144 AECHBLSHOP O'BEIElSr ON THE 



qualities, and extorted reverence by his elevated code of ethics, attributed to a divine power 

 that which they did not understand. An ignorant and credulous agecauglit up the baseless 

 belief, embodied it in their traditions, and tinally caused it to be written down in their annals 

 or in their sacred books. Succeeding generations accepted without question these fables^ 

 and attested their foith in them by enduring cruel torments, and death itself by tortures long 

 drawn out, rather than renounce them. Dante, Thomas Aquinas, Leibnitz, N'ewton, Shake- 

 speare and thousands of the brightest intellects of the race, owing, we suppose, to that 

 mysterious scape-goat for the sins of all bad children, heredity, believed with the common 

 herd. But now that most elastic and dignitied, though altogether undefined and elusive 

 entity, modern science, has opened the eyes of a few of its votaries, and so In-oadeiied their 

 intellectual horizon, that they can trium^ihantly lay their finger on tbe original cause of all 

 this world-wide and race-coeval error. Tbe dogma which they promulgate may be preceded 

 by a long preamble, bristling with sesquipedalian terms for very old and very familiar objects, 

 but its conclusion is ever anathema against all. and singular, who dare maintain we can be 

 certain of that the cause of which is unknown. 



It is really marvellous what unreasoning and unreasonable statements can be made by 

 an intellectiial man when he sets out to uphold, come what may, a preconceived theory. 

 The mental equipoise which should distinguish the trained thinker, the logical precision 

 which should characterize his deductions, and the candid good faith and mental honesty 

 which should set their impress on his reasoning, seem to desert him, or to be cast aside for 

 the nonce by a wave of prejudice. It must surely he an unenvialjle intellectual condition, 

 even if existent in a man of science, that confounds the knowledge of an eftect with that of 

 its cause, or which deduces from one's ignorance of the latter one's inability to testify to the 

 former. Or is it only in miraculous events that this novel theor}' is to be advanced? There 

 is no valid reason for its admission in any department of human knowledge. The existence 

 of this or that phenomenon is a fact cognizable to the senses, and is subject, for its verifica- 

 tion, to the ordinary canons of evidence. The manner of its causation and the nature of its 

 cause may be entirely unknown. This nescience will not affect the certainty of an ascer- 

 tained fact. Because a rustic toiler knows nothing of chemistry, nor of the various salts of 

 the soil, nor how they conspire to produce vegetation, is he, therefore, incompetent to testify 

 to the fact that his wheat has grown three inches within a few days, or that his potatoes are 

 rapidly increasing in size ? Here some one will exclaim, " you are building up a man of 

 straw that you may have the childish pastime of knocking him down. No man endowed 

 with ordinary intelligence, much less a man of scientific attainments, has ever denied the 

 competency of a rude toiler to bear witness to those natural effects, although ignorant of the 

 laws governing the action of their efficient cause." We can pardon the implied suspicion of 

 our honesty owing to its naturalness, whilst we smile at the frank simplicity of the objector. 

 He has evidently not read with due attention the arguments of the scientific opponents of 

 miracles ; nor has he, perhaps, fully understood the nature of miraculous events. 



To prove that we have not misrepresented the attitude of some scientists, at least, 

 towards this subject, we shall hear what Professor Huxley has to say. In his " Science and 

 Christian Tradition," (Applctons) whilst he frankly admits that the proposition — miracles 

 are impossible — cannot be sustained, lie does not think it (Icrogatory to reason, or unworthy 

 of the position tlie human intellect occupies, to bring forth from the limbo of forgotten 

 absurdities into which it was long since hurried l>y the derisive laughter of intelligent men. 



