A miracle is usually defined to be a suspension of the laws of nature, or a deviation from the uniform manner in which God exercises his power throughout the created world, or from the uniform method in which second causes operate and produce their effects. It follows that a miracle cannot be performed by human power. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the negative and the positive element in miracles. A phenomenon is miraculous in the former sense when it is simply inexplicable by any known laws; but in the latter sense inexplicable events require to bear upon the interests of religion, as distinctive signs, in order to be considered miraculous. In the negative sense, a real deviation from ordinary phenomena may be admitted without necessitating an acquiescence in miracles in the positive and religious sense. Not a few phenomena in physical science are possessed of this negative element of miracles without being considered miraculous. They exhibit the character of a prodigium, or *τροπή*, without being what the religious miracle always is, a *σημεῖον*, or sign by which the Divine power is made known. It is in the latter sense that miracles are regarded here.

The person who professes to have received a revelation from God to be communicated to his fellow-men is bound to produce his credentials, in order that they may know that he is not either a deceiver or deceived. They have a right, and it is their duty, to demand sufficient evidence that his revelation is really from God before they place entire confidence in its truth and Divine authority. The working of a miracle will furnish incontestable proof that his statement is true. If an effect be produced which cannot be referred to the operation of natural laws, we at once recognise it as the act of Him who is the God of nature, and who alone can suspend its laws and produce effects in another way. If, therefore, a miracle be wrought by one who claims to be the bearer of a Divine revelation, we are warranted to conclude that his claims are well founded, and that God speaks by him. Man indeed is so constituted that he must draw this conclusion; for, "to try the theorem upon a simple case," after the example of Paley, if any man in the possession of his senses were to witness the performance of a miracle,—the restoration, for example, of sight to the blind, or the raising of the dead,—under circum- Miracles, stances which satisfied him that there could be no deception or mistake, he would, without doubt, believe that he who wrought the miracle was the messenger of God, and spoke God's truth. The evidence of supernatural and Divine interposition in this way would be irresistible. Jesus himself has given his sanction to this reasoning, for He expressly suspends the authority of his doctrines, and his claims to man's belief, on the fact of his miracles: "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me," &c. He repeated in the presence of the messengers of John the Baptist many of his most wonderful works: He healed the sick, cleansed the lepers, restored sight to the blind, raised the dead, and then dismissed them with this injunction—"Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard." These miracles were proofs both of Divine power and of Divine goodness. They are works of a nature far superior to those which the uniform experience of mankind has taught us to consider as lying within the range of human power—works, in short, which no man could do unless God were with him. At his word the storm was hushed into a calm, the deaf heard, the dumb spake, and the dead were raised to life; at his touch diseases fled, the blind saw, the lame walked, and the lepers were cleansed. His miracles were not only above the reach of human power, but they were benevolent in their motives and eminently useful in their effects. They tended in every instance to alleviate suffering and wretchedness, or to teach an important moral or doctrinal lesson. The benevolent tendency, therefore, of these miracles, as well as their wonderful character—the combination in them of might and mercy—proved that they were of God. They were performed by Christ for the express purpose of proving his claims to a Divine commission, and were constantly appealed to by Him as signs and seals of that commission,—as proofs of the truth of the system of doctrines and moral precepts which He taught. And it is obvious, that unless the doctrines which Jesus promulgated had received the Divine approbation, these miracles could not have been performed. Nicodemus gave expression to the instinctive feeling of human nature when he said to Jesus, "We know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do those miracles that thou dost except God be with him" (John iii. 2).

A similar inference must of course be drawn from the miracles performed by the Apostles and Evangelists. Their works, like Christ's, were beyond the unassisted powers of man. Like Him, too, they appealed to these miraculous works as the credentials of their Divine commission. They affirmed "that the things which they taught, God had revealed to them by his Spirit."

