Thus sang Israel at the Red Sea in words which are constantly reëchoed in our liturgy. Nothing impresses the religious sense of man so much as unusual phenomena in nature, which seem to interrupt the wonted course of events and thus to reveal the workings of a higher Power. A miracle—that is, a thing “wondered” at, because not understood—is always regarded by Scripture as a “sign”(463) or “proof”(464) of the power of God, to whom nothing is impossible. The child-like mind of the past knew nothing of fixed or immutable laws of nature. Therefore the question is put in all simplicity: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”(465) “Is the Lord’s hand waxed short?”(466) “Or should He who created heaven and earth not be able to create something which never was before?”(467) Should “He who maketh a man’s mouth, or makes him deaf, dumb, seeing or blind,”(468) not be able also to open the mouth of the dumb beast or the eyes of the blind? Should not He who killeth and giveth life have the power also to call the dead back to life, if He sees fit? Should not He who openeth the womb for every birth, be able to open it for her who is ninety years old? Or when a whole land is wicked, to shut the wombs of all its inhabitants that they may remain barren? Again, should not He who makes the sun come forth every morning from the gates of the East and enter each night the portals of the West, not be able to change this order once, and cause it to stand still in the midst of its course?(469) So long as natural phenomena are considered to be separate acts of the divine will, an unusual event is merely an extraordinary manifestation of this same power, “the finger of God.” The people of Biblical times never questioned whether a miracle happened or could happen. Their concern was to see it as the work of the arm of God either for His faithful ones or against His adversaries.