of the authority of some particular person." With this addition the definition will be sufficiently satisfactory, as it explains the nature of the phenomenon, and gives the reason or end of its occurrence.

Farmer, in his "Dissertation on Miracles," denies to any created intelligences, however high, the power of working miracles, when acting from themselves alone. This dispute is only to be settled by a strict definition of terms; but whatever power may be allowed to superior beings to produce miraculous effects, or effects apparently so, by the control they may be supposed to exert over natural objects; yet, as they are all under the government of God, they have certainly no power to interfere with his work, and the order of his providence, at pleasure. Whatever they do, therefore, whether by virtue of natural power, or power specially communicated, they must do it by commission, or at least by license.

The miracles under consideration are such effects as agree with the definition just given, and which are wrought either immediately by God himself, to attest the Divine mission of particular persons, and to authenticate their doctrines; or by superior beings commissioned by him for the same purpose; or by the persons themselves who profess this Divine authority, in order to prove that they have been invested with it by God.

The possibility of miracles wrought by the power of God, can be denied by none but Atheists, or those whose system is substantially Atheistic. Spinosa denies that any power can supersede that of nature; or that any thing can disturb or interrupt the order of things: and accordingly he defines a miracle to be "a rare event happening in consequence of some laws that are unknown to us." This is a definition of a prodigy, not of a miracle; but if miracles in the proper sense be allowed, that is, if the facts themselves which have been commonly called miraculous be not disputed, this method of accounting for them is obviously most absurd; inasmuch as it is supposed that these unknown laws chanced to come into operation, just when men professing to be endued with miraculous powers wished them, while yet such laws were to them unknown. For instance, when Moses contended with the Egyptian magicians, though these laws were unknown to him, he ventured to depend upon their operation, and by chance they served his purpose.

To one who believes in a Supreme Creator of all things, and the dependence of all things upon his power and will, miraculous interpositions must be allowed possible, nor is there any thing in them repugnant to our ideas of his wisdom and immutability, and the perfection of his. works. They are departures from the ordinary course of God's operation; but this does not arise from any natural necessity, to remedy an unforeseen evil, or to repair imperfections in his work; the reasons for them are moral and not natural reasons, and the ends they are intended

to accomplish are moral ends. They remind us, when they occur, that there is a power superior to nature, and that all nature, even to its first and most uniform laws depends upon Him. They are among the chief means by which he who is by nature invisible, makes himself as it were visible to his creatures, who are so prone to forget him entirely or to lose sight of him by reason of the interposition of the veil of material objects. (8)

Granting then the possibility of miraculous interposition on the part of the great Author of nature, on special occasions, and for great ends, in what way and under what circumstances does such an interposition authenticate the Divine mission of those who profess to be sent by him to teach his will to mankind?

The argument is, that as the known and established course of nature has been fixed by him who is the Creator and Preserver of all things, it can never be violated, departed from, or controlled, but either immedi

(8) Bishop Butler has satisfactorily shown, in his Analogy, (part ii, c. 11,) that there can be no such presumption against miracles as to render them, in any wise, incredible, but what would conclude against such uncommon appearances as comets, and against there being any such powers in nature as magnetism and electricity, so contrary to the properties of other bodies not endued with these powers. But he observes, "Take in the consideration of religion, or the moral system of the world, and then we see distinct particular reasons for miracles, to afford mankind instruction, additional to that of nature, and to attest the truth of it; and our being able to discern reasons for them, gives a positive credibility to the history of them, in cases where those reasons hold."

"It is impossible," says an oracle among modern unbelievers, (Voltaire,) “that a Being, infinitely wise, should make laws in order to violate them. He would not derange the machine of his own construction, unless it were for its improve. ment. But as a God, he hath, without doubt, made it as perfect as possible; or, if he had foreseen any imperfection likely to result from it, he would surely have provided against it from the beginning, and not be under a necessity of changing it afterward. He is both unchangeable and omnipotent, and therefore can neither have any desire to alter the course of nature, nor have any need to do so." “This argument,” says Dr. Van Mildert, "is grounded on a misconception or a misrepresentation of the design of miracles, which is not the remedy of any physical defect, not to rectify any original or accidental imperfections in the laws of nature, but to manifest to the world the interposition of the Almighty, for especial purposes of a moral kind. It is simply to make known to mankind, that it is he who addresses them, and that whatever is accompanied with this species of evidence, comes from him, and claims their implicit belief and obedience. The perfection, therefore, or imperfection, of the laws of nature has nothing to do with the question. All nature is subservient to the will of God; and as his existence and attributes are manifest in the ordinary course of nature, so, in the extraordinary work of miracles, his will is manifested by the display of his absolute sovereignty over the course of nature. Thus, in both instances, the Creator is glorified in his works; and it is made to appear, that 'by him all things consist,' and that 'for his pleasure they are, and were created.' This seems a sufficient answer to any reasoning, a priori, against miracles, from their supposed inconsistency with the Divine perfections."

ately by himself, or mediately by other beings at his command, and by his assistance or permission; for if this be not allowed, we must deny either the Divine omnipotence, or his natural government; and, if these be allowed, the other follows. Every real miracle is a work of God, done specially by him, by his permission, or with his concurrence.

In order to distinguish a real miracle, it is necessary that the common course of nature should be understood; for without some antecedent knowledge of the operation of physical causes, an event might be deemed miraculous which was merely strange, and through our ignorance inexplicable. Should an earthquake happen in a country never before visited by such a calamity within the memory of man, by the ignorant it might be considered miraculous; whereas an earthquake is a regular effect of the present established laws of nature.

