a scientific insight into the grounds on which his faith rested. Here, at any rate, the appeal to what he had himself known and tasted of the powers of the world to come, might well have found room. For, to use the words of Coleridge,* "Is not a true, efficient conviction of a moral truth, is not the creating of a new heart, which collects the energies of a man's whole being in the focus of the conscience, the one essential miracle, the same and of the same evidence to the ignorant and to the learned, which no superior skill can counterfeit, human or demoniacal; is it not emphatically that leading of the Father, without which no man can come to Christ; is it not that implication of doctrine in the miracle, and of miracle in the doctrine, which is the bridge of communication between the senses and the soul;-that predisposing warmth which renders the understanding susceptible of the specific impressions from the historic, and from all other outward, seals of testimony ?" And even if arguing with one who had never submitted himself to these blessed powers, and to whose experience therefore no like appeal could be made, yet even for him there is the outward utterance of this inward truth, in that which he could not deny, save as he denied or was ignorant of every thing, which would make him one to be argued with at all-the fact, I mean, of a Christendom-the standing miracle of a Christendom commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized world”—the mighty changes which this religion has wrought in the earth-the divine fruits which it every where has borne-the new creation which it has been-the way in which it has taken its place in the world, not as a forcible intruder, but finding all that world's pre-established harmonies ready to greet and welcome it, ready to give it play and room-philosophy, and art, and science, practically confessing that only under it could they attain their highest perfection, that in something they had all been dwarfed and stunted and insufficient before. Little as it wears of the glory which it ought to have, yet it wears enough to proclaim that its origin was more than mundane; surely from a Christendom, even such as it shows itself now, it is fair to argue back to a Christ such as the Church receives as the only adequate cause. It is an oak which from no other acorn could have unfolded itself into so goodly a tree.

It is true that in this there is an abandoning of the attempt to put the proof of Christianity into the same form as a proposition in an exact science. There is no more the claim made of giving it their kind of certainty. But this, which may seem at first sight a loss, is indeed a gain; for the argument for all which as Christians we believe is in very truth not logical and single, but moral and cumulative; and the attempt

* The Friend, Vol. 8, Essay II.

to substitute a formal proof, where the deepest necessities of the soul demand a moral, is one of the most grievous shocks which the moral sense can receive, as it is one, too, of the most fruitful sources of unbelief. Few who have had books of evidences put into their hands, constructed upon this principle, but must remember the shock which they suffered from them-how it took them, it may be, some time to recover the tone of their minds, and how only by falling back upon what they themselves had felt and known of the living power of Christ's words and doctrine in their own hearts, could they deliver themselves from the injurious influences, the seeds of doubt and of misgiving, which these books had now for the first time perhaps sown in their minds. They must remem ber how they asked themselves, in deep inner trouble of soul: "Are these indeed the grounds, and the only grounds, upon which the deep foundations of my spiritual life repose? is this all that I have to answer? are these, and no more, the reasons of the faith that is in me?" And then, if at any moment there arose a suspicion that some link in this chain of outward proof was wanting, or that any would not bear all the weight which was laid upon it—and men will be continually tempted to try the strength of that on which they have trusted all-there was nothing to fall back upon, with which to scatter and put to flight a suspi cion such as this. And that such should arise, at least in many minds, were inevitable; for how many points, as we have seen, are there at which suspicion may intrude. Is a miracle possible? Is a miracle provable? Were the witnesses of these miracles competent? Did they not too lightly admit a supernatural cause, when there were adequate natural ones which they failed to note? These works may have been good for the eye-witnesses, but what are they for me? And these doubts and questionings might be multiplied without number. Happy is the man, and he only is happy, who, if the outworks of his faith are at any time thus assailed, can betake himself to an impregnable inner citadel, from whence in due time to issue forth and repossess even those exterior defences, who can fall back on those inner grounds of belief, in which there can be no mistake, that testimony of the Spirit, which is above and better than all.*

