xlii PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. 



the cognizance of experience must be as certainly rejected, on the 

 principle of the argument as a presumed miracle beyond that cogni- 

 zance." Nay, he holds that the belief in the miracle is preferable, 

 for the whole force of the anti-miracle reasoning fails to disprove the 

 possibility of miracles, and only goes to this, that they are not to be 

 credited upon report, or otherwise than on the strength of our own 

 senses ; that is, the argument only tries to show an imperfection in 

 our own minds an imperfection, however, which has not been 

 found to exist in intellects of the highest class, such as that of Dr. 

 Chalmers, and those of Butler and Locke. We may, in short, be 

 assured of a miracle from proper testimony ; but of a law we can 

 know nothing but from experience, and one contrary to experience is 

 no law at all. Therefore " the argument of Hume and Laplace is 

 perfect, as such, when directed against the development visions of 

 Lamarck." 



Mr. Miller must pardon me when I say that it is contrary to all 

 the controversial codes I am acquainted with, to make one writer 

 answerable for the arguments of another, to which he never referred, 

 and of which he never made any use. Against everything like a 

 trial of my views by those of Hume and Laplace, I protest, as 1 like- 

 wise do against the injustice committed by Mr. Miller of mixing up 

 this work with the comparatively vague and unsatisfactory specula- 

 tions of De Maillet, Lamarck, and Oken. 



I might content myself with this general protest; but I am, 

 nevertheless, willing to show how experience really bears on this 

 question. 



Grant that we have certain miracles sufficiently attested, and 

 which are therefore believed by the Lockes, the Butlers, and the 

 Chalmerses, it remains to be asked if they form, on the doctrine of 

 experience, any proof for a miraculous mode of creation. Mr. Miller 

 speaks of " the great moral purpose God intended by them." 

 Locke, we find, characterises them as " the credentials of a messenger 

 delivering a divine religion." They notedly had a special purpose 

 in view concerning human affairs. Being in their very nature ex- 

 ceptional, in the words of Locke, " operations contrary to the fixed 

 and established laws of nature," it does not appear to us that, in 

 their most unqualified reception, they favour the idea that a process 

 extending through a vast stretch of time, the origination of one enor- 

 mous section of what we now call nature, a process which in the 

 main took place before humanity existed at all, so as to be in any 

 way aifected by it, was also of the character of miracle. It rather 

 seems to us that this process belonged to that fixed course of nature 

 which it is necessary for a miracle to interrupt or violate, in order to 

 be a miracle. 



On the other hand, experience has this reference to a theory of 

 organic creation in the manner of law. It presents to us a system 

 of order or of law that system of which miracles are but transient 

 interruptions. " Where is the man among the cultivators of 

 science," says Professor Sedgwick, " who denies that the whole of 