But as the course of nature and the operation of physical causes are but partially understood, and will perhaps never be fully comprehended by the most inquiring minds, it seems necessary that such miracles as are intended to authenticate any religious system, promulged for the common benefit of mankind, should be effects produced upon objects whose properties have been the subject of common and long observation; that it should be contrary to some known laws by which the objects in question have been uniformly and long observed to be governed; or that the proximate cause of the effect should be known to have no adequate power or adaptation to produce it. When these circumstances occur separately, and more especially when combined, a sufficient antecedent acquaintance with the course of nature exists to warrant the conclusion, that the effect is miraculous, or, in other words, that it is produced by the special interposition of God.

Whether the works ascribed to Moses and to Christ, and recorded in Scripture were actually performed by them, will be considered in another place; but here it is proper to observe, that, assuming their actual occurence, they are of such a nature as to leave no reasonable doubt of their miraculous character; and from them we may borrow a few instances for the sake of illustrating the preceding observations, without prejudging the argument.

The rod cast from the hand of Moses becomes a serpent. Here the subject was well known; it was a rod, a branch separated from a tree, and it was obviously contrary to the known and established course of nature, that it should undergo so signal a transformation. If the fact can be proved, the miracle must therefore follow.

The sea is parted at the stretching out of the rod of Moses. Here is no adaptation of the proximate cause to produce the effect, which was obviously in opposition to the known qualities of water. A recession of the sea from the shores would have taken down the whole mass of water from the head of the gulf; but here the waters divide, and, con

trary to their nature, stand up on each side, leaving a passage for the host of Israel.

It is in the nature of clouds to be carried about by the wind; but the cloud which went before the Israelites in the wilderness, rested on their tabernacle, moved when they were commanded to march, and directed their course; rested when they were to pitch their tents, and was a pillar of direction by day; and, by night, when it is the nature of clouds to become dark, the rays of the sun no longer permeating them, this cloud shone with the brightness of fire.

In all these cases, if the facts be established, there can be no doubt as to their miraculous character.

"Were a physician instantly to give sight to a blind man, by anointing his eyes with a chemical preparation, to the nature and qualities of which we were absolute strangers, the cure would to us, undoubtedly, be wonderful; but we could not pronounce it miraculous, because it might be the physical effect of the operation of the unguent upon the eye. But were he to give sight to his patient, merely by commanding him to receive it, or by anointing his eyes with spittle, we should, with the utmost confidence, pronounce the cure to be a miracle; because we know perfectly, that neither the human voice nor human spittle has, by the established constitution of things, any such power over the diseases of the eye. No one is ignorant, that persons, apparently dead, are often restored to their families and friends, by being treated, during suspended animation, in the manner recommended by the Humane Society. To the vulgar, and sometimes even to men of science, these resuscitations appear very wonderful; but as they are known to be effected by physical agency, they cannot be considered as miraculous deviations from the laws of nature. On the other hand, no one could doubt of his having witnessed a real miracle, who had seen a person, that had been four days dead, come alive out of the grave at the call of another, or who had even beheld a person exhibiting all the common evidences of death, instantly resuscitated, merely by being desired to live." (Gleig's edition of Stackhouse's History of the Bible, vol. iii, p. 241.)

In all such instances, the common course of nature is sufficiently known to support the conclusion, that the power which thus interferes with, and controls it, and produces effects to which the visible, natural causes are known not to be adequate, is God. (9)

(9) It is observable, that no miracles appear to have been wrought by human agency before the time of Moses and Aaron, in whose days, not only had the world long existed, but consequently the course of nature had been observed for a long period and farther, these first miracles were wrought among a refined and observant people, who had their philosophers, to whom the course of nature, and the operation of physical causes, were subjects of keen investigation.

But it is also necessary, in order to prove that even these miraculous events are authentications of a Divine mission, that a direct connection between the power of God, exerted in a miraculous act, and the messenger, and his message, should be established.

The following circumstances would appear sufficiently to establish such a connection:-1. When the miracles occur at the time when he, who professes to have a Divine mission from God, is engaged in making known the will of God to mankind, by communicating the revelation he has received, and performing other acts connected with his office. 2. When, though they are works above human power, they are wrought by the messenger himself, or follow his volitions. The force of this argument may be thus exhibited :—

When such unequivocal miracles as those we have pointed out occur only in connection with an actual profession by certain persons, that they have a Divine authority to teach and command mankind, this is a strong presumption, that the works are wrought by God in order to authenticate this pretension; but when they are performed mediately by these persons themselves, by their own will, and for the express purpose of establishing their mission, inasmuch as they are allowed to be real miracles, which no power, but that of God, can effect, it is then clear that God is with them, and that his co-operation is an authenticating and visible seal upon their commission.

It is not necessary, in this stage, to specify the rules by which real and pretended miracles are to be distinguished; nor to inquire, whether the Scriptures allow, that, in some cases, miracles have been wrought in support of falsehood. Both these subjects will be examined when we come to speak of the miracles of Scripture. The ground established is, that miracles are possible; and that, when real miracles occur under the circumstances we have mentioned, they are satisfactory evidences of a Divine mission.

But though this should be allowed, and also that the eye witnesses of such miracles would be bound to admit the proof, it has been made a question, whether their testimony affords sufficient reason to others to admit the fact that such events actually took place, and consequently whether we are bound to acknowledge the authority of that mission, in attestation of which the miracles are said to have been wrought.

If this be admitted, the benefits of a revelation must be confined to those who witnessed its attestation by miracle, or similar attestations must be afforded to every individual; for, as no revelation can be a benefit unless it possess Divine authority, which alone can infallibly mark the distinction between truth and error, should the authentication be partial, the benefit of the communication of an infallible doctrine must also be par tial. We are all so much interested in this, because no religious system can plead the authentication of perpetual miracle, that it deserves special