hich should have been
fertile, barren and wasted. Holy Scripture is not responsible
for the phrase, "suspension of the laws of nature." Theologians
do not dogmatise about the nature of miracles, and it would be
well if science were less zealous for the inviolability of laws,
the outside limits of which she cannot now ascertain. Miracles
are but a part of the Gospel, and we judge them by the setting
in which they are placed. Those who received them at first were
not made Christians by them. (Mark ix. 23, 24.) To us they are
not even the beginning of faith, for Christ was our Teacher and
Friend before our infant minds could conceive what miracles meant.
He, the sinless Lord, is our first miracle; His teaching is our
second miracle; and a third may be added, viz., the transforming
power of the Gospel in human hearts.

The reader is referred to the sermon on _Miracles_ in Archbishop
Thomson's "Life in the Light of God's Word," "The Reign of Law," by
the Duke of Argyll, and Sir Edmund Beckett's "Review of Hume and
Huxley on Miracles."

MISSION. _A sending forth_. The power or commission to preach
the Gospel. Thus our blessed Lord gave His disciples and their
successors their mission, when He said, "Go ye into all the world,
and preach the Gospel to every creature."

MISSION. An effort to awaken or increase spiritual life in a
Parish by means of special Services and Sermons.

MISSIONARY SOCIETIES, _see_ Societies.

MORAVIANS, or UNITED BRETHREN. A sect generally said to have
arisen under Nicholas Lewis, a German nobleman of the last century,
and thus called because among the first converts were some Moravian
families. They themselves claim to have sprung from the Greek
Church in the ninth century. Hook says, "It is sometimes supposed
that because the Moravians have Bishops they are less to be blamed
than other dissenting sects. But, to say nothing of the doubt that
exists with respect to the validity of their orders, an Episcopal
Church may be, as the English Moravians and Romanists in this
country are, in a state of schism. And the very fact that the
difference between them and the Church is not great, if this be
so, makes the sin of their schism, in not conforming, yet greater."
In England the _Moravians_ number 5,000 members, 6,000 scholars,
and have 32 chapels and preaching stations.

MORMONISTS, or LATTER DAY SAINTS. The founder of this sect was
Joseph Smith, born in 1805, of poor parents, in the State of
Vermo