of the spirit and of power; that our faith fhould not ftand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God *.”

men.

Such were the affociates chosen by him, who was the delegate of heaven, and whofe help was from above. We may expect therefore that an impoftor, who meant to rely on buman means for fuccefs, would take a directly contrary course. And this we find in fact to be the cafe. Who were the companions and affiftants felected by the grand impoftor Mahomet? They were men of the most weight and authority, and rank and influence, among his countryThe reafon is obvious; he wanted fuch fupports; Chrift did not; and hence the marked difference of their conduct in this inftance. It is the natural difference between truth and impofture. That the power of God and not of man was the foundation on which our Lord meant to erect his new fyftem, very foon appeared; for the next thing we hear of him is, that he "went about all Galilee teaching in their fynagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of difcafe among the peoplet,"

Here then began that DEMONSTRATION OF THE SPIRIT AND OF POWER, which was to be the grand basis of his new kingdom, the great evidence of his heavenly miffion. It is indeed probable that the wisdom and the authority with which he fpake, and the weight and importance of the doctrines he taught, would of themselves make a deep impreffion on the minds of his hearers, and produce him fome followers. But had he ftopt here, had he given his new difciples nothing but words, their zeal and attachment to him would foon have abated. For it was natural for thefe converts to fay to him, "You have called upon us to repent and to reform; you have commanded us to renounce our vices, to relinquifh our favourite pleasures and pursuits," to give up the world and its enjoyments, and to take up our crofs and follow you; and in return for this you promife us diftinguished happiness and honour in your fpiritual king-a dom. You fpake, it is true, moft forcibly to our confciences and to our hearts; and we feel strongly difpofed to obey

your injunctions, and to credit your promifes; but ftill the facrifice we are required to make is a great one, and the conflict we have to go through is a bitter one. We find it a most painful ftruggle to fubdue confirmed habits, and to part at once with all our accustomed pleasures and indul Before then we can entirely relinquish thefe, and make a complete change in the temper of our fouls and the conduct of our lives, we must have fome convincing proof that you have a right to require this compliance at our hands; that what you enjoin us is in reality the command of God himself; that you are actually fent from heaven, and commiffioned by him to teach us his will, and to inftru&t us in our duty; that the kingdom you hold out to us in another world is fomething more than mere imagination: that you are in fhort what you pretend to be, the SON OF God; and that you are able to make good the punishment you denounce against fin, and the rewards you promife to virtue."

Our Lord well knew that this fort of reasoning muft occur to every man's mind. He knew that it was highly proper and indifpenfably neceffary to give fome evidence of his divine commiffion, to do SOMETHING which fhould fatisfy the world that he was the Son of God, and the delegate of heaven. And how could he do this fo effectually as by, performing works which it utterly exceeded all the ftrength and ability of man to accomplish, and which nothing lefs than the hand of God himself could poffibly bring to pass? In other words, the proofs he gave of his miffion were those aftonishing miracles which are recorded in the Gospel, and which are here for the first time mentioned by St. Matthew in the 23d verse of this chapter: "And Jefus went about all Galilee, teaching in their fynagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of fick nefs and all manner of disease among the people."

This then is the primary, the fundamental evidence of his divine authority, which our Lord was pleafed to give to his followers. His first application, as we have seen, was (like that of his precurfor, John the Baptift) to their hearts, "REPENT YE," lay afide your vices and your prejudices.

Till this was done, till these grand obftacles to the admif fion of truth were removed, he well knew that all he could fay and all he could do would have no effect; they would not be moved either by his exhortations or his miracles, "they would not be perfuaded though one rofe from the dead*." And in fact we find that feveral of the pharifees, men abandoned to vice and wickedness, did actually refift the miracles of Christ, and the refurrection of a man from the grave; they afcribed his cafting out devils to Beelze bub; they were not convinced by the cure of the blind man, and the raifing of Lazarus from the dead, though they faw them both before their eyes, one restored to fight, the other to life. This plainly proves how far the power of fin and of prejudice will go in clofing up all the avenues of the mind against conviction; and how wifely our Saviour acted in calling upon his hearers to repent, before he offered any evidence to their understandings. But the way being thus cleared, the evidence was then produced, and the ef fect it had was fuch as might be expected; for St. Matthew tells us, that his fame went throughout all Syria; and that there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerufalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan +; that is, from every quarter of his own country and the adjoining nations.

