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to some of the miraculous deliverances of Israel. with theirs the history of the Waldenses, the Israel of the Alps. Read the history of the siege of the mountain fortress La Balsille; how the little band, having been surrounded by a French and Sardinian army throughout an entire summer, at length had to face the prospect of death by starvation, since the enemy was guarding every outlet of the valley. In midwinter they are driven by hunger to visit the snow-clad fields which they have been unable to harvest, and there under the deep snow they find the entire harvest still uninjured. Part of this was housed in good condition eighteen months after it had been sown. Read how in the following spring one breastwork of the small fortress after another sank under the enemy's cannonade, until finally the last intrenchment was demolished; how they then stood defenceless, at the mercy of a cruel foe, and could only cry to the Lord of Hosts; and how in their extremity a cloud of fog suddenly rolled down upon the valley, and enveloped it in so dense a darkness, that, although in the midst of their enemies, they were able to climb down the rocks unseen and effect their escape. This occurred on the 13th of May 1690. Does it not remind us of the God who once fed Israel so miraculously, and who covered them with the pillar of cloud as a defence against Pharaoh's army?1

Again, what a wonderful deliverance was experienced by

1 Almost more wonderful deliverances are related in the history of the South African Missions. In one case "the terror of the Lord" suddenly fell on a triumphantly advancing enemy, who was about to set fire to the mission-house, so that the victory was turned into a sudden flight, and both friends and foes were compelled to confess that God had fought for His people. (Vide Kleinschmidt, ubi supra, pp. 73, 77; cf. Ps. xxxiv. 8, and 2 Kings vii. 6 ff.)

Another most remarkable instance occurred in the case of a missionary of the Rhenish Society, named Nommensen, working in Sumatra. On one occasion a heathen who had designs on his life managed secretly to mix a deadly poison in the rice which Nommensen was preparing for his dinner. Without suspicion the missionary ate the rice, and the heathen watched for him to fall down dead. Instead of this, however, the promise contained in Mark xvi. 18 was fulfilled, and he did not experience the slightest inconvenience. The heathen, by this palpable miraculous proof of the Christian God's power, became convinced of the truth, and was eventually converted but not until his conscience had impelled him to confess his guilt to Nommensen, did the latter know from what danger he had been preserved. This incident is well attested (cf. V. Rohden, Geschichte der rhein. Missionsgesellschaft, 2d ed., p. 324), and the missionary still lives.

the crew of the missionary ship Harmony, which every year visits the Moravian stations on the coast of Labrador, and supplies them with provisions! Some years ago an iceberg was one day perceived drifting rapidly towards the vessel. A moment more, and it would have inevitably been dashed to pieces. At a distance of only one foot from the ship, the monster suddenly stopped in its course, and drifted away again. I myself have heard the captain of the Harmony attest the truth of this incident, which the entire crew declared to be a miracle. Cases of this sort, especially as regards the marvellous deliverances of children, could be multiplied indefinitely, but they belong to miracles in the wider sense.

But even apart from the history of Missions, especially in the healing of the sick and in miraculous answers to prayer, our times offer resemblances at least to the apostolic age.

You all know with what victorious faith Luther once wrestled with God in prayer at the bedside of the dying Melanchthon, and how he then with firm confidence went up to the sick man, who felt that his last hour had come, and taking him by the hand, said, "Be of good cheer, Philip, you shall not die;" and how from that hour Melanchthon revived. Johann Albrecht Bengel, famous as the best interpreter of Holy Scripture in the last century, relates that a girl in a little town of South Germany,' who had been paralysed for twenty years, was suddenly healed by the prayer of faith. The case was examined and publicly certified to be a miracle. And surely the veracity of an informant like Bengel cannot be questioned.

Most of us are aware that wonderful things are related of the healing of the sick at the present day. Yet these are but weak analogies of that divine power of healing in the New Testament history, through which the severest and most chronic cases were instantly cured by a word. Our age, it is true, can show more cases of wonderful answers to prayer than many previous ones; and assuredly all history as well as the present period abounds in wonders of the divine govern

1 Leonberg, near Stuttgart.

2 I need only remind you of the humble origin and the grand development of so many Christian institutions and societies as related in the memoirs of A. H. Franke, J. Falk, Jung Stilling, J. Gossner, George Müller of Bristol, Theodor Fliedner, L. Harms, J. Wichern, and others, whom Spurgeon designates "modern workers of miracles."

ment, and in sudden divine interpositions which are no less. the workings of God's providence for being often brought about by circumstances or men, and thus concealed from us through the dimness of our spiritual vision. But these signs and wonders do not possess the same force and clearness as the biblical miracles.

On the other hand, we see the sceptics of the present day reject with scorn the appeal to the lives of God's children, and the clear proofs afforded by them, for every one who is not wilfully blind, of a special divine providence; and we find them presuming to derive from merely natural sources all the answers to prayer, and all the dearest experiences of the children of God, or representing them as self-deceptions.1 This shows us clearly that it is the want of faith in our age which is the greatest hindrance to the stronger and more inarked appearance of that miraculous power which is working here and there in quiet concealment. Unbelief is the final and the most important reason for the retrogression of miracles.

