consider; and is precisely of the same nature as that which enters into
his every-day calculations of probability; While the objections are
founded entirely on our ignorance and presumption. They suppose that we
know more of the modes of the divine administration--of what God may
have permitted, of what is possible and impossible to the ultimate
development of an imperfectly developed system, and its relations to the
entire universe,--than we do or can know.*
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* The possible implications of Christianity with distant regions of the
universe, and the dim hints which hints which Scripture seems to throw
out as to such implication, are beautifully treated in the 4th, 5th,
and 6th of Chalmer's 'Astronomical Discourses;' and we need not tell the
read of Butler how much he insists upon similar considerations.
____

Of these objections the most widely felt and the most specious,
especially in our day, is the assumption that miracles are an
impossibility+; and yet we will venture to say that there 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!
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+ It is, as we shall see, the avowed axiom of Strauss; he even