THE INVESTIGATION OF NATURE AND MIRACLE. 1 3 



getische Vortrage iiber die Grundwahrheiten des Christ- 

 enthums,") and see how he defends the reality of 

 miracles. " Miracles," he says, ** are not even miracles. 

 They do not even repeal the laws of nature ; they merely 

 release single occurrences from the dominion of those 

 laws, and place them under the law of a higher will and 

 a higher power. Of this we have many analogies in lower 

 spheres. If my arm hurls a stone into the air, this is 

 contrary to the nature of the stone, and is not an effect 

 of the law of gravitation, but the interposition of a 

 higher power and a higher will, producing effects 

 which are not the effects of the inferior powers. These 

 powers and these laws are not hereby repealed, but still 

 subsist." 



Let us pause a m.oment. To say that it is contrary to 

 the nature of the stone that gravity should be apparently 

 overpowered for a few moments by muscular agency, is 

 physically absurd. The stone remains the same weight, 

 'its nature is wholly the same, even while in the motion 

 of projection ; and it is utterly unjustifiable and so- 

 phistical to prate about muscular force as a higher 

 power opposed to gravity. If the stone weighs two 

 hundred-weight, where is the higher power then? 



But when the champion of supernaturalism has mis- 

 led and prepared his hearers by his worthless analogy^ 

 he proceeds : " Thus in the miracle, a higher causality 

 interposes, and evokes an efiect which is not the effect 

 of the concatenation of those lower causalities, and yet 

 subsequently submits to these concatenations. But this 

 lugher causality ultimately coincides with the highest 

 moral objects of existence. To serve them is nature's 

 higlicst and most glorious pursuit Therefore if miraclr 



