Acts 7:24

24. Pray ye For a moment the Magus is overawed. He believes the divine power to reside in the apostles, and trembles at the perdition into which Peter’s imprecation precipitates his money and himself. He begs their prayer, not as refusing to pray for himself, but as believing they have an interest with the Divine, while his is only with the lower powers. But still his lower dregs of character remain undisturbed. Peter tells him to seek forgiveness; he only wants the aversion of threatened evil. He is at bottom still a sorcerer, and has not the slightest purpose of turning from his deviltries and demonish ways.

Josephus relates that, some ten years later than this, the Roman procurator, Felix, sent one of his friends, Simon by name, a Jew, a Cyprian by birth, claiming to be a magus, to seduce by glowing predictions and promises, Drusilla, daughter of Herod Agrippa and wife of Azizus, king of Emesa, to forsake her husband and marry the procurator. Rosenmuller, Kuinoel, Neander, and others, identify the two magi as one. But this Simon was a Cyprian; and the testimony of Justin Martyr that Luke’s Simon was a Samaritan, born at Gitton, is a little too specific to be fictitious, and is confirmed by the newly discovered writings of Hippolytus. If either was mistaken as to Simon’s birthplace it was Josephus.

In the early apocryphal writings, Simon Magus was made a legendary hero. His imagined contests with St. Peter were marvellous. He elevated himself into the air, (like a modern pseudo-spiritualist,) but was made to fall to the earth and was crushed, by Peter’s prayers, in Nero’s presence. He shut himself up in a tomb at Rome, promising to rise from it the third day; but, as Hippolytus says, he remains there still!

The case of Simon Magus suggests a brief discussion of the differences between a true and a false miracle. We agree with that class of thinkers, including Dr. Samuel Johnson, Baxter, Wesley, and, at the present day, Dr. Bushnell, who maintain that supernatural events of various classes are not confined to Scripture alone, but that the narratives affirming them are too numerous and too well authenticated to be rationally rejected summarily and universally. These narrated events may be roughly classified as 1. Fictitious, 2. Preternatural, 3. Supernatural, and 4. Miracle.

1 . The Fictitious. Narratives not sustained by contemporaneous evidence of perfectly unexceptionable character are to be held false. This sweeps away the larger mass of pagan and papal supernaturalisms. They are not generally, like the Gospel miracles, sustained by eyewitnesses, or the eyewitnesses were easily deceived by collusion, or mechanical and other contrivances. In countries where supernatural events, in accordance with the established faith, are readily believed without any critical hesitation, abundance of stories of the kind will prevail. Others are true in fact, but explicable by science. Marks of the cross on the body, which were once imagined to be miraculous, are found to be producible by electricity. Apparitions are often the result of disease.

2 . The Preternatural. A large share of wonders there are, not produced by any superhuman agent, but connected with the human system, which seem to belong to that side of our nature which is nearest to the supernatural, which is divided from the supernatural by no clear line, and which seems to be an avenue through which the supernatural reaches us, but which human scrutiny has never yet fully investigated. Under this class may come somnambulism, mesmeric sleep, verified presentiments, second sight, and some predictive dreams. Here may come those marvels in witchcraft which have never been explained. All these phenomena reveal depths in our nature never yet revealed by science.

Our systems are susceptible of preternatural wonders from the intense expectation of their coming upon us. (See note on Acts 3:4.) Here we may place, perhaps, the curing of diseases by the shadow of Peter, (Acts 5:15,) and the handkerchiefs and aprons of Paul, (Acts 19:12.) Here, too, we place mostly the performances of Sceva and his set at Ephesus, as well as the wonders there produced by the spells of Diana; and the casting out of demons by the Jews as narrated by Josephus and alluded to by Jesus. Here we may place the wonder-working of Simon Magus, Elymas the sorcerer, and their class. Many preternatural phenomena take place in intense religious excitements, such as catalepsies, jerkings, and trances. The Mohammedan dancing dervishes perform preternatural exploits in whirling, and the Shakers in dancing.

