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The laws

distinct

from the

occasions

of events.

The former, rightly deemed the "eternal lessons of History," are occupied with the tendencies, rather than the occurrences of the time: while occasions, exhibiting principles in the garb of events, constitute the web, and not the warp, of human affairs. But though the effect be proportioned to the cause, and the motor ideas of an age are relative to its position in the course of human progress, (thus, it may be admitted, Bacon and Descartes would have been powerless in the seventh or the tenth century); yet the circumstances which attend their announcement may be favourable or unfavourable, and admit of no uniform analysis. But they are not therefore to be left out of account. Hence, Mr. Mill,' (no mean authority), holds the author of the History of Civilization in England' to be in error, when "he attributes all to general causes without imagining that casual circumstances, the acts of governments, the thoughts of men of

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also his conception (1b., II. viii.) of an Universal History. So Johnson remarked that Shakspeare's characters "are mostly species, not individuals." See Hallam, M. A., I. 66, and Mr. Buckle, Hist. Civ., II. 317, 324, who cites Montesquieu and adds, "the real history of the human race is the history of tendencies, which are perceived by the mind, and not of events which are discerned by the senses." Mr. Pattison remarks, with his usual discrimination, that Mr. Buckle, having begun with defining history as an inquiry into the laws of events, proceeds to a mere narration. Comte, if I remember rightly, somewhere proposes to write a history, without names of individuals, or even of nations. See Phil. Pos., V. 22, 268. He thus delineates the respective destinies of Athens, Rome, Carthage, and even of Christianity itself.

1 A. Comte and Positivism, p. 114.

genius, materially accelerate or retard human progress." Such incredulity gives rise to an opposite exaggeration, when it is maintained that "the history of the world is but the biography of

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history.

great men. This is, indeed, not to be able to "see the forest for the trees." Doubtless, there Appeal to have been turning-points in the world's story. At Marathon, at Metaurus, at Tours, the worship of Ormuzd, of Bel, of Mahomet trembled in the scale. Victory hung upon the standards of the strongest, if not the biggest battalions, or on those which were most ably led, or on both combined. Yet, how is it that it has passed into a proverb that "the race is not always to the swift, the battle to the strong but time and chance happeneth unto all"? It is not then "gratuitous" to assert a Providential element in history; for it has a real ground in experience. Facts suggest it to a serious mind; and though in ruder times this element has had too large scope assigned it, this only warns us to confine it within due limits. There is at present

1 Carlyle, Hero Worship; though Guizot rightly reckons them as a separate element in the history of civilization. Civ. en E., I. 56: “No one can say why a great man appears at a certain epoch, and what he adds to the development of the world. That is a secret of Providence: but the fact is not therefore less certain." "The riddle of fortune or circumstance," says Coleridge, "is but a form or effluence of the riddle of man."

2 Eccles. ix. 11. It was no immature thinker who observed upon such facts as these, that

This should teach us

There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will. That is most certain.

cation of

general laws by recent writers,

Personifi- an aspect of history much in vogue, in which General Laws are as much personified as in mythical periods of thought. "The Tower of Siloam," says a brilliant writer, "fell not for any sins of the eighteen who were crushed by it: but through bad mortar probably, the rotting of a beam, or the uneven settling of the foundations. The persons who should have suffered according to our notion of distributive justice, were the ignorant architects or masons who had done their work amiss. But the guilty, perhaps, had long been turned to dust. And the law of gravitation brought the tower down at its own time, indifferent to the persons who might be under it." Does not such language show that there may be a Fetishism latent in the highest abstractions? For myself, I do not see that the unphilo planetary spirits of Origen or Kepler are more

sophical.

1 Mr. Froude on Calvinism, Short Studies, II. Ser. p. 11. Another instance may be cited from a more exact thinker. “The Law of Gravitation," writes Professor Tyndall, Fragm. T., p. 45, "crushes the simple worshippers of Ottery St. Mary, while singing their hymns, just as surely as if they were engaged in a midnight brawl." "J'ai lu," says De Maistre," des millions de plaisanteries sur l'ignorance des anciens qui voyaient des esprits partout. Il me semble que nous sommes beaucoup plus sots, nous qui n'en voyons nulle part."-Soirées, Vme Entret., p. 188.

