Without some such limitation, the general principle cannot be admitted, since it would involve an egregious fallacy.

We must not limit Omnipotence by circumscribing the range of its possible exercise within the narrow bounds of the existing economy, or of our actual experience.

We are not warranted to assume that the origin of the world, on the one hand, or the establishment of Christianity on the other, may be accounted for by _natural causes_ still known to be in actual operation.

In regard to _natural events_ the principle is sound, and it is rigorously adhered to by the expounder of Natural Theology; in regard to _supernatural events_ it can have no legitimate application, except in so far as it is combined with the doctrine of efficient and final causes, which leads us up to the recognition of a Higher Power.

It might be safe and legitimate enough, when we find a fossil organism imbedded in the earth, to ascribe its production to the ordinary law of generation, even although we had not witnessed the fact of its birth, provided the same species is known to have existed previously; but when we find _new races_ coming into being, for which the ordinary law of derivation cannot account, we are not at liberty to apply the same rule to a case so essentially different, and still less to postulate _a spontaneous generation_, or a _transmutation of species_, for which we have no experience at all.