Things which might tend to lessen the greatness of the facts, especially the ascription of them by our Lord's enemies to evil spirits, are faithfully narrated. The inability of the disciples to cast out an unclean spirit is noted. The peculiar dignity and reserve, and what I may call the propriety of our Saviour's conduct, his authoritative and yet simple and unaffected manner of doing his mighty works, are beyond imitation. There is no coloring, no amplification, no study of effect, no eagerness to strike wonder, no anxiety to be believed. The evangelists write as those who give a faithful narrative of a wonderful, but real course of action. Nor is it a slight corroboration of all these arguments, that the undesigned coincidences so admirably adduced by critics in proof of the general credibility of the gospel narrative, fall as frequently upon the miracles as on any other events.f

The wonderful deeds then of the New Testament really occurred. To resist such accumulated evidence, borne by such witnesses, attested by all their contemporaries, admitted by their bitterest foes, corroborated by existing monuments and public usages, and strengthened by all the marks of truth in the accounts themselves-I say, to resist such evidence, not to speculative opinions, but to distinct matters of fact, is to overthrow the very foundations of truth, and to involve men in one bewildering maze of scepticism and absurdity.

And yet this is coolly attempted by modern infidels, not by going into an examination of our arguments, or by producing counter-evidence; but by general insinuations against the fallibility of human testimony, by asserting that miracles are contradictory to experience, and by alleging that the proof of remote history is weakened and extinguished by the lapse of time.

But what has the general fallibility of human testimony to do with the strong, unshaken evidence of upright men to specific events which fell under their own notice? For we are now only considering miracles as to the facts on which

(f) See Mr. Blunt's Veracity: where the remark is first made, and illustrated with admirable judgment.

they rest. What the cause of them might be, that is, whether they are properly miraculous or not, we do not now inquire; we adduce testimony to the naked facts. Were the water-pots filled with water? Did it become wine? Here are two facts. Was Lazarus dead? Did Lazarus live again after four days? Was Bartimeus blind? Did he receive his sight? Was our Lord crucified? Did he live again on the third day? These are the questions.

Now what can general insinuations against human testimony avail in a case like that before us, when every caution has been taken against this very fallibility, and the evidence of twelve unimpeached beholders, with the suffrages of a whole nation, excludes all possibility of mistake? As well might we enter a court of justice, and, when a jury of twelve men upon their oath, under the direction of a learned and impartial judge, have brought in a verdict, upon the testimony of numerous credible witnesses to a specific fact-whisper the fallibility of human testimony.

It is further objected, that these wonderful works are contrary to experience? To what experience! To that of the objector merely? Then he will shut out all facts of which he is not himself the eye-witness; and the Indian who should refuse to believe on any testimony the fact of water being frozen, would be in the right. But does the objector mean the experience of others? Then he must come to testimony. Thus his objection does not apply. Opposite experience is not necessarily contradictory. In order to oppose experience to miraculous facts, the objector should contrast the testimony of those who professed to have seen miracles, and considered them divine; to the testimony of those who, under similar circumstances, saw the same actions, and considered them not divine, but mere impostures.h

Again, it is urged, that the transmission of remote facts is weakened till it becomes extinct. But we are not speak

(h) See a fine remark to this purport in Bishop Van Mildert's Lecture on Infidelity in loc.

ing of a loose, undefined transmission by oral testimony. We are speaking of written testimony, and where a series of separate and credible witnesses, in each age from the present, may be traced up, step by step, till we come to the apostolic. In this view, the Christian church is a society which never passes away, nor leaves a void in the transmission of testimony. The generations of it change only gradually and imperceptibly. The new age of Christians has been baptized into the faith of the great and striking facts of Christianity, and received the distinct testimony of them, long before the old age has passed off. Twenty or thirty individuals joining hands, as it were, across the lines which divide the centuries, form an unbroken chain from the apostles' time to our own. The successive generations of witnesses imperceptibly passing away in the Christian society, are only like the successive changes in the matter of the same human frame, which possesses always one unchanged essence and form, though the particles which compose it are partly dissipated every moment, and renewed by those which take their place. A man is the same man, whatever imperceptible changes take place in the substance of his body, because his consciousness, his mind, his identity remains. Thus the Christian society continues still the same depository of truth. Consciousness is diffused, as it were, throughout the community. The passage from one generation of Christians to another is imperceptible. The society is always the same body, preserving the memory of certain events, and celebrating actions in commemoration of them. The church in her first and in her eighteenth century, only differs as a man at seventy years of age differs from what he was at twenty. His consciousness, his memory of certain prominent facts, and his testimony to them continue as fresh and decisive as ever.i

