That all men die is the result of a vast induction of instances. That one or more men at given times shall be restored to life, may be as much a consequence of the law of existence appointed for man at his creation, as the appearance and reappearance of the isolated cases of apparent exception in the arithmetical machine.
But the workings of machinery run parallel to those of intellect. The Analytical Engine* might be so set, that at definite periods, known only to its maker, a certain lever might become moveable during the calculations then making. The consequence of moving it might be to cause the then existing law to be violated for one or more times, after which the original law would resume its reign. Of course the maker of the Calculating Engine might confide this fact to the person using it, who would thus be gifted with the power of prophecy if he foretold the event, or of working a miracle at the proper time, if he withheld his knowledge from those around until the moment of its taking place.
Miracles, therefore, are not the breach of established laws, but they are the very circumstances that indicate the existence of far higher laws, which at the appointed time produce their pre-intended results.
From Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864) by Charles Babbage (1791-1871).
* The Analytical Engine was an even more sophisticated calculating machine than the Difference Engine. By the time of his meeting with Dr Lloyd and Dr Robinson (just after constructing his first Difference Engine in 1833), Babbage was already working on the Analytical Engine, but he had built only part of it when he died in 1871. The Difference Engine basically just did addition; the Arithmetical Engine was a fully-functional computer driven by steam, programmed with punch cards. As far as we know, nobody had ever conceived such a thing before, let alone designed and attempted to build one. It is for this machine that Babbage is recognised as the Father of Computing.