which might produce them, becomes smaller and smaller. We are told, indeed, that the 'inevitable progress of research must, within a longer or shorter period, unravel all that seems most marvelous;** but we may be permitted to doubt the relevancy of the remark to the present case, until it has been shown that the advance of science has in some degree enabled men to perform the miracles performed by Christ. When the inevitable progress of research shall have enabled men of modern times to give sight to the blind with a touch, to still tempests with a word, to raise the dead to life, to die themselves, and to rise again, we may allow that the same causes might possibly have been called into operation ten thousand years earlier, by some great man in advance of his age. But, until this is done, the unraveling of the marvelous in other phenomena only serves to leave these works in their solitary grandeur, as wrought by the finger of God, unapproached and unapproachable by all the knowledge and all the power of man. The appearance of a comet or the fall of an aerolite may be reduced by the advance of science from a supposed supernatural to a natural occurrence; and this reduction furnishes a reasonable presumption that other phenomena of a like character will in time meet with a like explanation. But the reverse is the case with respect to those phenomena which are narrated as produced by personal agency. In proportion as the science of to-day surpasses that of former generations, so is the improbability that any man tould have done in past times, by natural means, works which no skill of the present age is able to imitate."

With these general remarks on the subject of miracles, I proceed to state what is the form which the ar* Essays and Reviews, p. 109. † Aids to Faith, p. 21, 22.

gument assumes in the nineteenth century, or, in the present age of the world, with all the advances which have been made in science; or what points have been established as bearing on the possibility and the credibility of the miracles of the New Testament.

I. The first remark is, that no such universality of the certain and fixed laws of nature as is claimed by those who deny the reality of miracles, has been ascertained and demonstrated; nor can it be. In other words, amidst the infinite number and variety of phenomena which have occurred in our world, and in other worlds, and which are now constantly occurring, it has not been demonstrated, and can not be, that there are none in respect to which the only antecedent is the direct will and power of God. To show that miracles are not possible, and not credible, it is necessary to do this. But this can not be done; for, if there is any thing made clear by science, it is that the human powers of observation and comprehension are not vast enough to establish so universal a proposition. The argument of Newton in regard to "gravitation" could not reach the point that there is, and has been nowhere, any matter that is not moved by another force. The laws of Kepler in regard to planetary motions are not so established in regard to their universality that there may not be, somewhere in the boundlessness of space, worlds held in being, and moved by other forces than these.

The remark now made, so obvious, demonstrates that no one can prove that the uniformity and fixedness of the laws of nature is so 66 universal" as to exclude the possibility of miracles; for such a demonstration must take in all events, all worlds, all systems, all beings— angels and God as well as men. Our "experience," of which so much is made by Mr. Hume, pertains only to

our own world and to men; it takes in nothing beyond. But, to be complete, the demonstration must take in all worlds, creatures, systems, ages, and cycles of ages, and must establish the fact that in all these things God never does perform, and never has performed, any act by his own immediate power or will, or that no world has been called into being, that no creature has been made, that no event has occurred, where the only antecedent in the case was the divine power and will. Obviously this is wholly beyond the power of man to demonstrate. There have been times in the history of the universe of which no records have come to us. How can man demonstrate what has or what has not been done, then? There are worlds which man has never seen by the naked eye or by the glass. How can he demonstrate what has been or has not been done in those worlds? There may be beings of whose "experience" man has no knowledge. How can he determine how they came into existence, or prove that among them there are not events produced by the direct power of God? There may be worlds and systems

"nebulae"-that are so detached from our system that we can not demonstrate that the same laws which govern our system control them, or that, in the infinity of the divine resources, there may not be methods of controlling those worlds which are unknown here. How is man to determine that point? And, moreover, there may be a spiritual world—a world so detached from all matter, and so wholly independent of matter, that nothing can be inferred in regard to the laws which govern it from the laws of Kepler or Newton. Who can tell how God may act in that spiritual world? Who can demonstrate that in that world no event ever occurs where the sole antecedent is the divine power and the divine will?

As, therefore, no one can prove that there is no God unless he himself is infinite, and can be present in all the immensity of space at the same time, since where he is not there God may be, so it is true that no one can prove that the laws of nature are so fixed and universal that a miracle is impossible, unless he himself can take in the whole of the universe, since it may be true that beyond the sphere of his knowledge there are events the only antecedent of which are the will and the power of God.

The observation now made, if well founded, must meet all that has been said by Mr. Hume in regard to "experience," so far as that bears on the subject. When it is said by him that "as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined," the word "experience," if it has any meaning, must refer to experience that embraces the whole subject; that is, in relation to all the events to which the question of such uniformity would be applicable. But it is clear that among men there has been no such “experience." There have been, and there are, many events which lie quite beyond any such range of observation hitherto made; there are undoubtedly many things which have not as yet been reduced to any known laws, and it is yet an open question whether they can be; that is, whether the powers of men are adequate to the inquiry, and whether, if they are thus adequate, the events are of such a nature that they can be reduced to regular and fixed laws. In the earlier periods of the world, as already remarked, there were many things that passed under the name of "miracles” and wonders-phenomena which there was no way thus of

accounting for-whose causes are now familiar to us, for in the ruder ages of the world they seemed to lie wholly in the regions of the marvelous. As science advances, the circle of those marvelous works is contracted, and a large part of those wonders is reduced to the dominion of fixed laws. The laboratory of the chemist now exhibits many a phenomena which in the Middle Ages would have been classed among the marvelous, now reduced to the regular operation of law; and it can not be doubted that there may be yet in nature many a secret power that has not yet been made the subject of scientific observation, or been brought under the general word "experience." It can not be regarded . as improbable that many of those things will thus be carefully observed, arranged, and classified, and that they will be found to be under the control of fixed and unchanging laws; but the world is not yet far enough advanced to justify the assertion that the "experience" of mankind extends to all these things. Not until this is done, and not until that "experience" shall take in the whole of the distant material worlds and systems, and not until that "experience" shall take in also the whole of the spiritual world, could it be affirmed that it has been demonstrated by "experience" that there may not be events the sole antecedent of which is the will and the power of God. Man can not, therefore, as yet, prove that miracles are impossible..

II. The second remark in regard to miracles, as a sequence of what has already been said, is, that the effect. of the progress of true science is to demonstrate that the hypothesis which refers miracles to unknown natural causes is baseless; and that if the events occurred, they were real miracles. The only possible opinions in regard to the miracles of the New Testament are, that