But were these miracles actually performed? What evidence is there that these alleged miraculous works are not, as Strauss and his followers affirm, a collection of myths, or, as others say, mere illusions. First of all, these miracles, if they were either illusions or frauds, were imposed alike on friend and foe, and triumphed over not only the strongest prejudices, but the deepest enmity. They were publicly performed in open day before multitudes of inveterate enemies, who had every motive to induce them keenly to scrutinize the evidence, and to detect and expose the deception, if the miracle was not genuine. We are expressly informed that the Pharisees narrowly examined into the reality of a miracle performed by Jesus on a man that was born blind; and we may be sure that they must have done so in the case of other miracles also. Prejudice, self-interest, and malignant hatred of Christ, must have made them eager to detect any falsehood or fraud in his conduct, if such had existed; and yet they were constrained to acknowledge with the Sanhedrim, in the case of the cure wrought by Peter and John on the lame man who sat at the gate of the temple, "that indeed a notable miracle had been done, and they could not deny it." Modern infidels deny the reality of the miracles related in the New Testament; but the ancient infidels who lived on the spot at the time, and were eye-witnesses of the events, were compelled to admit their miraculous character, though they ascribed them to the agency of evil demons. This acknowledgment by unbelieving Jews and pagans of the reality of the miracles of Christ and his apostles, shows that the evidence for them, after the strictest hostile scrutiny, was undeniable.

Secondly, The miraculous facts of the gospel history are proved by the testimony of the Apostles and Evangelists, who have narrated what they saw and heard. They were not only competent, but also unprejudiced and disinterested witnesses; not only had they no prepossession to mislead their judgments and bias their minds in favour of the claims of Jesus of Nazareth, and no interest to serve by falsifying or misrepresenting what they had heard or seen, but they had many deep-rooted prejudices to overcome in embracing the religion of Christ, and many powerful motives to induce them to "resist even the evidence of their senses, and stifle the very firmest convictions of their mind." Like the rest of their countrymen, they entertained most erroneous notions respecting the character and office of the expected Messiah; and it was not till some time after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, that the pleasing dream of temporal grandeur which had captivated their minds was completely dispelled, and they became thoroughly convinced that their Master's kingdom "is not of this world." The witnesses of Christ's miracles, therefore, had none of the motives which usually influence human conduct to induce them to become his followers or to bear testimony in his behalf. On the contrary, they were solicited by the united ties of nature, of habit, of education, and of interest, to reject the claims of a religion which disappointed all their early associations and prejudices, all their favourite hopes and schemes. So that it is impossible to account for their conduct on any rational principle, except that they were fully convinced of the truth of what they declared, and "could not but speak the things which they had seen and heard."

Thirdly, the credit given to their testimony, and the

---

1 The absurdities of the theory propounded by Paulus of Heidelberg, that the disciples of Christ mistook natural phenomena for supernatural occurrences, have been thus forcibly exposed by Quintus:—"The pen which wrote the Pseudocritical Letters would be necessary to lay bare the strange consequences of this theology. According to its conclusion, the tree of good and evil was nothing but a venomous plant, probably a manchined tree, under which our first parents fell asleep. The shining face of Moses on the heights of Mount Sinai was the natural result of electricity; the vision of Zechariah was effected by the smoke of the chandellers in the temple; the Magian kings, with their offerings of myrrh, of gold, and of incense, were three wandering merchants who brought some glittering trinket for the Child of Bethlehem; the star which went before them, a servant bearing a flambeau; the angels in the scene of the temptation, a caravan traversing the desert, laden with provisions; the two angels in the tomb, clothed in white linen, an illusion caused by a linen garment; the Transfiguration, a storm." (Voice of the Churches, by Dr Beard.)

2 "But some people may say that the ancient Jews and pagans, who so readily believed in magical arts and the power of demons, must have been very weak and credulous men, and that therefore they may have given credit to tales of miracles without making any careful inquiry. Now there is, indeed, no doubt that they were weak and credulous; but this weakness and credulity would never have led them to believe what was against their early prejudices, and expectations, and wishes: quite the contrary. The more weak and credulous any man is, the harder it is to convince him of anything that is opposite to his habits of thought and inclination. He will readily receive without proof anything that falls in with his prejudices; and will be disposed to hold out against any evidence that goes against them." (Whatley's Introductory Lessons on Christian Evidences.) consequent establishment and propagation of Christianity, can be accounted for only on the supposition that the miracles were really performed. Indeed, the Apostles, so far from commanding belief, would never have obtained even a hearing among the wealthy, refined, and proud inhabitants of the great Roman and Grecian cities, if they had not at the outset produced their credentials, and roused men's attention by the display of superhuman powers. The doctrines the Apostles preached were alike obnoxious to Jewish prejudices, destructive of Jewish hopes, and offensive to Grecian pride. To the one class they were "a stumbling-block," and to the other "foolishness." Their converts had to make a total revolution in their whole habits,—to incur the loss of all things, often of life itself,—to encounter foes in their own household,—to be separated from all they held dear in life,—to suffer ridicule, and contempt, and calumny, and violent persecution. And yet in a few years this mere handful of obscure and illiterate Jews induced vast multitudes of all ranks, and of different races and nations, to renounce the religion of their ancestors and to embrace the faith of Jesus of Nazareth. On the supposition that the miracles to which they appealed in confirmation of their statements were spurious, this is altogether unaccountable, and indeed incredible. The difficulty, therefore, as Whately remarks, of believing that the Christian religion was propagated by means of miracles, is nothing in comparison with the difficulty of believing that it could have been propagated without any. In the well-chosen words of Butler, "the miracles are a satisfactory account of the events of which no other satisfactory account can be given, nor any account at all, but what is imaginary merely and invented."

