The laws of nature never raised a man from the dead, instantaneously gave hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, or sight to the blind. No laws of nature can heal a leper in an instant, multiply “five loaves and a few small fishes,” till the amount will be sufficient to feed five thousand persons, leaving “twelve baskets full of fragments,” or enable men to speak in some fifteen or seventeen languages, never studied or learned in the ordinary way. A miracle may suspend laws of nature for the time being, do something above them, or something that they never perform; but to be a miracle at all, something must be done above all human art, device or ability, and something which we know the laws of nature, in their legitimate course, and ordinary operation, never perform. When anything of this kind occurs, we know that it could not have taken place without foreign and direct interposition. This is a miracle; it is above and superior to all human art or device; above and superior to any thing ever done by the laws of nature, as well as different from anything they ever do. “AFFIRMATIVE GOSPEL.” We heard an illusion to the fanciful idea that some have conceived of preaching an “affirmative gospel,” or, as some have expressed it, “preaching the gospel _affirmatively_,” or, as we suppose, to come a little nearer their idea, merely to preach, maintain and defend the truth _affirmatively_, and let the _negative_ alone; or still, if possible, to be more fully understood, to preach _truth_ and not preach against what is _not truth_; to preach what _is to be done_ and not what _is not to be done_. Look at the following Psalm I.: 1. “Happy is the man that walks _not_ in the counsel of the ungodly.” 2. “_Nor_ stands in the way of sinners.” 3. “_Nor_ sits in the seat of the scornful.” These three items are _negative_—things that the man whom the Lord pronounces _happy, does not_. This is not leaving the negative part out, but inserting it first, and pronounces the man happy that does not these things. In contrast, the Psalmist of Israel proceeds to give us the following, which is affirmative: 1. “His delight is in the law of the Lord.” 2. “In his law he meditates day and night.” The Lord gives the following guarantee to those who do not say the negative part, but do the affirmative: “He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper.” What an awful contrast with this is the ungodly: “The ungodly are not so; but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregations of the righteous.” To this the Lord adds the following conclusion: “The Lord knows the way of the righteous,” or _approves_ it, “but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”