re, one word
is of Latin and the other of Saxon derivation.[1] But this is surely a
very feeble excuse for bad composition. Of a very different kind is that
beautiful climax which is reached in the three admirably chosen pairs of
words in the Prayer for the Parliament, "peace and happiness, truth and
justice, religion and piety."--F. A. M.

(Note 1: The repetition of synonymous terms is of very frequent
occurrence in sixteenth century writing, as "for ever and aye," "Time
and the hour run through the roughest day" (_Macbeth_, i. 3).)]

[Footnote 173: In some of the country districts of Scotland the right of
the Church to interfere with the lives of private individuals is still
exercised. Only two years ago, a wealthy gentleman farmer was rebuked by
the "Kirk Session" of the Dissenting Church to which he belonged, for
infidelity to his wife.

At the Scottish half-yearly Communion the ceremony of "fencing the
tables" used to be observed; that is, turning away all those whose lives
were supposed to have made them unfit to receive the Sacrament.]

THE NATURE AND AUTHORITY OF MIRACLE.[174]

267. Every age of the world has its own special sins, and special
simplicities; and among our own most particular humors in both kinds
must be reckoned the tendency to parade our discoveries of the laws of
Nature, as if nobody had ever heard of a law of Nature before.

The most curious result of this extremely absurd condition of mind is
perhaps the alarm of religious persons on subjects of which one would
have fancied most of the palpable difficulties had been settled before
the nineteenth century. The theory of prayer, for instance, and of
Miracles. I noticed a lengthy discussion in the newspapers a month or
two ago, on the propriety of praying for, or against rain. It had
suddenly, it seems, occurred to the public mind, and to that of the
gentlemen who write the theology of the breakfast-table, that rain was
owing to natural causes; and that it must be unreasonable to expect God
to supply on our immediate demand what could not be provided but by
previous evaporation. I noticed farther that this alarming difficulty
was at least softened to some of our Metropolitan congregations by the
assurances of their ministers, that, although, since the last lecture by
Professor Tyndall at the Royal Institution, it had become impossible to
think of asking God for any temporal blessing, they might still hope
their applications for spiri