We are met, however, by the oft-repeated assertion, that a miracle is an impossibility, and therefore that no amount of evidence can prove that a miracle has been performed. This is the fundamental axiom of Strauss, who acknowledges that if it were not true, he would not think it worth while to attack the credibility of the Scripture history. "No just notion," he remarks, "of the true nature of history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the chain of second causes, and of the impossibility of miracles." (Strauss's Life of Jesus, vol. i., Introduction, sect. 13.) The assumption that miracles are an impossibility is probably the most specious and widely-urged objection to Christianity in our day; and though enunciated with all the pretension of a new discovery, was one of the main arguments of the older infidels, as it is of their modern successors still. The main difference is, that the deists of a former day accounted for the miracles on the supposition of the grossest fraud acting on the grossest credulity; while Strauss and his disciples explain them by the theory of illusion or myth. Strauss seems to regard the assertion as a self-evident truth, for he offers no argument whatever in its support. But it would not be difficult to show that the man who denies the possibility of miracles in any circumstances cannot consistently stop short of atheism. The atheist who repudiates

---

2 "Myths have been defined as fabulous narratives allegorically describing some physical or moral phenomena, philosophical principles, systems, &c., under the figures of actions performed by certain ideal personages; these allegories having been afterwards, through the mistake of the vulgar, belived to be history." (Hume's Essays, p. 51.) On this mythical theory Dr. Strauss explains the whole of the evangelical history, and affirms that the acts attributed to Christ are to be regarded, not as historic verities, but as allegorical fables, or at least as combining only a very slender portion of facts and truth with an immense mass of fiction and fable. He admits at the same time that strict historic investigations bring this collection of myths within thirty or forty years of the very time in which all the alleged wonders they relate are said to have occurred. According to this theory, Christianity is a system of mythology which originated in one of the most enlightened ages the world has ever seen, while all other mythologies have had their origin in an age of barbarism and of remote antiquity, before the commencement of authentic history. All other mythical systems have been of slow and gradual formation and reception, but the Christian "myths" sprung up at once within a single generation, and were received as historic facts by multitudes who must have been well aware of their recent origin. They originated among a people who expected a Messiah entirely different from Jesus of Nazareth, and were attached with the most intense bigotry to the faith which his gospel proposed to supersede. While other mythologies rarely, if ever, extend beyond the limits of the races which have originated them, Christianity was embraced by thousands of different races and nations, to whom it was most obnoxious on every ground—national, political, religious, and personal. And, finally, this accidental collection of fable and fiction, with a few facts interspersed, in a few years, though unaided by military power, or court authority, or philosophy, or science, triumphed over the prejudices of ignorance and superstition, and the vigilance of scepticism, the policy of government, and every other obstacle. The man who can believe this may believe anything. (Eclipse of Faith, 3rd edition, pp. 209-212.) medical remedies; the testimony of the Apostles affirms that they were sometimes removed at the mere word or touch of the Saviour; but these facts are not necessarily inconsistent or irreconcilable. "Each fact may arise from its own proper cause, each may exist independently of the other, and each is known by its own proper proof, be it of sense or testimony." (White's Bampton Lecture, p. 285.)

