26 THE REIGN OF LAW. 



were beyond human control. We might know 

 the conditions necessary to the performance of a 

 miracle, although utterly unable to bring those 

 conditions about. Yet a work performed by the 

 bringing about of conditions which are out of 

 human reach, would certainly be a work attest- 

 ing superhuman power. 



Nevertheless so deeply ingrained in popular 

 theology is the idea that miracles, to be miracles at 

 all, must be performed by some violation or suspen- 

 sion of the laws of Nature, that the opposite idea 

 of miracles being performed by the use of means 

 is regarded by many with jealousy and suspicion. 

 Strange that it should be thought the safest course 

 to separate as sharply and as widely as we can 

 between what we are called upon to believe in 

 Religion, and what we are able to trace or un- 

 derstand in Nature ! With what heart can those 

 who cherish this frame of mind follow the great 

 argument of Butler? All the steps of that 

 argument — the greatest in the whole range of 

 Christian philosophy — are founded on the op- 

 posite belief, that all the truths, and not less all 

 the difficulties of Religion, have their type and 



