_Versus_ Hume, Philos. Works, 4:130—“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.” Christian apologists have too often needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume’s definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet’s word, make the iron to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it. But this last is miracle. See Mansel, Essay on Miracles, in Aids to Faith, 26, 27: After the greatest wave of the season has landed its pebble high up on the beach, I can move the pebble a foot further without altering the force of wind or wave or climate in a distant continent. Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 471; Hamilton, Autology, 685-690; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 445; Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 54-74; A. A. Hodge: Pulling out a new stop of the organ does not suspend the working or destroy the harmony of the other stops. The pump does not suspend the law of gravitation, nor does our throwing a ball into the air. If gravitation did not act, the upward velocity of the ball would not diminish and the ball would never return. “Gravitation draws iron down. But the magnet overcomes that attraction and draws the iron up. Yet here is no suspension or violation of law, but rather a harmonious working of two laws, each in its sphere. Death and not life is the order of nature. But men live notwithstanding. Life is supernatural. Only as a force additional to mere nature works against nature does life exist. So spiritual life uses and transcends the laws of nature” (Sunday School Times). Gladden, What Is Left? 60—“Wherever you find thought, choice, love, you find something that is not under the dominion of fixed law. These are the attributes of a free personality.” William James: “We need to substitute the _personal_ view of life for the _impersonal_ and _mechanical_ view. Mechanical rationalism is narrowness and partial induction of facts,—it is not _science_.” (_c_) In all free causation, there is an acting without means. Man acts upon external nature through his physical organism, but, in moving his physical organism, he acts directly upon matter. In other words, the human will can _use_ means, only because it has the power of acting initially _without_ means.