If, then, we are told that miracles are incredible because they are contrary to uniform experience, we ask the objector what he means by experience? Does he speak of his own experience and that of his friends and neighbours? Then, on this principle, the Indian prince of whom Hume speaks, who affirmed that there could be no such thing as ice because it was contrary to his experience, was right in rejecting the possibility of such an occurrence. Does he mean the general experience of mankind? If so, his statement is true, but it is nothing to the purpose. Miracles are, from their nature, comparatively of rare occurrence, and being rare, are necessarily at variance with the experience of the greater part of mankind. If they were not, they would, as Paley remarks, be no miracles. Or does the objector mean that miracles are contrary to the uniform experience of all mankind in all ages? This were a mere begging of the question in dispute. He affirms that no one has ever witnessed a miracle, and when challenged to produce his evidence, he merely asserts in effect that nobody has ever witnessed one. Besides, how does the objector know that miracles are contrary to either the general or universal experience of mankind? Of course, by testimony and nothing else. So that, after all, it is on testimony which he derides, and not on experience, that the weight of Hume's argument depends. Farther, the experience of which Hume speaks extends to the mental and spiritual as well as to the physical and material part of nature—to the world of mind no less than to the world of matter. He expressly admits "that there is a uniformity in both the moral and physical world, and that nature does not transgress certain limits in either the one or the other." Again he says,—"We readily and universally acknowledge a uniformity in human motives and actions as well as in the operations of body." And he adduces an argument for the doctrine of "philosophical necessity," drawn entirely from the general uniformity observable in the course of nature with respect to the principles of human conduct, as well as those of the material universe, from which uniformity, he observes, it is that we are enabled in both cases to form our judgments by means of experience; "and if," he adds (Essays, p. 85, 8vo, 1817), "we would explode any forgery in history, we cannot make use of a more convincing argument than to prove that the actions ascribed to any person are directly contrary to the course of nature." It is admitted, then, by the objector to miracles that there are moral laws of nature as well as physical, and that the violation of the one, no less than of the other, beyond a certain point, is to be regarded as a miracle. Let us apply this admission to the present case. Here we have a considerable number of individuals declaring that in their presence certain works of wonder, of which they were competent to judge, were performed different from the usual manner in which the laws of nature operate, and which could not be accounted for according to those laws; that they saw the most inveterate diseases healed—the deaf, the blind, and the lame cured, and the dead raised by the mere word of Christ. In proof of their belief of these miracles, they renounced the religion in which they had been educated, and to which they had been previously attached with intense bigotry; they constantly adhered to this testimony, not only without any assignable motive, but in opposition to all the motives by which mankind are usually influenced; they persisted in affirming that these statements were true, in spite of ridicule and contempt, of insult and wrong, of the scourge, the dungeon, the axe, the cross, and the stake. They had hundreds and thousands of associates of both sexes and of all ranks and ages, and yet not one of them was ever induced, either by the hope of reward or the fear of punishment, to betray their cause or to confess that it was an imposture. That this uniform and inflexible constancy should have been displayed in support of an unprofitable falsehood, by men who taught and preached the purest system of morality the world has ever heard of, is utterly at variance with all the principles of human nature, and would be a greater miracle than any work of wonder recorded in the Scripture history. If their testimony be false, the physical miracles must of course be false too; but then the moral miracle must be true. The denial of the one necessarily implies the belief of the other, and the falsehood of such testimony, in the circumstances of the case, would be more incredible far than the truth of the miraculous interpositions which it attests. (Eclipse of Faith, 3d edition, pp. 270-274.)

The argument of the sceptic has been most dexterously turned against himself in the masterly refutation of infidelity just referred to (p. 278). It is there shown that Strauss and Hume, and others who affirm that a miracle is impossible, would, if they saw what seemed a miracle, distrust their senses, and believe that they were deceived. The position, then, of those who deny and of those who assert miracles is exactly the reverse of Hume's statement. The man who believes "transubstantiation" distrusts his senses, and rather believes testimony; and in the same way, the man who believes that miracles are impossible, if he were to witness any event that has a miraculous appearance, must, on his principles, be prepared to deny the evidence of his senses, and to trust to testimony—that general experience which comes to him, and can come to him only in that shape. It is the infidel, therefore, and not the Christian, who is affected by the argument of Hume.

The impossibility of a miracle—or at least the impossibility of proving a miracle—has been defended by Rousseau on an entirely different ground. A miracle he defines to be an exception to the laws of nature; and as we do not know, he says, what the laws of nature are, we cannot determine whether any given event be or be not a deviation from these laws; and therefore it is impossible to prove the reality of a miracle. It is true, we do not know universally what the laws of nature are; but there are certain events so different from their uniform results, that we may confidently affirm that they cannot have been produced by the operation of these laws. We do not know the full extent of the powers of medicine; but we do know that the cure of blindness, or deafness, or paralysis, by a word or a touch is at variance with all medical laws, and must therefore have been the result of another and totally different cause—the special interference of a superhuman power. The fertility of the earth varies in different countries and climates, and may probably hereafter, by the applications of science, be increased far beyond anything yet attained; but in no country, and by no possible application of science, could a few barley loaves and small fishes be instantaneously multiplied so vastly as to suffice for a meal to five thousand persons faint with hunger. We do not know fully the nature of fire or the utmost extent of its power; but this we do certainly know, that it is the nature of fire to burn; and therefore, when Daniel's three companions were thrown into the burning fiery furnace, and came out unhurt, this result was contrary to the nature or the laws of fire, and must therefore have been produced by a miraculous interposition.

