has been such a gradual reduction of all phenomena of nature 
within the sphere of established laW that this principle must 
be received as a truth. It is, however, but the revival of Hume’s 
celebrated objection to miracles. “ A miracle/* says Hume, 
“ is a violation of the laws of nature, and a firm and unalter- 
able experience has established these laws : the proof against a 
miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any 
argument from experience can possibly be imagined.” I will 
not stop here to show that this assumption of Hume’s has been 
proved again and again to involve the very facts which are in 
dispute. That, if even one miracle has happened, which is the 
point in discussion, then Hume’s proposition must fall to the 
ground, for it cannot be contrary to experience. Nor need I 
remark for those so much inclined to bow to the authority of 
great names, that the progress of the reduction of the phe- 
nomena of nature within the sphere of established law between 
the time when Newton wrote his “Principia” and his “Optics,” 
and that when Hume wrote his famous treatise on Miracles, was 
not so great as to have any material influence on the important 
question of the credibility of miracles. Yet Newton, who more 
than any other man had the most profound conviction of the 
existence of natural laws, was not compelled on that account 
to reject his belief in miracles, or that greatest of all miracles 
the creation of the physical world by an omnipotent Creator, 
and His support of all things by His ever- watchful domination 
and providence. Those who try to divorce the conception of a 
Creator and Ruler of the Universe from our views of the physi- 
cal world, the world of matter, and would restrict the recep- 
tion of the marvellous entirely to the spiritual world, evade 
the example of Newton by the assertion, that he, who made 
the greatest step ever made by the inductive philosophy, was 
destitute of its true spirit. 
The advance of the inductive philosophy since the days of 
Newton may have opened up a wider region of law in the 
physical universe. We know of other forces than those of 
gravitation and light. But what progress have we made in 
bringing these within the domain of law expressed in mathe- 
matical terms enabling us to anticipate by these laws un- 
known phenomena and facts of nature ? If, therefore, the man 
who more than any other, by his clear and vigorous intellect, 
has reduced the widest range of phenomena within the sphere 
of established law, did not, on that account, feel compelled as 
a consequence to reject the miraculous, we may well ask why 
we, as students of Nature’s laws, must as a matter of rational 
necessity be required to do so. 
It will be instructive, however, to trace the effect of this 
