the skill and ability of mortals. Hence, if God manifest himself at all-unless, in accommodation to the capacities of men, he should constrain his manifestations within the compass of human ability—every act of God's immediate power would, to human capacity, be a miracle. But, if God

were to constrain all his acts within the limits of human means and agencies, it would be impossible for man to discriminate between the acts of the Godhead and the acts of the manhood. And man, if he considered acts to be of a Divine origin, which were plainly within the compass of human ability, would violate his own reason.

Suppose, for illustration, that God desired to reveal a religion to men, and wished them to recognise his character and his benevolence in giving that revelation. Suppose, further, that God should give such a revelation, and that every appearance and every act connected with its introduction, were characterised by nothing superior to human power: could any rational mind on earth believe that such a system of religion came from God? Impossible! A man could as easily be made to believe that his own child, who possessed his own lineaments, and his own nature, belonged to some other world, and some other order of the creation. It would not be possible for God to convince men that a religion was from heaven, unless it was accompanied with the marks of Divine power

Suppose, again, that some individual were to appear either in the heathen or Christian worldhe claimed to be a teacher sent from God, yet aspired to the performance of no miracles. He assumed to do nothing superior to the wisdom and ability of other men. Such an individual, although he might succeed in gaining proselytes to some particular view of a religion already believed, yet

he could never make men believe that he had a special commission from God to establish a new religion, for the simple reason that he had no grounds more than his fellows, to support his claims as an agent of the Almighty. But if he could convince a single individual that he had. wrought a miracle, or that he had power to do so, that moment his claims would be established, in that mind, as a commissioned agent from heaven. So certainly, and so intuitively, do the minds of men revere and expect miracles as the credentials of the Divine presence.

This demand of the mind for miracles, as testimony of the Divine presence and power, is intuitive with all men; and those very individuals who have doubted the existence or necessity of miracles, should they examine their own convictions on this subject, would see that, by an absolute necessity, if they desired to give the world a system of religion, whether truth or imposture, in order to make men receive it as of Divine authority, they must work miracles to attest its truth, or make men believe that they did so. Men can produce doubt of a revelation in no way until they have destroyed the evidence of its miracles; nor can faith be produced in the Divine origin of a religion until the evidence of miracles is supplied.

The conviction that miracles are the true attestation of immediate Divine agency, is so constitutional (allow the expression) with the reason, that so soon as men persuade themselves they are the special agents of God, in propagating some particular truth in the world, they adopt likewise the belief that they have ability to work miracles. There have been many sincere enthusiasts, who believed that they were special agents of heaven, and, in such cases, the conviction of their own

miraculous powers arises as a necessary concomitant of the other opinion. Among such, in modern times, may be instanced Emanuel Swedenborg, and Irving, the Scotch preacher. Impostors also, perceiving that miracles were necessary in order that the human mind should receive a religion as Divine, have invariably claimed miraculous powers. Such instances recur constantly from the days of Elymas down to the Mormon, Joseph Smith.

All the multitude of false religions that have been believed since the world began, have been introduced by the power of this principle. Miracles believed, lie at the foundation of all religions which men have ever received as of Divine origin. No matter how degrading or repulsive to reason in other respects, the fact of its establishment and propagation grows out of the belief of men that miraculous agency lies at the bottom. This belief will give currency to any system, however absurd; and without it, no system can be established in the minds of men, however high and holy may be its origin and its design.

Such, then, is the constitution which the Maker has given to the mind. Whether the conviction be an intuition or an induction of the reason, God is the primary cause of its existence; and its existence puts it out of the power of man to receive a revelation from God himself, unless accompanied with miraculous manifestations. If, therefore, God ever gave a revelation to man, it was necessarily accompanied with miracles, and with miracles of such a nature as would clearly distinguish the Divine character and the Divine authority of the dispensation.

The whole fulness and force of these deductions apply to the case of the Israelites. The laws of

their mind not only demanded miracles as an attestation of Divine interposition; but at that time, the belief existed in their minds, that miracles were constantly performed. Although they remembered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet they likewise, as subsequent facts clearly attested, believed that the idols of Egypt possessed the attributes of Divinity. The belief in a plurality of gods was then common to all nations. And although this error was corrected, and perhaps entirely removed, by succeeding providences and instructions, from the minds of the Jews; yet, before the miracles in Egypt, while the God of Abraham was, perhaps, in most cases acknowledged as their God, the idols of Egypt were acknowledged as the gods of the Egyptians, and probably wor shipped as the divinities who had power to dispense good and evil to all the inhabitants of that land. And in common with all Egypt, they, no doubt, believed that the acts of jugglery, m which the magicians, or priests of Egypt, had made astonish ing proficiency, were actual miracles, exhibiting the power of their idols, and the authority of the priests to act in their name.

In view, therefore, of existing circumstances, two things were necessary, on the part of God, in order to give any revelation to the Israelites :First, that He should manifest himself by miracles, and, Secondly, that those miracles should be of such a character, as evidently to distinguish them from the jugglery of the magicians, and to convince all observers of the existence and omnipotence of the true God, in contradistinction from the objects of idolatrous worship. Unless these two things were

When we speak of a thing as necessary on the part of God, it is said, not in reference to God's attributes, but to man's nature and circumstances.

done, it would have been impossible for the Israel ites to have recognised JEHOVAH as the only living and true GOD.

It follows, then, that by the miracles which God wrought, by the hand of Moses, he pursued the only way that was possible to give a revelation in which his presence and power would be recognised. The only point of inquiry remaining is, Were the miracles of such a character, and performed in such a manner, as to remove false views from the minds of the Israelites, and introduce right views concerning the true God, and the non-existence of factitious objects of worship?

With this point in view, the design in the management and character of the miracles in Egypt is interesting and obvious. Notice, first, the whole strength of the magicians' skill was brought out and measured with that of the miraculous power exerted through Moses. If this had not been done, the idea would have remained in the minds of the people, that although Moses wielded a mighty miraculous power, it might be derived from the Egyptian gods, or if it were not thus derived, they might have supposed, that if the priests of those idols were summoned, they could contravene or arrest the power vested in Moses by Jehovah. But now, the magicians appearing in the name of their gods, the power of Moses was seen to be not only superior to their sorceries, but hostile to them and their idolatrous worship.

Notice, secondly, the design and adaptedness of the miracles, not only to distinguish the power of the true God, but to destroy the confidence placed in the protection and power of the idols.

The first miracle, while it authenticated the mission of Moses, destroyed the serpents which, among the Egyptians, were objects of worship: