ciples of right, that the good prospered and the bad failed; but
this view has vanished before observation, and, by those who demand an
exact accordance between conduct and fortunes, the final compensations
of life have been relegated to the other world.

+1011+. The belief in miracles, however, has never completely vanished
from the world. A miracle is an intervention by the deity whereby a
natural law is set aside. No a priori reasoning can ever prove or
disprove the possibility of miracles--such proof or disproof would
involve complete knowledge of the universe or of the divine power in the
universe, and this is impossible for man. The indisposition to accept a
miracle has arisen from the conviction that the demand for interventions
that set aside the natural order is a reflection on the wisdom of the
Creator's arrangement of the world, and further from long-continued
observation of the dominance of natural law, and, when appeal is made to
alleged miraculous occurrences, from the arbitrary way in which,
according to the reports, these have been introduced. In the records of
peoples we find that miracles increase in number and magnitude in
proportion as we go back to dim times without exact historical
documents. They appear, it is held, in connection usually with
insignificant affairs while the really great affairs in later times are
left without miraculous elements.[1828] The history of the world, so
historical science holds, receives a satisfactory explanation from the
character of the general laws of human nature, and the principle of
parsimony demands that no unnecessary elements of action be introduced
into affairs. The exclusion of miracles from the world does not exclude
divine agency and government; it only defines the latter as being in
accordance with man's observation of natural law.

+1012+. Philosophy constructs the constitution of the deity and the
relation of divine elements to the world. Whether the deity stands
outside of the world or within it, whether the divine power is unitary
or dual or plural, or whether there is any need to assume a power
outside of physical nature--these are the questions that are discussed
by philosophy, whose conclusions sometimes favor a religious view of the
world, sometimes oppose it. Few persons are able to follow elaborate
philosophic lines of thought--the majority of men accept the simple
doctrine of a personal god who is generally supposed to stand outside of
the wor