ON MIRACLES. 219 



way in the knowledge of the world around us, and its laws ; 

 and would by no means assure us of the constancy of those 

 laws. 



Should any one doubt the soundness of this conclusion, let 

 him follow me carefully in the following supposition : — 



Suppose that the sum of the collected labours of all 

 philosophers and thinkers were swept away in a moment, and 

 blotted from our memory, and that we were left without the 

 experiences of the past to guide us in forming our opinions 

 upon the world in which we live : should we then have that 

 conviction of the constancy of natural operation which 

 inspired Baden Powell's words (already quoted) ? Should 

 we then regard the supernatural as inconceivable ? 



Suppose that on our awakening to-morrow morning, we had 

 forgotten all the past history of the world now stored up in 

 historical and scientific treatises ; that by some mysterious 

 process it was blotted alike from memory and from book ; 

 that we knew nothing of the laws determining the movements 

 of the sun and the other heavenly bodies ; that we looked 

 upon the earth with the eyes of Adam when he awoke to life ; 

 that we knew nothing of the cemeteries in which slept the 

 bodies of our forefathers and friends ; what would be our 

 relation to the laws of nature, which, we further suppose, 

 remained unchanged ? We should be in absolute ignorance 

 of them. 



When we saw the sun go down for the first time we should 

 fear, as the darkness crept over the earth, that he was bidding 

 us an eternal farewell ; when we saw him rise again in the 

 east we should entertain some faint hope that he might remain 

 with us, some fear lest he might again disappear. Much 

 experience would be necessary to correct the one and 

 strengthen the other. But many years of experience would 

 not give us that sense of the stability and regularity of his 

 movements which we now possess. Considerable variation in 

 regard to the time or the place of his rising would be regarded 

 with equanimity ; there would be no valid reason, in the then 

 condition of our knowledge, against them. Our sense of the 

 stability of the sun's movements is derived not from our own 

 observation, but from the testimony of others, which is con- 

 firmed, in part, by our own experience. 



Suppose, again, that under the condition supposed above 

 one of our number died. How should we regard his death ? 

 We should regard his condition as being analogous to sleep ; 

 we should keep his body with us as long as we conveniently 

 could, and, when impelled to remove it, we should certainly 

 not bury it, but preserve it in a cave or other receptacle and 



