McCOSH IN REPLY TO CARPENTER. 2 $ 



by any external impulse ; which can as little be accounted for by reflex 

 action as they could by gravity or by chemical affinity. Then there 

 are cases in which the action originates within, with no prompting 

 from without. I awake in the morning and I think and conclude that 

 some good cause, the cause of liberty, or of my country, or of religion, 

 requires me to take a bold, decisive action, and I hasten to put my 

 purpose in execution. How absurd to call this, with some physiolo- 

 gists, a reflex action ! That able men should have fallen into this error 

 can only be accounted for by a law of " expectancy ; " they have ex- 

 plained so much by their law, and they think that they can explain 

 everything. 



Dr. Carpenter has unfolded, as Hume had done a century ago, the 

 tendencies which predispose man to believe in preternatural occur- 

 rences. But are there no " prepossessions " and " expectations " which 

 incline some scientific men in the present day to account for all things 

 by natural agency, and prejudice them against calling in any thing 

 preternatural ? The business of science is to look into the causes of 

 obvious or recondite phenomena, and, proceeding in the right method, 

 they have discovered the natural causes of events which many re- 

 garded as supernatural. The men who have explained lightning 

 and mysterious diseases, and resolved light into vibrations, and 

 detected the composition of the sun's atmosphere, and of the distant 

 stars, are led to spurn at the very idea of there being any thing which 

 cannot be accounted for by mundane agency. Then they have seen, 

 or heard, or read, of so many cases of religious pretension and impost- 

 ure that they at once set down every reported case of divine inter- 

 position to illusion or delusion. Some have gone the length of main- 

 taining that a miracle is not only an improbability, but an impossi- 

 bility. A "prepossession" is produced, an "expectancy" is created, 

 that the miracles of Scripture may be solved by some natural means. 

 In the last age Paulus labored to prove that Jesus accomplished his 

 cures by taking advantage of the secret agencies of Nature. But this 

 theory has long ago been set aside by every one as inconsistent with 

 the training, the position, and known character of Jesus. Then the 

 mythic theory was started and stretched to its utmost capacity by 

 Strauss ; but it has been shown that no myths ever had the con- 

 sistency, the purity, the spirituality of the gospel narratives, parables, 

 and doctrines. Now it is averred that historical proof is wanting of 

 the early date of the books of the New Testament. This objection 

 has been met already by the great scholars of Germany, and is being 

 met by Dr. Lightfoot and others among English-speaking divines. 

 It is shown and is admitted that some of the epistles of Paul must 

 have been written by their reputed author, and that they presuppose 

 a belief throughout the Church of the leading events in Christ's life, 

 and of a perfected system of evangelical belief. If the epistles are 

 genuine, so must be the correlated Book of Acts, with its wonderful 



