of the knowledge and the integrity which those witnesses must be proved to possess, that the performance is real, that they have seen enough to prove that the thing done is really the superhuman work which it is asserted to be, and not a mere imitation of, or pretension to it. If a person on whose judgment we can thoroughly depend were to tell us that he had seen any phænomenon, we should take it for granted that he had not failed to observe its real possession of all those conditions which, he must know, are necessary to constitute that phænomenon. And so if a fact, in which they cannot mistake, be vouched to be a miracle by a sufficient number of witnesses, we cannot doubt but that it must possess those conditions which are necessary to constitute a real miracle. Provided that the witnesses must have sufficiently known those conditions, it is not indispensable that they should specify any one of them *.

Thus in the case of the raising of Jairus's daughter, we have no detailed evidence that the child was really dead. No one circumstance is related which can serve to discriminate be

See farther on this subject, Chap. IV.

b Matt. ix. 18. Mark v. 22. Luke viii. 41. and seqq.

tween the state in which she was found by our Saviour, and a state of trance, or of mere coma, or sleep. But we know that the spectators, of whom it is not to be imagined, but that they could discern whether the indications of death were absolutely certain, or only fallacious, were themselves entirely convinced of its certainty. Their convictions, therefore, may be a sure basis of ours, though we know not one of the symptoms which they observed.

That this is so, in this case, cannot be doubted. But we must extend the same principle also to all relations of miracles which may be affirmed even in the most general terms, supposing them to possess otherwise the same conditions of credibility. Thus, where our Saviour says to the disciples of John the Baptist, "Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up :"-if we assume, as I think we reasonably may, that John's disciples returned to their master convinced of the truth of these miracles, it appears to me that though

Matt. xi. 4, 5. Cf. Luke, vii. 21.

K

no particulars of them are recorded, we have yet complete evidence of their real performance.

I do not say that we have the same evidence of the performance of these miracles which we have of the miracle of raising Jairus's daughter, of the miracle of restoring the blind man to sight, or of the cardinal miracle of our Saviour's resurrection. We have not the same evidence for the following reason; that we are not so sure of John the Baptist's disciples, that they may not have been prone to believe our Saviour's miracles, as we are sure that there was no proneness of this sort among the Scribes and Pharisees; of whom we have it in evidence that they could not deny the real performance of those miracles of which they were witnesses. We cannot be so sure, therefore, that the disciples of John must have subjected to a rigid examination the miracles to which our Saviour appealed in their presence. We do know, indeed, that even in the age of the Apostles there arose a heresy of John the Baptist's disciples, who set up the authority of the Baptist against Christ". If the disciples who were sent by John to our

a Marsh's Michaelis, Vol. 111. Chap. vii. Sects. 4 and 5.

Saviour were persons infected with this disposition, we cannot doubt but that they would jealously scrutinize the evidence of the miracles thus laid before them. We can scarcely be sure, however, that this was their disposition, though we have ground to conjecture that they were not wholly well pleased to see the pretensions of their own master surpassed by the power and dignity of a far greater prophet. Their testimony, therefore, is not the highest possible. We cannot affirm it to be that of unwilling wit

nesses.

But still their testimony, though not unwilling, may be unimpeachable. If it stood alone, I can discern no reason for questioning it, except that in a revelation which rests its evidence on miracles, we naturally expect that at least some of these miracles should be detailed at length in the records of the revelation. That God should so work them, and the detail of none of them be preserved, that an historian, the whole value of whose history depends on the truth of certain events recorded in it, should fail to particularize at least some of those events, would strike us at first glance as being a great incongruity. But then since some miracles are

fully detailed, this objection to admit the evidence of the other miracles falls at once to the ground. Nor is this a mere proving of the real performance of those miracles, which, as in the case of those worked before John the Baptist's disciples, are related to us only generally, or in the gross, on the authority of those miracles which are fully detailed. The proof is in both cases independent and complete. The mention of the detailed miracles is here introduced, not in the least for the sake of proving the others, but only to disprove an hypothetical objection, that objection being that none are detailed.

II. This statement of the importance of the impression made on the witnesses leads me now to another and a farther proof of the real performance of the Scripture miracles. It has been proved, that the facts are such as could not be mistaken; it has been proved to be contrary to all the principles of human nature to suspect the witnesses of wilful fraud or mis-statement; and it has also been proved that we have their valid testimony, not only in the cases which they have particularly detailed, but in those also which they have stated generally, or in gross. But, in farther corroboration of these positions, we have