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philosopher can do is to point out certain phenomena and include them in 
some general formula, and when he has included a certain amount of pheno- 
mena in one hypothesis, he calls it a law. Now it is assumed, and that I 
maintain shows the fallacy of the argument against miracles from natural 
philosophy, — it is assumed with regard to any related fact in the world’s 
history, that we can say from what we know of these laws, such and such a 
thing could not occur. That we can say, for instance, a man could not 
be raised from the dead — such an event could not occur. Now I am 
prepared to maintain, upon strictly mathematical and philosophic prin- 
ciples, philosophy cannot say that ; that it cannot even tell us that such 
a law as that of gravitation is universal. It is said, as a grand triumph, 
that we know it proceeds to the last planet discovered ; it is said it 
proceeds to the binary stars. Are you sure, with regard to the latter, 
that it is the exact law ? Are you sure it is a law not varying directly 
as the distance ? We will now test this assumption by mathematics or 
mechanics. If I put on the 1st horizontal row of wheels of the calculating 
machine in Somerset House, the number 41, under that the number 2 on the 
2nd row, and again the number 2 on the 3rd row ; the machine could then 
be set to produce a certain series of numbers for thousands of terms, in due 
sequence, according to a certain mathematical law ; each term in succession 
being calculated and recorded in stereotype by simply turning the handle of 
the machine. A mathematician ignorant of the numbers originally placed on 
the machine, and looking only at the recorded results, would find the series 
41, 43, 47, 53, 61, &c., printed in succession. Observing every one of these 
numbers to be primes, that is numbers indivisible by any other number but 1, 
he might assume the machine to be set so as to record prime numbers only. 
The correctness of this assumption would increase in probability till the 
40 and 41 2 terms were reached, when it would be broken by the appearance 
of numbers not primes. Again the mathematician regarding the law of 
sequence of these numbers might find that they could all be included in the 
general algebraical formula x 2 -J-cc-{-41, by giving successive integral values 
to x from 0, 1,2, 3, &c., upwards. This would enable the mathematician to 
predicate the numbers I had placed on the machine. But I will now give 
you a case in which he could not do so. I might start by putting on the 
machine, once for all, such a series of numbers that the recorded results should 
be the squares or cubes of the numbers 1, 2, 3, &c., in due sequence for any 
number of terms I pleased, but that at some predetermined term, say the 
7,345,671st, the law should be broken. The odds that this breach of law 
should occur, so far as observation could determine, would be estimated 
mathematically by millions to one against its occurrence. In this case, con- 
trary to the example I gave in the instance of the prime numbers, nothing 
in the sequence of the numbers, or in any mathematical formulae which would 
express that sequence, could give the mathematician the slightest clue as to 
the possibility of the occurrence of this breach of continuity in the law of 
sequence. Now when man is observing the laws of nature, he does not know 
what is put on the original machine of the universe. There is no interposition 
