In his famous essay on Miracles, Hume took up the remarkable position, that even if miracles happened, their occurrence could not be established by testimony ; for, without troubling ourselves with any metaphysical discussion about their objective
* Religion innerhalb der Grenson der blossen Vernunf?, p. 99, ed. Rosenkranz,
t Lettres de la Montagne, iil,
t Spectator, Feb. 10, 1866,
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possibility, they may be seen to be subjectively incredible. Hume’s case has otten been argued since his day, but it is doubtful if any writer has ever presented it in a more plausible form than its original advocate ; and it will therefore be best te take it in his own words:
“A miracle,’ he says, ‘is a violation of the laws of p sture ; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined, . . . It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet heen frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. . . . The consequence is that no testi- mony is suflicient to establish a miracle, wndess the iestimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miracu- lous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. Or, briefly, it is contrary to experience that a miracle should be true, but not contrary to experience that testimony should be false.’
2. In this argument a careful observer will not fail to observe that the point to be proved is assumed at the outset. ‘A firm and wnalterable experience has established these laws... that has never been observed in any age or country.’ Why, this is the very question at issue. (1.) The very thing that the believers in miracle assert is that experience has not always given negative testimony on the point. All the evidence (what- ever it be worth) that has ever been produced to guarantee the occurrence of miracles must be reckoned as counter evidence in refutation of the ground on which it is asserted that miracles must be disbelieved. It is in the highest degree un- scientific to sweep away all the positive evidence for any alleged fact in such a fashion. In matters of science a new trial must always be granted whenever there is any reasonable ground to sup- pose that new evidence has turned up, or chat any fault can be found with the processes by which. from ascertained facts, inferences have been drawn. ‘The question can only be stated fairly as depend- ing on a balance of evidence ; a certain amount of positive evidence in favour of miracles, and a negative presumption from the general course of human experience against them’*; it being always borne in mind that negative evidence is never so conclusive as positive, since facts of which there had been no previous experience are often dis- covered and proved by positive experience to be true. (ii.) Next, Paley’s familiar criticism must not be forgotten. Paley points out t that Hume’s argument turns on an ambiguity in the phrase ‘contrary to experience.’ The miracles of the Gospel are not contrary to experience in the sense that they contradict our own present ex- perience, the witness of our own senses; they can only be said to be contrary to experience in the sense that we have never experienced any- thing like them. ‘This unusualness is, of course, a distinguishing feature of miracles, a mark of their signal character (see SIGN); if they were ordinary occurrences, they would cease to be miracles, but the fact that they are thus unasual or extraordinary does not in itself make them ii credible. ‘These two considerations may be thus summarized. Hume says that miracles are contrary to experience. Now, if by experience he means all experience, his maxim is a plain petitio principii ; and if he only means general experience, it sinks into the platitude that miracles are uncommon. +
3. We refuse, therefore, to allow that Hume’s argument is complete in logic. Viewed as an attempt to eliminate the credibility of miracles
* Mill, Essays on Religion, p. 221, where the illogical char- acter of Hume's argument is plainly exhibited.
+ Paley, Avidences, Introduction.
tAn ingenious practical illustration of the fallibility of Hume's principles as to the value of human testimony will be found in Whately’s once famous pamphlet, “δέον Doubts concerning Napoleon Buonaparte,
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on the ground of the fallibility of human testi- mony, it is a failure. But we cannot fail to recognize the element of truth which has given the argument its plausibility. It is this. The course of nature is, as a rule, uniform. What is disturbed by the assertion that a miracle has taken place is the mechanical expectation of a recurrence, and we find it hard to get out of our scientific groove, in which everything does recur mechanically, because we so often regard nature as a mere machine—self-acting, whether self- created or no.* If nature were such a machine, the improbability (we are not justified in speaking of incredibility) of a miracle would be enormous, although even then there would be no reason why that improbability should not be overcome by ade- quate testimony. But the question as to the proba- bility or improbability of miracle assumes quite a different aspect when we recognize that nature is the exhibition of the Divine will and purpose.