I tations verified, and in but a very few | entific belief, for would Professor Huxley 66 ality from whose mouth the weighty utterances we have just heard proceeded? Yet if you grant me the trustworthiness of memory, when it speaks positively of a recent experience, can you deny me the trustworthiness of other human faculties equally fundamental? Is my "belief" in the distinction between right and wrong, between holiness and sin, any less trustworthy than my belief in the asseverations of my memory? Did not Professor Huxley himself suggest in his closing remarks that the moral roots of our nature strike deeper than the intellectual roots; in other words, that if memory be much As Professor Huxley's rich and reso- more than a working hypothesis," if its nant voice died away, Father Dalgairns, trustworthiness be the condition without after looking modestly round to see which no working hypothesis would be whether any one else desired to speak, even possible, there are moral conditions began in tones of great sweetness: Pro- of our nature quite as fundamental as fessor Huxley has implied that to the sci- even the trustworthiness of memory it entific student the words "I believe" self? I hold it, I confess, most irrational have a stricter and more binding force to have an absolute and undoubting bethan they have to us theologians. If it lief in the uniformity of nature based on really be so, it is very much to our shame, any accumulation of experience, for no for no words can be conceived which are such accumulation of experience is possito us more solemn and more charged with ble at all without an absolute and unmoral obligation. But I confess that the doubting belief in the past, and this no drift of Professor Huxley's remarks hardly merely present experience can possibly bore out to my mind the burden of his give us. And I hold such a belief in the peroration. It seems that a "working uniformity of nature, based on anything hypothesis" is the modest phrase which but the trustworthiness of our faculties, to represents even the very maximum of sci- | be irrational, for precisely the same kind 66 of reason for which I hold it to be irra- | the negative which the writer appeared to tional to question the belief in God. The desire, that precisely on that ground the solemnity which Professor Huxley at- performance of any so-called miracles taches to the words "I believe," I attach to them also. Moreover, I could not use them in their fullest sense of anything which I regard merely as a "working hypothesis," however fruitful. But I deny that we theologians regard our deepest creed as a working hypothesis at all. We accept the words "I believe in God," as we accept the words "I believe in the absolute attestations of memory," as simply forced upon us by a higher intuition than any inductive law can engender. When I say "I believe in God," I use the word believe just as I use it when I say "I believe in moral obligation," and when I say "I believe in moral obligation," I use the word believe just as I do when I say "I believe in the attestations of memory." "God is not necessary only to my conception of morality. His existence is necessary to the existence of obligation." I know God by "a combination of intuition and experience, which is Kant's condition of knowledge. If there be a God, our imagination would present him to us as inflicting pain on the violator of his law, and lo! the imagination turns out to be an experienced fact. The Unknowable suddenly stabs me to the heart." I be lieve in the uniformity of nature only in the sense in which I believe in every other high probability for instance, only in the sense in which I believe that the sun will rise to-morrow. I believe in God in the sense in which I believe in pain and pleasure, in space and time, in right and wrong, in myself, in that which curbs me, governs me, besets me behind and before, and lays its hand upon me. The uniformity of nature, though a very useful working hypothesis, is, as Professor Huxley admits, unproved and unprovable as a final truth of reason. But "if I do not know God, then I know nothing whatsoever," for if "the pillared pavement is rottenness," then surely also is "earth's base built on stubble." whatever would be really unimpressive to. me. If a second Joshua to-morrow commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him, and he therefore claimed def erence as a miracle-worker, I am afraid I should answer, 'What! a miracle that the sun stands still?- not at all. I was always expecting it would. The only wonder to me was its going on.' But even assuming the demonstrable uniformity of the laws or customs of nature which are known to us, it remains to me a difficult question what measure of interference with such law or custom we might logically hold miraculous, and what, on the contrary, we should treat only as proof of the existence of some other law hitherto undiscovered. For instance, there is a case authenticated by the signatures of several leading physicians in Paris, in which a peasant girl, under certain condi tions of morbid excitement, was able to move objects at some distance from her without touching them. Taking the evidence for what it may be worth, the discovery of such a faculty would only, I suppose, justify us in concluding that some new vital energy was developing itself under the conditions of modern life, and not that any interference with the laws of nature had taken place. Yet the generally obstinate refusal of men of science to receive any verbal witness of such facts, is a proof that they believe them contrary to a code of law which is more or less complete in their experience, and altogether complete in their conception; and I think it is therefore the province of some one of our scientific members to lay down for us the true principle by which we may distinguish the miraculous violation of a known law from the natural dis covery of an unknown one." "However," he proceeded, "the two main facts we have to deal with are that the historical record of miracle is always of inconstant power, and that our own actual energies There was a certain perceptible reluc-are inconstant almost in exact proportion tance to follow Father Dalgairns, which lasted some couple of minutes. Then we heard a deep-toned, musical voice, which dwelt with slow emphasis on the most important words of each sentence, and which gave a singular force to the irony with which the speaker's expressions of belief were freely mingled. It was Mr. Ruskin. "The question," he said, "Can experience prove the uniformity of nature? is, in my mind, so assuredly answerable with to their worthiness. First, I say the his tory of miracle is of inconstant power. St. Paul raises Eutychus from death, and his garments effect miraculous cure, yet he leaves Trophimus sick at Miletus, recognizes only the mercy of God in the recovery of Epaphroditus, and, like any uninspired physician, recommends Timothy wine for his infirmities. And in the second place, our own energies are inconstant almost in proportion to their noble. 