the same point, let us revert to the truly philosophical, the primitive, experience. Suppose that the first man had been created before the heavens were spread forth, or the earth hung in the empty space, and that he had beheld those awful effects of Omnipotence. Would he, at the close of the first day of his existence, find it difficult to believe in miracles? Why then, should the experience of forty years, amidst regular successions of events, make him forget that miracles might again be a part of the course of nature? The experience that makes a man feel as if there could be no more miracles, seems to me narrow, and if I may say so, provincial; like that which makes an ignorant and home-bred rustic feel as if every thing in the great world must be just like what he had seen in his father's house, and fills him with astonishment, amounting to incredulity, at every thing new and extraordinary. What is the spirit of a real and studious philosophy, in cases which, so far as the facts are considered, are precisely analogous to miracles. An extraordinary, unheard-of, and before unknown fact is presented in nature. Water, for instance, is produced by the intense combustion of two invisible gases. There are many men in the world who would say on the first proposition of such a marvel, that they would not believe it. But does the philosopher say so? Or does he wait, before he will believe, till he can resolve that fact into some order of nature? By no means. The fact has been submitted to the test of experiment, and he is satisfied. And he believes it, let me add, not because it belongs to any order of things, but because it has been proved by satisfactory experiments. The King of Siam would not believe, that the liquid and flowing water could become a solid body under his feet. He took the very ground of the skeptic about miracles. He had never seen water frozen; nobody in his country had ever seen it; and he would not believe it. Was that the ground of philosophy, or of prejudice? A man says, that he cannot and will not believe in miracles. And yet every object in the universe around him, had its origin in a miracle. And suppose that it were given us again to witness such displays of power. Suppose that another sun were created and placed in the heavens before our very eyes. Should we not believe the fact till we perceived that it was produced by some preexisting, worldmaking machinery of causes? And yet I verily believe that that wonderful creation would not be more extraordinary, than

to the discriminating moral eye is that great Light which burst upon the darkness of the world, eighteen centuries ago!

If, then, the strong and almost insuperable presumption against the doctrine of miracles, which many feel, is not justified by a strict philosophy, let us now proceed a step farther.

I am willing to concede something to this presumption; I wish to give it all the weight that it deserves; but I do not conceive that it possesses the broadest characters of philosophy. It appears to me instinctive rather than rational, hasty rather than deliberate, and narrow rather than comprehensive. And I believe that the rational, deliberate, and comprehensive view of things is more than sufficient fairly to rebut the narrow, the basty, and the instinctive view.

It is said, that nature and experience are against miracles. That a part of nature and experience is so, I admit; but I desire special attention to the remark that it is only a part. That the whole is so, I deny. Nay, I would invite your still more particular attention to the observation, that the parts of nature and experience which are against miracles are the lowest and humblest. It is the mechanical order of nature which is opposed to miracles, and not its grand, comprehensive meaning and principle. And it is a less cultivated experience, which, feeling less the need of those truths that revelation discloses, is less disposed to admit of such a revelation, than the mind in its highest developement.

Let us then, go into the broad field of nature and experience, into that very field, where skepticism has found its strong-hold, and see what it teaches us.

The particular course of things in nature is order; the great principle is beneficence, the adaptation of all things to the happiness of sensitive beings, the supply of all wants, the relief of all sufferings. Nay, order itself has its chief value in its uses; it is designed for the improvement of rational beings; and it has been well argued, on a former occasion in this place, that, "if the great purposes of the universe can best be accomplished by departing from its established laws, those laws will undoubtedly be suspended, and, though broken in the letter, they will be observed in the spirit ;" and hence that "miracles, instead of warring against nature, would concur with it."*

VOL. XXI.

* Channing's Dudleian Lecture. 3D S. VOL. III. NO. I.

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But let us cast a glance, first, not at human experience, but at the condition of irrational natures. The most striking feature in that condition is the adaptation of means to beneficent ends, of supplies to wants, of reliefs to unavoidable. sufferings. Among all the tribes of animate life, there is not a creature so small, but contains within it a world of wonders; and wonders not of skill only, but of beneficence. The anatomy of a fly, the instinct of a spider, the economy of a hive of bees, the structure of an ant-hill, are each of them subjects which fill many ample pages in the books of philosophy; and fill them constructively with this one theme, the goodness of the Creator, his gracious regard to the humblest thing that lives. If you rise higher in the scale of the creation, you find everywhere, multiplying and crowding upon you, the proofs of unspeakable goodness. In heaven, on earth, and abroad upon all the pathless seas, are innumerable creatures, possessing frames filled with the most exquisite adaptations of part to part, guided by kindly instincts, supplied with bountiful provisions, arrayed, as Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed, and provided with habitations, more perfect for their purposes, than palaces of cedar or marble.

