Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

more full cognizance rather than to that which is contradicted by all that we do know. It may be "irrational " to feel entire confidence that the sun will "rise" tomorrow, or that the moon will continue to wax and wane as in the past, but we shall without doubt retain this belief, and reject any assertion, however positive, that the earth will stand still to-morrow, or that it did so some thousands of years ago. Evidence must take its relative place in the finite scale of knowledge and thought, and if we do not absolutely know anything whatever, so long as one thing is more fully established than another, we must hold to that which rests upon the more certain basis. Our belief in the invariability of the order of nature, therefore, being based upon more certain grounds than any other human opinion, we must of necessity refuse credence to a statement supported by infinitely less complete testimony, and contradicted by universal experience, that phenomena subversive of that order occurred many years ago, or we must cease to believe anything at all. If belief based upon unvarying experience be irrational, how much more irrational must belief be which is opposed to that experience. According to Dr. Mozley, it is quite irrational to believe that a stone dropped from the hand, for instance, will fall to the ground. It is true that all the stones we ourselves have ever dropped, or seen dropped, have so fallen, and equally true that all stones so dropped as far back as historic records, and those still more authentic and ancient records of earth's crust itself go, have done the same, but that does not justify our belief, upon any grounds of reason, that the next stone we drop will do So. If we be told, however, that upon one occasion a stone so dropped, instead of falling to the ground, rose

up into the air and continued there, we have only two courses open to us: either to disbelieve the fact, and attribute the statement to error of observation, or to reduce the past to a mere irrelevant picture, and the mind to a blank page equally devoid of all belief and of all intelligent reasoning.

cause.

Dr. Mozley's argument, however, is fatal to his own It is admitted that miracles, "or visible suspensions of the order of nature,' "1 cannot have any evidential force unless they be supernatural, and out of the natural sequence of ordinary phenomena. Now, unless there be an actual order of nature, how can there be any exception to it? If our belief in it be not based upon any ground of reason,-as Dr. Mozley maintains, in order to assert that miracles or visible suspensions of that order are not contrary to reason,-how can it be asserted that miracles are supernatural? If we have no rational ground for believing that the future will be like the past, what rational ground can we have for thinking that anything which happens is exceptional, and out of the common course of nature? Because it has not happened before? That is no reason whatever; because the fact that a thing has happened ten millions of times is no rational justification of our expectation that it will happen again. If the reverse of that which had happened previously took place on the ten million and first time we should have no rational ground for surprise, and no reason for affirming that it did not occur in the most natural manner. Because we cannot explain its cause? We cannot explain the cause of anything. Our belief that there is any permanent cause is a mere unintelligent impulse. We can only say that there is a cause suffi1 Bampton Lectures, 1865, p. 6.

If there be no

cient to produce an isolated effect, but we do not know the nature of that cause, and it is a mere irrational instinct to suppose that any cause produces continuous effects, or is more than momentary. A miracle, consequently, becomes a mere isolated effect from an unknown cause, in the midst of other merely isolated phenomena from unknown causes, and it is as irrational to wonder at the occurrence of what is new, as to expect the recurrence of what is old. In fact, an order of nature is at once necessary, and fatal, to miracles. order of nature, miracles cannot be considered supernatural occurrences, and have no evidential value; if there be an order of nature, the evidence for its immutability must consequently exceed the evidence for these isolated deviations from it. If we are unable rationally to form expectations of the future from unvarying experience in the past, it is still more irrational to call that supernatural which is merely different from our past experience. Take, for instance, the case of supposed exemption from the action of the law of gravitation, which Archbishop Trench calls "a lost prerogative of our race" we cannot rationally affirm that next week we may not be able to walk on the sea, or ascend bodily into the air. To deny this because we have not hitherto been able to do so is unreasonable; for, as Dr. Mozley maintains, it is a mere irrational impulse which expects that which has hitherto happened, when we have made such attempts, to happen again next week. If we cannot rationally deny the possibility, however, that we may be able at some future time to walk on the sea or ascend into the air, the statement that these phenomena have already occurred loses all its force, and such occur1 Notes on Miracles, p. 32 f., p. 291 f.

rences cease to be in any way supernatural. If, on the other hand, it would be irrational to affirm that we may next week become exempt from the operation of the law of gravitation, it can only be so by the admission that unvarying experience forbids the entertainment of such a hypothesis, and in that case it equally forbids belief in the statement that such acts ever actually took place. If we deny the future possibility on any ground of reason, we admit that we have grounds of reason for expecting the future to be like the past, and therefore contradict Dr. Mozley's conclusion; and if we cannot deny it upon any ground of reason, we extinguish the claim of such occurrences in the past to any supernatural character. Any argument which could destroy faith in the order of nature would be equally destructive to miracles. If we have no right to believe in a rule, there can be no right to speak of exceptions. The result in any case is this, that whether the principle of the order of nature be established or refuted, the supernatural pretensions of miracles are disallowed.

More than this, however, must inevitably be deduced from Dr. Mozley's reasoning. In denying, as he does, the doctrine of a permanent cause, Dr. Mozley must equally renounce, as without foundation in reason, the assumption of a permanent agent working miracles. Not only do the supposed miracles, in the complete isolation of all effects, cease to be supernatural or even exceptional, but as it cannot be affirmed that there is any cause of a nature more permanent than its existing or known effects, it is obvious that miracles cannot be traced to an eternal Being of permanent omnipotence. If Dr. Mozley, therefore, be understood to adopt this reasoning as his own, he has involved himself in the

necessary abandonment both of miracles as supernatural occurrences, and of a permanent and unlimited cause of miracles. If, on the other hand, he has merely snatched the sword of an adversary to turn it against him, he has unfortunately impaled himself upon the borrowed

weapon.

2.

THROUGHOUT the whole of his argument against the rationality of belief in the order of nature, the rigorous precision which Dr. Mozley unrelentingly demands from his antagonists is remarkable. They are not permitted to deviate by a hair's breadth from the line of strict logic, and the most absolute exactness of demonstration is required. Anything like an assumption or argument from analogy is excluded; induction is allowed to add no reason to bare and isolated facts; and the belief that the sun will rise to-morrow morning is, with pitiless severity, written down as mere unintelligent impulse. Belief in the return of day, based upon the unvarying experience of all past time, is declared to be without any ground of reason. We find anything but fault with strictness of argument; but it is fair that equal precision should be observed by those who assert miracles, and that assumption and inaccuracy should be excluded. Hitherto, as we have frequently pointed out, we have met with very little or nothing but assumption in support of miracles; but, encouraged by the inflexible spirit of Dr. Mozley's attack upon the argument from experience, we may look for similar precision from himself.

« ForrigeFortsett »