then, under which we include prophecy, are the only direct evidence which can be given of divine inspiration. When a religion, or any religious truth, is to be revealed from heaven, they appear to be absolutely necessary to enforce its reception among men; and this is the only case in which we can suppose them necessary, or believe for a moment that they ever have been or will be performed.

The history of almost every religion abounds with relations of prodigies and wonders, and of the intercourse of men with the gods; but we know of no religious system, those of the Jews and Christians excepted, which appealed to miracles as the sole evidence of its truth and divinity. The pretended miracles mentioned by Pagan historians and poets are not said to have been publicly wrought to enforce the truth of a new religion contrary to the reigning idolatry. Many of them may be clearly shown to have been mere natural events; (see MAGIC). Others of them are represented as having been performed in secret on the most trivial occasions, and in obscure and fabulous ages long prior to the era of the writers by whom they are recorded. And such of them as at first view appear to be best attested, are evidently tricks contrived for interested purposes; to flatter power, or to promote the prevailing superstitions. For these reasons, as well as on account of the immoral character of the deities by whom they are said to have been wrought, they are altogether unworthy of examination, and carry in the very nature of them the completest proofs of falsehood and imposture.

But

(A) ἐν γὰρ ἔχει ἀπόδειξιν, ὅ τι πείσει ἀν σοῦ τε καὶ γυναῖκας εἰς δει, ἐν τούτῳ καλοποιεῖται παλινστήν. Θεοὺ μοιραίων αὐτὸ συνειδῇ. De Repub. lib. vi. But the miracles recorded of Moses and of Christ bear a very different character. None of them is represented as wrought on trivial occasions. The writers who mention them were eye witnesses of the facts; which they affirm to have been performed publicly, in attestation of the truth of their respective systems. They are indeed so incorporated with these systems, that the miracles cannot be separated from the doctrines; and if the miracles were not really performed, the doctrines cannot possibly be true. Besides all this, they were wrought in support of revelations which opposed all the religious systems, superstitions, and prejudices, of the age in which they were given: a circumstance which of itself sets them, in point of authority, infinitely above the Pagan prodigies, as well as the lying wonders of the Romish church.

It is indeed, we believe, universally admitted, that the miracles mentioned in the book of Exodus and in the four Gospels, might, to those who saw them performed, be sufficient evidence of the divine inspiration of Moses and of Christ; but to us it may be thought that they are no evidence whatever, as we must believe in the miracles themselves, if we believe in them at all, upon the bare authority of human testimony. Why, it has been sometimes asked, are not miracles wrought in all ages and countries? If the religion of Christ was to be of perpetual duration, every generation of men ought to have complete evidence of its truth and divinity.

To the performance of miracles in every age and in every country, perhaps the same objections lie as to the immediate inspiration of every individual. Were those miracles universally received as such, men would be so overwhelmed with the number rather than with the force of their authority, as hardly to remain masters of their own conduct; and in that case the very end of all miracles would be defeated by their frequency. The truth, however, seems to be, that miracles so frequently repeated would not be received as such, and of course would have no authority; because it would be difficult, and in many cases impossible, to distinguish them from natural events. If they recurred regularly at certain intervals, we could not prove them to be deviations from the known laws of nature, because we should have the same experience for the one series of events as for the other; for the regular succession of supernatural effects, as for the established constitution and course of things.

Be this, however, as it may, we shall take the liberty to affirm, that for the reality of the Gospel miracles we have evidence as convincing to the reflecting mind, though not so striking to vulgar apprehension, as those who had contemporary with Christ and his apostles, and actually saw the mighty works which he performed. To the admirers of Mr Hume's philosophy this assertion will appear an extravagant paradox; but we hope to demonstrate its truth from principles which, consistently with himself, that author could not have denied. He has indeed endeavoured to prove*, that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle;" and the reasoning employed for this purpose is, that "a miracle being a violation of the laws of nature which a firm and unalterable experience has established, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can be; whereas our experience of human veracity, which (according to him) is the sole foundation of the evidence of testimony, is far from being uniform, and can therefore never preponderate against that experience which admits of no exception." This boasted and plausible argument has with equal candour and acuteness been examined by Dr Campbell*, who justly observes, that so far is experience from being the sole foundation of the evidence of testimony, that, on the contrary, testimony is the sole foundation of by far the greater part of what Mr Hume calls firm and unalterable experience; and that if in certain circumstances we did not give an implicit faith to testimony, our knowledge of events would be confined to those which had fallen under the immediate observation of our own senses. For a short view of this celebrated controversy in which the Christian so completely vanquishes the philosopher, see the word ABRIDGMENT.

