Note 36 — MIRACLES.

Since writing the above, I have lighted on the following passage in an able university sermon by one of the lecturers in the present course. I am glad to confirm what had struck my own mind, by quoting the words of so careful a reasoner. In reference to philosophic doubts directed against the idea of design, and the analogy between human and natural productions, he remarks: "This is evidently a very hard question, and if it properly belonged to the province of physical inquiry I should shrink from hazarding any investigation of its merits. But the question has overstepped the boundary of such sciences, and become a branch of philosophy. I may seem obscure in making this assertion, but you will see its truth if you consider for a moment the limit which divides science from philosophy. Sciences are often content to accept their principles, the lower from the higher (as Aristotle puts the case) in an ascending scale up to metaphysic, which, if it is anything at all, is the philosophy of first grounds so far as they are discoverable. While the various kinds of inquiry assume their several grounds as postulates, each keeps its separate and subordinate place. But one prime impulse of the human mind is unification, and thus, in every science, there springs up a tendency to ground itself. The moment this attempt is made, a science becomes a philosophy, and must be tested by the ordinary criteria of philosophic procedure."—Right and Wrong, by the Rev. W. Jackson, M.A.