But in what form, it may be asked, or with what limitations, ought the Christian controversialist to avail himself, in this question, of the experience argument? Much ought to depend, I reply, on the position taken up by the opposite side. We find no direct reference made by the author of the “Vestiges” to the anti-miracle argument, first broached by Hume, in a purely metaphysical shape, in his well-known “Inquiry,” and afterwards thrown into the algebraic form by La Place, in his _Essai philosophique sur les Probabilités_. But we do not detect its influences operative throughout the entire work. It is because of some felt impracticability on the part of its author, of attaining to the prevailing belief in the _miracle_ of creation, that he has recourse, instead, to the so-called _law_ of development. The _law_ and the _miracle_ are the alternatives placed before him; and, rejecting the _miracle_, he closes with the _law_. Now, in such circumstances, he can have no more cause of complaint, if, presenting him with the experience argument of Hume and La Place, we demand that he square the evidence regarding the existence of his _law_ strictly according to its requirements, than the soldier of an army that charged its field-pieces with rusty nails would have cause of complaint if he found himself wounded by a missile of a similar kind, sent against him by the artillery of the enemy. You cannot, it might be fairly said, in addressing him, acquiesce in the miracle here, because, as a violation of the laws of nature, there are certain objections, founded on invariable experience, which bear direct against your belief in it. Well, here are the objections, in the strongest form in which they have yet been stated; and here is your hypothesis respecting the development of marine algæ into terrestrial plants. We hold that against that hypothesis the objections bear at least as directly as against any miracle whatever,—nay, that not only is it contrary to an invariable experience, but opposed also to all testimony. We regard it as a mere idle dream. Maillet dreamed it,—and Lamarck dreamed it,—and Oken dreamed it; but none of them did more than merely dream it: its existence rests on exactly the same basis of evidence as that of Whang the miller’s “monstrous pot of gold and diamonds,” of which he dreamed three nights in succession, but which he never succeeded in finding. If we are in error in our estimate, here is the argument, and here the hypothesis; give us, in support of the hypothesis, the amount of evidence, founded on a solid experience, which the argument demands.