All these cases which we have been rehearsing, taking them in the
fullest literality, agree in this general point of union--they are all
silent incarnations of miraculous power--miracles, supposing them to
have been such originally, locked up and embodied in the regular course
of nature, just as we see lineaments of faces and of forms in
petrifactions, in variegated marbles, in spars, or in rocky strata,
which our fancy interprets as once having been real human existences;
but which are now confounded with the substance of a mineral product.
Even those who are most superstitious, therefore, look upon cases of
this order as occupying a midway station between the physical and the
hyperphysical, between the regular course of nature and the
providential interruption of that course. The stream of the miraculous
is here confluent with the stream of the natural. By such legends the
credulous man finds his superstition but little nursed; the incredulous
finds his philosophy but little revolted. Both alike will be willing to
admit, for instance, that the apparent act of reverential thanksgiving,
in certain birds, when drinking, is caused and supported by a
physiological arrangement; and yet, perhaps, both alike would bend so
far to the legendary faith as to allow a child to believe, and would
perceive a pure childlike beauty in believing, that the bird was thus
rendering a homage of deep thankfulness to the universal Father, who
watches for the safety of sparrows, and sends his rain upon the just
and upon the unjust.
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