as a claim of teaching by higher authority than that to which I have been accustomed to defer. I perceive that if I admit this claim, I admit likewise motives to obedience of the truths inculcated, and dissuasives from disobedience of a higher order than have before reached and influenced my soul. I ask for the teacher's credentials. I would see a sign of the mighty authority to which the teaching which I have heard asserts such positive claim. The teacher performs a series of miracles in my presence, and I am satisfied. The blind receive sight, the deaf hear, the dead live and speak. Here is more than wisdom. Here is astonishing power. I can doubt no longer. I now feel what Nicodemus felt and expressed, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." I now believe the teacher came from God, and that he who came from God, thus commissioned and endowed, will speak truth in God's name, and that it is all important I should regard the truth thus spoken. Other truth, which others speak, I may or may not practically regard; and the consequences in either case shall be, at least may be, comparatively small and temporary. But this truth, so manifestly divine, I may by no means slight or disregard. It has the stamp of God's authority and power upon it; and as it is celestial in its origin, so it must be spiritual, paramount, uncompromising, and everlasting in its claims. I believe reverently, and I feel that I must obey heartily.

Perhaps the order of the process of believing in the communications of the teacher, as a revelation from God, may be the reverse of the preceding, as follows. -I am first attracted by the miracles which are exhibited. I pause for a short time in vague and speechless wonder. But soon I conclude that the man who can do these miracles must come from God. I am therefore prepared to receive what he says as a message from God; and afterwards I am confirmed in my belief of the source whence it came, by the character and adaptations of the message itself. In each order of process, the miracles are evidence evidence, the first to be coveted, the mightiest to evince, the last to be abandoned.

"So then," says the objector, "the logic of the argument is this, Jesus fed five thousand persons with five loaves and two fishes, therefore he spake truth when he said, ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the

dead shall hear the voice of the son of God, and they that hear shall live,' and therefore also, this truth is to be received as part and portion of a special revelation from God to men?" Certainly, I readily admit, the conclusion does not follow from the position assumed in the objection, in the same way in which a logical inference or conclusion follows from an antecedent verbal proposition or premise in a syllogism. The reasoning is capable, however, of being reduced to the syllogistic form. But without insisting upon this, it is sufficient to maintain, as I have done, that it is a just and natural exercise of the understanding or reason which God has given me, that I should believe and confide in the authority and truthfulness of the teacher, on account of the works which he performs, when they are such works as those which are held in view. It must at once be admitted to be possible for some to reason and conclude otherwise; but it is certain to my mind that it will generally be held unnatural, unreasonable, and unphilosophical for them to do so.

It follows, from the preceding discussion, that although there are other evidences of the truth, the importance, and the divine origin of what Jesus has spoken, miracles are essential to the fulness and perfection of a body of evidence. They are the key-stone in the structure of evidences. Without them most believers in Christianity as a revelation from God would feel that an evidence was wanting which it is extremely desirable to have, if not essential to the integrity of their faith in divine revelation as such. It is readily admitted as indisputable, that God can make a revelation to my mind and soul if he pleases, and assure me that it is a revelation from him, without a visible or tangible miracle, or to any other individual mind with like assurance. But if I am to communicate this revelation to others as a matter which concerns them equally with myself, the question arises, how am I to afford them reasonable proof that what I inculcate as a revelation from God is such in reality? Here it is that miracles find their place and value, as evidences of a divine communication, as pertinently as the man who informs me that he raised from the ground yesterday, by his unaided strength, five hundred pounds weight, labors to convince me that he speaks truth, by raising seven hundred pounds, in the same manner, in my presence, to-day.

But," it may be asked, "how are we to distinguish the

real miracle from other wonders, from the exploits of the man privileged and skilled in nature's secrets-the juggler's featsdivers marvellous things?" I cannot but consider this difficulty as far more theoretical than practical. I think it fair to presume that, if God would reveal his will to his rational creatures, and assure them of the reality of the revelation by wonderful works and signs, these would be such in number, variety, and character, as to leave little or no room for the intrusion of this difficulty upon the minds of competent and candid witnesses of the works. At any rate, such are the Christian miracles, as to character, variety, number. The enlightened and sincere inquirer after truth will always bear in mind that the question is not whether marvellous works in general are evidences of God's special interposition to authenticate a revelation, or to effect any other object; but whether the Christian miracles in particular, and collectively taken, are to be received as a decisive evidence that Christianity is a divine revelation. I do not contend that any and every wonderful work is sufficient, singly, to establish the performer's claim to teach by divine authority. Nor is it the question how confidently I ought to believe, or how much I should actually doubt, if the miracles of changing water into wine, the blasting of the barren fig-tree, the transfer of mania from a man to a herd of swine, and the finding of money in a fish's mouth were all which were exhibited. I might wish, in my presumption that, if those were all which were wrought, there had been a record of none. But in view of the whole done, recorded, and referred to, I find it easy to believe that, if every particular relating to the occasion, the action and the result were preserved and placed before me, I should find no great difficulties attached to these few, which constitute so small a portion of the whole. The rest stand out heaven wide from the juggler's feats, the alchymist's transmutations, the fanatic's trances, and everything else with which they have been sometimes, but very improperly, classed.

