222 ~ eev. h. c. m. watson 



This Uniformity did not exist 

 [ (a) at the Beginning/ of the World. 



But it is evident by a process of necessary reasoning 

 that the operations of nature have not always been 

 what they are now, "^ There is no presumption/' Butler 

 says {Analogy, part ii., chap, ii.), '^against some opera- 

 tions which we should now call miraculous, particularly 

 none against a revelation at the beginning of the world. 

 . . . For a miracle in its very nature is relative 

 to a course of nature, and implies somewhat different 

 from it, considered as being so. Now, either there was no 

 course of nature at the time which we are speaking of, or, 

 if there were, we are notacquainted what the course of nature 

 is upon the first peopling of worlds." " When mankind was 

 first placed in this state there was a power exerted totally 

 different from the present course of nature." 



Upon this argument Mozley remarks in a note to his 

 third Bampton lecture (note 4) : — 



" This argument does not appear to be interfered with by 

 anything which science has brought to light since Butler's 

 time. It assumes, indeed, a beginning of the world," and 

 scientific authorities state that there are no evidences in 

 nature of a beginning. But supposing this to be the case, 

 science still does not assert that there is no beginning, but 

 only denies that the examination of nature exhibits proof that 

 there is one. Science would, indeed, appear to be in the 

 reason of the case incompetent to pronounce that there was 

 no beginning in nature. (Nature, as Sir C. Lyell expressed 

 it, has written her own autobiography, — and an autobiography 

 cannot go back to birth.) 



Mozley concludes, " Science, then, is not opposed to the idea 

 of creation, because all that is essential to the integral notion 

 of creation is a beginning, and a beginning is not and cannot 



be disproved by science Taking the facts of nature as 



they stand, and abstracted from any hypothesis respecting 

 them, the introductions of all new species were generally 

 ' exertions of a power different from the course of nature.' " 



Butler's contention, then, is granted, — that " when mankind 

 was first placed in this state there was a power exerted 

 totally different from the present course of nature." ' 