1. ness. We breathe with regularity, and keen prepossession against the doctrine As Mr. Ruskin ceased, Walter Bagehot, It is apter to accept superficial and inadequate wards. But we do know that in millions | part, he said, I am quite ready to examine and billions of cases expectations founded into the evidence of any so-called miracle, on the same sort of evidence as the expectation that the sun will rise to-morrow, and that the dropped bar will fall to the earth, have been verified, and that the imaginative illusion which half-educated people still so often indulge, that excep. tions will occur, for the occurrence of which there is no rational evidence, is a most mischievous one, which we ought to try to eradicate. We ought to engage what I have ventured in this society to call the "emotion of conviction," the caprices of which are so extravagant and so dangerous, much more seriously on the side of the uniformity of nature than we have ever hitherto done. We should all try to distinguish more carefully than we do between possibility, probability, and certainty. It is not as certain that the sun will rise to-morrow as it is that I was cold before I entered this room; it is not as certain that Messrs. Baring's acceptances will be paid, as it is that the sun will rise to-morrow; it is not as certain that Peel's Act will always be suspended in a panic, as it is that Messrs. Baring's acceptances will be paid. And it is difficult for "such creatures as we are to accommodate our expectations to these varying degrees of reasonable evidence. But though experience, however long and cumulative, can never prove the absolute uniformity of nature, it surely ought to train us to bring our expectations into something like consistency with the uniformity of nature. And as I endeavor to effect this in my own mind I certainly cannot agree with Mr. Ruskin that I have always been "expecting" the sun to stand still. Probably as a child I was always expecting things quite as improbable as that. But if I expected them now I should not have profited as much by the disillusionizing character of my experience as I endeavor to hope that I actually have. There was a general smile as Bagehot ceased, but the smile ceased, as Mr. Fitzjames Stephen - the present Sir James Stephen took up the discussion by remarking, in the mighty bass that always exerted a sort of physical authority over us, that while the society seemed to be pretty well agreed upon the main question, namely, that the uniformity of nature could not be absolutely proved by experience, or, indeed, by any other method, there was a point in Dr. Ward's paper, namely, the challenge to examine seriously into the authenticity of miracles, which had not been dealt with. For my that is, into the evidence of any unusual event which is offered to prove divine interference in our affairs, when it comes before me with sufficient presumption of authority to render it worth my while to investigate it; though I probably should not agree with Dr. Ward as to what constitutes such a presumption. Certainly a bare uncorroborated assertion by a person professing to be an eyewitness of an event is not sufficient evidence of that event to warrant action of an important kind based upon the supposition of its occurrence. When you are obliged to guess, such an assertion may be a reason for making one guess rather than another. Less evidence than this would make a banker hesitate as to a person's credit, or would lead a customer to doubt whether his banker was solvent; but in such cases all that is possible is a guess more or less judicious, and a guess, however judicious, is a totally different thing from settled rational belief. As regards all detailed matters of fact, I think there is a time, greater or less, during which the evidence connected with them may be collected, examined, and recorded. If this is done a judgment can be formed on the truth of allegations respecting them at any distance of time. Such judgments are rarely absolute; they ought always or nearly always to be tempered by some degree of doubt, but I do not think they need be affected by lapse of time. If, however, this opportunity is lost, if no complete examination is made at the time of an incident, or if being made it is not properly or fully recorded, clouds of darkness which can never be dispelled settle down upon it almost immediately. All that remains behind is an indistinct outline which can never be filled up. Under certain conditions rare occurrences are quite as probable as common ones. The main condition of the probability of such an event is that the rare occurrence should, from its nature and from the circumstances under which it occurs, be capable of being observed, and that the evidence of it should be recorded in the manner which I have already described. If a moa were caught alive and publicly exhibited for money, or if the body of a sea-serpent were to be cut up upon the coast and duly examined by competent naturalists, the existence of moas and sea-serpents could be proved beyond all reasonable doubt. The reason why their existence is disbelieved or doubted is not that they are seen, if at all, so sel dom, but because in each particular in- | believers in miracles of the most astound- Hereupon the Archbishop of Westmin ster, looking at Mr. Stephen with a benign smile, said: Mr. Stephen's investigations into the evidence of the interference of unseen agents in human affairs are hardly on a par with some of those undertaken by the Church to which I belong. In canonizing, or even beatifying those who are lost to us, the Holy See has long been accustomed to go into the evidence of such events as those to which Mr. Stephen has just referred, and that with a disposition to pick holes in the evidence, which, if he will allow me to say so, could hardly be surpassed even by so able a sifter of evidence as Mr. Stephen himself. Nor is it indeed necessary to go into the archives of these laborious and most sceptically conducted investigations. If there were but that predisposition amongst Protestants to believe in the evidence of the unseen which Dr. Ward desired to see, there would, I am convinced, be many 2647 LIVING AGE. VOL. LI, |