laims and to consider their
character, their purpose, their results, their credentials, because the
mere supposition of them violates the fundamental conception and
condition of science, absolute and invariable law, as well as that
common-sense persuasion which everybody has, whether philosopher or
not, of the uniformity of the order of the world.

II

To make room for reason to come in and pronounce upon miracles on their
own merits--to clear the ground for the consideration of their actual
claims by disposing of the antecedent objection of impossibility, is
Mr. Mozley's main object.

Whatever difficulty there is in believing in miracles in general
arises from the circumstance that they are in contradiction to or
unlike the order of nature. To estimate the force of this
difficulty, then, we must first understand what kind of belief it
is which we have in the order of nature; for the weight of the
objection to the miraculous must depend on the nature of the
belief to which the miraculous is opposed.

His examination of the alleged impossibility of miracles may be
described as a very subtle turning the tables on Hume and the empirical
philosophy. For when it is said that it is contrary to reason to
believe in a suspension of the order of nature, he asks on what ground
do we believe in the order of nature; and Hume himself supplies the
answer. There is nothing of which we have a firmer persuasion. It is
the basis of human life and knowledge. We assume at each step, without
a doubt, that the future will be like the past. But why? Hume has
carefully examined the question, and can find no answer, except the
fact that we do assume it. "I apprehend," says Mr. Mozley, accepting
Hume's view of the nature of probability, "that when we examine the
different reasons which may be assigned for this connection, i.e. for
the belief that the future will be like the past, they all come at last
to be mere statements of the belief itself, and not reasons to account
for it."

Let us imagine the occurrence of a particular physical phenomenon
for the first time. Upon that single occurrence we should have but
the very faintest expectation of another. If it did occur again
once or twice, so far from counting on another recurrence, a
cessation would come as the more natural event to us. But let it
occur a hundred times, and we should feel no hesitation in
inviting persons from a di