The grandeur of the acts and the beneficence and permanence of the results in the Christian miracles generally are conceded; still it is urged that "to give any weight of evidence to the mere wonderful work itself, either independently of or combined with, the testimony of the performer, is to assume that every wonderful work, which we cannot otherwise account for, must of necessity be explained by supposing

a special divine interference." How much am I to understand by the phrase "cannot otherwise account for?" If this phrase means cannot show how and by what agency the work was actually performed, I wholly deny the allegation. I make no sort of attempt to account for half the marvels I see and hear. If the phrase means - cannot give any plausible account how the work might possibly have been done - the allegation comes some nearer to the truth; for in an example of the kind last supposed, there would arise some presumption that the work must be wrought by divine wisdom and power. But I deny that there is any assumption whatever of the kind alleged. The reasons for which certain wonderful works are believed to be performed by special divine interposition, have already been referred to, and in part expressly stated. They may be insufficient to satisfy some minds that the works are God's works, in the sense contended for; but they are sufficient to show that in giving weight of evidence to miracles, there is no assumption whatever, but reasoning from an opinion or belief which rests upon its own grounds, be these grounds sufficient or insufficient to sustain the opinion.

"But suppose," the objector still urges, "the man who brings to you an alleged divine revelation, and works miracles. to authenticate his divine commission to teach, commands you to break God's law written in your heart by slaying your brother, or to do some other known evil that good may come of it, and is himself guilty of absolute falsehood. What will you say then?" I wait, and I expect to wait, for the presentation of this difficulty in the shape of facts. Then I will reply to the hypothesis. I am not bound to reply to an hypothesis which, to my mind, involves an absurdity, at least a contradiction, and which seems to me to border upon impiety. It is sufficient to say now, no such instance has occurred, will occur, or can occur. God does not act in contravention to his own attributes and purposes. It is the association of the Christian Miracles, luminous gems in themselves, with God's manifest purposes of love, which gives them additional lustre; and they again reflect back, with increased brilliancy and effect, the light and beauty and glory, in the midst of which they stand.

It is now time to ask, if the Christian miracles furnish no evidence of Christianity as a divine revelation, why were they

wrought? - what was their design? No satisfactory account is given of this matter by those who think lightly of the miracles as evidence, or altogether deny to them this office. One able writer says, "I know not what was the actual purpose for which they were wrought; nor do I know what purpose they actually served.” * Another able writer says, "We may perceive many purposes answered by them, but what was their special purpose, I venture not to state. I cannot sympathize with the confidence, with which many undertake to tell what is the intended end of any event, even the humblest.” t "It would rather seem," he adds afterwards, "that every particle of the great whole exists for an end, indefinable, inconceivable." It would be natural to some persons to inquire here, why we should believe that the great whole, or any part of it, exists for any end, if none can be descried, which is either definable or conceivable? But this is aside from the purpose in hand.

Öther writers admit equal ignorance of the design of the Christian miracles. Well they may, after denying to them all value as evidence. And most certainly there was no need of them as evidence, if men generally, in the beginning of the Gospel dispensation, could see intuitively, and so "take up into their own consciousness," according to the new phraseology of the day, whatever of truth God was pleased to announce to them by his messenger. But that might not have been a time of such enlarged consciousness and intuition as the present. Why then, I reiterate the inquiry, such prodigal superfluity of marvellous and beneficent power?

But, notwithstanding all the professed ignorance of the design of the Christian miracles, one of the writers referred to says, "Mankind, especially when but partially enlightened, are much more attracted by extraordinary displays of physical power, than by the exhibition of moral grandeur." "The miracles he performed, therefore, were necessary to draw attention to him, and induce people to listen to him." "Here was

something extraordinary; here was a wonderful man, what had he got to say." So far so good. I think so too. I think the evidence often begins its operation of producing belief pre