50 
action ” Hence miracles are incredible. Strong in this 
premise —the inherent necessity of natural laws,— he issues an 
££3 edict to all theologians : « Keep to the region of the 
human heart ; but keep away from physical nature. Her e 
all frankness, I would say, you are ill-informed, self-deluded, 
and likely to delude others. . 1 1 
So frank a statement demands a frank and simple rep y. 
The exclusion of all theologians and believers in mnrac es 
from the fields of science rests on two grounds, a plain histori- 
cal falsehood, and a patent logical sophism. If thls 
interdict is valid, Sir Isaac Newton must share in the exile 
denounced against all Christian divines. His authority is here 
quoted to prove that very doctrine which lie has most clearer, 
strongly, and pointedly denounced and condemned. Accoid g 
to him } the law of gravitation and the other laws of nature are 
no product „f a blind and fatal necessity. “This beautiful 
system ” he says, “ of sun, planets, and comets, could only 
proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and 
powerful Being.” And again— “ Blind, metaphysical neces- 
sity which is the same always and everywhere, could pi oduc 
no" variety of things. All that diversity of natural things 
which weftnd, could arise from nothing but the counsel and 
will of a Being necessarily existing.” Thus Newton is 
to establish, as a test of scientific competence, that conception 
of natural laws, which he has plainly denounced as unscientific, 
unreasonable, and absurd. , r , • 
But the reasoning of Dr. Tyndall is here no less e ec 1 
than his inversion of historical truth is surprising and extreme. 
He confounds two things wholly distinct; a hypothetical 
necessity that certain results must follow, if such and such a s 
operate undisturbed; and a real necessity that these laws 
must continue to operate, and can never be varied 01 sus- 
pended, either by some higher law unknown to us, or by t ic 
free choice of the Creator. His dictum then is not less 
opposed to common sense than to Newton s real teaching an 
authority. Whenever there are diverse laws among which a 
calculator may choose, so as to trace the consequences of one 
or another at his pleasure, the real existence of any one of t lem 
can be due to no blind fate, but, as Newton justly maintains, 
to the wise and intelligent choice of a Divine Lawgiver. 
This necessity, which Dr. Tyfidall affirms of all natural laws, 
Mr Spencer also asserts of the law of gravitation, near the 
onenimr of his scheme of philosophy. Physicists, he says, 
have assumed variation by the law of the inverse square, 
because any other was excluded by the laws of space. He 
