ied, until old age is
inclined to suspect that experience has nothing new to offer. And when
the experience of generation after generation is recorded, and a single
book tells us more than Methuselah could have learned, had he spent
every waking hour of his thousand years in learning; when apparent
disorders are found to be only the recurrent pulses of a slow working
order, and the wonder of a year becomes the commonplace of a century;
when repeated and minute examination never reveals a break in the chain
of causes and effects; and the whole edifice of practical life is built
upon our faith in its continuity; the belief that that chain has never
been broken and will never be broken, becomes one of the strongest and
most justifiable of human convictions. And it must be admitted to be a
reasonable request, if we ask those who would have us put faith in the
actual occurrence of interruptions of that order, to produce evidence
in favour of their view, not only equal, but superior, in weight to that
which leads us to adopt ours.

This is the essential argument of Hume's famous disquisition upon
miracles; and it may safely be declared to be irrefragable. But it must
be admitted that Hume has surrounded the kernel of his essay with a
shell of very doubtful value.

The first step in this, as in all other discussions, is to come to a
clear understanding as to the meaning of the terms employed.
Argumentation whether miracles are possible, and, if possible, credible,
is mere beating the air until the arguers have agreed what they mean by
the word "miracles."

Hume, with less than his usual perspicuity, but in accordance with a
common practice of believers in the miraculous, defines a miracle as a
"violation of the laws of nature," or as "a transgression of a law of
nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of
some invisible agent."

There must, he says,--

"be an uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise
the event would not merit that appellation. And as an uniform
experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full
proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any
miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed or the miracle rendered
credible but by an opposite proof which is superior."--(IV. p.
134.)

Every one of these dicta appears to be open to serious objection.

The word "miracle"--_miraculum_,--in its primitive