MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 29 



doubt as to their continuing to obey them. Year after 

 year, as the ages rolled, they believed that those laws 

 would continue to illustrate themselves in the heavens. 

 But this was not sufficient. The scientific mind can 

 find no repose in the mere registration of sequence in 

 nature. The further question intrudes itself with 

 resistless might, Whence comes the sequence? What is 

 it that binds the consequent to its antecedent in nature? 

 The truly scientific intellect never can attain rest until 

 it reaches the forces by which the observed succession 

 is produced. It was thus with Torricelli; it was thus 

 with Newton; it is thus pre-eminently with the scien- 

 tific men of to-day. In common with the most igno- 

 rant, he shares the belief that spring will succeed win- 

 ter, that summer will succeed spring, that autumn will 

 succeed summer, and that winter will succeed autumn. 

 But he knows still further and this knowledge is es- 

 sential to his intellectual repose that this succession, 

 besides being permanent, is, under the circumstances, 

 necessary; that the gravitating force exerted between 

 the sun and a revolving sphere with an axis inclined 

 to the plane of its orbit, must produce the observed 

 succession of the seasons. Not until this relation be- 

 tween forces and phenomena has been established, is 

 the law of reason rendered concentric with the law of 

 nature; and not until this is effected does the mind 

 of the scientific philosopher rest in peace. 



The expectation of likeness, {hen, in the proces- 

 sion of phenomena, is not that on which the scientific 

 mind founds its belief in the order of nature. If the 

 force be permanent the phenomena are necessary, 

 whether they resemble or do not resemble anything 

 that has gone before. Hence, in judging of the order 

 of nature, our enquiries eventually relate to the perma- 

 nence of force. From Galileo to Newton, from New- 



