that an invariable continuity in the order of nature appears of itself to be ill-suited for a full discovery of the Creator's Personality. Nevertheless, in the moral world a clear discovery of His Personality is indispensable. To effect that discovery, therefore, an occasional interruption of invariable order for the moral enlightenment of mankind would seem to have been à priori probable. Invariable law simply shows the power of the Creator; it only exhibits His skill as a mechanist or chemist. But, inasmuch as He has other attributes far beyond these in true dignity and glory, nothing would appear to have been antecedently more probable than that, for the purpose of manifesting these, He should have adopted another set of contrivances, viz. moral and personal manifestations. Of course we allow that, while the entire physical world is uniformly sustained by the action of fixed laws, it can never be supposed to have required, on its own account, any supernatural or miraculous interferences. The whole machinery of nature is so constructed that its sequences are constant. Its laws are so perfectly adjusted, and are kept so uninterrupted in action, that to suppose any supernatural interference with them for the accomplishment of merely natural designs would only be to suppose they had become spoiled and marred by external forces, against the action of which they had not been previously provided.

Modern philosophy, therefore, is right in arguing that, as all our present experience shows nature to be above the necessity of any arbitrary interferences

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for the purpose of keeping it in order, so it is extremely improbable that, as far as that purpose is concerned, there ever have been such interferences. But because they were never needed for natural purposes, does it follow that they may never have been needed for moral purposes; as, for instance, to attest and confirm a revelation which was designed to bring about in the end the triumph of good over evil? When we bring to the front a design so noble and glorious as that, is there the same antecedent improbability in the Divine interference with natural law as there was before?

Here is a caution for Doubters which ought to be candidly considered; inasmuch as the argument from our present non-observation and non-experience of such interferences is thus accounted for. There is certainly no Supernatural Revelation now being given to man; consequently, it is no wonder that we are without this Divine form of attestation. It appears to me that philosophy, instead of rejecting the credibility of miraculous interference with nature, simply because it has never been tested by modern observation or experience, ought rather to trace in the fact of its non-occurrence a condition of perfect harmony with the supposition that it may have been experienced at a past period, when the circumstances alleged to have produced it were so entirely different.

It will be said that this line of argument takes for granted the reality of a Supernatural Revelation. I am aware of it; and, therefore, all I urge is, that

the one form of Divine intervention covers, and carries with it, the other. In other words, the improbability of there ever having been any miraculous interference with physical law utterly vanishes, providing we can only show the previous probability of there having been some supernatural interference for the purposes of Divine Revelation.

To that point, therefore, I will now address myself. In doing which, however, I must first dispute the parallel which is drawn between the fixed uniformity of law in the physical and moral worlds.

Let it not be supposed that I deny the existence of certain ordinary laws which govern the activities of our mental and moral life. No one can reasonably oppose that view. The point for which I contend is, that such laws are being continually interrupted and dissipated by other forces, which are so irregular and incalculable as to render them quite distinct from those fixed laws of nature whose variations can be almost always either predetermined or otherwise generally accounted for.

I ask, for instance, as a matter of experience and self-consciousness, who can affirm of his mental and moral being that they are always working with undeviating constancy to fixed law? Who can say that his reason, his conscience, his affections, and his volitions keep as regularly to predetermined courses of action as the physical forces of the world do? On the contrary, is it not just the reverse? Is not the whole moral world held under an antagonism between good and evil, which essentially prevents

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us from recognizing within it the same harmony of operations that obtains throughout the material universe?

As for the phenomena of nature, they recur to us again and again with perpetual regularity. We can foretell an eclipse, and even know when to expect the return of a comet. The tides flow twice in every twenty-four hours without any variation. Who doubts about the rising of the sun to-morrow? Who would dispute the coming of summer heats, or of winter frosts? It is true that the weather and the winds are uncertain; yet who does not know that there will be equinoctial gales in England twice every year? and that when the wind blows from the south it will be warm, and from the north cold?

But look, honest Doubters, into your own moral being, and ask yourselves whether you can predict the working of laws there with anything approaching to such constancy. Who can foretell with certainty the uprising of his passions or the outburst of his griefs? Who can say that he has uniformly the same set of feelings even under the same set of circumstances? Which of us can prove that he is not subject to elements of moral disturbance, resulting from passing events and special temptations, which upset all ideas of his being acted upon by laws that display invariable constancy? Let me appeal only to your own experience. Are you all angry or loving, or happy, or hopeful, with an invariable and ever-recurring

sameness under similar conditions? Some men are happy in their crimes one day; the next day they are bowed down by remorse. Some, with capricious and fickle-minded humours, will say one thing at one moment, and the very opposite the next moment. Often, too, when we resolve to do one thing, we are unconsciously and almost unaccountably led to do another. Where, then, in our moral life, is there any undeviating subjection to fixed laws? And where is the assumed parallel of constant uniformity of action within the physical and moral world? Is it not plain that in the one there are no antagonisms, except such as act so regularly on each other that their effects may be calculated with an almost certain precision; while in the other there are antagonisms acting so irregularly that the wisest forecasts of their results must ever remain uncertain? The truth is, that all reasoning from the law of averages to the necessity of any particular moral action is utterly inconclusive. The possibility, for example, of calculating a moral action, either in the past or future, with anything like the certainty of calculating an eclipse, is an idea not only devoid of all past evidence, but antagonistic to all present experience.

I do not enter now into the cause of this irregularity and uncertainty of contingent actions within the moral world. I do not attempt to discuss how it happens that all the operations of nature in the physical world obey one set of uniform laws, the effects of which may be safely tabulated and fore