system of nature. It may then accidentally bring conviction of an intelligent Creator; for it voluntarily proffers a testimony which we have ourselves to extort from the ordinary course of things, and forces upon the attention a truth which otherwise is not discovered, except upon examination.

And as it affords a more striking evidence of a Creator than that conveyed in the order and established laws of the Universe, still more so does it of a Moral Governor. For, while nature attests the being of God more distinctly than it does His moral government, a miraculous event, on the contrary, bears more directly on the fact of His moral government, of which it is an immediate instance, while it only implies His existence. Hence, besides banishing ideas of Fate and Necessity, Miracles have a tendency to rouse conscience, to awaken to a sense of responsibility, to remind of duty, and to direct the attention to those marks of divine government already contained in the ordinary course of events.

Hitherto, however, I have spoken of solitary Miracles; a system of miraculous interpositions, conducted with reference to a final cause, supplies a still more beautiful and convincing argument for the moral government of God.

SECTION II.

ON THE ANTECEDENT CREDIBILITY OF A MIRACLE, CONSIDERED AS A DIVINE INTERPOSITION.

IN proof of miraculous occurrences, we must have

recourse to the same kind of evidence as that by which we determine the truth of historical accounts in general. For though Miracles, in consequence of their extraordinary nature, challenge a fuller and more accurate investigation, still they do not admit an investigation conducted on different principles,-Testimony being the main assignable medium of proof for past events of any kind. And this being indisputable, it is almost equally so that the Christian Miracles are attested by evidence even stronger than can be produced for any of those historical facts which we most firmly believe. This has been felt by unbelievers ; who have been, in consequence, led to deny the admissibility of even the strongest testimony, if offered in behalf of miraculous events, and thus to get rid of the only means by which they can be proved to have taken place. It has accordingly been asserted,

that all events inconsistent with the course of nature bear in their very front such strong and decisive marks of falsehood and absurdity, that it is needless to examine the evidence adduced for them.f "Where men are heated by zeal and enthusiasm," says Hume, with a distant but evident allusion to the Christian Miracles, "there is no degree of human testimony so strong as may not be procured for the greatest absurdity; and those who will be so silly as to examine the affair by that medium, and seek particular flaws in the testimony, are almost sure to be confounded."" Of these antecedent objections, which are supposed to decide the question, the most popular is founded on the frequent occurrence of wonderful tales in every age and country-generally, too, connected with Religion; and since the more we are in a situation to examine these accounts, the more fabulous they are proved to be, there would certainly be hence a fair presumption against the Scripture narrative, did it resemble them in its circumstances and proposed object. A more refined argument is that advanced by Hume, in the first part of his Essay on Miracles, in which it is maintained against the credibility of a Miracle, that it is more probable that the tes

↑ I.e., it is pretended to try past events on the principles used in conjecturing future; viz., on antecedent probability and examples. (Whately's Treatise on Rhetoric.) See Leland's "Supplement to View of Deistical Writers," Let. 3. 8 Essays, Vol. ii. Note 1.

timony should be false than that the Miracle should be true.

This latter objection has been so ably met by various writers, that, though prior in the order of the argument to the former, it need not be considered here. It derives its force from the assumption, that a Miracle is strictly a causeless phenomemon, a selforiginating violation of nature; and is solved by referring the event to divine agency, a principle which (it cannot be denied) has originated works indicative of power at least as great as any Miracle requires. An adequate cause being thus found. for the production of a Miracle, the objection vanishes, as far as the mere question of power is concerned; and it remains to be considered whether the anomalous fact be of such a character as to admit of being referred to the Supreme Being. For if it cannot with propriety be referred to Him, it remains as improbable as if no such agent were known to exist. At this point, then, I propose taking up the argument; and by examining what Miracles are in their nature and circumstances referable to Divine agency, I shall be providing a reply to the former of the objections just noticed, in which the alleged similarity of all miraculous narratives one to another, is made a reason for a common rejection of all.

In examining what Miracles may properly be ascribed to the Deity, Hume supplies us with an observation so

just, when taken in its full extent, that I shall make it the groundwork of the inquiry on which I am entering. As the Deity, he says, discovers Himself to us by His works, we have no rational grounds for ascribing to Him attributes or actions dissimilar from those which His works convey. It follows, then, that in discriminating between those Miracles which can and those which cannot be ascribed to God, we must be guided by the information with which experience furnishes us concerning His wisdom, goodness, and other attributes. Since a Miracle is an act out of the known track of Divine agency, as regards the physical system, it is almost indispensable to show its consistency with the Divine agency, at least, in some other point of view; if, that is, it is recognised as the work of the same power. Now, I contend that this reasonable demand is satisfied in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, in which we find a narrative of Miracles altogether answering in their character and circumstances to those general ideas which the ordinary course of Divine Providence enables us to form concerning the attributes and actions of God.

While writers expatiate so largely on the laws of nature, they altogether forget the existence of a moral system: a system which, though but partially understood, and but general in its appointments as acting upon free agents, is as intelligible in its laws and provisions as the material world. Connected with this