Again, it has been said that no miracle can prove a moral truth, because there is no natural relation between the displays of physical power and any such truth. The performance of a miracle, therefore, it is alleged, is a mere evidence of extraordinary power, and is neither a proof of the veracity Miracles, or Divine commission of the person by whom it is performed, nor of the Divine authority of the religion which he may teach. It is true that a miracle, considered by itself, proves merely that its author is endowed with supernatural power over the operations of nature; but the miracles of Christ do not stand alone—they form only one link in the chain of Christian evidences, and must be taken in connection with their circumstances and the purposes for which they were performed. Their character and tendency, as well as their miraculous nature, must be taken into account, together with the fact that they were constantly appealed to by our Lord as credentials of his mission. It is not from the miracles of Christ, considered merely as supernatural works, but from their benevolent character, which proves that they originated in a benevolent source,—the union in them of power and goodness, combined with the fact that they were performed in attestation of his claims to the office of Messiah, and in support of the system of doctrines and precepts which he taught,—that we draw a conclusive argument in favour of his Divine authority.

Lastly, it has been alleged, that whatever may have been the original strength of the evidence of the Scripture miracles, it has undergone a very serious diminution by being transmitted through a number of successive individuals and generations, and will in the end become extinct. "Suppose a fact to be transmitted," says Laplace, "through twenty persons,—the first communicating it to the second, the second to the third, &c.,—and let the probability of each testimony be expressed by nine-tenths (that is, suppose that of ten reports made by each witness, nine only are true), then at every time the story passes from one witness to another, the evidence is reduced to nine-tenths of what it was before. Thus after it has passed through the whole twenty, the evidence will be less than one-eighth." That is, the chances for the fact thus attested being true will be less than one in eight. "The diminution of evidence," he adds, "by this species of transmission may be compared to the extinction of light by the interposition of several pieces of glass. A small number of pieces will be sufficient to render an object entirely invisible which a single piece allowed to be seen very distinctly." (Laplace, Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités.) Now it must be admitted that if any statement as to a matter of fact were to be transmitted successively through twenty persons, and we ourselves were to receive the account from the twentieth narrator alone, the credibility of the report would be very considerably diminished; in other words, the probability of error or mistake would be largely increased. But in the present instance we have not merely the testimony of the last, but of every preceding witness, to the truth of the gospel narrative. We can travel back step by step, in regular and unbroken order, through every link in the chain of testimony from the present time to the days of the Apostles, the eye-witnesses and original relaters of our Lord's miracles. We have not only the testimony of those who heard the Apostles tell their simple story, but of the Apostles themselves, who have declared what they heard and saw. In this way, to recur to the illustration of Laplace, we can remove one by one the interposing pieces of glass which intercepted the rays of the light of truth, until we are enabled to see the object presented to our view as clearly, and to judge of it as correctly, as the original spectators. (Benson's Hulsean Lectures for 1820, p. 80.)

The truth of the miracles recorded in the books of Moses can be established by similar arguments to those which have been adduced in proof of the reality of Christ's miracles. Both have all the marks which are necessary to prove them worthy of full credit. The four well-known rules laid down by Leslie as infallible tests of the genuineness of an alleged miracle, all meet in the works of wonder performed by Moses as well as by Christ; and they never have met, and never can possibly meet, in any imposture or pretended miracle:—1. That the facts related be such as that men's outward senses—their eyes and ears—can be judges of them; 2. That those facts be done openly and publicly in the face of the world; 3. That not only public monuments, but outward institutions and actions, should be appointed and perpetually kept up in memory of them; 4. That these institutions should commence from the time the facts were done. The miracles of Moses,—the passage through the Red Sea, the miraculous supply of manna and of water from the rock in Horeb, and the passage over Jordan, &c.,—were all events regarding which the senses of the spectators could not be deceived. These miracles were performed in the most public manner, and in the presence of many witnesses; so that there was every opportunity to subject them to the most searching scrutiny. Not only were public monuments erected, but various institutions—such as the feast of the Passover—were appointed at the time to be observed in remembrance of these miraculous interpositions, and were observed by the Jewish nation in all succeeding ages,—institutions which, from their nature, it would have been impossible to induce any people to observe unless fully satisfied of their Divine authority. And the books in which these miracles are related are not only a history of the Jewish people, but their very statute-book, containing their municipal as well as civil and ecclesiastical laws, which, like the history, are inseparably connected with the miracles wrought by the legislator. (See Leslie's Truth of Christianity Demonstrated; and Short and Easy Method with the Deists.)

