Let us have it fixed in our minds—no facts are known to reason. Thus the facts of Christ's existence in the world, or His miracles, cannot be the subject of reasoning, but of sense or testimony. All the conclusions of reasoning, or the inductions of man's mind, are founded on facts which are known without those, and form the basis on which they are grounded. But, further, experience does not touch the origin of that of which observation takes notice. The experience being of phenomena cannot go beyond phenomena. Thus, the sun rises; but what makes it rise? We may find successive sequences (and come to where we can go no farther), as well as immediate ones; but this alters nothing. First or last we come to a point where something has produced the facts, or produces the facts, which form the experience. With that something science has nothing to do. Science does not go beyond the phenomena and conclusions from it. But here I come to a power producing these facts or these laws, of which reason has no cognizance. I do exist. I did not always exist. I began to exist. Of that, the first cause to which it leads, there can be no experience. Now whether I take “causa causata,” or “causa causans,” it is all one. I have something that has given rise to the phenomena, something which science cannot touch or reason about—admits it cannot (even Mill and materialists do). That is, a thing being no matter of experience and yet existing is certain. If I say anything had a beginning, clearly when it began, it was contrary to experience, or rather no experience did or could exist. This cannot exist, till the constant succession expressed by general laws had lasted long enough to be known as such. Science tells us things had a beginning. That is, there was a time when judging by experience had no place at all, and yet facts were there and true, or experience never could have come to exist.
I quote one passage from Mill: “This class of considerations leads to a conception which we shall find to be of great importance; that of a permanent cause, or original natural agent. There exists in nature a number of permanent causes, which have subsisted ever since the human race has been in existence...... These have existed, and the effects or consequences which they were fitted to produce have taken place (as often as the other conditions of the production met) from the very beginning of our experience. But we can give no account of the origin of the permanent causes themselves. Why these particular natural agents existed originally, and no others, or why they are commingled in each and such proportions, and distributed in such and such a manner throughout space, is a question we cannot answer.......The co-existence therefore of primeval causes ranks to us among merely casual occurrences. Not only, for instance, is the earth itself a permanent cause the rotation itself is entitled to be ranked as a permanent cause. It is, however, only the origin of the rotation which is mysterious to us.” This last I may touch on, but do not pursue here. He then states that no event happens in the known universe, which does not depend on some preceding one, the necessary, or, in other words, the unconditional consequence of some former collocation of the permanent causes. He admits that these effects, though invariable while these causes co-exist, would, if the co-existence terminates, terminate along with it. “We can only calculate on finding these sequences or co-existences where we know by direct evidence that the natural agents—on the properties of which they ultimately depend—are distributed in the requisite manner.” —Logic (Ed. eighth, pp. 398-400). But all this, “at least unless some new condition of a power capable of constructing the universe should supervene” (400).
Another able materialist, but who declares himself at the same time a Christian, arrives at the same result, after quoting indeed part of what is quoted above from Mill.
The method of science is thus essentially skeptical, and continually leads to reject all interference of casual powers, not themselves phenomena, till we reach a point where analysis can go no farther, and we are compelled to admit a primordial cause or causes, of whose nature logic and science can tell us nothing.
Thus we are conducted to a blank wall by a method which is wholly powerless to penetrate the mystery which lies behind. The only thing it conducts to not really what these authors say. The last says, “What we may term logical or negative atheism;” the former, who could not—being melancholy almost to madness for several years—but see the misery and degradation in which men were and even creation itself, and, not believing in the fall of man, concluded that a God of very feeble power, but in the main benevolent, had made the best He was able out of the materials He had at hand! The simple and only true history of the matter is this—man is so, constituted that he cannot conceive a thing which has a form or individual existence without a cause. He sees something so existing: it came into existence by a cause. Hence he goes on to a primordial cause, because he cannot conceive anything existing without one. But this is exactly what a first cause does; it exists without one. That is, he cannot conceive it. He knows it must be. What it is he cannot conceive. That is where man's mind ends, so that such is the result of science; “it conducts us to a blank wall by a method which is wholly powerless to penetrate the mystery which lies behind.” Poor comfort to those led by it! or, to use the larger work, and say with Mr. Mill, “We can give no account of the origin of the permanent causes themselves. Why these particular natural agents existed originally, and no others, or why, etc., is a question we cannot answer.”
