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MAEINE AND TERRESTRIAL. 241 



hasre taken place, — the probabilities against them, stated in 

 their most extreme and exaggerated form, are by no means 

 many or strong ; but we are nevertheless not to believe that 

 they did take place simply because miracles they were. Kow 

 the effect of the establishment of a principle such as this would 

 be simply, I repeat, the destruction of the ability of transmit- 

 ting certain beliefs, however well founded originally, from one 

 set or generation of men to another. These beliefs the first 

 set or generation might, on La Place's own principles, be com- 

 pelled to entertain. The evidence of the senses, however 

 wonderful the event which they certified, is not, he himself 

 tells us, to be resisted. But the conviction which, on one 

 set of principles, these men were on no account to resist, the 

 men that came immediately after them were, on quite another 

 set of principles, on no account to entertain. And thus the 

 anti-miracle argument, instead of leading, as all true philo- 

 sophy ought, to an exact correspondence between the realities 

 of things and the convictions received by the mind regarding 

 them, palpably forms a bar to the reception of beliefs, ade- 

 quate to the possibilities of actual occurrence or event, and 

 so constitutes an imperfection or flaw in the mental economy, 

 instead of working an improvement And, in accordance 

 with this view, we find that in the economy of minds of the 

 very highest order this imperfection or flaw has had no place. 

 Locke studied and wrote upon the subject of miracles proper, 

 and exhibited in his " Discourse" all the profundity of his 

 extraordinary mind ; and yet Locke was a believer. Newton 

 studied and wrote on the subject of miracles of another kind, 

 — those of prophecy ; and he also, as shown by his " Obser- 

 vations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse," 

 was a believer. Butler studied and wrote on the subject of 

 miracles, chiefly in connection with "Miraculous Revelation;" 

 and he also was a believer. Chalmers studied and wrote on 

 the subject of miracles in his " Evidences," after Hume, La 



