MIRACLES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—An American clergyman, writing on the subject of Miracles, says :—" In one of the high cathedral towers of England there is a clock so constructed that at the close of a century it strikes the years just as it ordinarily strikes the hours. As a hundred years come to a close, suddenly, in the immense mass of complicated mechanism, a little wheel turns, a pin slides into the appointed place, and amid the shadows of the night, the bell tolls a requiem over the generations which, during a century, have lived and laboured and been buried around it One of these generations might live and die, and witness nothing peculiar. The clock would have what we call an established order of its own ; but what should we say when, at the mid- night which brought the century to its close, it sounded over the sleeping city, rousing all to listen to the world's age ? Would it be a violation of law? No; only a variation of the accustomed order, produced by the intervention of a force always existing, but never appearing in this way till the appointed moment had arrived. The tolling of the century would be a variation from the observed order of the clock ; but to an artist in constructing it, it would have formed a part of that order. So a miracle is a variation of the order of Nature, as it has appeared to us ; but to God, it was only a part of the
great plan and purpose of the law of the universe." I shall be greatly obliged if any one of your readers can inform me in which of our venerable cathedrals this remarkable clock is to be
[We fancy the American philosopher invented his striking illustration.—En. Spectator.]
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