To illustrate the argument which I design to draw from this appeal to nature, let me make a supposition entirely at variance with the facts to which we have now adverted. Suppose, then, that you had found any one tribe of the animal creation unprovided for. Suppose, that it had no appropriate food, or that it had no instinct to guide it to that food, that it knew not where to seek its sustenance, whether in the water, or the air, or the earth. If we had seen any species of beings in this situation, if, for example, every summer should bring into existence a certain kind of bird, for which there was no suitable provision, or no guiding instinct, if we should see them flying about us, as if uncertain, destitute, and suffering, with wild screams testifying their anxiety and distress, apparently ignorant whether the night or the day was appointed for them, now rising into the air, now plunging into the water, and then madly dashing against the earth, if, I say, we had thus seen them holding a precarious and painful existence for a few weeks, and then miserably perishing; we should feel as if such a phenomenon was most extraordinary and astonishing, - at war with the whole system of nature, and with all the proofs of divine benevolence. We do unhesitatingly pronounce the

facts embraced in such a supposition impossible. If we were to study nature for ever, we should never expect to meet with any thing like this.

Now I apply this to the case of human nature. And I desire you to suspend your judgment of the comparison for one moment till I can fully lay it before you. Consider, in the first place, the dignity of the being, to illustrate whose condition this comparison is brought. Consider all the difference between animal sense, and a being so "infinite in faculties" as man. Suppose, in the next place, that this being, acting according to an unquestionable law of his nature, should improve his faculties to the highest degree conceivable, without the knowledge of a future life. And finally, suppose him, with all the craving wants, the soaring aspirations, and the exquisite, varied, and multiplied sorrows of refined thought and feeling, to stand upon the earth, as it rolled in silence through the mighty void of heaven, -with death all around him, and without one voice from beyond the realms of visible life to assure him, that he should live hereafter, and then say, whether this would not be a condition more mournful, more disastrous, more at war with the order of divine beneficence, than any catastrophe that ever could befall animal natures,

If any one distrusts this comparison, I must beg leave to doubt whether he fairly comprehends it. The truth is, that all the world has held to revelations in one form or another. By communications direct or traditional, by the voice of augurs or of prophets, by open miracle or inward light, all mankind have deemed themselves to have special guidance from above. It is an important inference from this fact, that no one can very well estimate the case of supposed utter destitution; and, therefore, that it is extremely difficult for any individual to feel the whole and legitimate force of this argument. Every man has been trained up from childhood by a system of communications; and now, upon the very strength of these communications, or of the convictions they have inevitably inspired, he deems himself able to stand without them. But difficult as the task is made by the unfair position of the objector, I shall offer two or three observations, in close, tending to show the need, and therefore the likelihood, instead of the often alleged improbability, of an extraordinary revelation.

Leaving other communications out of the account, then, we, as Christians, say that about eighteen centuries ago, at a period

at once of unprecedented intellectual developement and equally prevailing skepticism, there appeared an extraordinary teacher from heaven. I am not now to offer any of the arguments for his divine mission, that seem to me so abundant and overwhelming; but I think I am fully entitled by the circumstances to say, that there ought to be no presumption against it. For it is undeniable, that, amidst all the lights of Grecian and Roman civilization, the most important truths, the unity and paternity of God, and the immortality of man, were obscured; and it is but a reasonable inference, that without a revelation, they would have been overshadowed with doubt till And even the belief that prevailed in the minds of a few philosophers, seems to me singularly to have wanted vitality. There is more reasoning than conviction apparent in their discourses; and certainly their faith had but little influence on their lives. Cicero, we know, and others, amidst all their hopes, had strong doubts. And I maintain, not only from these examples, but from the experience of every powerful mind since, that no reasonings can relieve that great question from painful, from distressing uncertainty.

now.

My argument, then, is from human experience, and from cultivated human experience. It is easy to see, that a rude age might less need the relief which a revelation on this point would give; and for this reason, as I hold, to rude ages it was not given. My argument, then, is from cultivated human experience. And this is the form into which it resolves itself. God is the author of life, and the former of the mind. It is fair to presume, that he, who has provided for the wants of the humblest animal life, would not doom the noblest creature he has made on earth, to overwhelming despondency and misery. Now I say, that, without a revelation, this result is inevitable. I maintain, that no scheme of a virtuous, improving, and happy life can be made out, which leaves the doctrines of God's paternal and forgiving mercy, and of human immortality, in great and serious doubt.

My friends, I bring home the case to myself, and to you. I know what it is to doubt, and I say that no man should judge of the effect of that doubt, till he knows by experience what it is; till, crushed by its weight, he has laid himself down to his nightly rest, too miserable and desperate to care whether he ever raised his head from that pillow of repose and oblivion; till every morning has waked him to sadness and despond