1. But, at the very threshold of our inquiry we are met by the assertion, that a miracle, however defined, is in itself simply impossible. Impossible! In what sense impossible? Does it mean impossible to man, or impossible to God? Impossible to man, of course, it is. That impossibility enters into the popular idea of a miracle. Man has no such control over nature as to be able to produce one. But if it be said a miracle is impossible to God, such an impossibility involves the extension of human inability to God Himself. It involves either the idea, that nature has ever been independent of God, or the idea, that if produced by Him, He is no longer Lord of His own works--this Lordship having been surrendered by His will, or having escaped from His hands. Summarily disposing of this gross anthropomorphism, we find behind it the dogma of Spinoza, that there is nothing transcendental anywhere, no transcendental beginnings, no transcendental interpositions; for God and nature are one through the eternities. In the wake of Spinoza's philosophy follows the modern axiom--"to recognise the impossibility even of any two material atoms subsisting together without a determinate relation--of any action of the one on the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without reference to a physical cause--of any modification whatsoever in the existing conditions of material agents, _unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences, following in some necessary chain of orderly connexion_."[34] Here, _in limine_, before examining this principle, let me observe, once for all, that miracles do by no means cast any slur upon the settled order of nature, as if it were faulty and imperfect, and required correction or supplement for effectuating its proper ends--as frail constructions in engineering departments of human contrivance need subsequent repairs. Nature is perfect enough for her own ends; miracles are introduced for other and higher purposes. This requires to be borne in mind throughout our entire discussion.