CLOSING DAYS. 151 



Bridgewater Treatise ; " consisting chiefly in resolving a phe- 

 nomenon, which was exceptional within the little span of 

 human experience, into an incident of some more slowly cir- 

 culating series. Dr. Carpenter remarked that this explanation, 

 by merely throwing the event out of the category of miracle 

 into that of law, stripped off all its supposed religious signifi- 

 cance, as a special act of Divine witness and authentication. 

 Instead of an isolated " interposition," it Avas the recurring 

 term of a periodicity, admitting of prediction. There was 

 neither more nor less sacredness in a change due to a law 

 of giant strides taking a millennium at a step, than in one 

 which recurred at a moment's beat, like the steps of a little 

 child. If the common conception is true, and all the order of 

 Nature is delivered over to Second Causes, immediate volition of 

 the First Cause is removed alike from the frequent and the 

 rare. If, on the other hand, the enumerated energies of nature 

 are but constant varieties of form in the Divine activity, the 

 contents of every cycle, swift or slow, are alike immediate. The 

 supposed argument from miracles rests upon an assumed 

 antithesis between Nature and God, which the Babbage solution 

 destroys. 



Dr. Carpenter added that, to him, the whole class of argu- 

 ments to which that of Bishop Temple belongs, on the abstract 

 possibility, probability, credibility, of miracles, appeared a 

 futile waste of ingenuity. The problem was not philosophical, 

 but historical ; and must be determined by critical methods 

 applied to the records of concrete cases ; fair account being 

 taken, on the one hand, of the value and extent of assured 

 first-hand evidence; and, on the other, of the sources of sub- 

 jective illusion and the fluid state of all popular tradition. 



Under these conditions, the reported miracles were, to him, 

 evidence chiefly of the intense and profound impression left by 

 the personality of Jesus. In that, and in the spiritual relations 

 which it implied, lay the real secret, and the permanent power, 

 of Christianity. These the records suffice to preserve; and 

 with these it is wiser for the present age to be content. 



More than this passed between us ; and 1 believe that I was 

 tempted to say more in my recital to the Christian Conference. 

 But further I cannot securely go, without making my lamented 