Now, in these statements, the substantive truth of which cannot be denied, we have the proof that the whole a priori argument against miracles entirely fails. Science, based on experience, reaches no farther than the actual sensible Course of things already set in motion within the present limits of our senses or experimental discovery. Now, within that course—and science know nothing, but that, as science—we have of course no reason to expect a change so far as we reason from that; and this is all we can do. It is indeed tautology. It would not be a course of things else. But it does do something more. It leads us to the blind wall, to its own end, but to what discloses that there is something of which it knows nothing; for it proves that everything we know comes from something that preceded it. This is a fixed principle, then. There are primeval causes of which we know nothing but that they exist, safe that they must have a cause of which science is simply, wholly, ignorant, and cannot touch, as beyond its kind and sphere of knowledge. Things exist of which to science the origin is not known. What the men of science know is only the actual course things follow when they exist. Of their origin, of the force which gave them that course, what imposed on them the form of operations we find them to have, of everything that is constituent, science is ignorant; the constituent it cannot inquire into. Not only this, but it must, for its conclusion have the circumstances, the collocations of existing things, their condition of existence, just the same; or else all conclusion fail, indeed are false, and have no basis, for they are drawn from what exists. Hence the condition is inserted by Mr. Mill, and very justly, “unless there is a counteracting cause.” One step farther. Mr. Mill tells us, that any one who knew all the agents, their collocations in space, the laws of their agency, could predict the whole subsequent history of the universe, at least unless some new volition capable of constructing the universe should supervene. Now, there is not much science in this; which merely says that a state of things going a regular course would continue what it is unless something changed it: a proposition which (I suppose) no one would contradict, save by reason of another possibility that the course is a changing one (as is said to be the case), so as to come to an end.
Farther, I must add that it is not necessary to change the universe: a power which could originate anything could do that without changing an atom, anything whatever, of the regular course of things, though it might introduce something which was not of that course. Thus a man might rise from the dead and go to heaven, or an angel come down from heaven and leave the course actually known to science untouched. I am not saying any such thing happened, but that a power which can originate does not necessarily change anything in. that beyond which science cannot go. Men may go on eating, drinking, dying, and an. angel come down, or a man may be raised, without anything of experienced phenomenal order being changed. This might go on as usual, and, physically speaking, its course be predicted jest as before. When the man died, science came to its absolute end, to the blind wall, as much as in primeval causes at the other end, and the angel go away again, and no one care whether he had been here or not. Science can know nothing but the existing course of phenomena, and presume its continuance as it is, if nothing interfere. If he attempts to go farther, it must say, I cannot answer, or knock its head against a blind wall.
But then, mark, we have this positively recognized, that there is a primeval cause, perhaps causes (for. they do not like to own one—it would be too near God—though Mr. Mill in the most wretched way did), whose origin is wholly unaccounted for. Science has its sole task to investigate their course when they are at work; but their origin and the origin of the laws which govern their course must be ascribed to a source of which science is ignorant. The course they follow is the whole it can inquire, into; their existence is a “casual circumstance,” stands by itself, is no part of the general law which science can discover when it is in operation. The conservation of force now insisted on alters this in nothing; it is only a more general law which we cannot apply beyond the, universe subject to observation, nor does it reveal its origin more than the rest. Let evolution be true, which in some respects, it may be, and cells and protoplasm be the starting-point of everything. You only have the starting-point of development—only what is material with possible action, as organic, on mind. As to the origin, you are exactly where you were. A volition capable of originating, science can tell nothing of—cannot say it does not exist. For science, save that there is the insuperable conviction of a cause, it is the other side of a blind wall.
This being so, all that denies the possibility or credibility of a miracle is wholly out of court. Experience has nothing to do with it. It is not the subject of its knowledge, or the knowledge would not be experience. This knows the course of what is, and nothing more; but the origin of all that is, and of the force that acts in the uniform operations which they call a general law is out of their reach, but must be, for these things so governed exist; and it may of course operate independently now, as it did in the origin, when it could not be a matter of science, for the knowledge of a general law was only when they had existed long enough, and been so operated on as to enable them to predicate a course. Of these causes or cause there never was knowledge in science. They were there when the ground of science was laid. They had an origin, and what originated them may originate a miracle, a casual circumstance; for the things originated were only “casual circumstances” at first. Science can tell us nothing about those “casual circumstances:” such are altogether out of its sphere. No experience, applies here, and so of miracles.
