MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL. 239 



tlie hundred dice, it would occur an infinite number of times. 

 And yet the principle of Hume and La Place forms, when 

 adopted, an impassable gulf between this possibility and hu- 

 man belief. The possibility might be embodied, as we see, 

 in an actual occurrence, — an occurrence witnessed by hun- 

 dreds ; and yet the anti-miracle argument, as illustrated by 

 La Place, would cut off all communication regarding it be- 

 tween these hundreds of witnesses, however unexceptionable 

 their character as such, and the rest of mankind. The prin- 

 ciple, instead of giving us a right rule through which the 

 beliefs in the mind are to be rendered correspondent with the 

 reality of things, goes merely to establish a certain imperfec- 

 tion of transmission from one mind to another, in conse- 

 quence of which, realities in fact, if very extraordinary ones, 

 could not possibly be received as objects of belief, nor the 

 mental appreciation of things be rendered adequately con- 

 current with the state in which the things really existed. 



Nor is the case different when, for a possibility which the 

 arithmetician can represent by figures, we substitute the 

 miracle proper. Neither Hume nor La Place ever attempted 

 to show that miracles could not take place ; they merely di- 

 rected their argument against a belief in them. The wildest 

 sceptic must admit, if in any degree a reasonable man, that 

 there may exist a God, and that that God may have given 

 laws to nature. No demonstration of the non-existence of a 

 Great First Cause has been ever yet attempted, nor, until the 

 knowledge of some sceptic extends over all space, ever can be 

 rationally attempted. Merely to doubt the fact of God's ex- 

 istence, and to give reasons for the doubt, must till then form 

 the highest achievements of scepticism. And the God who 

 may thus exist, and who m^y have given laws to nature, Tnay 

 also have revealed himself to man, and, in order to secure 

 man's reasonable belief in the reality of the revelation, m<iy 

 have temporarily suspended in its operation some great natu- 



