366 
would multiply the miracle of Creation ; and he refuses to admit the creation 
of Adam and Eve, because in doing so he would be admitting a miracle. To 
have created Adam and Eve would have been a miracle, and according to him, 
a miracle is not to be admitted. In Paley’s “ Evidences of Christianity” 
allusion is made to Hume’s objection to miracles, and Hume’s objection was 
that it was contrary to all experience that miracles should be true ; but that 
it was not contrary to experience that human testimony should be false, and, 
therefore, no amount of testimony could support miracles. But after a time 
the sophistry of this was discovered. It was found that the major premiss 
involved the whole question, because the whole question was that miracles 
were contrary to experience. This sophism having worked its way for a 
time, was taken up by the Rationalists of Germany, and by them converted 
into a form which has become very popular among some who make a noise in 
the world as scientific men. They, in order to eliminate the miraculous 
records from the Bible, give a definition of a miracle. Now, I must say that 
theologians are somewhat chary of giving a definition of a miracle, just in 
the same way as physiologists are chary of giving a definition of life. How- 
ever, these men defined a miracle as something contrary to law, or an inter- 
ference with law, and they asserted that no interference with law could take 
place. Therefore, when they set to work with their system of destructive 
criticism, they argued that everything which appeared to be miraculous was 
to be eliminated from the Bible. We now find certain men in our own 
scientific world who have become suddenly enamoured of this definition of a 
miracle, and they admit that creation must have been miraculous. There 
we are at one with them. But they go further, and they say, creation being 
miraculous, there could be no creation. Professor Huxley is .an advocate for 
this theory, because he has a scientific objection to the idea of creation, on 
the ground of its unphilosophical character ; and he says it is unphilosophical 
to admit the creation of man. He states that the progress of science pushes 
the origin of things further and further back. There are others who have 
gone further back than Professor Huxley. He does not publicly state more 
than that to multiply the centres of the creation of man would be to 
multiply miracles. But we go further. Professor Baden Powell, combining 
with the representatives of the rational theology of Germany, and with those 
who were supposed to be men of advanced scientific opinion, no sooner 
saw Mr. Darwin’s book, which, it should be understood, was only put 
forward as a matter of hypothesis, admitted not to be proved, and to be 
unprovable at present, and based upon negative evidence — no sooner did he 
see this book, than, in his celebrated essay in the Essays and Reviews, he 
went the length of denying creation at all, and proceeded on the eternity and 
self-evolving powers of matter. Now, that I maintain to be a denial, not 
only of the theological proposition, but of the principle which lies at the 
bottom of all great scientific discoveries ; namely, that all the visible works 
of creation have impressed indelibly upon them the evidence that they came 
from the hands of an intelligent Being, and that they are the production of 
a Creator. There is an objection to the use of the word Atheism ; and I do 
