miracles in the course of events. There is perhaps one objection which is about as equally unjust as the objection of caprice; and that is the objection that faith in miracles, in teaching a belief in supernatural things, lends to introduce into the course of events something which is against nature. But since miracles, as a sign of divine teleology, manifest ends for which nature also is prepared, and through which the fallen nature of man, fallen by sin, is again restored; and since to the religious view of the world all natural phenomena and processes expressly rank among miracles, the faith in miracles teaches the contrary of an opposition to nature. It is incontestible--and will become still clearer and more certain to us through all farther investigation of the subject--that the acknowledgment of the idea of miracles as a necessary and a justified part of religiousness {372} stands and falls with the acknowledgment of a teleological view of the world. We certainly do not indulge in the foolish hope that with the deductions of this section we should be able suddenly to win over any of the decided adversaries of faith in providence and miracles. For, as we have had occasion to remind the reader, the acknowledgment or the non-acknowledgment of God and his living government in the world is not the result of this or that reflection and chain of conclusions, but rather an ethical action of the centre of human personality in which God discovers himself in his self-manifestation. Now, if this centre, in the freedom of its decision, has once denied the acknowledgment of God and his government, then the intellectual actions of the soul offer themselves to this atheistic and anti-theistic standpoint, and build up atheistic systems in which the ideas of providence and miracles naturally find no place. Thus system is opposed to system, although the one is not able to overcome the other. For the last and deepest power of conviction lies, neither for one nor the other system, in its chains of conclusions, in its superstructure, but in its foundation, its standpoint, and its principles; and the choosing of one or the other standpoint, the theistic or atheistic, is an ethical action which precedes methodical reasoning--or if it takes place at the same time or precedes it, has still deeper motives than those of more or less clear forms of mere reasoning. But we believe, and we wish and hope in our modest way to have shown by our present investigation, that the standpoint of faith also has its logical and justified science, and that it is able to appreciate the {373} world of the real more universally and candidly, and offers to logical reasoning fewer and less important difficulties, than the systems of atheism.