e this very frequent case
of a certain limited variation from the order of nature as consistent
with the absence of miracle, and a certain degree of that variation as
inconsistent with it."

"Will you just state our criterion once more, with the limitation
attached; and then I shall know better whether we are certainly agreed
in the criterion we ought to employ?"

"I say, then," resumed Harrington, "that our uniform experience, that
of our friends and neighbors, and of all whose experience we have the
opportunity of testing, as to the order of nature,--meaning by that
either an order absolutely invariable, or varying only limits which
are themselves absolutely invariable,--justifies us in pronouncing an
event contradicting such experience to be all impossibility. If the
principle is worth any thing, let us embrace it, and inflexibly
apply it."

"And I, for one," replied Fellowes, "am quite satisfied with the
principle and the limitations you have laid down; and am so confident
of its correctness, that I do not hesitate to say that all the
miraculous histories on record are to be summarily rejected."

"For example," said Harrington, "we have seen the sun rise every morning
and set every evening all our lives; and every one whose experience
we can test has seen the same. Every man who has come into the world
has come into it but one way, and has as certainly gone out of it, and
has not returned; and every one whose experience we can test affirms
the same. We therefore conclude on this uniform and invariable
experience, that the same sequences took place yesterday and the day
before, and will take place tomorrow and the day after; and we
may fearlessly apply this principle both to the past and the future.
I know of no other reason for rejecting a miracle; and if I am to
apply the principle at all to phenomena which have not fallen under
my own observation, I must apply it without restriction."

"I am quite of your mind."

"You think, with me, that our experience,--the experience of those
about us,--the experience of all whose experience we have the means
of testing,--is sufficient to settle the question as to the experience
of those whose experience we have not the means of testing; who lived,
for example, a thousand years before we were born; or in a distant
part of the world, where we have never been?"

"Certainly: why should we hesitate so to apply it?"

"I am sure I know not; and you see I am not unwilling so