In comparing the evidence for the miracles recorded in Scripture with that which can be offered in support of any other miracle, it is proper, as Paley shows, to lay out of the case—

1. Such accounts of supernatural events as are written a long time after their alleged occurrence. On this principle we may at once set aside the miraculous story of Pythagoras, written 800 years after his death; the prodigies of Livy's history; the fables of the heroic ages; the whole of the Greek and Roman mythology; a great part of the accounts of Popish saints; the miracles of Apollonius Tyanaeus, published more than 100 years after his death; and the miraculous powers ultimately claimed for Ignatius Loyola.

2. We may lay out of the case accounts published in one country of what passed in a distant country, without any proof that such accounts were received or known at home. The Gospels are not only a contemporary history, but they were first published, and the Christian church first planted, in the place where its Founder lived and performed his miracles, and died; while the accounts of the alleged miracles of Apollonius Tyanaeus, of Francis Xavier, and others, were published at a great distance from the supposed scene of the wonders.

3. We ought to lay out of the case transient rumours. On the first publication of any story, unless we are personally acquainted with the facts of the case, we cannot know whether it is true or false. We look to the confirmation or contradiction of the account by its increasing notoriety or its dying away, and to its permanency or disappearance for the discrimination of truth from falsehood. Tried by this criterion, the miracles recorded in Scripture are presented to us in the most favourable light.

4. We lay out of the case what may be called naked history,—history found merely in a book, unattended with any evidence that the accounts given in the book were credited and acted upon at the time when the events are said to have occurred, and unsupported by any collateral or subsequent testimony, or by any important visible effect. This certainly is not the case with the history of the miracles of Christ. That history is to be combined with Miramichi the institutions of Christianity, with the time and place and circumstances of its origin and progress, as collected from other historical sources, with its prevalence to the present day, with the fact of our present books having been received by the advocates of Christianity from the first, with a great variety of subsequent books referring to the transactions recorded in the four Gospels, and containing accounts of the effects which flowed from the belief of those transactions,—those subsequent books having been written with very different views, "so disagreeing as to repel the suspicion of confederacy, and yet so agreeing as to show that they were founded in a common origin."

5. A mark of historical truth, although only to a certain degree, is particularity in names, dates, places, circumstances, and in the order of events preceding or following the transaction. The gospel history, in this respect, affords extraordinary facilities for detecting its falsehood if it were an imposture, and it has stood the test most triumphantly.

6. We lay out of the case stories of supernatural events upon which nothing depends, and in which no interest is involved,—stories which require only an indolent assent, and which pass from one to another without examination.

7. We lay out of the case those miracles which were performed in confirmation of opinions already adopted. It is easy to account for the reception of those alleged miracles which go to support a system of religion already established; but Christianity is the only religion that was ever introduced—and introduced among enemies—by miraculous pretensions. (See Whately's Introductory Lessons.) The miracles recorded in the gospel history "were wrought in the midst of enemies, under a government, a priesthood, and a magistracy decidedly and vehemently adverse to them and to the pretensions which they supported. They were Protestant miracles in a Popish country; they were Popish miracles in the midst of Protestants." They made converts among those who were most unwilling to credit these evidences, and who, in consequence of believing them, were required to abandon their most deeply-rooted opinions and inveterate prejudices.

8. We lay aside all those events which can be accounted for by a heated imagination, false perception, momentary insanity, or any other natural principle. But the miracles of Christ cannot be accounted for in any such way, or be resolved into the operation of the common powers of nature. When a person born blind was restored to sight, or the deaf and dumb to hearing and speech, or a man who had been dead four days was restored to life, we are sure that such events must be ascribed to a superhuman cause. (Paley's Evidences of Christianity; Douglas's Criterion of Miracles; Leland's Deistical Writers; Campbell On Miracles.)