And as it is thus with him, who entirely desiring to believe, is only unwillingly disturbed with doubts and suggestions, which he would give worlds to be rid of for ever, so on the other hand the expectation that by arguments thrown apparently into forms of strict reasoning there is any compelling to the faith one who does not wish to believe,

* See the admirable words of Calvin, Instit., L. 1, c. 7, § 4, 5, on the Holy Scrip. ture as ultimately αὐτόπιστος.

is absurd, and an expectation which all experience contradicts. All that he is, and all that he is determined to be, has bribed such an one to an opposite conclusion. Rather than believe that a miracle has taken place a miracle from the upper world, and connected with doctrines of holiness, to which doctrines he is resolved to yield no obedience he will take refuge in any the most monstrous supposition of fraud, or ignorance, or folly, or collusion. If no such solution presents itself, he will wait for such, rather than accept the miracle, with its hated adjunct of the truth which it confirms. In what different ways the same miracle of Christ wrought upon different spectators! He raised a man from the dead; here was the same outward fact for all; but how diverse the effects!-some believed and some went and told the Pharisees. (John xi. 45, 46.) Heavenly voices were heard,-and some said it thundered, so dull and inarticulate were those sounds to them, while others knew that they were voices wherein was the witness of God to his own Son. (John xii. 28-30.)

Are then, it may be asked, the miracles to occupy no place at all in the array of proofs for the certainty of the things which we have believed? On the contrary, a most important place. We should greatly miss them if they did not appear in sacred history, if we could not point to them there; for they belong to the very idea of a Redeemer, which would remain most incomplete without them. We could not ourselves, without having that idea infinitely weakened and impoverished, conceive of him as not doing such works; and those to whom we presented him might make answer, "Strange, that one should come to deliver men from the bondage of nature which was crushing them, and yet himself have been subject to its heaviest laws,-himself wonderful, and yet his appearance accompanied by no analogous wonders in nature, claiming to be the Life, and yet himself helpless in the encounter with death; however much he promised in word, never realizing any part of his promises in deed, giving nothing in hand, no first fruits of power, no pledges of greater things to come." They would have a right to ask, "Why did he give no signs that he came to connect the visible with the invisible world? Why did he nothing to break the yoke of custom and experience, nothing to show men that the constitution which he pretended to reveal has a true foundation ?”* And who would not feel that they had right in this, that a Saviour who so bore himself during his earthly life, and his actual daily encounter with evil, would have been felt to be no Saviour? that he must needs show himself, if he were to meet the wants of men, mighty not only in

*MAURICE'S Kingdom of Christ, v. 2, p. 264.

word but in work? When we object to the use that has been often made of these works, it is only because they have been forcibly severed from the whole complex of Christ's life and doctrine, and presented to the contemplation of men apart from these; it is only because, when on his head who is the Word of God, are "many crowns," (Rev. xix. 12,) one only has been singled out in proof that he is King of kings, and Lord of lords. The miracles have been spoken of as though they borrowed nothing from the truths which they confirmed, but those truths every thing from them; when indeed the true relation is one of mutual interdependence, the miracles proving the doctrines, and the doctrines approving the miracles, and both held together for us in a blessed unity, in the person of him who spake the words and did the works, and through the impress of highest holiness and of absolute truth and goodness, which that person leaves stamped on our souls ;so that it may be more truly said that we believe the miracles for Christ's sake, than Christ for the miracles' sake. Neither when we thus affirm that the miracles prove the doctrine, and the doctrine the miracles, are we arguing in a circle: rather we are receiving the sum total of the impression which this divine revelation is intended to make on us, instead of taking an impression only partial and one-sided.

*

* See PASCAL's Pensées, c. 27, Sur les Miracles.

Augustine was indeed affirming the same when against the Donatists, and their claims to be workers of wonders he said (De Unit. Eccles., c. 19); Quæcunque talia in catholicâ [ecclesiâ] fiunt, ideo sunt approbanda, quia in catholicâ fiunt, non ideò manifestatur catholica, quia hæc in eâ fiunt,

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