t utmost force of speculative intellect
is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment,
shall study to do ours:--

"Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly
begins the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile,
the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that
Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried
with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a
miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific,
do not I work a miracle, and magical '_Open sesame_!_'_ every time I
please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_, or
shut Turnpike?

"'But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?'
ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of
Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation
of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first
penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been,
brought to bear on us with its Material Force.

"Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground
shall one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that therefore
he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such
declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the
First Century, was full of meaning.

"'But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' cries
an illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move
by unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay I, too, must
believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without
variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that
Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be
prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable
rules. And now of you, too, I make the old inquiry: What those same
unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may
possibly be?

"They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated
records of Man's Experience?--Was Man with his Experience present at the
Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific
individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and
gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that
they read His ground-plan of the i