SECT. 27.] Credibility of Extraordinary Stories. 433 



26. Considerations of this character are doubtless 

 often introduced into the discussion, but it appears to me 

 that they are introduced to a very inadequate extent. It is 

 often urged, after Paley, Once believe in a God, and mira 

 cles are not incredible. Such an admission surely demands 

 some modification and extension. It should rather be stated 

 thus, Believe in a God whose working may be traced through 

 out the whole moral and physical world. It amounts, in 

 fact, to this Admit that there may be a design which we 

 can trace somehow or other in the course of things ; admit 

 that we are not wholly confined to tracing the connection of 

 vents, or following out their effects, but that we can form 

 some idea, feeble and imperfect though it be, of a scheme 1 . 

 Paley s advice sounds too much like saying, Admit that there 

 are fairies, and we can account for our cups being cracked. 

 The admission is not to be made in so off-hand a manner. 

 To any one labouring under the difficulty we are speaking 

 of, this belief in a God almost out of any constant relation to 

 nature, whom we then imagine to occasionally manifest him 

 self in a perhaps irregular manner, is altogether impossible. 

 The only form under which belief in the Deity can gain en 

 trance into his mind is as the controlling Spirit of an infinite 

 and orderly system. In fact, it appears to me, paradoxical 

 as the suggestion may appear, that it might even be more 

 easy for a person thoroughly imbued with the spirit of In 

 ductive science, though an atheist, to believe in a miracle 

 which formed a part of a vast system, than for such a person, 

 as a theist, to accept an isolated miracle. 



27. It is therefore with great prudence that Hume, 

 ind others after him, have practically insisted on commencing 

 a discussion of the credibility of the single miracle, 



1 The stress which Butler lays upon this notion of a scheme is, I think, 

 me great merit of his Analogy. 



v. 28 



