Miracles

They do more to unsettle faith in the existing order than to settle it in any other; similarly, missionaries are more valuable as underminers of old faiths than as propagators of new. Miracles are not impossible; nothing is impossible till we have got an incontrovertible first premise.  The question is not “Are the Christian miracles possible?” but “Are they convenient?  Do they fit comfortably with our other ideas?”