could not exist in all times and in all places, my personal experience becomes necessarily very confined, and that of my fellowcreatures falls under the same predicament; testimony, therefore, is the only road by which I can arrive at the knowledge of every experience which I have not made myself.

When I advance that the experience of all times and of all places evinces that the dead do not rise, I only say, that the testimony of all times and all places attests that the dead do not rise. If, therefore, weighty testimonies appear, attesting that dead men did rise, there will be an opposition between these two testimonies.

I say, however, that these testimonies will not, properly speaking, be contradictory; because the testimonies which bear -witness that the dead do not rise, do not attest that it is impossible for the dead to rise. The testimonies, therefore, which appear opposed to each other, do in reality no more than dissent from each other. Now, if the testimonies which attest that the dead did rise, have all the requisite qualities to com

mand my assent, I cannot reasonably refuse it; because,

First, The contrary testimonies cannot prove the impossibility of this resurrection.

Secondly. Because I have no proof that physical order may not contain some secret dispensations, of which this resurrection might be the result.

Thirdly. Because, at the same time that the witnesses attest this resurrection, I evidently discover the moral intention of the miracle.

There is not, therefore, properly speaking, any contradiction between the experiences, but there is diversity between the testimonies.

It is true, that experience makes known to me physical order; it is also by experience that I come to the knowledge of moral order. But these two modes of experience. are not precisely of the same kind, neither can they be placed in competition with each other.

From experience of the first kind I may legitimately deduce, that, according to the ordinary course of nature, the dead do not rise; but I cannot with propriety conclude, that it is physically impossible for the dead

to rise.

I may deduce from experience of the second kind, that men endued with the same faculties as myself, may have seen and felt things, which I should have seen and felt, had I existed in the same time and in the same place.

And if I have competent moral proofs of the validity of their testimony, I may also deduce from this kind of experience, that those men have seen and felt those things.

The Indian, when he asserts that it is physically impossible for water to become a solid body, is no logician; his conclusion reaches beyond the premises from which it is drawn. When he has said that he has never seen, and that no one has ever seen, water become, in his country, a solid body; so far he is justified in his assertions : but he should proceed no further. Indeed,

having never seen ice, and also being very certain that no one of his countrymen had ever seen any, he has a right to be very incredulous concerning the testimonies which are offered to him, concerning such a fact,

If, in physics, I had reasoned only from known facts, I must necessarily have rejected, without examination, the wonders of electricity, the prodigy of the polype, and a multiplicity of facts of the same kind; for, what analogy could I discover between these prodigies and those facts which the ordinary course of nature presents to my consideration! And yet I believed these prodigies; because, in the first place, the evidence for them appeared competent: Secondly, because, in sound logic, my ignorance of the secrets of nature was not a sufficient authority to oppose to weighty testimonies. But, as a greater number of moral proofs are requisite to make a miraculous fact appear probable, than to render probable a physical prodigy, I think also that I discover, in the testimonies adduced in favour of the miraculous facts in question, characters of

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truth, proportioned to the nature of the facts.

I have pointed out what appeared to me to constitute the difference between a miracle and a prodigy*. I have not termed miracles supernatural facts. I had seen sufficiently that they might be the result of a pre-established arrangement; I therefore simply called them extraordinary events, as opposed to those events which are conformable to the ordinary course of nature. If the testimonies were in actual contradiction to each other, it would follow, that the witnesses, who attest the resurrection of a dead man, must attest, at the same time, that this resurrection was produced according to the ordinary course of nature. Now I well know, that, so far from attesting this, they have attributed the miracle to the intervention of omnipotence.

I cannot therefore logically argue, from the uniformity of the course of nature, against the testimony which affirms that this uniformity is not constant; for, I must

* Vide Parti. Chap. vi.