themselves.(1) The Jewish idea of God was equally anthropomorphic; but their highest conception was certainly that which the least resembled themselves, and which described the Almighty as "without variableness or shadow of turning," and as giving a law to the universe which shall not be broken.(2)
3.
None of the arguments with which we have yet met have succeeded in making miracles in the least degree antecedently credible. On the contrary they have been based upon mere assumptions incapable of proof and devoid of probability. On the other hand there are the strongest reasons for affirming that such phenomena are antecedently incredible. Dr. Mozley's attack which we discussed in the first part of this chapter, and which of course was chiefly based upon Hume's celebrated argument,
never seriously grappled the doctrine at all. The principle which opposes itself to belief in miracles is very simple. Whatever is contradictory to universal and invariable experience is antecedently incredible, and as that sequence of phenomena which is called the order of nature is established by and in accordance with universal experience, miracles or alleged violations of that order, by whatever name they may be called, or whatever definition may be given of their characteristics or object, are antecedently incredible. The preponderance of evidence for the invariability of the order of nature, in fact, is so enormous that it is impossible to credit the reality of such variations from it, and reason and experience concur in attributing the ascription of a miraculous character to any actual occurrences which may have been witnessed to imperfect observation, mistaken inference or some other of the numerous sources of error. Any allegation of the interference of a new and supernatural agent, upon such an occasion, to account for results, in contradiction of the known sequence of cause and effect, is excluded by the very same principle, for invariable experience being as opposed to the assertion that such interference ever takes place as it is to the occurrence of miraculous phenomena, the allegation is necessarily disbelieved.
Apologists find it much more convenient to evade the simple but effective arguments of Hume than to answer them, and where it is possible they dismiss them with a sneer, and hasten on to less dangerous ground. For instance, a recent Hulsean Lecturer, arguing the antecedent credibility of the miraculous, makes the following remarks: "Now, as regards the inadequacy of testimony to establish a miracle, modern scepticism has not advanced
one single step beyond the blank assertion. And it is astonishing that this assertion should still be considered cogent, when its logical consistency has been shattered to pieces by a host of writers as well sceptical as Christian (Mill's Logic, ii., 157—160). For, as the greatest of our living logicians has remarked, the supposed recondite and dangerous formula of Hume—that it is more probable that testimony should be mistaken than that miracles should be true—reduces itself to the very harmless proposition that anything is incredible which is contrary to a complete induction. It is in fact a flagrant petitio principii, used to support a wholly unphilosophical assertion."(1) It is much more astonishing that so able a man as Dr. Farrar could so misunderstand Hume's argument and so misinterpret and mis-state Mr. Mill's remarks upon it. So far from shattering to pieces the logical consistency of Hume's reasoning, Mr. Mill substantially confirms it, and pertinently remarks that "it speaks ill for the state of philosophical speculation on such subjects" that so simple and evident a doctrine should have been accounted a dangerous heresy. It is, in fact, the statement of a truth which should have been universally recognized, and would have been so, but for its unwelcome and destructive bearing upon popular theology.
Mr. Mill states the evident principle, that—"If an alleged fact be in contradiction, not to any number of approximate generalizations, but to a completed generalization grounded on a rigorous induction, it is said to be impossible, and is to be disbelieved totally." Mr. Mill continues.: "This last principle, simple and evident as it
