“Why do the miracles in the Bible not happen now? The answer is, if they were to happen all the time they would stop astonishing us. Let us look about us. See how day and night turn in their perpetual round, and how the sky and stars follow their changeless courses. See how the seasons change, and the leaves grow wither on the boughs. Look at the unquenchable vitality within seeds, and at the beauty of light, colors and sounds, of smells and of tastes, in all their variety. Now let us go and talk to someone who was seeing this for the first time. Could he talk to us? He would be struck dumb by all these miracles. Yet we think them ordinary. This is not because we understand them. Their causes remain a deep mystery. No, it is because they are never absent from our experience.”

— St. Augustine of Hippo, ~391 AD

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