84+ PROF. H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.SC., ON’ 
Relations between science and miracles: Are there in fact 
any relations? According to the late Archbishop Temple* 
science can deal only with such materials as are “ reducible to 
invariable laws. If any observation made by the senses is not 
capable of being brought under the laws which are found to 
govern all other observations, it is not yet brought under the 
dominion of science.” The investigation of any newly observed 
fact “proceeds on the assumption that nature will be found 
uniform, and on no other assumption can science proceed at 
all” He points out that “this assumption of something 
permanent in things around us comes from the consciousness of 
something permanent within us. We know our own per- 
manence, whatever else we know or do not know about our- 
selves, we are sure of our own personal identity through succes- 
sive periods of life. And as our explanation of things outside 
begins by classing them with things inside we still continue 
to ascribe permanence to whatever underlies phenomena even 
when we have long ceased to ascribe individual wills to any 
except beings like ourselves. And without this assumption of 
permanence our whole science would come to the ground.” He 
then goes on to say that experience shows the uniformity of the 
separate laws of nature, and that “the evidence for the 
uniformity of nature is the accumulated evidence for all the 
separate uniformities.” With regard to the occurrence of 
miracle, his conclusion is—“ science has shown that the vast 
majority of events are due to derivative action regulated by 
laws. Here is an event which cannot be so explained any 
more than the action of our own free will can be so explained.” 
“Science may fairly claim to have shown that miracles, if they 
happen at all, are exceedingly rare. To demonstrate that they 
never happen at all is impossible, from the very nature of the 
evidence on which science rests. But for the same reason 
science can never in its character of science admit that a 
miracle has happened. Science can only admit that, so far as 
the evidence goes, an event has happened which les outside its 
province.”+ From this it might be inferred that the present 
inquiry need proceed no further,—that science and miracle are 
like two travellers, ignorant of and incapable of learning each 
other’s language, who pass each other upon different sides of a 
* “Relations between Religion and Science” (Bampton Lectures for 
1884). 
+ Lbid, 
