90 PROF. H, LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.SC., ON 
of the will of some being who has power over nature ; and in 
particular of a Being, whose will being assumed to have 
endowed all the causes with the powers by which they produce 
their effects, may well be supposed able to counteract them.” 
In this connection, he quotes Brown’s* remark that a miracle 
is no contradiction to the law of cause and effect; it is a new 
effect, supposed to be produced by the introduction of a new 
cause. 
The law of causation proves the existence of the super- 
natural :—Consideration of any natural phenomenon shows us 
that a series of phenomena follow it, and another series precede it. 
It is a link in a “causation chain” or chain of effects, with a 
multitude of sequences and a multitude of antecedents. Now 
this multitude of effects must be either infinite or not infinite. 
If infinite, then the power producing this infinite effect is 
infinite, and is therefore the attribute of a Supernatural Being. 
If, however, the chain have a beginning, a great First Cause 
exists which, by the supposition, is supernatural.t In any 
case, then, the supernatural exists. An adequate cause for 
miracles exists. 
But the possibility of miracles has been contested on two 
grounds—(1) That they are violations of the laws of nature, 
therefore contrary to experience; (2) That they are dissonant 
from the character of God, and their occurrence would imply 
that He is inconsistent with Himself. 
The first argument has been made famous by Hume, and 
contains a petitio principit. There is need to define this definition: 
What is “violation”? What is a law of nature? What is 
contrariety to “experience”? A change in the usual order of 
natural phenomena does not connote a violation of any law. 
The natural force which was working before continues to work 
still, but a new force having come to work with it, these two 
forces are (in accordance with the principles of physics), 
equivalent to a third force—their resultant, of which the 
phenomenal expression is of course different from that of the 
original single force. There is no “violation” in the phenome- 
non being altered; there would have been violation, if to a 
new and different force there did not correspond a new and 
different effect. A cricket ball, falling right upon the wicket, is 
stopped by the bat, and sent high up in the air presently to end 
* Inquiry, Notes (A) and (F) in the Appendix. 
+ This latter is, as we have seen, the case affirmed by science. The 
“causation chain would fall, were there no Hand that held it up.” 
