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The evidence afforded by the performance of such acts, admitting or proving them to be really performed, is the plainest and most popular of all evidences for the truth of any divine revelation. Nor, indeed, can any evidence be more certain than this. Nothing can be more correct than that natural impulse which led our Saviour's contemporaries to exclaim, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." And hence, accordingly, the chief practical end, which ought to be designed in a general treatise on miracles, is the proof of the fact, or of their real performance. This alone is that point of the case which modern infidels appear to deny. This also is the chief object of the following treatise; and if we first lay down a few elementary principles, which may be rendered evident to all attentive inquirers, carries every thing else along with it, and is altogether decisive of the divine origin of Christianity.

These elementary principles it is my intention here to discuss. It is not possible, without

John, iii. 2. Compare ix. 16, 33.

correctly ascertaining them, to appreciate the conclusiveness of even real miracles; and though a sound understanding is not likely to be stopped, by any merely theoretical difficulty, from acknowledging that miracles like those of the Scripture are certainly conclusive, if really performed, yet no person who has been accustomed to read or reflect on the intricate questions which have been proposed on this subject, can forbear to expect some previous solution of them.

One of these questions is rendered familiar to all of us by being brought into notice in the sacred volume itself. We read there, that some of the Jews, who admitted that demons had been cast out by our Saviour, yet attributed this miracle not to God but to Beelzebub2. The natural refutation of this Jewish objection our Saviour himself sets before us in answer to it; and is, in effect, that it is absurd to suppose that Beelzebub would assist in his own overthrow". So far as this objection goes, we assuredly cannot require any additional or more satisfactory answer: but many other questions still remain

a Matt. ix. 34, xii. 24, and the parallel passages in the other Gospels.

b Matt. xii. 25, 26, etc.

undisposed of, questions also which are of much real importance to a clear apprehension of the nature of miracles, and of their conclusiveness of the divine sanction or authority for doctrines which they attest as coming from God.

I. Thus, in the first place, it may be very naturally asked, in what manner a miracle, which is in itself merely an act of power, can be alleged as evidence of the truth of a doctrine ?— This must, of course, be, because it is alleged in attestation of the authority claimed by the agent or teacher. A miracle is nothing, that is, nothing in the way of evidence, unless so alleged; unless so alleged, may be a mere idle wonder, or rather is evidence of nothing more than the mere power which is, of course, displayed in the act. But when claimed as an attestation, it confers on the person producing it the authority of that being whose power it evidences. Thus if a messenger, claiming to bear a commission from any distant friend or superior, were to produce to us a signet known to be genuine, his possession of that signet may be a full proof of his claim. To complete that proof we require only the conditions that we know it to be a signet which could come from that person only

from whose hands he professes to have received his commission, and that we also know that it could not be stolen. This, too, is precisely our own case with regard to miracles. Define a miracle to be an act clearly divine, and it stamps on the doctrine, for which it is produced or alleged, the sanction of a clearly divine authority. Nothing can be more infallible than this conclusion.

It is plain, also, that if we suppose the power of working miracles to be at any time communicated to human beings, as when we say that the apostles and prophets performed them, we suppose those men, of whom we here speak, to perform them, not of themselves, but either by the divine, or at least by some other superhuman assistance. It is also plain that the divine or superhuman power assisting is properly to be accounted the real agent in the case.

II. If, then, the power be clearly divine, it is certain that the authority must be divine also. But here arises the question, and a question naturally suggested even by that ascription of miracles to evil spirits, which we read in Scripture to have been common among the Jews, whether there be any miracles which can be referred to

God only and if not, or if we cannot contend that the power which they evidence must in itself be divine, whether we can have, nevertheless, any other means of inferring that they must still argue the divine sanction and authority.

The difficulty of this question has been often sensibly felt. That there may be beings who, though inferior to God, are yet possessed of more than human power, is doubtless a position which cannot be denied. We even read in Scripture that such beings exist, and that they intermix themselves in the affairs of mankind: and it is at least not obvious, that any powers which they may possess can be in any way limitable by human faculties. And though our Saviour's argument, that, "if Satan cast out Satan he is divided against himself" ", be extended to mean, that where the doctrine is good, the author of the miracle cannot be evil, still this argument goes not the whole length of the question. Though surely a sufficient argument for the purpose He designed in it, yet we have still to ask what security we can possess, that

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a Matt. xii. 26.