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cannot possibly be evaded ; still the third difficulty in our pathv ay is this, 
that this invasion of the necessary efficient causation of things is absolutely 
to be fastened upon us as a condition of revelation. I see not, if it pleases God 
to give us revelation, why He may not give it us with or without miracles, as 
He & pleases. I am not prepared to bind myself down beforehand to any such 
philosophy as this, that if it pleases God to reveal Himself to man, He shall 
and must of necessity work a miracle to convince man. No : the difficulty in 
my mind at once is this, that if there be such a necessity, then every man who 
has an interest in revelation can demand a miracle for himself in particular. 
If the thing ex necessitate belongs to revelation, and if it must be guaranteed 
to man’s mind in that way, we might all demand miracle. We shall at once 
acknowledge there is a difference between seeing a miracle and having a 
record of it handed down through very distant media, requiring a great 
deal of testing. I cannot conceive of miracles wrought eighteen hundred 
years ago, in order to be tests of faith for us in the nineteenth century, as 
standing on the same footing exactly as miracles wrought before our own eyes. 
So, if men are determined to put theological argument on such a basis, they 
may require a miracle for each of us. But, supposing these assumptions and 
difficulties were got over, we come at last to this, W here is the necessary con- 
nection between the working of a miracle and the convincing of man’s con- 
science of right and wrong ? For if w T e admit our own records, if we admit the 
Holy Scriptures, we shall see that miracles are very far from being confined 
to good agents. Pharaoh’s magicians are said to have wrought miracles c.s 
well as Moses. I do not see how, on purely natural principles, there should 
be any connection between the working of a miracle and the truth of the 
doctrine of the man who worked it. — Now, thus far we have been speaking 
of miracles without at all defining nature, and I have not heard anything 
like a definition of what we mean by nature. We come here upon a wide 
subject, which our scientific men seem to me to take a great deal of pains to 
avoid. I recollect that Cuvier, in the beginning of his Animal Kingdom — 1 
think in the first chapter,— takes pains to describe what he meant by nature. He 
meant the properties, first of all, distinguishing any individual being ; so that 
the properties of a man or of a stone are not the same. The nature of one is 
not confounded with that of any other. We know what this means ; the 
human being has human nature ; and however difficult the definition may 
be, I am not prepared myself to find fault with this definition, that the 
nature of an individual is that which constitutes him with certain properties, 
so that he is what he is. We are taught in Scripture that God’s nature (I 
speak with reverence) is best defined u I am that I am.” But, beyond this, 
Cuvier says there is a law of relation which prevails, connecting various 
natures or classes of being. That is the all-pervading law which he calls 
general nature. This individual and this general law of nature ought to be 
thoroughly apprehended oy us before we can speak of exceptions to the lav. 
Put before any man anything astonishing, and, if ignorant, he will think it a 
miracle. If he does not know very well the laws of his own being and of 
general being, he would be likely to err on that subject ; for we cannot 
