ical laws or
phenomena, get to believe in no others. They are impatient of any things
in the universe except what they can number, or measure, or weigh. They
are in danger of regarding the Supreme Being Himself as an "anomaly."
They certainly seem to do so, when they take every pains to show that
the universe can get on perfectly well without His superintending
presence and control.

Whatever odium, then, may be attached to the violation of a natural
_law_, cannot be attached to the action of a superior _force_, making
itself felt amongst lower grades of natural forces.

If it be rejoined that this superior force must act according to law, we
answer, certainly, but according to what law? Not, of course, according
to the law of the force which it counteracts, but according to the law
under which itself acts.

The question of miracles, then, is a matter of evidence; but we all know
what a power human beings have of accepting or rejecting evidence
according as they look for it or are prejudiced against it.

If men concentrate their thought upon the lower forces of the universe,
and explain the functions of life, and even such powers as affection,
will, reason, and conscience, as if they were modifications of mere
physical powers, and ignore a higher Will, and an all-controlling Mind,
and a personal superintending Providence, what wonder if they are
indisposed to receive any such direct manifestation of God as the
Resurrection of Jesus, for the Resurrection of Jesus is the pledge of a
righteous Judgment and Retribution which, however it takes place, will
be the most astounding "anomaly" amidst the mere physical phenomena of
the universe, whilst it will be the necessary completion of its moral
order.

The proof of miracles is then, as I said, a matter of evidence. When
Hume asserts that "a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature," we
meet him with the counter-assertion that it is rather the new
manifestation in this order of things of the oldest of powers, that
which originally introduced life into a lifeless world.

When he says that "a firm and unalterable experience has established
these laws," we say that science teaches us that there must have been
epochs in the history of the world when new forces made their appearance
on the scene, for it teaches us that the world was once incandescent,
and so incapable of supporting any conceivable form of animal life, but
that at a certain geological period life made its