There is no uncertainty as to the origin of belief in supernatural interference with nature.  The assertion that spurious miracles have sprung up round a few instances of genuine miraculous power has not a single valid argument to support it.  History clearly demonstrates that, wherever ignorance and superstition have prevailed, every obscure occurrence has been attributed to supernatural agency, and it is freely acknowledged that, under their influence, ‘inexplicable’ and ‘miraculous’ are convertible terms.  On the other hand, in proportion as knowledge of natural laws has increased, the theory of supernatural interference with the order of nature has been dispelled and miracles have ceased.  The effect of science, however, is not limited to the present and future, but its action is equally retrospective, and phenomena which were once ignorantly isolated from the sequence of natural cause and effect are now restored to their place in the unbroken order.  Ignorance and superstition created miracles; knowledge has for ever annihilated them.

To justify miracles, two assumptions are made:  first, an Infinite Personal God; and second, a Divine design of Revelation, the execution of which necessarily involves supernatural action.  Miracles, it is argued, are not contrary to nature, or effects produced without adequate causes, but on the contrary are caused by the intervention of this Infinite Personal God for the purpose of attesting and carrying out the Divine design.  Neither of the assumptions, however, can be reasonably maintained.

The assumption of an Infinite Personal God:  a Being at once limited and unlimited, is a use of language to which no mode of human thought can possibly attach itself.  Moreover, the assumption of a God working miracles is emphatically excluded by universal experience of the order of nature.  The allegation of a specific Divine cause of miracles is further inadequate from the fact that the power of working miracles is avowedly not limited to a Personal God, but is also ascribed to other spiritual Beings, and it must, consequently, always be impossible to prove that the supposed miraculous phenomena originate with one and not with the other.  On the other hand, the assumption of a Divine design of Revelation is not suggested by antecedent probability, but is derived from the very Revelation which it is intended to justify, as is likewise the assumption of a Personal God, and both are equally vicious as arguments.  The circumstances which are supposed to require this Divine design, and the details of the scheme, are absolutely incredible and opposed to all the results of science.  Nature does not countenance any theory of the original perfection and subsequent degradation of the human race, and the supposition of a frustrated original plan of creation, and of later impotent endeavours to correct it, is as inconsistent with Divine omnipotence and wisdom as the proposed punishment of the human race and the mode devised to save some of them are opposed to justice and morality.  Such assumptions are essentially inadmissible, and totally fail to explain and justify miracles.