doubtless have been authorized in continuing his suspense, however powerful and unequivocal might be the testimony by which the reality of the fact was supported. But that he should refuse his assent to any fact, merely because "it arose from a state of nature with which he was unacquainted," and in which it was therefore impossible for him to say whether the circumstances were or were not the same with those in which he had observed a different effect, was least of all like the conduct of a correct and inductive philosopher, who always presumes that when the results are different there must have been some difference also in the nature of the experiments under which they were produced.—It was, in reality, neither more nor less than turning his own ignorance into the infallible standard of credibility. It was drawing an inference against a fact, which had all the evidence which mere testimony could give it, when even by his own confession he must have perceived that he was uninformed of the premises by which alone such an inference could be justified. I dwell upon the points in which the conclusion of this Indian philosopher was false and unsound, because his reasoning was precisely similar to that of those sceptical philosophers who, in the present day, would reject the Christian miracles upon the ground of their being contradictory to experience. Be it that we are assured by universal experience

that no miracles have ever been wrought for any other purpose, there is still no incredibility in their having been wrought in defence of the Jewish and Christian revelations, because they differ so entirely from every other purpose. In miracles pretended to have been wrought in favour of any particular sect of the true religion, the matter in dispute has always been either frivolous, or unessential, or unholy, or capable of being determined by the subordinate instruments of reason and authority. Again, in miracles pretended to have been wrought in favour of false religions, the whole system, as in Mahometism, has been impure, or, as in Idolatry, repugnant to the first principles of reason, and the fundamental attributes of the Deity. In all and every of these cases, I should therefore indeed doubt the reality of the best attested miracles, and say that their intrinsic incredibility was sufficient to counterbalance the weight of the strongest testimony, because the voice of a constant and uniform experience is against the operation of divine miracles in defence of any object which is either frivolous or unrighteous, irrational or unnecessary. Upon this we may boldly pronounce, because we have had plentiful opportunities of remarking what usually happens in such circumstances. But how can this affect the credibility of miracles in any instance in which the object is altogether of

a different character, and where we have had no opportunity whatever of observing what is the usual method of God's proceeding? Where, as in the systems of the Gospel and the Law, the internal evidence is so strong, the morality so pure, the doctrine so holy, the end so important, the means so wise, and whole tissue so blessed and so worthy of God, as to stand forth without a parallel in the annals of mankind, there the argument from the past cannot possibly apply. We cannot here assume that miracles are contradictory to experience, or even different from our observation, because the fact is simply this, that we are altogether destitute of experience and without observation upon the subject. The voice of experience must therefore be content to be silent upon the proper or probable mode of establishing such a religion as that of the Bible, for nothing like it has ever been seen in the records of human history. The consequence is, that we must throw experience out of consideration whenever we would estimate the natural credibility of the mode in which Christianity is said to have been actually propagated, and measure the extent of our belief in its miracles, by the only remaining branch of evidence, the capacity and fidelity of the witnesses to the facts. Experience is neutral. Testimony is positive. We must turn away therefore from the dumbness of the first, and listen

implicitly and exclusively to the latter. For it is as irrational to reject testimony, when experience is mute, in matters of religion as in matters of philosophy, and as imprudent to deny the credibility of the miracles of revelation, because they have never been observed to have been wrought upon any other occasion, as to deny the freezing of mercury under the pole, because it has never been observed under the equator. The circumstances of the two experiments and occasions being different we cannot with propriety expect the same results in both.

The true doctrine, then, with regard to evidence would appear to be just what we have stated it to be, namely, that our experience of what has already occurred, is a safe guide of reasoning and a sound rule of judgment as to the natural credibility of alleged matters of fact, only in those cases in which the circumstances are similar

or the same. Where the circumstances vary, and in proportion as they vary, in the same degree are the deductions from past experience inapplicable, and in the same degree does testimony alone become the measure of truth and the ground of belief. And this is a rule which leaves the testimony to every fact which is recorded in the Bible, whether it be of a miraculous or of an ordinary kind, both unimpeached and unim

peachable. The declarations of the Evangelists are equally credible, so far at least as this argument is concerned, whether they record the most uncommon or the commonest occurrences of our Saviour's life; whether they merely relate his birth and his burial, or speak of his bursting the barriers of the grave and planting his footsteps on the waters of the deep. For the Gospel is a solitary and a singular religion, against which we must never presume to judge by the laws which are deduced only from our experience in the common occasions of life.

I should much regret the logical and didactic statements into which I have been thus compelled to enter, did I not hope that they might have a tendency to remove that confusion of the understanding (for few, I should presume, have ever found their understandings satisfied with the reasonings of Hume, when applied to the Gospel miracles) which almost every one must have felt when rising from the perusal of his loose and unconnected Essay; and did I not think that there are some useful and important fruits to be gathered even in this wilderness of sophistry. For what shall we say of those who have thus laboured to cast a stumbling-block in the way every one that would lay hold on Christ? Shall we judge of the motives of their conduct by its

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