And indeed it can be no wonder that fuch multitudes were convinced and converted by what they faw. The wonder would have been if they had not. To those who were themselves eye-witneffes of his miracles, they muft have been (except in a few inftances of inveterate depravity of heart) irrefiftible proofs of his divine miffion. When, they faw him give eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, health to the fick, and even life to the dead, by fpeaking only a few words, what other conclufion could they poffibly draw than that which the centurion did, truly this was the Son of God. To us indeed who have not feen these mighty works, and who live at the distance of eighteen hundred years from the time when they were wrought, the force of this evidence is undoubtedly less than it was to an eye witness. But if the reality of thefe miracles is proved to us

Lake, xvi. 31. Matth. iv. 24, 25, Matth. xxvii. 54.

by fufficient teftimony, by teftimony fuch as no ingenuous and unprejudiced mind can withstand, they ought still to produce in us the firmeft belief of the divine power of him who wrought them*.

It must be admitted at the fame time, that these miracles, being facts of a very uncommon and very extraor dinary nature, fuch as have never happened in our own times, and but very seldom even in former times, they require a much stronger degree of teftimony to fupport them than common hiftorical facts. And this degree of teftimony they actually have. They are fupported by a body of evidence fully adequate to the cafe; fully competent to outweigh all the disadvantages arifing from the great diftance and the astonishing nature of the events in queftion.

1. In the first place, these miracles are recorded in four different hiftories, written very near the time of their be ing performed, by four different men, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; two of whom faw these miracles with their own eyes; the other two had their account from them who did the fame; and affirm, that "they had a perfect knowledge of every thing they relate†.”

They were plain artlefs men, without the leaft appearance of enthusiasm or credulity about them, and rather flow than forward to believe any thing extraordinary and out of the common course of nature. They were perfectly competent to judge of plain matters of fact, of things which paffed before their eyes, and could certainly tell, without the leaft poffibility of being mistaken, whether a person whom they knew to be blind was actually restored to fight, and a person whom they knew to be dead was taifed to life again by a few words spoken by their master. They were men, who, from the fimplicity of their manners, were not at all likely to invent and publish falfehoods of fo extraordinary a nature; much lefs falfehoods by which they could gain nothing, and did in fact lofe every thing. There is not therefore, from the peculiar character of these * Mr. Hume's abftruse and fophiftical argument against miracles, has been completely refuted by Drs. Adams, Campbell, and Paley.

↑ Luke, i. 3.

perfons, the leaft ground for disbelieving the reality of any thing they relate. Nor is there any reason to doubt whether the writings we now have under their names are thofe which they actually wrote. They have been received as fuch ever fince they were published; nor has any one argument been yet produced against their authenticity which has not been repeatedly and effectually confuted.

2. It is a very ftrong circumftance in favor of our Sav iour's miracles, that they were related by contemporary hiftorians, by those who were eye-witneffes of them, and were afterwards acknowledged to be true by thofe who liv ed nearest to the times in which they were wrought; and what is still more to the point, by many who were hostile to the Chriftian religion. Even the emperor Julian himself, that most bitter adverfary of Chriftianity, who had openly apostatized from it who professed the most implacable ha tred to it, who employed all his ingenuity, all his accutenefs and learning, which were confiderable, in combating the truth of it, in difplaying in the strongest colours every objection he could raise up against it; even he did not deny the reality of our Lord's miracles. He admitted that Jefus wrought them, but contended that he wrought them by the power of magic.

*

3. Unless we admit that the founder of our religion did actually work the miracles afcribed to him by his hiftorians, it is utterly impoffible to account for the fuccefs and establishment of his religion. It could not, in fhort, to all apperance, have been established by any other means.

Confider only for a moment what the apparent conditon of our Lord was, when he firft announced his miffion among the Jews, what his pretenfions and what his doctries were, and then judge what kind of a reception he must have met with among the Jews, had his preaching been accompanied by no miracles. A young man of no education, born in

Julian apud Cyrillum, L. vi, viii. x. Celfus alfo acknowledged the truth of the gospel miracles in general, but ascribed them to the affiftance of demons. "The Chriftians, fays he, feem to prevail, daimonën tinōn onomafi kai kataklifeft, by virtue of the names and the invocation of certain demons," Orig. contra Celfum, ed. Cantab. 1. i. p 1.