sphere, when already battled in its first. It also contains an 
an assumption of fixed law in a phenomenal sense, (the sense of 
sequence), as a necessity in another order of being. It is, per- 
haps, a latent denial of a real and distinct Causation, under the 
semblance of asserting it. If “law ” were a sufficient account 
of “ agency/’ the argument might be good ; but law does not 
account for agency at all. Law is nothing but an abstraction 
which represents “sequence”; until we superadd “agency,” 
which is a difteient idea from law r altogether, and introduces 
a cause. 
67. Dr. Mozley is in the same snare as to the idea of a 
miracle ; and so is Dr. Mansell. They assume, and so does 
Hume, (and so all the Scotch school), that our inferential power 
can be appealed to, after our Rationality has been set aside, and 
inference denied; which seems absurd. Now Divine Revelation, 
regarded as a “ light from heaven above the brightness of the 
sun,, is intelligible. But the idea that God first makes a com- 
munication “confounding the intellect,” and then does some- 
thing else that we cannot account for, in order to “ prove ” to 
our intellect that that communication is true,— is somewhat 
hard. Indeed, for God to work a miracle to prove something 
to us, or for God to act, and then to prove, not by the act 
■itselj but by something else, that He has acted, is at the 
least circuitous. 
Miracles prove themselves ; Revelation must prove itself; and 
Christ, in saying, “ Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not 
believe, rebukes the thought that a high faith, as an inference, 
must come from seeing miracles ; much less from proving his- 
torically that other people saw them 1800 years ago. ° Our 
Religion, says Origeu, speaks for itself. Divine Authority 
addresses conscience. Our authors imagine that all except 
ceitain later theologians (p. 60) regard miracles as violations 
of the order of nature; if they will examine somewhat further, 
they will find a higher idea in St. Augustine, and in St. Thomas 
Aquinas, to whom I refer in another place. ( Bible and its In- 
terpreters, pp. 182 and 239., &c.) 
68. A higher conception of Miracles than our authors 5 would 
lead to the much-dreaded metaphysics, 55 and border on a 
discussion as to the Absolute and the Phenomenal, and the 
Cause, conscious or not. Not that our authors can really 
escape metaphysics at last — (as Professor Clifford intimates, 
and they themselves half own). The innocent observer, who 
had always “spoken prose 55 without knowing it, may fairly 
repiesent the fact that every man is a metaphysician, if he only 
