understand.
Nor can I understand it a bit better by your saying that it, is in
conformity with the vague something you are pleased to call a law.
It is a safe phrase, however; for as neither you nor any one else
can interpret it, no one can refute you. This law is a most convenient
thing! It repeals, it appears to me, all other laws,--even those of
logic. Perhaps would be better to say that miracles are no miracles
when they are 'lawful' miracles. No! let us keep our principle intact
from all such dangerous admissions as these. In that way only
are we safe."

"Safe do you call it? I see not how, if we carry out this principle
in the way and to the extent you propose, we can reply to the atheist
or to the pantheist, who tells us that the universe is but an
eternal evolution of phenomena in one infinite series, or in an
eternal recurrence of finite cycles."

"And what is that to you or me? How can we help our principle (if we
are to hold it at all) leading to some such conclusion? We are, I
presume, anxious to know the truth. You see that Strauss, who is the
most strenuous assertor of the impossibility of miracles, is also a
pantheist. I know not whether you may not become one yourself."

"Never," said Fellowes, vehemently; "never, I trust, shall I yield
to that 'desolating pantheism' (as worthy Mr. Newman calls it) which
is now so rife."

"I think Mr. Newman's principles ought to guide you thither. You
seem to hold fast by his skirts at present; but I very much doubt
whether you have yet reached the termination of your career. You
have, you must admit, made advances quite as extraordinary before.

"We shall see.--But I suppose you have reached the end of the
objections which your wayward scepticism suggests against a
conclusion which we both admit; or have you any more?"

"O, plenty; and amongst the rest, I am afraid we must admit--whether
we admit or not your expedient of law--a miracle, or something
indistinguishable from it, as involved in the creation and
preservation of the first man,--since you will have a first man."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that supposing the creation of man to be no miracle, because
he entered by law; or that that first fact (which would otherwise be
miraculous) is not such, simply because it is the first of a series
of such facts,--I should like to see whether we have not even then
to deal with a miracle, or a fact as absolutely unique; and which was
not connected with any seri