Professor Sidgwick on the Ethics of Religious Conformity: A Reply.

Hastings Rashdall

Footnote #05
Further thoughts about miracles and the laws of nature


Personally I do not share the a priori philosophical objection to the idea of a miracle in the strictest and most popular sense, as distinct from the philosophical objections to the sufficiency of such evidence as actually exists. I should quite be prepared to believe a law of nature suspended upon sufficient historical evidence. But since (1) there is a great accumulation of evidence that the universe is, as a matter of fact, governed by general laws, and (2) those commonly so-called miracles for which the evidence is strongest are precisely those for which there is most analogy in other experience, it seems more reasonable to believe that such events of this character as have a claim to acceptance on historical grounds might, with adequate knowledge, be seen to fall within the ordered sequences of nature and not outside them. At the same time it would, on this view, be quite possible that some of the events may be of a highly exceptional or even unique character, provided that the conditions by which they are determined are exceptional or unique also. No one who finds it possible to believe, in any sense, in a unique personality, can object to the supposition that the normal control of the human will over the processes of physical nature may have likewise received in his case a unique extension. So much I feel bound to say, lest I should be held to assent to Professor Sidgwick's exclusion of a ``thaumaturgical element'' in Christianity in a sense in which I am not prepared to do so; but beyond this point I do not wish to enter upon any discussion of the question of miracles.


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Professor Sidgwick on the Ethics of Religious Conformity: A Reply.