THE SUPERNATURAL. 15 



is essential to all Religion ? If we have not, then 

 it is only putting, as so many other hasty sayings 

 do put, additional difficulties in the way of Re- 

 ligion. The relation in which God stands to 

 those rules of His government which are called 

 " laws," is, of course, an inscrutable mystery to us. 

 But those who believe that His Will does govern 

 the world, must believe that ordinarily, at least, He 

 does govern it by the choice and use of means. 

 Nor have we any certain reason to believe that 

 He ever acts otherwise. Extraordinary manifes- 

 tations of His Will — signs and wonders — may be 

 wrought, for aught we know, by similar instrumen- 

 tality — only by the selection and use of laws of 

 which Man knows and can know nothing, and 

 which, if he did know, he could not employ.* 



Here, then, we come upon the question of 



* This chapter, originally published as an article in the Edin- 

 burgh Review for Oct. 1862, has been referred to in the remark- 

 able work of Mr Lecky on " The Rise and Influence of Rationalism 

 in Europe," (vol. i. ch. ii. p. 195 note,) as conveying "a notion of 

 a miracle which would not differ generically from a human act, 

 though it would still be strictly available for evidential purposes." 

 I am quite satisfied with this definition of the result. Beyond the 

 immediate purposes of benevolence which were served by almost 

 all the miracles of the New Testament, the only other purpose which 



