[162] [Papists urge that the actual conversion of the bread and wine in the Eucharist is an invisible miracle. But an invisible miracle is such because wrought under circumstances which exclude examination: while transubstantiation invites and facilitates examination. It is wrought publicly, and constantly, and yet cannot be discovered to be a miracle. Indeed it supposes the working of a second miracle, to make the first invisible.]
[163] [Paley shows conclusively that a denial of miracles leads not only to a denial of revelation, but a denial of the existence of God, all of whose extraordinary acts are necessarily miraculous.]
[164] [Whately, in his Logic, b. iii., has shown the folly of the Deistical attempts to explain our Savior’s miracles as mere natural events. Having labored to show this of some one of the miracles, they then do so as to another, and thence infer that all were accidental conjunctures of natural circumstances. He says, they might as well argue “that because it is not improbable one may throw sixes once in a hundred throws, therefore it is no more improbable that one may throw sixes a hundred times running.”Fitzgerald says, “the improbability of a whole series of strange natural events, taking place unaccountably, one after another, amounts to a far greater improbability than is involved in the admission of miracles.”]
[165] [That man, at first, must have had supernatural instructions, or in other words some revelations, is shown by Archbishop Whately in his “Origin of Civilization.” Rev. Samuel Stanhope Smith expresses his conviction, both from reason and history, that man in his savage state could not even have preserved life without instruction from his Creator.]
[166] [The maintenance by the Jews, of a system of pure Theism, through so many and so rude ages, without being superior, or even equal to their neighbors, in science and civilization, can only be accounted for on the presumption of a revelation.]
[168] [Mills (Logic, chap. 24, § 5,) points out what he deems a mistake of “some of the writers against Hume on Miracles,” in confounding the improbability of an event, before its occurrence, with the improbability afterwards; that is, considering them equal in degree. He fully proves that the great Laplace fell into this error, and the student should consult the passage.Prof. Fitzgerald holds Butler to have fallen into the mistake adverted to by Mills; and quotes the latter author in a way which seems to make him say that such is his opinion also. I do not so understand Mills, nor do I see that Butler has confounded these meanings; but the very contrary. He expressly affirms, and most truly, that the strongest presumption may lie against “the most ordinary facts before the proof which yet is overcome by almost any proof.” Butler’s position here, may be thus illustrated. Suppose a hundred numbers to be put in a box, and it is proposed to draw out the number 42. Now there are 99 chances to 1 against drawing that, or any other given number. But suppose a child tells you he put the hundred numbers into a box, and drew out one, and it proved to be 42; you at once believe, for that was as likely to come as any other.The proof of Christianity from prophecy becomes amazingly strong, thus viewed. There are many predictions, for instance that Christ should be born at a certain time, and place, and under certain very particular circumstances. The probabilities against such a conjuncture of events are almost infinite; yet they happened exactly as foretold.]
[169] [For instance, a mass of ice or snow, may imperceptibly accumulate for an age, and then suddenly fall and overwhelm a village. Or a planet, or comet, may have been gradually nearing our earth for a million of years, without producing, as yet, any effect on our orbit; but in process of time, its proximity may work great changes in our condition.]