But though Dr Campbell has exposed the sophistry of his opponent's reasoning, and overturned the principles from which he reasons, we are persuaded that he might safely have joined issue with him upon those very principles. To us, at least, it appears that the testimony upon which we receive the Gospel miracles is precisely of that kind which Mr Hume has acknowledged sufficient to establish even a miracle. "No testimony (says he) is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. When one tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle." In this passage every reader may remark what did not escape the perspicacious eye of Dr Campbell, a strange confusion of terms; but as all miracles are equally easy to the Almighty; and as Mr Hume has elsewhere observed, that "the raising of a feather, when the wind wants ever so little of a force requisite for that purpose, is as real a miracle as the raising of a house or a ship into the air;" candour obliges us to suppose, that by talking of greater and less miracles and of always rejecting the greater, he meant nothing more, but that of two deviations from the known laws of nature he always rejects that which in itself is least probable.

If, then, we can show that the testimony given by the apostles and other first preachers of Christianity to the miracles of their Master would, upon their supposition that those miracles were not really performed, have been as great a deviation from the known laws of nature as the miracles themselves, the balance must be considered as evenly poised by opposite miracles; and whilst it continues so, the judgment must remain in a state of suspense. But if it shall appear, that in this case the false testimony would have been a deviation from the laws of nature less probable in itself than the miracles recorded in the Gospels, the balance will be instantly destroyed; and by Mr Hume's maxim we shall be obliged to reject the supposition of falsehood in the testimony. of the apostles, and admit the miracles of Christ to have been really performed.

In this argument we need not waste time in proving that those miracles, as they are represented in the writings of the New Testament, were of such a nature, and performed before so many witnesses, that no imposition could possibly be practised on the senses of those who affirm that they were present. From every page of the Gospels this is so evident, that the philosophical adversaries of the Christian faith never suppose the apostles to have been themselves deceived, but boldly accuse them of bearing false witness. But if this accusation be well founded, their testimony itself is as great a miracle as any which they record of themselves or of their Master.

It has been shown elsewhere (see Metaphysics, No. 138.), that by the law of association, which is one of the laws of nature, mankind, in the very process of learning to speak, necessarily learn to speak the truth; that ideas and relations are in the mind of every man so closely associated with the words by which they are expressed in his native tongue, and in every other language of which he is master, that the one cannot be entirely separated from the other; that therefore no man can on any occasion speak falsehood without some effort; that by no effort can a man give consistency to an unpremeditated detail of falsehood, if it be of any length, and include a number of particulars; and that it is still less possible for several men to agree in such a detail, when at a distance from each other, and cross questioned by their enemies.

This being the case, it follows, if the testimony of the apostles to their own and their Master's miracles be false, either that they must have concerted a consistent scheme of falsehood, and agreed to publish it at every hazard; or that God, or some powerful agent appointed by him, must have dissolved all the associations formed in their minds between ideas of sense and the words of language, and arbitrarily formed new associations, all in exact conformity to each other, but all in direct contradiction to truth. One or other of these events must have taken place; because, upon the supposition of falsehood, there is no other alternative. But such a dissolution and formation of associations as the latter implies, must, to every man who shall attentively consider it, appear to be as real a miracle, and to require as great an exertion of power, as the resurrection of the dead. Nor is the supposed voluntary agreement of the apostles in a scheme of falsehood an event less miraculous. When they sat down to fabricate their pretended revelation, and to contrive a series of miracles to which they were unanimously to appeal for its truth, it is plain, since they proved successful in their daring enterprise, that they must have clearly foreseen every possible circumstance in which they could be placed, and have prepared consistent answers to every question that could be put to them by their most inveterate and most enlightened enemies; by the statesman, the lawyer, the philosopher, and the priest. That such foreknowledge as this would have been miraculous, will not surely be denied; since it forms the very attribute which we find it most difficult to allow even to God himself. It is not, however, the only miracle which this supposition would compel us to swallow. The very resolution of the apostles to propagate the belief of false miracles in support of such a religion as that which is taught in the New Testament, is as great a miracle as human imagination can easily conceive.