2 On this subject there is something noble in the indignation of M. Comte, Phil. Pos., V. 42. "De nos jours même qu'est-ce réellement, pour un esprit positif, que ce ténébreux Panthéisme dont se glorifient si étrangement, surtout en Allemagne, tant de profonds métaphysiciens, si non le Fétichisme géneralisé et systématisé, enveloppé d'un appareil doctoral propre à donner le change au vulgaire ?" In V. 49 he remarks that an age of metaphor has now succeeded to the Fetishism of an earlier time. Compare Mr. Tylor, Hist. Prim. Cult., I. 264.

unreasonable than Gravitation made into an agent. It may be through general and permanent Laws (to call them immutable, involves an assumption. incapable of proof) that the Providence of God presides over the order, better perhaps to say, the endless play, of the universe.' But it would be more exact to give them another name. They are the continuously active will of an ever-present God in its exercise upon the world of its creation; for where the laws are, there is the Lawgiver also.2

law not in

with the

tial aspects

§ 9. We conclude, then, that in the hypothesis Natural of universal Law, and in the fact, if it be a fact, compatible that the history of physical science is one continued Providenrevelation of the reign of Law, there is nothing of Chrisantecedently fatal to Christianity as a religion for mankind. For if otherwise, it must be so in respect either of its special contents, or of the fundamental evidences adduced in its support; I mean of

It is a truer instinct which, with Malebranche, sees all things in God. "Whether a dagger," says De Maistre, "pierces a man's heart or a little blood collects in his brain, he falls dead alike. But in the first case we say he has ended his days by a violent death. For God, however, there is no such thing as violent death. A steel blade fixed in the heart is a malady just like a simple callosity, which we should call a polypus."-Soirées, IVme Entret.

2 Guizot, Méditat., Vol. I. p. 33. Newton's Scholium on the nature of God is thus worded: "Entis summè perfecti idea ut sit substantia una; omnia in se continens tanquam eorum principium et locus; omnia per præsentiam substantialem cernens et regens et cum rebus omnibus secundum leges accuratas ut naturæ totius fundamentum et causa, constanter co-operans, nisi ubi aliter agere bonum est.' See in Brewster's Memoirs, II. 154. Compare the description of the Koran (Sale, I. c. vi., p. 166).

tianity,

nor with its evidences,

viz.

miracles.

1

Miracles and Prophecy, "that splendid apparatus with which its mission was introduced and attested." Into the nature of these evidences I am not now called to enter. For the subject of Miracles, the magnificent dialectical effort made not very long since from this place, must deter, while rendering unnecessary, all inferior handling of the same topic. I would remark only in answer to a more recent objection, that if it be true that as men advance from an imperfect to a higher civilization, they gradually sublimate and refine their creed, exhibiting an indisposition, in place of an earlier proneness, towards the reception of the miraculous: it may still be replied, that Christianity, as it has become better understood, has borne this These ad- test. Already in the long history of the Church, we have learned to distinguish between true and false miracles, evangelical and ecclesiastical, evidential and doctrinal, intrinsic and spurious imitations. The tendency of superstition to multiply miracles does not disprove their probability, much less their possibility: it rather goes to establish the instinctive nature of their recognition. A truer estimate of the position of Miracles in relation

mit of dis

crimina

tion.

1 Paley, Moral Phil., Bk. IV. sub fin.

2 See Mr. Lecky, Hist. Rat., I. 160-195. Hist. Eur. Mor., I. 370, 385, &c. Jean Paul Richter acutely remarks, Vorschule der Aesthetik, Works, xix. 163, that the greatest miracle is our tendency to believe in miracles, surrounded as we are by the mechanical kingdom of our senses that in spite of continual contact with the world of matter we still believe in an invisible world.

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