So utterly futile are the objections against the history of the gospel-objections, however, which being sown in the fertile soil of fallen nature, and favoring the pride and sensuality of the heart, require continually to be exposed.

(i) Frayssinous.

Let it be remembered, then, that if men attempt to shake our belief in the testimony to the miraculous facts of the gospel, they resist the common sentiments and most approved practice of mankind; nay, the very sentiments and practice by which they themselves are governed in similar cases. In short, all historical truth, all philosophy, all jurisprudence, all society, depends on the evidence borne by credible witnesses. A reliance on well-authenticated and well-circumstanced testimony is as much a law of our moral nature, as the belief of the ordinary laws by which the universe is governed, is of our understanding.i

But we proceed, in the next place, to consider

II.

WHETHER THESE FACTS WERE, PROPERLY SPEAKING,

MIRACULOUS.

That the facts took place is proved: it is admitted also that they were extraordinary. A few considerations will show that they were in the strictest sense miracles.

For what is a miracle? Is it not such an operation as suspends some of those laws of nature, on the general constancy of which the order and preservation of the whole universe rest? These laws God alone, as the author of nature, fixed; and these laws God alone, as the governor and preserver of nature, can alter or suspend. A miracle supposes an established and generally unaltered course of things. Effects that are produced in the regular order of that course we call natural, and those which clearly and palpably depart from that order we call miraculous. Both are equally easy to God; and equally incomprehensible, in the mode of them, to us. That grains of corn sown in the earth should turn into abundant harvests which nourish whole nations, is an astonishing act of that goodness which continually supplies our wants. But it is constantly exerted, and therefore creates little surprise. It is common. That five barley loaves and a few small fishes should be multiplied instantaneously so as to feed five thousand men, and that twelve baskets of fragments should be collected from them, is an astonishing act effected by divine goodness, communicating a revelation to man(i) Frank's Hulsean Lectures.

kind. But it is rare and unexpected. It therefore strikes us with admiration. It excites inquiry into the cause of the extraordinary occurrence. The usual acts of God's power prove his being and providence; the unusual and miraculous prove the divine commission of the person at whose word they are performed. The extraordinary phenomena which we call miracles, are fitted, therefore, from their infrequency, to awaken the attention of mankind; and at the same time they afford, by their evident connexion with supernatural agency, the best conceivable proof of an immediate indication of the divine will.

1. The facts then of the gospel were plain and palpable miracles-such suspensions of the order of nature as men's outward senses, their eyes and ears, might judge of. They were not facts of the nature of which any doubt could be entertained whether they were in the ordinary course of things or not; but plainly contrary to that course. Such as raising a body that had been dead four days; restoring instant and perfect sight to the blind; healing by a word or at a distance all the diseases incident to our nature; casting out unclean spirits; walking on the sea; calming in a moment the raging of a storm. These works were evidently miracles-suspensions of the laws of nature-bold, sensible, and level to every man's comprehension.

2. They were done by Christ and his apostles professedly as divine acts, and were accompanied with that open and undisguised publicity which would have led to their detection had they been impositions. They were performed in the face of the world, or before a sufficient number of competent and intelligent witnesses. They were not fabricated among a few interested persons in a corner. They were done openly in the midst of the assembled multitudes, and before the most bitter adversaries. The man born blind, Lazarus, the paralytic, were seen by their families and neighbors and all the Jews. The few loaves and fishes were multiplied publicly, and partaken of by five thousand men. The entire Jewish nation, assembled at the feast of Pentecost, heard the apostles address them in new tongues. These things were done at noon-day, and were