When they formed this design, either they must have hoped to succeed, or they must have foreseen that they should fail in their undertaking; and in either case, they chose evil for its own sake. They could not, if they foresaw that they should fail, look for anything but that contempt, disgrace, and persecution, which were then the inevitable consequences of an unsuccessful endeavour to overthrow the established religion. Nor could their prospects be brighter upon the supposition of their success. As they knew themselves to be false witnesses and impious deceivers, they could have no hopes beyond the grave; and by determining to oppose all the religious systems, superstitions, and prejudices of the age in which they lived, they wilfully exposed themselves to inevitable misery in the present life, to insult, and imprisonment, to stripes and death. Nor can it be said that they might look forward to power and influence when they should, through sufferings, have converted their countrymen; for so desirous were they of obtaining nothing but misery, as the end of their mission, that they made their own persecution a test of the truth of their doctrines. They introduced the Master from whom they pretended to have received these doctrines as telling them, that "they were sent forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; that they should be delivered up to councils, and scourged in synagogues; that they should be hated of all men for his name's sake; that the brother should deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child; and that he who took not up his cross and followed after him was not worthy of him." The very system of religion, therefore, which they invented and resolved to impose upon mankind, was so contrived, that the worldly prosperity of its first preachers, and even their exemption from persecution, was incompatible with its success. Had these clear predictions of the Author of that religion, under whom the apostles acted only as ministers, not been verified, all mankind must have instantly perceived that their pretence to inspiration was false, and that Christianity was a scandalous and imprudent imposture. All this the apostles could not but foresee when they formed their plan for deluding the world. Whence it follows, that when they resolved to support their pretended revelation by an appeal to forged miracles, they wilfully, and with their eyes open, exposed themselves to inevitable misery, whether they should succeed or fail in their enterprise; and that they concerted their measures so as not to admit of a possibility of recompense to themselves, either in this life or in that which is to come. But if there be a law of nature, for the reality of which we have better evidence than we have for others, it is, that "no man can choose misery for its own sake," or make the acquisition of it the ultimate end of his pursuit. The existence of other laws of nature we know by testimony and our own observation of the regularity of their effects. The existence of this law is made known to us not only by these means, but also by the still clearer and more conclusive evidence of our own consciousness.

Thus, then, do miracles force themselves upon our assent in every possible view which we can take of this interesting subject. If the testimony of the first preachers preachers of Christianity was true, the miracles recorded in the Gospel were certainly performed, and the doctrines of our religion are derived from heaven. On the other hand, if that testimony was false, either God must have miraculously effaced from the minds of those by whom it was given all the associations formed between their sensible ideas and the words of language, or he must have endowed those men with the gift of prescience, and have impelled them to fabricate a pretended revelation for the purpose of deceiving the world, and involving themselves in certain and foreseen destruction.

The power necessary to perform the one series of these miracles may, for any thing known to us, be as great as that which would be requisite for the performance of the other; and, considered merely as exertions of supernatural power, they seem to balance each other, and to hold the mind in a state of suspense. But when we take into consideration the different purposes for which these opposite and contending miracles were wrought, the balance is instantly destroyed. The miracles recorded in the Gospels, if real, were wrought in support of a revelation which, in the opinion of all by whom it is received, has brought to light many important truths which could not otherwise have been made known to men; and which, by the confession of its adversaries, contains the purest moral precepts by which the conduct of mankind was ever directed. The opposite series of miracles, if real, was performed to enable, and even to compel, a company of Jews, of the lowest rank and of the narrowest education, to fabricate, with the view of inevitable destruction to themselves, a consistent scheme of falsehood, and by an appeal to forged miracles to impose it upon the world as a revelation from heaven. The object of the former miracles is worthy of a God of infinite wisdom, goodness, and power. The object of the latter is absolutely inconsistent with wisdom and goodness, which are demonstrably attributes of that Being by whom alone miracles can be performed. Whence it follows, that the supposition of the apostles bearing false testimony to the miracles of their Master, implies a series of deviations from the laws of nature, infinitely less probable in themselves than those miracles: and therefore by Mr Hume's maxim, we must necessarily reject the supposition of falsehood in the testimony, and admit the reality of the miracles. So true it is, that for the reality of the Gospel miracles we have evidence as convincing to the reflecting mind, as those had who were contemporary with Christ and his apostles, and were actual witnesses to their mighty works.