different kinds of miracles, all of which stand in relation, although in different ways, to the world as revelation. One class consists of events in Nature, which cannot be comprehended on the basis of the causality of Nature alone, but only of the divine operation within Nature, whether of a creative kind, or one providentially controlling natural elements and causes for the ends of revelation. In the same list we may place the sending of heavenly messengers, in which case God indeed employs. creaturely causes, but such as are remote from the circle of the earthly causal system. It was previously shown 2 how important, nay necessary, external manifestations of God, such as must be referred directly to His causality and revealing will, are for the bearers, and therefore for the establishing of revelation itself. In point of fact even Nature, by means of sensuously obvious, miraculous data within it, may in some respects render essential service to spirit and its develop

1 This seems also to be Köstlin's view, when he says: The divine power presiding over all things may intervene in the operation and reciprocal action of the forces. In this way these forces produce the miraculous. The tendencies, which the substance would have had, left to themselves, are thus counteracted, reversed, by God's power.

2 § 52.

ment. Let us observe more closely how Nature may at the same time be made serviceable for the ends of revelation. Little as spirit can be described as originally a mere blank table, on which sensuous experience has to write, it is certain that it only becomes what it is meant to be by means of correspondent stimulus from without. Thus in its ordered course Nature serves to awaken the consciousness of God in its physical definitions, such as power, measure, order, beauty, and finite teleology. Higher spiritual definitions of the idea of God certainly cannot be revealed by Nature as such. On the contrary, its self-contained system and regularity of rotation may lead, if religious development remains bound to this, to errors that confound God and the world, as the history of religion but too abundantly shows, so that it might seem that for higher spiritual communications we must remain wholly shut up to internal operations of God's Spirit. But the law of human nature, according to which the latter needs appropriate means of stimulus from without, holds good also in reference to the spiritual sphere, and in the same way the need of bearers of revelation holds good, as was shown in § 52. Nay, this need is directly corroborated in an eminent degree by the dangers, just mentioned, of religious errors, to which mankind is exposed in bare intercourse with Nature. Now, by means of miracle, the spirit may be rescued from the sole predominance of Nature, and become conscious of a higher power holding sway over Nature. If this, taken alone, is rather a mere negative importance of miracle, being fitted to show man that behind or above the usual course of nature there are other higher powers superior to it, it is further to be taken into consideration that Nature is also capable of symbolizing and embodying the ideal and ethical in objective realization in the world. Nature is designed for spirit, and in virtue of the secret bond subsisting between the two, the elements, such as light, fire, lightning, storm, wind, have capacity for symbolizing the spiritual, and thus, operating in the right place, for becoming the stimulating earthly foil for the conception of the ideal truth, which revelation desires to communicate. Here come in the natural events at the fundamental revelation of the divine. holiness to Moses and at the giving of the Law to the people,'

1 Ex. iii. 19, xix.

as well as in the case of Elijah,' the significant, exact appropriateness of which to the spiritual truth revealed deserves special notice. Where an event, if only of an unusual kind, within the visible world is of such a nature as of itself to necessitate a symbolical interpretation, because coincident with a peculiar attitude of the heart, or with a spiritual revelation of God, there its effect may be to cause man, to receive either an effectual stimulus to the living apprehension of the truth to be revealed, or on the other hand a ratification of the same, and there Nature through its teleological correlation with the work of revelation is made co-operative in the latter, and is for the recipient of the spiritual truth, externally symbolized by the independent natural phenomena, a disclosure of the objective, divine revealing will. God is made known therewith to the bearer of the revelation as the supreme unity of Nature and spirit. There is still another way in which Nature may render service to revelation as an accompanying and ratifying seal. Its life is in such intimate connection with that of the spirit, for whose sake it exists, that notable phenomena in the inner spiritual field, God's revealing acts in that field, as it were sympathetically find an echo in Nature by virtue of the secret original bond subsisting between it and spirit, of which we have a significant example in God's inner voice in conscience, whose stroke not merely affects the spirit, but is felt in physical and corporeal respects, just as the N. T. describes spiritual redemption as the commencement of corporeal (Rom. viii. 17 ff.), and connects with it a presentiment of the latter. That sympathy of feeling between Nature and the great and greatest events in the spiritual field, of which the highest is the field of revelation, is openly exhibited in the case of Christ's birth, death, resurrection, as well as in the birth of the Christian Church at Pentecost.

It is true that the highest form of revelation would only be attained where Nature is not the minister of revelation, either taken alone, or by its teleological correlation with

11 Kings xix. 10 ff.

2 But elements of Nature may also be employed by the spirit, e.g. the creaturely spirit of the messengers of God, by His authority, e.g. by word and discourse, to convey spiritual truth to man from without.