Again, it is in a high degree probable that miraculous events will generally, so to say, take their colour from the special character of that relation which may exist between God and man at the time when they come to pass. If, in the inscrutable counsels of the Almighty, man is placed, during different eras in his history, in different circumstances towards his Creator and Preserver, it would seem only natural that the variations in those circumstances should be impressed upon the extraordinary intercourse between God and His people. Or, to use the common Christian term, each _dispensation_ will have its peculiar supernatural aspect, as well as its peculiar spiritual and invisible relationship. If man was originally in a higher and more perfect state of being than he is now, it is probable that his communion with God was singularly, if not totally, unlike what it has been since he fell from primeval blessedness. If after his fall, two temporary states have been appointed to him by his God, then the miracles of each epoch will bear their own special corresponding characteristics. And lastly, if by a new exercise of regenerating and restoring power it has pleased the Invisible One to rescue His creatures from the consequences of their ancient ruin, then again we may expect to recognise the history of that redemption in the whole course of the miraculous intercourse between the Redeemer and the redeemed until the end of time. The supernatural elements in the Paradisiacal, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian states, may be expected to be in many respects distinct, each embodying with awful and glorious power the invisible relations which the God of nature and of grace has thought fit to assume towards His creatures.
And such, in fact, has been the case. Not only is the ceaseless existence of a miraculous intercourse between God and man one of the most completely proved of all historical events, but the miracles of each dispensation are found in a wonderful degree to correspond with the relationship of God to man in each of the separate epochs. The same superhuman consistency is found to pervade all the works of God, both where nature and grace are separate from one another, and where the common laws of nature are burst through, and the material universe is made as it were the bondslave of the unseen. The impiously meant assertions of unbelief are fulfilled in a sense which unbelievers little look for; and they who cry out in their hatred of miracles, that all things are governed by unchanging _law_, may learn that in truth unchanging laws do rule over all, although those laws have a range and a unity in the essence and will of God, of which mortal intelligence never dreamed. The natural and the supernatural, the visible and the invisible, the ordinary and the miraculous, the rules of the physical creation and the interruptions of those rules,--all are controlled by one law, shaped according to one plan, directed by one aim, and bound to one another by indissoluble ties, even where to human eyes all seem lost in confusion and thwarted by mutual struggle.