tual advantages would occasionally be
successful;--thus implying that though material processes were
necessarily slow, and the laws of Heaven respecting matter, inviolable,
mental processes might be instantaneous, and mental laws at any moment
disregarded by their Institutor: so that the spirit of a man might be
brought to maturity in a moment, though the resources of Omnipotence
would be overtaxed, or its consistency abandoned, in the endeavor to
produce the same result On a greengage.

More logically, though not more wisely, other divines have asserted that
prayer is medicinally beneficial to ourselves, whether we obtain what we
ask for or not; and that our moral state is gradually elevated by the
habit of praying daily that the Kingdom of God may come,--though nothing
would more astonish us than its coming.

268. With these doubts respecting the possibility or propriety of
miracle, a more immediate difficulty occurs as to its actual nature or
definition. What is the quality of any event which may be properly
called "miraculous"? What are the degrees of wonderfulness?--what the
surpassing degree of it, which changes the wonder into the sign, or may
be positively recognized by human intelligence as an interruption,
instead of a new operation, of those laws of Nature with which, of late,
we have become so exhaustively acquainted? For my own part, I can only
say that I am so haunted by doubt of the security of our best knowledge,
and by discontent in the range of it, that it seems to me contrary to
modesty, whether in a religious or scientific point of view, to regard
_any_thing as miraculous. I know so little, and this little I know is so
inexplicable, that I dare not say anything is wonderful because it is
strange to me, or not wonderful because it is familiar. I have not the
slightest idea how I compel my hand to write these words, or my lips to
read them: and the question which was the thesis of Mr. Ward's very
interesting paper, "Can Experience prove the Uniformity of Nature?"[175]
is, in my mind, so assuredly answerable with the negative which the
writer appeared to desire, that, precisely on that ground, the
performance of any so-called miracle whatever would be morally
unimpressive to me. If a second Joshua to-morrow commanded the sun to
stand still, and it obeyed him; and he therefore claimed deference as a
miracle-worker, I am afraid I should answer, "What! a miracle that the
sun stands still?--not at all. I w