truth of miraculous facts for the reasons to be now given. In the former case there is no advantage to be gained by falsehood, in the latter there may be much. I cannot conceive any motive which could induce historians and other authors, in different ages and countries, to agree in giving false accounts of the periods of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the succession of the seasons, the course of human life, the property of fire to burn, and of water to quench. It is quite inconceivable that numbers of people, at different times and places, should concur, without any intelligible motive, in disseminating falsehoods. With respect to supposed miraculous events, the case is widely different. The love of power affords a strong stimulus to human action, and the desire to be thought superior to others acts perhaps with equal force. The man who can work a miracle excels others in power, and will attain a reputation among those who believe in the miracle beyond other men. These are distinctions attaching to all pretences to the possession of miraculous powers; but these are by no means the only, or even the strongest motives which may lead to. the assumption of these powers. Those who have pretended to possess them have generally been either founders of some new religion, or introducers of some important changes in that which was established, or persons who held, or aspired to hold, important offices in their respective churches. Such persons have an obvious interest in giving strength to the authority which they enjoy, and in advancing and increasing their influence over the minds of their followers; which ends would evidently be answered by the belief of their possessing miraculous powers. But this is by no

means all. The priesthood has been usually closely connected with the civil authority of their respective countries. Often the same persons have wielded both civil and ecclesiastical power; and where that has not been the case, the ecclesiastical and the civil authority have given mutual aid and support to each other. Thus the natural desire of power and distinction may be reasonably presumed to have stimulated individuals to pretend to possess miraculous power, and to delude the world by pretended working of miracles, whenever the circumstances of the age in which they lived, and the position in which they were placed, afforded a probable chance of success in their attempts. Credulity largely prevails among men, particularly in the ignorant and ill-informed; and pretences to supernatural power, when skilfully conducted, and claimed with unhesitating confidence, will often, in a rude and credulous age, be attended with success. The conclusion to be drawn from history is, that a disposition to believe in supernatural events bears an inverse proportion to the intelligence of the age in which they are alleged to have taken place, and a direct proportion to the tendency of the age to superstition. I see not the slightest objection to a passage from Bacon, which Hume considers confirmatory of his argument. "Above all," says Bacon, "every relation must be considered as suspicious which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy."

Returning then to the question of the assumed incredibility of miracles, I see nothing to warrant the conclusion, that it is incredible that the Deity has at any time, under any circumstances, and for any purpose, caused a deviation from the ordinary laws

of nature. If any one should say that the laws of nature are absolutely in themselves unalterable, so that even the Almighty cannot change them, I must demand of him to prove this; as no proof of it, or, to my knowledge, plausible argument for it, has been yet produced. Those who believe that those laws are the appointment of God, which I have. endeavoured to show in the early part of this work is the only rational belief, can have no difficulty in admitting that he has power to suspend or alter them. Are we then in a condition to assert, that having the power, he never has had, and never can have the will to do so? Surely it would be folly and presumption in the highest degree for weak, shortsighted man to say this of his Creator. I do not see then that we can positively assume that there is any incredibility in a deviation from the laws of nature, such deviation having been calculated to produce beneficial effects which would not have occurred if they had constantly been in force without such deviation.

But although we should admit that there is nothing incredible in such a miracle as this, the evidence of its having taken place ought to be sifted with great care, and a reasonable suspicion may well be entertained that some deception has been practised. The grounds of this suspicion have been enumerated already. We will now consider what sort of evidence we may reasonably require to prove a miracle:-1, we must be satisfied that the witnesses could not be deceived; 2, that they were persons of honest character who did not intend to deceive others; which can only be proved by their being placed in such cir

cumstances as leave no reason for believing that they were induced to give false testimony by a regard to their own interest, or by the influence of prejudice or passion; 3, that if there are several witnesses, they should all agree in the main fact of the miracle. We have already seen that differences respecting immaterial circumstances connected with the miracle, but not essentially belonging to it, would not tend to invalidate their testimony. This will be easily understood by all who have been in the habit of attending courts of criminal justice, where, in the proof of the most serious crimes, witnesses frequently differ as to immaterial facts, such as the dress of the person present, the exact time in which the event took place, &c. No sensible jury attaches any importance to discrepancies of this sort, for the plain reason, that these are facts, immaterial and, on that account, not likely to have been observed with close attention.

I will add here that great strength will be given to the evidence if the witnesses were previously strongly indisposed to believe the fact in question; and if they were very slowly brought to the conviction that a miraculous event had actually occurred.

In estimating the weight of the evidence produced to prove a miracle, due regard must be paid to the circumstances under which it is said to have taken place. We are always justified in demanding the best evidence which can be produced of the event in question. If we have an opportunity of personally witnessing the supposed miraculous fact, we ought to do so, because the evidence of our own senses must have greater weight than the testimony of others. If the miracle is said to have taken place in a distant

age and country, we can of course have nothing beyond historical testimony. With respect then to the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the question is, have we or have we not sufficient evidence of its truth?

The Christian religion must have had a beginning. All the information from the writings of Christians and heathens which we possess concurs in showing that it had its origin in Palestine in the reign of the emperor Tiberius; that its original promulgator was Jesus Christ; and that after his death it was taught by his followers. That Jesus was crucified, and that he was miraculously raised from the dead, has been the belief of Christians in all ages of which we have any written account; and there is not a tittle of evidence tending to show that this was not an article of the Christian creed from the very beginning of the religion. We must, then, unless we choose to assume a fact without any evidence, believe that the first teachers of Christianity embraced and inculcated this belief. We have five narratives which profess to give accounts of the resurrection of Jesus, and of the subsequent conduct and teachings of his disciples. There are no writings in existence inconsistent with these histories; and if we reject them we are left without any information respecting the origin of Christianity. Considered as histories of ordinary facts, they are quite as much entitled to be received as authentic as any other ancient historical writings. I shall therefore continue to treat the gospels and the book of Acts as authentic narratives, as I have already done as to the accounts of the life of Jesus contained in the four gospels. The question for our serious con

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