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| Why Miracles are Not Usual Works.
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Chapter 5.—Why Miracles are Not Usual
Works.
11. For since the divine power
administers the whole spiritual and corporeal creature, the waters
of the sea are summoned and poured out upon the face of the earth
on certain days of every year. But when this was done at the prayer
of the holy Elijah; because so continued and long a course of fair
weather had gone before, that men were famished; and because at
that very hour, in which the servant of God prayed, the air itself
had not, by any moist aspect, put forth signs of the coming rain;
the divine power was apparent in the great and rapid showers that
followed, and by which that miracle was granted and dispensed.371
In like
manner, God works ordinarily through thunders and lightnings: but
because these were wrought in an unusual manner on Mount Sinai, and
those sounds were not uttered with a confused noise, but so that it
appeared by most sure proofs that certain intimations were given by
them, they were miracles.372
Who draws up the sap through the
root of the vine to the bunch of grapes, and makes the wine, except
God; who, while man plants and waters, Himself giveth the
increase?373
But when, at
the command of the Lord, the water was turned into wine with an
extraordinary quickness, the divine power was made manifest, by the
confession even of the foolish.374
Who ordinarily clothes the trees
with leaves and flowers except God? Yet, when the rod of Aaron the
priest blossomed, the Godhead in some way conversed with doubting
humanity.375
Again, the
earthy matter certainly serves in common to the production and
formation both of all kinds of wood and of the flesh of all
animals: and who makes these things, but He who said, Let the earth
bring them forth;376
and who
governs and guides by the same word of His, those things which He
has created? Yet, when He changed the same matter out of the rod of
Moses into the flesh of a serpent, immediately and quickly,
that
change, which was unusual, although of a thing which was
changeable, was a miracle.377
But who is it that gives life to
every living thing at its birth, unless He who gave life to that
serpent also for the moment, as there was need.378
| 378 [One chief reason why a miracle is
incredible for the skeptic, is the difficulty of working it. If the
miracle were easy of execution for man—who for the skeptic is the
measure of power—his disbelief of it would disappear. In
reference to this objection, Augustin calls attention to the fact,
that so far as difficulty of performance is concerned, the products
of nature are as impossible to man as supernatural products. Aaron
could no more have made an almond rod blossom and fructuate on an
almond tree, than off it. That a miracle is difficult to be wrought
is, consequently, no good reason for disbelieving its
reality.—W.G.T.S.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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