Educated but uncritical thought finds the notion of miracle increasingly burdensome. Many reject it outright and others would gladly be rid of it. The current conception with such persons may be fairly described as follows: There is an order of nature from which it is hard, if not impossible, to show a departure. There may be apparent departures from the accustomed order, but they are always expressions of a deeper order and hence are natural. For instance, the freezing of water by the application of heat seems like a violation of the familiar laws of physics, but it is really an illustration. The science of today makes us familiar with many facts, which would once have been thought miraculous, but which we now see to be outcomes of law. Comets and eclipses were cases of this kind in the middle ages, and epidemics also were similarly regarded; but all of these things have been brought under the reign of law. The aëroplane and wireless telegraphy, and even the trolley car, would have been signs and wonders beyond ordinary thaumaturgy three hundred years ago, but they are not miraculous. The facts of witchcraft, faith healing, cures at shrines, were long denied because they seemed to affirm spiritual agencies of some sort; now we admit many of the alleged facts, but deny their supernatural character by including them under the head of hypnotism, suggestion, influence of mind on body, and so on. Considerations of this kind are making us increasingly hospitable to strange facts which once would have been thought miraculous, and increasingly indisposed to admit their miraculous character. Thus the realm of nature and the realm of mystery are both extending, but the sphere of miracle seems to be approaching the vanishing-point.
