THE INVESTIGATION OF NATURE AND MIRACLE. 13 
getische Vortrige tiber die Grundwahrheiten des Christ- 
enthums,”) and see how he defends the reality of 
miracles. “ Miracles,” he says, “are not even miracles. 
They do not even repeal the laws of nature ; they merely 
release single occurrences from the dominion of those 
laws, and place them under the law of a higher will and 
a higher power. Of this we have many analogies in lower 
spheres. If my arm hurls a stone into the air, this is 
contrary to the nature of the stone, and is not an effect 
of the law of gravitation, but the interposition of a 
higher power and a higher will, producing effects 
which are not the effects of the inferior powers. These 
powers and these laws are not hereby repealed, but still 
subsist.” 
Let us pause a moment. To say that it is contrary to 
the nature of the stone that gravity should be apparently 
overpowered for a few moments by muscular agency, is 
physically absurd. The stone remains the same weight, 
its nature is wholly the same, even while in the motion 
of projection; and it is utterly unjustifiable and so- 
phistical to prate about muscular force as a higher 
power opposed to gravity. If the stone weighs two 
hundred-weight, where is the higher power then? 
But when the champion of supernaturalism has mis- 
led and prepared his hearers by his worthless analogy, 
he proceeds: “Thus in the miracle, a higher causality 
interposes, and evokes an effect which is not the effect 
of the concatenation of those lower causalities, and yet 
subsequently submits to these concatenations. But this 
higher causality ultimately coincides with the highest 
moral objects of existence. To serve them is nature’s 
highest and most glorious pursuit. Therefore if miracle 
