ration of them. The church in her eighteenth and in her first century, only differs as a man at seventy years of age differs from what he was at twenty. His consciousness, his memory of certain prominent facts, and his testimony to them, continue as fresh and decisive as ever.8

So utterly futile are the objections against the history of the gospel-objections, however, which being sown in the fertile soil of fallen nature, and favouring the pride and sensuality of the heart, require continually to be exposed. Let it be remembered, then, that if men attempt to shake our belief in the testimony to the miraculous facts of the gospel, they resist the common sentiments and most approved practice of mankind; nay, the very sentiments and practice by which they themselves are governed in similar cases. In short, all historical truth, all philosophy, all jurisprudence, all society, depends on the evidence borne by credible witnesses. A reliance on well-authenticated and well-circumstanced testimony is as much a law of our moral nature, as the belief of the ordinary rules by which the universe is governed, is of our intellectual."

But we proceed, in the next place, to consider

II. WHETHER THESE FACTS WERE, PROPERLY SPEAKING, MIRACULOUS.

That the facts took place is proved; it is admitted also that they were extraordinary. A few considerations will show that they were in the strictest sense miracles.

1. The facts then of the gospel were such plain and palpable suspensions of the order of nature as constitute miracles. They were not facts of the nature of which any doubt could be entertained whether they were in the ordinary course of things or not; but

8 Frayssinous.

9 Franks' Hulsean Lectures.

plainly contrary to that course; men's outward senses, their eyes and ears, might judge of them. Raising a body that had been dead four days; restoring instant and perfect sight to the blind; healing by a word, or at a distance, all the diseases incident to our nature; casting out unclean spirits; walking on the sea; calming in a moment the raging of a storm. These works were evidently miracles---suspensions of the laws of nature---bold, sensible, level to every man's comprehension.

2. They were done by Christ and his apostles professedly as divine acts, and were accompanied with that open and undisguised publicity which would have led to their detection had they been impositions. They were performed in the face of the 'world, or before a sufficient number of competent and intelligent witnesses. They were not fabricated among a few interested persons in a corner. They were done openly in the midst of the assembled multitudes, and before the most bitter adversaries. The man born blind, Lazarus, the paralytic, were seen by their families and neighbours and all the Jews. The few loaves and fishes were multiplied publicly, and partaken of by five thousand men. The entire Jewish nation, assembled at the feast of Pentecost, heard the apostles address them in new tongues. These things were done at noon-day, and were subjected to the examination of every beholder.

Lest, however, it should be said that a crowd are bad judges of a miraculous work, others were performed before individual competent witnesses, and then submitted to the public eye. Peter and James and John, and the father and the mother of the damsel (the persons best able to discern the truth of the restoration to life) were present at the raising of Jairus' daughter: whilst all the people weeping and wailing at her death, and the scoffers who derided our Lord's attempt to restore her, were so many witnesses

of the truth of the miracle, and, had there been any imposition, would have been so many accusers of the fraud. The circumstances of the damsel's walking, and being capable of receiving her ordinary food, are further proofs of the perfection of the work and its miraculous character.

3. Then the first Christian miracles were wrought, not before a heathen nation, but before the Jewish, accustomed to judge of miracles, and to weigh the evidence arising from them. At that very time they were expecting their Messiah, and therefore prepared to examine with care and jealousy the truth of the wonderful works; and were excited to bitter hostility against our Lord when they heard his doctrine; and scrutinized his miracles with eager desire to detect a fraud. Yet this people admit the miracles of Christ to be notable and decisive; they ascribe them to a supernatural power; the impression made upon their minds, contrary to their wishes and prejudices, is evidently that which undeniable miracles could alone produce; their very endeavours to oppose and resist them, or to explain away the just inferences from them, proclaim aloud the truth of the supernatural operations.

4. Further, our Lord's mighty deeds include such numerous and various suspensions of the course of nature, as, under the circumstances, constitute the most decisive proof of miraculous agency. It was not one or two or three professed miracles, with many failures and a long interval of time between each, which were performed, but a great number, without a single failure, during the whole of our Lord's ministry. His life was a life of miracles. "He went about doing good" in the exertion of an abiding and unfailing miraculous power. More than fifty express in

stances are recorded-whilst whole masses of them are registered in such words as these, "And Jesus went about Galilee healing all manner of sickness and

all manner of disease among the people; and his fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought unto him all the sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy, and he healed_them." And at the close of his history St. John adds, "And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book."

Again, these miracles of our Lord were of every sort; some less grand and stupendous, others more imposing. At one time he feeds an assembled multitude; at another he heals the trembling woman that came behind him and touched the hem of his garment. His power was universal. At Jerusalem, in several parts of Judea and Galilee, in streets and villages, in synagogues, in private houses, in the streets, in highways, in different manners, and on every kind of occasion, did he perform his mighty works. Some with preparation and a solemn prediction of what he was about to do, as in the case of Lazarus, and the daughter of Jairus; others without preparation and by accident, as we speak, as the widow's son at Nain.10 Some, when attended by the multitudes, others when alone with the patient. Most of these works were performed at the earnest entreaty of a father, a mother, a master of a family, on behalf of persons whom they loved; so that our Lord did not choose the subjects of his miracles, but displayed his power in cases where the' attention would be most awakened, and the reality of the cures best ascertained. By this variety every attempt at explaining away the accounts is precluded. If some might overwhelm the senses of the beholders,

10 In the one species of miracle, the raising from the dead, mark the gradations-the daughter of Jairus was just dead and lay like one asleep-the widow's son had been dead some little time and was being carried to the tomb-Lazarus had been dead four days, and corruption had taken place.

as the transfiguration and the ascension; others were submitted to the most sober, deliberate contemplation

-as the calming of the sea, the turning water into wine, the feeding the five thousand. No fortuitous circumstances, no exaggeration, can solve the phenomena of miracles varied in every possible form, and which never in a single instance failed of their end.

5. Consider, further, the miracles of which our Lord was the subject, as well as those which he himself performed, for these come within the miraculous proofs of Revelation." He was conceived and born by a direct, miraculous power. Three times during his life did a voice from heaven proclaim him to be the Son of God. At his death the rending of the vail, the earthquake, the supernatural darkness, the opened graves, were divine attestations to his mission. The greatest of all miracles was his own resurrection from the dead. I say nothing of his divine knowledge of the hearts and thoughts of men; I omit the miraculous fast of forty days; I pass by various other demonstrations of superhuman operations. I confine myself to the remark that the distinct miracles I have mentioned, of which our Saviour was the subject, are calculated to strengthen our belief of a truly supernatural character in his own mighty works, and make it more credible.

6. Then the wonderful works of Christ produced such permanent effects on those who were the subjects of them, as to prove their supernatural character. They were most of them performed, indeed, instantaneously; but the effects remained, and were submitted to every one's observation. When Lazarus was raised, he did not merely move and speak, and die again; or come forth out of the grave and vanish away. He returned to his family, and was visited by the Jews from motives of curiosity or malevolence. A momen

11 This is one of the fine thoughts with which Franks' Lectures abound.