processes of the nineteenth century should have been anticipated in the
first, that men should be miraculously guided to supply a kind of
evidence which would be utterly superfluous at the time in order to be
convincing eighteen hundred years afterwards. This would indeed have put
the miraculous incidents in the New Testament narrative altogether out
of place, and made the miracles more important than the Revelation which
they were worked to introduce.

Now, if these two conditions are borne in mind, it is difficult to see
what better evidence could be obtained of a miraculous life than we
possess concerning the life of our Lord.

The moral and spiritual evidence is His own character which
intentionally overshadows all the rest, and it is inconceivable that He
should have made a false claim. And the material evidence is the
testimony of men who freely gave their lives in proof of what they said.
Nor has anything yet been said or written to shake Paley's argument on
this point.

But, if we pass on to the other objection, that no evidence can ever be
sufficient to prove a miracle because the evidence for the uniformity of
nature is so overwhelming, we can only see in such an assertion an
instance of that inability to get out of an accustomed groove against
which Science has perpetually to guard. In Science the uniformity of
nature is so indispensable a postulate, that without it we cannot stir a
step. And if the student of Science is to admit a breach, it can only be
by stepping outside of his science for the time and conceiving the
possibility that there is some other truth beside scientific truth, and
some other kind of evidence beside scientific evidence. We have all
heard of the need of guarding against the bondage in which custom binds
the mind. We have heard of the student who when first he saw a
locomotive looked perseveringly for the horses that impelled it, because
he had never known, and consequently could not imagine any other mode of
producing such motion. But this danger attends not only the separate
investigations which Science makes into phenomena; it attends Science as
a whole. And it is necessary repeatedly to insist on the fact that
Science has not proved and cannot prove that the scientific domain is
co-extensive with nature itself.

The evidence for the uniformity of nature consists in the fact that from
the beginning of Science the known reign of physical law has been
steadily extending without