I do not say this proves any particular miracles true, but it proves the reasoning as to their credibility and possibility utterly foundationless and false. Whatever power produced was the origin of the first, may be of the other, and is just as active in one as in the other. All the appeal to experience is only to say that the continued action of general laws, which they can explain as a mere fact, is not the same as the power that originated them, which they cannot explain at all. And even this, which in a certain sense may be admitted, so far as that it is a different kind of exercise of it, they cannot say. For my own part, I am satisfied that the force or power which created and set the universe in movement is a power which keeps it in movement. The material world would not move itself unless it was moved, and the power and will which started it must always operate to continue it, or it could not continue. This is the true conservation of force: the perpetual operation of divine will, just as it operated at the beginning in setting what appears now as general laws aging. It is always exactly the same thing. This force was acted by and followed a certain order in starting, by will and power, and it continues by the same power and will every instant. It has never been proved that the power which sustains is not the same power which at first. originated. Science knows no more of one than the other. It only know, phenomena and the recognition of general laws by which they are governed, that is, the fact of constant sequence, or uniform effects when all is already there, the whole of which is as to its existence confessed to be a casual circumstance, just as a miracle is. Both are known by sense or testimony, and by no other means.
The infidel argument is utterly illogical. It is this— “We cannot admit a proposition as a law of nature, and yet believe a fact in real contradiction of it. We must either disbelieve the alleged fact, or believe we were mistaken in admitting the supposed law.” But this is merely, saying, there is no possible power in existence but the law of nature; which is not only not proved, but the contrary is admitted. We have seen that it is admitted that there are primeval causes, of which science knows nothing—that is, were contrary to experience. The effect B, they say, must follow from A, as it has always done, unless there be some counteracting cause; confining thus all possibilities to the existing phenomena. This assumes the whole question, denying anything else can be, yet admitting primeval causes. That anything happens not the consequence of existing phenomena, they say, must be disbelieved. A general conclusion that the usual phenomena will follow no one disputes, because it always has. How the phenomena themselves did originally, unless it be a changing, not an unchanging, course. But it is not the question. That is, whether Z cannot do something which is neither A nor B, or set A in motion to produce B. The consequence is supposed in the order of known phenomena. But the conclusion cannot go beyond a positive one: that there will happen a consequence when these causes act according to the known course. The act of power (for law is not power, but order produced by power) cannot be touched by that order, unless originating be denied; for this is power independent of existing order; and an origin, no part of the sphere of science, is admitted: were it not, its possibility cannot be denied. With that science has nothing to do. Mill then takes the ground that we must first believe in the existence of a being with supernatural powers before we can believe miracles. Now this proceeds on the supposition of our large ignorance of natural causes: a pretty plea for men of science who profess so to know nature, that the course of it is so fixed, that we cannot believe anything that contradicts that course—nay, which is not part of it. Now, when there is the consciousness that they cannot be denied, there must be previously the belief of supernatural power. But supposing we did so believe, which it is clear to me that we may and must without any miracles at all, that would not help us on a bit, because on their own sheaving it may be from some unknown cause. Nay, they say that He who formed the cause could not interrupt it! But this previous belief is not necessary. I may now assume miracles for the question is their cause. Events happen which no known cause—ever yet produced. They happen not of themselves. There is no antecedent natural cause discoverable. They happen only by the intervention of particular persons, and do not exist when these are not there. A man walks on the sea, stops the earth going round, raises a dead man, who was buried and passing into corruption. All outward evil disappears before a given individual, a word suffices even when he is not there. No sorrow or evil withstands his word. The facts happen before hundreds of thousands, and to thousands; and nobody is able to call them in question. They cannot deny it.
You say, But I do not believe what really would be miracles, as Joshua's stopping the day, or Lazarus' resurrection, etc. I quite understand you; but you do not believe, because they would prove the supernatural power if admitted. Now that is our present question, and you contradict your own statement. And I say, that a man who could deny that miracles cannot prove miraculous or supernatural powers, as they might be attributed to causes unknown to boasting science, ought not to write on logic, or pretend to analyze the true character of induction. “Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought". The truth of alleged miracles may of course be disputed, their character investigated; but to say that miracles, if true, cannot prove supernatural power, but that this must be first assumed, is in every sense absurd, and worthy only of infidelity, or of men of Science who cannot get beyond phenomena and the petty investigations of the general laws which govern them: very entertaining, I admit, but in no possible case leading to a right affection or the sense of moral obligation.