TO REVEALED RELIGION. 277 



miracles ; surely the power which made all things may 

 again, at any time, create or annihilate force or matter 

 and interfere with natural laws at His pleasure !* 

 With respect to final causes we may still, surely, in 

 harmony with our own ideas, admire the glory, the 

 .beauty, the beneficence, and the exquisite fitness of 

 things displayed in the universe, although we cannot 

 trace the direct working of the hand of the Creator in 

 the details of the organic world, any more than in the 

 revolution of the planets, nor the shaping of each coast- 

 line or mountain-chain .-[ Not that I admit that the 



* " Operating by intervening laws has exclusive reference to us, and 

 is not absolutely necessary. It is evident if the proposed physical 

 theory be true, that the laws are constant only so long as the 

 qualities of the aether and of the atoms on which they wholly depend 

 are constant ; and as we have concluded that these qualities were 

 made such as they are by an immediate exercise of power, by power 

 similarly exercised, they might be changed in any manner, and even, 

 annihilated. In fact there have been well attested occurrences in the 

 world, which can be accounted for only as being caused by power thus 

 operating. They have been called miracles, wonders, apparently on 

 account of their infrequency ; but, essentially, they are only repetitions 

 of creative acts of the same kind as those whereby the elements of the 

 world were originally called into existence. Of course, according to 

 these principles, the possibility of miracle's cannot be disproved by 

 physical science" (Challis, "The Mathematical Principles of Physics," 

 p. 106). 



t " By being conscious that strength and skill are required for making 

 anything, we can understand that these qualities were necessary for 

 the creation of the world, and, consequently, that it might have been 

 created, among other purposes, for that of demonstrating the power 

 and wisdom of the Creator" (p. 105). 



- " It is only by slow degrees and other prolonged intellectual labour, 

 that human intelligence has in some measure succeeded in deriving 

 the laws from the original conditions ; whereas, by the Supreme Intel- 

 ligence, all such consequences must have been intuitively seen when 

 the conditions were first imposed. Thus the theoretical study of 

 physics is specially adapted to exalt and give distinctness to our con- 

 ceptions, both of the wisdom and the power of the Creator. On the 

 principle of final causes it may be asserted that, together with many 

 other purposes, this was contemplated in giving to the aether and the 

 atoms their specific qualities. If I thought otherwise I should not be 

 able to consider as justifiable the devotion of many years of my life to 

 physical researches " (Challis, p. 106). 



