Article October 15, 1966 Issue

Signs of the Times

James Mackay

The Reverend James Mackay in "Are Natural Laws Final?" The Methodist Recorder London, England

In all our deepest religious moments we profess to believe that the laws of nature are not unalterable. We profess it very timidly, but we do profess it. We pray for those in peril on the sea—a waste of time if the sea and the storm are governed by unalterable law. We pray for our dear ones in the grip of disease—again a waste of time if only fixed laws are in operation. But there is something implanted in us that cannot accept the finality of natural law. The religious instinct naturally expects The miraculous; and Jesus certainly asks us to trust and develop that instinct.

We need to think out afresh our Lord's teaching about the nature of the Universe. For Him it was no closed system of material laws that shut out the gracious will of God. He always treated matter and material laws as the slaves of the spirit. When the storm roared on the lake, He did not accept it as inevitable; He rose and rebuked it as one might rebuke a boisterous dog: "Peace, be quiet" [Moffatt's translation]. And the winds and the sea obeyed Him. When Jesus stood in the presence of... death, He did not accept even that as the will of God.... Always in His earthly history the physical is the slave of the spiritual.

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