viction of a manly and rational and enlightened piety.

39. We have already explained the way in which an answer to prayer may be given-and yet without violence to the operation of any visible and secondary causes-how the accomplishment that is wanted may be brought about, not against, but with the use of the ordinary means-how in this way neither a special providence nor the answer to prayer may imply any invasion whatever on the generality or the constancy of Nature's processes: and thus it is, that, if the object of our earnest and persevering entreaty, be a right belief and an adequate knowledge, of all that relates to the friendship of God, and the well-being of our eternity -the answer may be given, and yet not one sequence connected with the phenomena of the human understanding be at all deranged or intercepted. More particularly, that sequence, by

which it is that a sound belief comes in the train only of a sufficient evidence, may be most fully and scrupulously observed. And the terminating conviction, instead of some deceitful or visionary glare, may in fact be the result of certain manifested proofs, that could both be apprehended by the intellect of the inquirer, and could be alleged and vindicated by him in the hearing of his fellow-men.

40. A miracle is an event that is at variance with the regular and ascertained processes of nature; and the conviction which is thus awarded to an inquirer, in answer to prayer, is not a

See our "Natural Theology," Book V. Chap. iii.

miracle. It is not borne in upon him like a resistless and indescribable impression. There is not the visitation of a preternatural light, or the whisper of a preternatural voice. It is not given to him like the prophetic inspiration of old-nor is there in it that gleam of illumination, which would almost assimilate the belief of a Christian to the spectral and superstitious fancy of those who take counsel of dreams, and are credulous of apparitions. There is, we are persuaded, an efficacy in the humble prayer for light, of him who has been visited by a moral earnestness to do as he ought and to believe as he ought; but just as the answer of other prayer is accomplished, not against the use of means, but by the use of means -so the belief that issues from the prevailing suit of him who hath mingled his prayers with his perusal of the word, is not a belief that is without the light of evidence, but a belief that is purely and legitimately the effect of it.

41. To be convinced how it is, that one may be made to believe in answer to his prayer, and yet that the belief may be rational and upon evidence-let us only think of the effect, were a tenfold power given to the faculty of sight. Then a whole world of novelties, that had before escaped all notice, might at once be ushered into observation-new objects altogether, and new appearances and shades of colour in objects, that before, in a gross and general way had been quite familiar to us. New convictions of things would instantly spring up in the person who had thus been visited; and, instead of any lack of evidence, it would be

evidence at first hand-strong at least as that of ocular demonstration, and impressing a confidence upon the mind as well warranted as that which we repose in the intimations of our senses. There would on this supposition be the revelation of many new facts and new objects; but our belief in their reality would be as distant as possible from a rash or misguided fanaticism. It would be vision with the eye of the body, and not the vagary of a heated imagination at all. Neither would the belief now engendered, be the fruit of any new facts or phenomena, now for the first time brought near to him. It would be solely the fruit of a now clearer and more penetrating inspection, cast by the medicated eye upon old objects. It would be the simple result of a look upon pre-existent nature, but of a look more powerful and perspicuous than we had ever been able to cast upon it before.

42. Now the same renovation that we have just supposed to take place on the eye of the body, may take place on the eye of consciousness-on that eye whose office it is, to look inwardly upon the tablet of the heart, and to take notice of the various characters and lineaments that are thereupon engraven. In virtue of our moral earnestness, and as the fruit of those efforts and of those prayers to which this earnestness hath given rise, some film of pride or of prejudice that had before obstructed the view of our own character might now be cleared away. We might in We might in consequence be now favoured with a reach of discernment that we never before had among the arcana of our own spirit. We see nothing that was not there before;

but we see what to us was invisible before. It is to the pre-existent nature within his breast, that he now looks to certain antecedent realities, from which the veil that was formerly upon his heart is now taken away. Let the power of consciousness but be augmented; and there is nought of phantasy whatever in those new truths which now address themselves to the faculty of internal observation. They are not new in respect of existence; they are only new in respect to our knowledge of their existence-recognised by the mental eye now purified and made more powerful than before, and to the reality of which, therefore, we may have in every way as good evidence as we have to the reality of our own thoughts.

43. All this might take place, and as yet there be no evidence evolved in behalf of a professed revelation. But only let us conceive that the same mental eye which can now look with more full and accurate discernment on the internal tablet of the heart, can also look with better discernment than before on the tablet of a written record. Just let us conceive one of its own prayers to be answered" open mine eyes to behold the wondrous things contained in the Book of thy law." We do not ask for any revelation of new things. We only ask for the power of a clearer discernment as to the things that are already written. Many of our general readers must be sensible of a certain repulsive obscurity, that overspreads, more especially, the doctrinal pages of the New Testament -a kind of mysterious or hieroglyphical aspect, through the disguises of which, they have not yet

been able to penetrate-a most singular phraseology, alike remote from the language of common life and from the language of general literature-a sort of obsolete and exploded nomenclature, that bears upon it the stamp of centuries, as unlike as possible to the phraseology in which those truths are conveyed that command an intellectual homage from the philosophers of this lettered and cultivated agean impracticable jargon, they may even feel tempted to call it, that is music to the popular ear, and behind which there lie certain recondite doctrines that can only be addressed with effect to the credulity of the vulgar or popular understanding. This is the actual film of prejudice that obstructs the mental eye of many, the most enlightened in science and in all liberal accomplishments. Now grant but the removal of this film-so that the weight and the significancy of such things as are written in scripture, might become palpable to the eye of the understanding. In its own language, let the understanding be opened to understand the scriptures; and still there is nothing perceived by the thus clarified eye of the mind, but such matters as were antecedently spread out on the field of this profest revelation. There might be nought of illusion and of imagination in this process; and the only change of which the man is at all conscious in reference to this book, is, that he now apprehends the sense of it-a matter, of which he may have just as good title to be confident, as he has when altogether sensible whether he understands or not any of the compositions of ordinary authorship. 44. Now, let us attend to the effect of this