Many preternaturalisms combine the marvel of expectation with the tentative. By tentative marvels we mean those which seem sometimes to succeed, but often fail. Thus the royal touch to cure the king’s evil, (of which Lecky in his “History of European Morals” makes much account,) had in its favour (besides the predisposition to feign and lie for flattery to the king) all the power of intense expectation, and yet often failed, or cured doubtfully, partially, or temporarily. So the public papers, both of New York and London, have contained marvellous paragraphs concerning the preternatural cures of certain classes of cases, performed by a Dr. Newton through manipulations and faith, which cures were partial and temporary, and yet sometimes apparently real. No clear case has ever yet occurred, we may believe, of curing congenital blindness or lameness.

The oracles of antiquity mostly arose from a preternatural excitement of the faculty of presentiment, in persons of a predisposed temperament, by artificial means. We have no necessity to deny that real predictions were sometimes produced. The difference between the oracular predictions and the divine prophecies is, that the former were scattered, and were, if not aimless, merely temporal in their objects and origin, and the latter were a collective system converging upon the Divine Messiah, having in view eternal objects as well as claiming a Divine origin.

3 . Supernatural. The simply supernatural, as distinct both from the preternatural and the miraculous, is a phenomenon that comes upon us from some invisible, yet clearly living superhuman agent. The power of that prophecy which identifies itself to the consciousness as the revelation from God, and is fully sustained as such by a fulfilment, is a supernaturalism.

The gifts or charisms of the New Testament Church, as promised by Christ, and forming part of his divine system, though often underlaid by the preternatural, are clearly supernatural. So, also, are the inspiration of the sacred writers, and even the influences of the Holy Spirit. All these are parts of one great supernatural whole, of which the word of God is the record and Christ the centre. All stand or fall together.

Under the supernatural, too, superinduced upon the preternatural, we rank demoniacal possessions and the case of the pythonic girl of Philippi. Here come all well-authenticated apparitions of the dead, and the appearance of angels, as to the apostles at ascension. It is impossible to explain the celebrated phenomena occurring in the Wesley family as other than supernatural, that is, as produced by an invisible, intelligent, purposing agent. They were sustained by such contemporaneous, intelligent, and incorrupt testimony as would prove even a miracle; they are authentic facts which no natural or materialistic philosopher has ever yet reconciled with his own system.

4 . The Miraculous. All miracle is supernatural; and from the standpoint of God himself, the Author of nature, both all nature and all supernatural, as by him performed, are miraculous. But from our human standpoint we may limit the term to a particular kind of supernaturalism, namely, to a supernaturalism visibly originated and performed at the will of a visible agent in attestation of a religious truth, system, or mission. A supernaturalism like a dream or a presentiment, coming upon a man from an invisible source rather than performed voluntarily by him, would thus be no miracle. Miracles, therefore, are in fact mostly limited to Scripture history. And the power for these miracles may be conceived as either in their agent’s permanent and original possession, and completely at his will, or specially delegated to him on only special occasions. Moses performed one miracle of larger physical magnitude than any one performed by Christ; but his miracles were specifically limited and prescribed to him. Christ alone appears to be full master of all miraculous power at will. All other performers of miracles are only occasional, and by special delegation from God, or from the ascended Christ. He stands alone in the attitude of claiming and wielding at pleasure, or in permanent unity with God’s will, any power he pleases in proof of his supreme identification with God himself. The human system, the elements, the gates of death and hades, nay, the powers of hell, submit to his sway and volition. He stands, therefore, without a rival; alone among all wonder-workers, alone among all professed religious founders; and when we superadd the identification of his divine person by antecedent prophecy, the majesty of his personality as it presents itself in the Gospel picture, and the wonderful effects of his life on human history, it is absurd to bring any supernaturalism into competition with his Divine Supremacy. Quite the reverse. Every other visible manifestation of the supernatural serves to remove the presupposition against miracle, and especially against the supreme miracle of Christ claiming to be God-man.