THE ATTITUDE OF SCIENCE TOWARDS MIRACLES. 93 
put forward by Spinoza* as a consequence of his pantheistic 
system. He says—“ But if you will have a miracle to be such 
a rare effect, which is absolutely above or (which really is all 
one) contrary to the laws of nature, or which cannot possibly 
follow from her fixed immutable order, then I dare not believe 
that any such miracle hath ever happened in nature. lest I 
oppose God to God, that is, admit that God changes His own 
decrees, which from the perfection of the divine nature, I know 
to be impossible.” This curious argument asserts that if at any 
time it has pleased God to work in nature in some particular 
manner, the perfection of His nature (or character) for ever 
precludes Him from working in any other manner, however 
different the conditions or circumstances. Such an assumption 
is absurd. Nature herself refutes it by pointing to catastrophes. 
Man’s free will is continually altering natural phenomena, 
removing old phenomena and producing new, changing physical 
configuration and the character of soils and climates. Shall we 
recognize freedom in the creature, and deny it to the Creator ? 
The “fixed immutable order” in nature, spoken of by Spinoza, 
may be fixed and immutable for a time only, then to be 
followed by “a new thing,” after which the order may, or may 
not, go on as before; or the old order may not have been 
intermitted, but merely modified by a new force. Also the old 
order and the new force and the miraculous event may each be 
included in and form part of a wider higherf order. There is 
nothing “impossible” in any of these suppositions. In his 
Gifford lecturest already referred to, Sir George Stokes gives, 
as illustrating the effect produced by a new force, the case of 
a clock with an iron pendulum, the rate of which, determined 
by the laws of motion and gravitation, was well known. 
“Suppose,” he says, “that on one occasion it went much faster 
for an hour or two, and then resumed its usual rate. It may 
have been that someone designedly put a powerful magnet 
under it, which after a time was taken away again. The 
acceleration of rate was here produced, not by any suspension 
of the laws of motion or of gravitation, but by bringing into 
play for a time a special force which left the laws of motion 
and of gravitation perfectly intact, and yet brought about the 
result that we have supposed to have been observed.” Different 
* Miracles, Premonition. 
t Babbage reminds us that “ A miracle, instead of being a violation of 
a law, is in fact the most eminent fulfilment of a vast law.” (Passages 
Jrom the Life of a Philosopher, 1864, p. 394.) t p. 24. 
