301 
you can have no disease of gravitation, though you have disease of life. 
But there is a higher thing than even life— the soul of man. Reason is still 
higher, and rises to higher laws ; and when you find in the moral world 
there is disease, and remember that the miracles of God wrought in Scrip- 
ture were to take away sin and its effects, then I say, the Christian can 
be a scientific man, and receive all the miracles recorded in Scripture, 
and yet study, with intense admiration and devotion, the works of his 
Creator ; he need have no fear in investigating them, and he may believe 
that the works of nature and revelation are in the most perfect harmony the 
one with the other. 
The meeting was then adjourned. 
REPLY BY THE BEY. W. W. ENGLISH. 
To make my views clearer, I would wish to add a very few words. The 
distinction between mind and matter, and the supremacy of the former over 
the latter, are points that underlie every essential part of the subject. The 
will of man is a faculty of the human mind, a sui potestas, and the arresting 
of the falling apple at will, is an illustration of the supremacy of mind or spirit 
over matter, though not a miracle, because here the human mind controls matter 
simply within its own prescribed limits. Satan or evil spirits controlling matter 
within their prescribed limits are a further illustration of the same funda- 
mental point. To us their acts, when they exceed what falls within our 
limits, appear, and no doubt are, really miraculous, in the true sense of the 
term ; a miracle being, as Butler and Mr. Birks contend, “ relative ” and not 
absolute. The great Spirit of God controls matter and its laws, within His 
own limits — that is to say, without limits ; for He can have none, except 
such as would be inconsistent with His goodness. To Him there can be no 
such thing as a miracle — nature, if it includes Deity, (and I see not how it 
can exclude it,) comprises all that is possible as well as actual. I am not sure 
that my short paragraph on what I termed “ the real point” bearing upon 
objections drawn from physical considerations, is of itself sufficiently clear ; 
but I thought it would have appeared so, in the light of what I said in 
reference to mind and matter. I have sought to find no theory by 
which to account for miracles apart from God. I have endeavoured 
simply to show by a chain of reasoning, that we can account for 
miracles upon principles apart from the Bible, or an appeal directly to 
God’s sovereignty and omnipotence. Bishop Butler does not disagree 
materially with anything I have said on the subject. Those “higher 
laws ” I referred to, are moral and not physical — those principles, in short, 
according to which all things are wisely governed. Miracles may be real or 
apparent infractions of material sequence, but they are, nevertheless, fulfil- 
ments of “ higher laws ” of moral government. Much confusion arises 
from confining the term law too exclusively to what it can only figuratively 
z 
