re is none more
truly unphilosophical. That miracles are improbable viewed in relation
to the experience of the individual or of the mass of men, is granted;
for if they were not, they would, as Paley says, be no miracles; an
every-day miracle is none. But that they are either impossible or so
improbable that, if they were wrought, no evidence could establish them,
is another matter. The first allegation involves a curious limitation of
omnipotence; and the second affirms in effect, that, if God were to work
a miracle, it would be our duty to disbelieve him!
___

+ It is, as we shall see, the avowed axiom of Strauss; he even
acknowledges, that if it be not true, he would not think it worth while
to discredit the history of the Evangelists; that is, the history
must be discredited, because he has resolved that a miracle is an
impossibility!
____

We repeat our firm conviction that this a priori assumption against
miracles is but a vulgar illusion of one of Bacon's idola tribus. So
far from being disposed to admit the principle that a 'miracle is an
impossibility,' we shall venture on what may seem to some a paradox, but
which we are convinced is a truth,--that time will come, and is coming,
when even those who shall object to the evidence which sustains the
Christian miracles will acknowledge that philosophy requires them to
admit that men have no ground whatever to dogmatise on the antecedent
impossibility of miracles in general; and that not merely because if
theists at all, they will see the absurdity of the assertion, while
they admit that the present order of things had a beginning; and, if
Christians at all, the equal absurdity of the assertion, while they
admit that it will have an end;--not only because the geologist will
have familiarised the world with the idea of successive interventions,
and, in fact, distinct creative acts, having all the nature of
miracles;--not only, we say, for these special reasons, but for a
more general one. The true philosopher will see that, with his limited
experience and that of all his contemporaries, he has no right to
dogmatise about all that may have been permitted or will be permitted
in the Divine administration of the universe; he will see that those
who with one voice denied, about half a century ago, the existence of
aerolites, and summarily dismissed all the alleged facts as a silly
fable, because it contradicted their experience,--that those who refused
to admit the