A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

‘Miracles do not Happen.’––Are we then unhoused? Undoubtedly we are, upon one assumption––that assumption which it takes a brilliant novelist to put forth in its naked asperity––’Miracles do not happen.’ The educated mind is more essentially logical than we are apt to suppose. Remove the keystone of miracle and the arch tumbles about our ears. The ostentatious veneration for the Person of Christ, as separated from the ‘mythical’ miraculous element, is, alas, no more than a spurious sentiment toward a self-evolved conception. Eliminate the ‘miraculous’ and the whole fabric of Christianity disappears; and not only so, what have we to do with that older revelation of ‘the Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious’? Do we say, Nay, we keep this; here is no miracle; and, of Christ have we not the inimitable Sermon on the Mount––sufficient claim on our allegiance? No, we have not; therein we are taught to pray, to consider lilies or the field, the fowls of the air, and to remember that the very hairs of our head are all numbered. Here we have the doctrine of the personal dealing, the particular providence of God, which is of the very essence of miracles. If ‘miracles do not happen,’ it is folly and presumption to expect in providence and invite in prayer the faintest disturbance of that course of events which is fixed by inevitable law. The educated mind is severely logical, though an effort of the will may keep us from following out our conclusions to the bitter end. What have we left? A God who, of necessity, can have no personal dealings with you or me, for such dealings would be of the nature of a miracle; a God, prayer to whom, in the face of such certainty, becomes blasphemous. How dare we approach the Highest with requests which, in the nature of things (as we conceive), it is impossible He should grant?