mankind."

"Nay, I cannot agree with you. I hope far other wise, and far better
for the human race."

"But will the result not contradict your uniform experience, if your
hopes be realized? Is not your experience sufficiently long and
sufficiently varied to show that the belief of miracles and all sorts
of prodigies is the normal condition of mankind, and that it is only
a comparatively few who can discern that uniform experience justifies
man in believing that no miracle is possible? While it teaches us that
a miracle is impossible does it not also teach us that, though none
is possible, it is nevertheless impossible that they should not
be generally believed? Is not this taught us as plainly by our
uniform experience as any thing else? See how fairly Hume admits this
at the commencement of his Essay on Miracles. He says, 'I flatter
myself that I have discovered an argument which, if just, will, with
the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of
superstitious delusion, and consequently will be useful as long as the
world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles
and prodigies be found in all histories, sacred and profane.' Thus
are we led to the conclusion, that, though miracles never can be real,
they will nevertheless be always believed; and that, though the truth
is with us, it never can be established in the minds of men in general.
And, my dear friend, let us be thankful that it never can; for if it
could, that fact would have proved the possibility of miracles by
contradicting one of those very deductions from uniform experience on
the validity of which their impossibility is demonstrated.

"These are some of the perplexities," continued Harrington, "which,
as Theaetetus says, sometimes make 'My head dizzy,' when I revolve
the subject. Meantime, surely a nobler spectacle can hardly present
itself than our fairly abiding by our principle, amidst so many
plausible difficulties as assail it. I know no one principle in
theology or philosophy which has been so battered as that of Hume.
Not only Campbell, Paley, and so many more, confidently affirm errors
in it,--such as his assuming individual or general experience to
be universal; his quietly attributing to individual experience a belief
of facts which are believed by the vast mass of mankind on testimony,
and nothing else; his representing the experience of a man who says
he has seen a certain event as 'contrary' to the experi