are left gazing upon a gap which nothing but Deity itself can 
fill up. We agree that philosophy should have no likes or dis- 
likes ; and, while a “ glow of admiration ” will assuredly he 
permitted “to the physical enquirer when he beholds his orderly 
development by the necessary inter-relation and inter-action 
of each element of the Cosmos,” we, too, viewing this neces- 
sary chain of cause and effect as concealing God when considered 
alone, as exhibiting nothing but a dark and inevitable fatalism— 
we, I say, may also be permitted a glow of admiration when 
we find ourselves set free from the darkness which surrounds 
this chain of endless causation, to behold in the purer light of 
MIND and intelligence the Cause of all causes, even Him “ who 
stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the 
earth upon nothing.” 
THOUGHTS OH MIRACLES. Eg Edward Burton 
Penny, Esq., M.Y.I. 
I T has been said that “ Scientific investigation plainly shows 
that every department of Hature is under the control of laws 
the most exact and inexorable,”* — which may well be conceded ; 
nor does it require any depth of “ investigation ” to arrive at 
a fact so patent to all observers. We may, therefore, allow it 
to be an axiom of science, and an “ inexorable law ” that no 
effect can take place, in Nature or out of Nature, without an 
adequate cause ; and we add that one of these “ inexo- 
rable laws ” is that the laws which “ control ” are necessarily, 
and ipso facto, stronger than the Nature “controlled.” 
It has been said further, that “ the whole course of Hature 
is a chain of antecedents and consequents , bound together by a 
necessary and absolutely certain connection entirely beyond the 
reach of interruption or alteration ; and every event that happens 
■in Hature is the inevitable result of the laws and properties of 
matter and force , which can neither be violated, modified, nor 
suspended; and beyond these laics and properties Hature knows 
no other i ule ; they are alone and supreme. 33 *— But the very 
reverse of this is manifest in every “ event in Nature,” every 
one of which is a breach, interruption, or overruling of one 
chain of antecedents by another. The laws of inertia and 
gi avitation are broken through, by vegetation ; the chain of 
consequents in vegetation is broken by the animal that feeds 
upon it ; and, above all, the will of man disposes according to 
his need, his pleasure, or his caprice, of all the chains of 
* Vide Journal of Transactions of the Victoria Institute , vol. I. p. 95. 
