118 PROF. H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.SC., ON 
The conjurers whom Celsus and Lucian knew to be charlatans and 
impostors were to Origen enchanters who had made a. compact with 
Satan.” 
Dr. SCHOFIELD.—This lecture seems a fitting sequence to the 
last. There it was proved that the concept of a Divine Creator was 
necessary to a student of the phenomenon of the universe. To-day 
it seems equally clear that the supernatural or miraculous is a 
necessary effect of the Divine concept. What we call natural laws 
are in reality Divine laws, and their Author can of course change or 
modify their action at will. 
It seems to me, however, that we make too much of the miracles 
Christ did, and too little of the miracle He was. The greatest 
miracles centred round Himself. His birth, life, resurrection, and 
ascension were all miraculous. 
Then, again, I am not quite sure that Professor Orchard’s 
definition of miracle, no doubt a very good one, will absolutely stand 
the test of a close examination. What is and what is not a natural 
cause ? According to the previous action a molecule of radium may 
be watched and will be found absolutely unchanged during a 
ceaseless observation by generations of scientists for 3,000 years, 
and a natural law may be deduced therefore that radium is an 
unchangeable element, and yet within a few years later it may be 
entirely dissipated and vanish away, showing the natural law 
though right for 3,000 years is not after all a law at all. 
Does Professor Orchard include the confused contradictions in 
the sequence of events and in the motions of bodies caused by the 
human will and life power among natural laws, or are they 
supernatural and spiritual? I read that God made iron swim 
which had sunk to the botton of the water according to the law of 
gravitation. 
Well, I can do the same; by my life and will power I can raise 
it up and hold it just level with the water. The difference is my 
arm is visible and God’s is not. Do I work according to a natural 
law, and God bya supernatural ? Itseems to me a more satisfactory 
definition if miracle could be “an occasional and exceptional action 
of Divine power.” 
I need hardly say how heartily I join with the other speakers in 
the praise of this closely reasoned, logical, and convincing paper. 
Lieut.-Col. MAckinLAY.—The Victoria Institute is to be con- 