We often see unbelievers greatly embarrassed by the countless and undeniable answers to prayer in the lives of many children of God; answers which it is ridiculous to attribute to chance. An instance of this may be seen in the desperate explanation attempted by Perty (in his work, Die mystischen Erscheinungen der menschlichen Natur, 1861). According to him, those results proceed, not from the influence of the suppliant upon God, but from the mystic working of one human soul upon another. The spiritual energy of the suppliant occasions disquietude in other souls until they have satisfied his needs. If this be so, then men and not God hear prayer. What a wild fancy is this! Indeed, it is an incomparably greater miracle than that God should answer prayer! In many cases help comes from a person whom the suppliant did not know of whose existence he was unconscious; or it does not come through persons at all, but through things and circumstances. How, in these cases, is a psychical influence conceivable? We see how unbelief in its despair prefers to accept the purest impossibility rather than the simple truth of Scripture. In this respect it is still true that "professing themselves to be wise, they become fools!" (Cf. Apologet. Beiträge von Gess und Riggenbach, p. 187.) The Gartenlaube remarks in a similar strain with regard to George Müller's wonderful work: "The Lord' who went before Müller was merely another form for his own German energy, his simple, feeling heart, etc.,-a form dear to him and imposing to the English public." Whoever takes the pains to read in The Lord's dealings with G. Müller (1860, 6th ed.), and to learn how, without ever applying to any one for a gift, he received the means to build those great palaces near Bristol, in which he provides for 2000 orphans, only through prayer, will immediately realize the folly of such a judgment. If it is always men who do such things, and not God, why do not these enlightened gentlemen make use of their own simple, feeling hearts," and some "imposing form," say that of Materialism, in order to perform like wonders?

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But though these facts-being miracles in a wider sense only-may be no direct proof for the miraculous, strictly so called, still they plainly prove that the omnipotent God is everywhere present and active in the natural as well as in the spiritual world. But when this fact is once admitted, it follows that the miraculous is constantly possible, and that God need not disturb nor destroy anything when He performs a miracle properly so called, of which we have at least single examples in our own days.

These alone may not be sufficient to lead one to a belief in the truth of the biblical miracles. But there is a still more cogent consideration which I would finally seek to impress upon you, viz. that by a denial of the miraculous we do not in the least escape miracles, but only have to believe in greater prodigies.

We have already seen that he who believes in God must also believe in the miraculous. Though one may not believe in God, yet he must believe in the miracle of the world, which, through a miracle, must have existed from eternity, and must have developed and preserved itself up to its present condition by means of still greater miracles and riddles. If one does not

believe in the miraculous creation of man, he must believe in his descent from the monkey, and further back in his generation, from the original slime a wild supposition which is contradicted by all experience and moral consciousness. He who does not believe in the miraculous revelation of God in history, especially in Christ, must assume that a people like Israel, and a phenomenon like Christianity, could have arisen of their own accord; he must assume that the preaching of a few poor Galilean fishermen could have overcome the world, and have ruled it spiritually until now, without the co-operation of divine power. And would that not be a far greater miracle? He who does not believe in the continual government of God's providence has lost the key for understanding the entire history of the world, of the divine kingdom, and of his own life, and has no longer any safeguard against the thoughtless belief in chance, which explains nothing.

As the Bible is much more inexplicable if we suppose it uninspired than if we grant its inspiration, so, too, the natural and the moral world are infinitely more full of riddles without

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the belief in miracles than with it. Though the latter may still leave much that is incomprehensible, yet the many comprehensible things which we find in Holy Scripture should induce us to believe the incomprehensible too. This is how children learn. For the sake of what they already understand, they accept that which for a long time is still beyond their powers of comprehension; and this is precisely the way to make progress in learning. In this respect we have much to learn from children, and especially do we see in them the simple beauty and naturalness of the belief in miracles. Since they have no doubt whatever of the existence of a higher world with its heavenly powers of love, miracles seem just as natural to them as to the angels; since their hearts are still open, and their consciences but little burdened, they joyously believe in the influence and interference of these divine powers in our lives. Were our children to find in some quiet meadow a ladder reaching up to heaven, they would not be so greatly astonished, but would straightway ascend it, while we older people still stood below, engrossed in critical considerations. And which would be the wiser ?

There are in our day many doubtful souls, who, if they meet with a miracle in the Holy Scriptures, swallow it as a bitter pill, or even allow it to spoil their delight in the Word of God. And why? Because they would fain measure the great ways of God by their own small ideas, which are not even adequate to the understanding of that which daily takes place around them.1 Because they think far too highly of our human wisdom and knowledge, they have far too small conceptions of God and of His mighty power. This view must be reversed in order to lead us to a belief in the miraculous. Think very highly, I pray you, of the infinite God, and make a very lowly estimate of all human knowledge and actions, and then, my respected hearers, the Scripture miracles will prove to you no longer a cross, but a comfort; a source no longer of timid doubts, but of heartfelt joy and of stronger faith!

As is Christ Himself, so certainly are all miracles, a sign which may be spoken against (Luke ii. 34); clear and unmis

1 Lord Bacon truly says: "Animus ad amplitudinem mysteriorum pro modulo suo dilatetur, non mysteria ad angustias animi constringantur."

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