crucifixion of Jesus, and who did not see Him after the resurrection, are to be believed rather than the honest upright and intelligent five hundred who, with the Apostles, did see Him, and constantly affirmed that He had risen from the dead. We appeal against such a decision the Apostles were not men who would deceive, nor could they have been deceived, nor was Jesus, in any sense, an impostor. The falsity of their testimony and of Christ's conduct would be more miraculous than the events they affirm.

We will make even the unbeliever a believer. Materialists, on the evidence of a bone, or part of one, or even the impression of it made in old time on clay or sand, firmly believe in creatures which they have never seen. It is but a fraction of their knowledge that scientific men can verify, the greater part rests on testimony. The evidence for miracles rests on testimony much more credible. We have not the bare bone of an extinct organism, but the organism itself-Christianity, with miracles as the life-blood pulsing through every part. The doctrines and miracles of Holy Scripture are sustained by a substratum of facts without which there is no explanation of a whole nation's history, laws, customs, manners, ritual, monuments, policy, social and private and religious life. Destroy miracles, and the Jewish history is without meaning (see Leslie's "Short and Easy Method with the Deists"). That is not all: the history, miracles, prophecies, form a vast plan. A plan not merely in connection with a Saviour to come, but with the grandest facts; creation, ruin, revelation, redemption, sanctification, glorification; facts which take up the very dregs of earth in order

ultimately to glorify the whole. The prophecies, which run through every age, are not vague guesses, nor merely sagacious surmises, but marvellous statements so disguised as not to provoke opposition against their fulfilment, nor in their fulfilment to coerce belief. They leave our intelligence and conscience free to judge, honestly and adequately to investigate the whole; while the correctness as to the creative account, the Messianic statements, the Jewish destiny, the spread of Christianity, is intellectually and morally irresistible. The laws of evidence, of human nature, render it impossible that all these can be false, or that the best and purest of our race could unite age after age in a gigantic swindle.

"Whence, but from Heaven, could men unskilled in arts,
In several ages born, in several parts,

Weave such agreeing truths? Or how, or why
Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie?
Unask'd their gains, ungrateful their advice,

Starving their gain, and martyrdom their price."

DRYDEN, Religio Laici.

That so marvellous a plan, correlated in every part, wrought out by many minds, in course of many ages, despite almost insuperable difficulties, should be effectuated by knaves who, strange to say, were the best of men, is incredible. That these knaves, deceived and deceiving, explain the mysteries and heal the miseries of life; and, without knowing one another, confirm one another's testimony; is a marvel indeed. If prophets and apostles and martyrs were deceived and deceivers ; if events, not witnessed, were ever and ever affirmed as witnessed by the most upright of mankind; if miracles are constantly affirmed by men who wrought them, and by thousands more who said they had seen miracles

for themselves; and if the whole was a delusion, we have a miracle which dwarfs every other marvel. Let the unbeliever choose: there is the lesser miracle, faith in which, proved by a pure loving life, will confer everlasting blessedness; there is the greater miracle-that which makes all the good bad, all the wise fools, all the truthful liars; to accept this leaves him without hope, and exposes him to the peril of eternal ruin. "The difficulties of belief are great, the difficulties of unbelief are greater" (Bishop Lonsdale).

An orderly array of a few facts confirms the foregoing statement.

I. We are all conscious of a tendency towards the marvellous "Natura hæsitate commovetur" (Cicero, "Heren," iii. 36); "Miracula quædam inusitata servavit quæ faceret ut dormientes homines excitaret" (S. Augustine). Not only do we experience pleasure when our surprise and wonder are excited, but we possess a deep conviction that this tendency and these emotions are an essential part of our inner nature, and correspond to something without. From earliest times, in rude prehistoric memorials, in the rituals of worship amongst all nations-barbarous and civilized, there is proof of ineradicable conviction as to the reality of supernatural events. He who believes in God believes in the greatest miracle; and if one does not believe in God, he must believe in the miracle of the world, which worldwhether God-made or self-made-is in its preservation and development full of miracles.

II. Many spurious miracles having been detected"Miracula magica, pleraque specie tenus, mortalium sensus imaginaria ludificatione decipiunt " (S. Augustine)

-fanatics being so ready to lie, heated imaginations leading to credulity, and possession of supernatural gifts conferring a splendid and desirable halo of renown, men of prudence in all ages rightly refused credit, so far as possible, to whatever opposed common custom and experience. Not because they were unbelieving as to miracles, but that in due use of their power, intelligence, experience, they might separate the true from the false. The credulity that accepts all things without asking a question, and the sagacity demanding verification before yielding assent, alike rest on the persuasion that our world is the scene of strange marvels. If the occasion of any miracle were trifling and frivolous we should hesitate to accept it, because a miracle is no trifle. "Miracula alio fine, aliaque potestate et jure fiunt per magos et per sanctos" (S. Augustine). The internal law for the human workers of miracles is this: their external miraculous power must be connected with inward and spiritual miracles taking place in their hearts. By means of the latter they must be raised into a specially close communion with God. . . . The internal law for men, in whom the miracles of salvation

take place, is faith" (Christlieb, "Christian Belief,"

p. 322).

III. We refuse purposeless miracles, done in a corner, or where verification was impossible; and we put away all romantic narratives coming from barbarous nations; but the impossibility of rationally or scientifically explaining away the universal conviction and expectation of marvels, and the special verification by the Jews of the Scripture miracles, afford proof to our best thinkers that there is a substratum of reality. Barbarous

men would not be barbarous if gifted with genius and imagination to create an idea of God, and to invent miracles as works by which He manifested Himself; nor would bad men, if they could, give the world such a book as the Bible. The ablest of our race, mathematicians, naturalists, chemists, philosophers, accept Holy Scripture and its Miracles as really a lesser marvel, and more in accordance with the facts of human nature, than that rejection which brands universal consciousness and conviction of the supernatural, sublimest thought and holiest aspirations, as a delusion and a snare.

IV. These miracles are in connection with the grandest and purest system of morals in existence; they are parts of a design, long before revealed, and wrought in confirmation of it. They are divine sign-manuals of doctrine, precept, ritual, sacrifice, festival, and law. They concern secret things of the past, and wonders in the future, not less miraculous. They belong to a mysterious scheme of Providence. They are object lessons in science which physicists have not yet mastered, and indicate a wealth of unknown energies the exploration of which is but begun. They are essential elements in the only rational religion possessed by the world, and destruction of faith in them will falsify history, and take conviction of its verity from the minds of all thoughtful men. They are wrought for a high and holy end, an end worthy of the Almighty Creator, by God-sent workers who cannot use the Divine Power arbitrarily, but only in virtue of high personal spiritual communion with God. No language, not even an angel's voice, can proclaim more intelligibly, that God is revealing His purpose. No other religion has been set up and con