is no difference whatever in the nature of the events, except that the variation from the ’established series of sequences’ is infinitely greater in those portentous revolutions of the universe to which the geologist points your attention.  The application of our principle (as you affirm with me) will justify us in at once pronouncing any variation from the ‘established series’ whether occurring yesterday, a year ago, a thousand years ago, or a million of years ago, incredible; it will, in the same manner, justify the men of any age in saying the same of all previous ages; and I, therefore, while contending for your principle with you, carry it consistently out, and affirm that the series of antecedents and consequents (as we now find it) must be regarded as eternal, because creation would do what a miracle is supposed to do, and a miracle, you know, is impossible.  You are silent.”

“I am not able to retract acquiescence in the principle, and I am as little inclined to concede the conclusions you would draw from it.”

“As you please; only, in the latter case, provide me with an answer.  If you saw now introduced on the earth for the first time a being as unlike than as man is unlike the other animals,—­say with seven senses, wings on his shoulders, a pair of eyes behind his head as well as in front of it, and the tail of a peacock, by way of finishing him off handsomely,—­would you not call such a phenomenon a miracle?”

“I think I should,” said Fellowes, laughing.

“And if the creature died, leaving no issue, would you continue to call it so?”

“Yes.”

“But if you found that he was the head of a race, as man was, and a whole nation of such monsters springing from him, then would you say that this wonderful intrusion into the sphere of our experience was no miracle, but that it was merely according to law?”

“I should.”

“Verily, my dear friend, I am afraid the world will laugh at us for making such fantastical distinctions.  This infraction of ’established sequences’ ceases to be miraculous, if the wonder is perpetuated and sufficiently multiplied!  Meantime, what becomes of the prodigy during the time in which it is uncertain whether any thing will come of it or not?  You will say, I suppose, (the interpolation in the ‘series’ of phenomena being just what I have supposed,) that it is uncertain whether it is to be regarded as miraculous or not, till we know whether it is to be repealed or not.”

“I think I must, if I adhere to the principle I am now defending.”

“Very well; only in the mean time you are in the ludicrous position of facing a phenomenon of which you do not know whether you will call it a miracle or not,—­the contingency, meantime, on which it is to be decided, not at all, as I contend, affecting the matter; since you allow that it is the infraction of the previously established order of sequences, as known to uniform experience, which constitutes a