topics, with which the scholar and the moralist are familiar, are of great and fundamental importance to our general views of the whole subject of Christian evidence; but the particular case of miracles, as such, is one specially bearing on purely physical contemplations, and on which no general moral principles, no common rules of evidence or logical technicalities, can enable us to form a correct judgment. It is not a question which can be decided by a few trite and commonplace generalities as to the moral government of the world and the belief in the Divine Omnipotence, or as to the validity of human testimony or the limits of human experience. It involves, and is essentially built upon, those grander conceptions of the order of nature, those comprehensive primary elements of all physical knowledge, those ultimate ideas of universal causation, which can only be familiar to those thoroughly versed in cosmical philosophy in its widest

sense.

In an age of physical research like the present, all highly cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects have imbibed, more or less, the lessons of the inductive philosophy, and have, at least in some measure, learned to appreciate the grand foundation conception of universal law; to recognize the impossibility even of any two material atoms subsisting together without a determinate relation; of any action of the one on the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without reference to a physical cause; of any modification whatsoever in the existing conditions of material agents, unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences, following in some necessary chain of orderly connection, however imperfectly known to us. So clear and indispu

table, indeed, has this great truth become, so deeply seated has it been now admitted to be in the essential nature of sensible things and of the external world, that not only do all philosophical inquirers adopt it as a primary principle and guiding maxim of all their researches, but, what is most worthy of remark, minds of a less comprehensive capacity, accustomed to reason on topics of another character, and on more contracted views, have at the present day been constrained to evince some concession to this grand principle, even when seeming to oppose it.

Among writers on these questions, Dean Trench has evinced a higher view of physical philosophy than we might have expected from the mere promptings of philology and literature, when he affirms that "we continually behold lower laws held in restraint by higher, — mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by moral;" remarks which, if only followed out, entirely accord with the conclusion of universal subordination of causation: though we must remark, in passing, that the meaning of "moral laws controlling physical" is not very clear.

It is for the most part hazardous ground for any general moral reasoner to take, to discuss subjects of evidence which essentially involve that higher appreciation of physical truth which can be attained only from an accurate and comprehensive acquaintance with the connected series of the physical and mathematical sciences. Thus, for example, the simple but grand truth of the law of conservation, and the stability of the heavenly motions, now well understood by all sound cosmical philosophers, is but the type of the universal self-sustaining and self-evolving powers which pervade all nature. Yet the difficulty of con

ceiving this truth in its simplest exemplification was formerly the chief hinderance to the acceptance of the solar system,—from the prepossession of the peripatetic dogma, that there must be a constantly acting, moving force to keep it going. This very exploded chimera, however, by a singular infatuation, is now actually revived as the ground of argument for miraculous interposition by redoubtable champions, who, to evince their profound knowledge of mechanical philosophy, inform us that "the whole of nature is like a mill, which cannot go on without the continual application of a moving power"!

*

Of these would-be philosophers we find many anxiously dwelling on the topic, so undeniably just in itself, of the danger of incautious conclusions; of the gross errors into which men fall by over-hasty generalizations. They recount with triumph the absurd mistakes into which some even eminent philosophers have fallen in prematurely denying what experience has since fully shown to be true, because in the then state of knowledge it seemed incredible. They feel an elevating sense of superiority in putting down the arrogance of scientific pretensions, by alleging the short-sighted dogmatism with which men of high repute in science have evinced a scepticism in points of vulgar belief, in which, after all, the vulgar belief has proved right. They even make a considerable display of reasoning on such cases; but we cannot say that those reasonings are particularly distinguished for consistency, force, or originality. The philosopher (for example) denies the credibility of alleged events

*Numerous instances of the kind referred to will be found cited in Mr. R. Chambers's Essay on Testimony, &c., Edinburgh Papers, 1859; and in Abp. Whately's edition of Paley's Evidences.

professedly in their nature at variance with all physical analogy. These writers, in reply, affect to make a solemn appeal to the bar of analogy, and support it by instances which precisely defeat their own conclusion. Thus they advance the novel and profoundly instructive story of an Indian who denied the exist ence of ice as at variance with experience; and still more from the contradiction, that, being solid, it could not float in water. In like manner, they dwell upon other equally interesting stories of a butterfly, who, from the experience of his ephemeral life in summer, denied that the leaves were ever brown or the ground covered with snow; of a child who watched a clock made to strike only at noon, through many hours, and therefore concluded it could never strike; of a person who had observed that fish are organized to swim, and therefore concluded there could be no such animals as flying fish.

These, with a host of other equally recondite, novel, startling, and conclusive instances, are urged in a tone of solemn wisdom, to prove - what? That water is converted into ice by a regular known law; that it has a specific gravity less than water by some law at present but imperfectly understood; that, without violation of analogy, fins may be modified into wings; that it is part of the great law of climate, that, in winter, leaves are brown, and the ground sometimes white; that machinery may be made with action intermitting by laws as regular as those of its more ordinary operation; in a word, that the philosopher who looks to an endless subordinating series of laws of succcessively higher generality is inconsistent in denying events at variance with that subordination!

It is indeed curious to notice the elaborate multi

plication of instances adduced by some of the writers referred to, all really tending to prove the subordination of facts to laws, clearly evinced as soon as the cases were well understood, though till then, often regarded in a sceptical spirit; while of that scepticism they furnish the real and true refutation in the principle of law ultimately established, under whatever primary appearance and semblance of marvellous discordance from all law. It would be beyond our limits to notice in detail such instances as are thus dwelt upon, and apparently regarded as of sovereign value and importance, to discredit philosophical generalization: such as the disbelief in the marvels recounted by Marco Polo; of the miracle of the martyrs who spoke articulately after their tongues were cut out; the angel seen in the air by two thousand persons at Milan; the miraculous balls of fire on the spires at Plausac; Herodotus's story of the bird in the mouth of the crocodile; narratives of the sea-serpent, marvels of mesmerism and electro-biology, all discredited formerly as fables; vaccination observed and attested by peasants, but denied and ridiculed by medical men.

These and the like cases are all urged as triumphant proofs of-what? That some men have always been found of unduly sceptical tendencies, and sometimes of a rationally cautious turn; who have heard strange, and perhaps exaggerated narratives, and have maintained sometimes a wise, sometimes an unwise, degree of reserve and caution in admitting them; though they have since proved in accordance with natural causes.

Hallam and Rogers are cited as veritable witnesses to the truth of certain effects of mesmerism in their