space. Thus science takes us on step by step to the horizon of matter, and even then does not leave us till she has conducted us into the suburbs of the spiritual world. She shows that this material world, which we are so occupied with, and which skepticism would call every thing, is but the crust and screen, the form and vehicle and material to be wrought, of invisible forces whose resistless tides flow through and underlie this shell of matter. She makes us familiar with forces and powers, to which all that we commonly mean by the word matter is but an instrument and medium of manifestation. She shows that these forces are not created by, but, separate or combined, create, the material forms, make them to exist as they are, and do not depend on them for existence. And while doing this, she brings us already into the circle of spiritual agencies. Our purpose in presenting these illustrations is not to prove from the light of nature a future life, but only to show that science is the ally of faith. They are at least sufficient to show that science utterly rejects and repudiates all the common notions of skepticism on this subject; that, to use the most qualified terms, she removes all antecedent improbability from the doctrine of a future state, and thus prepares us to receive, not with a blind assent, but with the profoundest conviction of a reasonable mind, the great doctrine of the soul's immortality.

Thus science suggests what revelation affirms, that the fundamental law of nature is progress, from the imperfect to the more perfect, from matter to spirit, from the corruptible to incorruption, from the mortal to immortality. Death is but a stage, a landing-place, in the eternal progress. Dark and fearful it doubtless is, and was intended to be. For there are broken ties of love, and farewells to the familiar scenes of earth, and the pathway into the untried world which must be trod alone, the summing up of the results of life and the righteous awards of heaven; and when such dread events accumulate on a point, well may we stand in awe, as we look into the gates of the tomb. But still it is a part of the everlasting progress.

The dead! Where are they? We are pointed down to the earth. There they lie, in ranks of graves which the current of ages has levelled, the hundred generations of the past. We who live are but the survivors of this vast shipwreck of time.

Ah! not so! We who live!- there is the mistake. We, just emerging from dust and eternal sleep, - we hardly understand what life is. We have so lately left the shore of death and nothingness that its lethargy still clings to us. We are but awaking. Our feeble affections, our halting aspirations, our faltering gropings after truth and good, are but omens and foreshadowings of what we shall be when these principles are fully awakened, and the soul, the man, lives. Not we, it is the dead who live! The encumbrance of the flesh thrown off, ushered into a higher sphere, with new faculties, with expanded powers, going on from progress to progress, they know what it is to live. While we grope in earth and night, they are companions of angels, and glide through space with the sun. By all the ages that have past since their bodies fell off into dust, they are in advance of us.

This earth and these senses all! The heavens, so science suggests and all but affirms, are thronged with the uncounted myriads that have passed from night and death to immortal life, no longer, as when on the earth, chained and dungeoned in sense, but clothed with an immortal body. There all infirmities are thrown off. The blind and deaf see and hear. Innocent children, whom their parents mourn, have there put on the wings of angels. The sick and maimed and palsy-struck, and those bent and worn with years and frailties, have drunk of the fountain of immortal youth. There is the open vision. There is the bright side of the cloud of death, — so black as we behold it from beneath, while on the other side glows and shines the light of immortality. The dead, who have passed through that black cloud from our sight, have emerged into the regions of immortal day. The dead! they fill this infinite space, empty to us only because we are blind. Truly sings the poet, in sublime strains, which still only feebly embody the sugges tions of science and the affirmations of religion:

"We know in day-time there are stars about us,
Just as at night, although to our gross eyes

Invisible.

So by faith

Although we may not see them, still we know

That spirits are about us, and believe

That, to a spirit's eye, all heaven may be

As full of angels, as a beam of light of motes."

And, with all our worldliness, we feel as if there were

starry influences, the presence and power of these beings around and above us. Our memories of the past and thoughts of the future have a different hue because of our faith. Our departed friends are now still more and unchangeably our friends. Good men behold us from their seats in heaven. Myriads of mourning parents look up, and know that their children are awaiting their coming. An atmosphere of heavenly affections broods over the earth, and unawares the souls of men are softened, and their affections made more hallowed and pure.

Faith changes the earth itself. It ceases to be a sepulchre. Faith transforms what otherwise were a dark cave, all way of egress blocked up and ending in despair, into the porch and entrance-way to a celestial temple. We have higher objects for which to live, and holy hopes to accompany us when we die; for death shall carry us into the realm of the glorified departed. O that we may be prepared for their society! Voices of the venerable and the good, the pure and the loved, how do they speak to our hearts! Could the dread silence of the senses be broken, how would they pursue our steps with anxious warnings and tender encouragements! Who shall doubt that they implore Heaven's blessing on dear ones yet walking amidst the temptations of the earth? Ye blessed spirits, God grant that we may not be utterly faithless to your love! God grant that our souls, when the hour of departure comes, may, through the mercy of Heaven, be prepared for the society of the redeemed, — that ours may be the faith and the life that shall give us the victory over death and the grave!

E. P.

ART. IV. MIRACLES.

HUME says that all experience is against miracles, and therefore it is more probable that a miracle is false than that the evidence offered for it is true. He assumes that miracles have never taken place in order to prove that they have never taken place. Still it must be admitted that his succinct antithesis presents in a striking light the

difficulty of proving miracles, in consequence of the failure of our ordinary standards of probability when we attempt to judge of the truth or falsehood of events professedly supernatural. But that this difficulty amounts to an impossibility is simply his assumption. An appeal to men's experience to show that miracles have never been wrought, makes ignorance the standard of truth. This argument would prove to most men that Newton never lived, for most men have had no experience of such a man. The Indian prince alluded to by Mr. Hume, who had always seen water fluid and therefore would not believe in the existence of ice, proved from experience that ice does not exist, just as Mr. Hume proves from experience that miracles have not occurred.

All experience is in favor of the truth of such evidence as we have never known to prove false. When accumulated to a certain amount, we trust it as much as we do our senses. Suppose a supernatural appearance were to fill the sky of New York for a week, would there be no possibility of proving to the citizens of Boston that such an appearance had occurred? And if a cross, like the legendary cross of Constantine, were to appear in the sky of Asia, blazing with words of solemn warning, which should be read at the same moment by all the inhabitants of that continent, each in his own tongue, would it be impossible to prove to the people of America that such a miracle had occurred?

What is the meaning of proving an occurrence? Nothing but mathematical truths can be demonstrated. Matters of fact can only be made probable, and what we call proving them is establishing their probability to such a degree, that it becomes wise men to reason and act upon the assumption that they are true rather than that they are false. Is it possible for any man to remain entirely unaffected by any imaginable amount of evidence for a miracle? But if we admit that a certain amount can excite attention, we must admit that an additional amount will establish a probability, and a still greater amount produce a conviction. In the case supposed just now, of the appearance of a miraculous cross in the sky of Asia, would not the story of such an appearance excite unbounded interest in the rest of the world? Would not inquiries into its truth be universal,

and prosecuted with intense eagerness? Would not men take for granted, that such a miracle could be proved by evidence, and thus practically disown the argument of Hume? It is a plain matter of fact, established by experience, as clearly as are the laws of nature, that evidence, direct and indirect, may be accumulated to such a degree, as to produce as strong a conviction as we receive from impressions made on our senses. To reason,

as Hume does, that testimony has been known to deceive, and therefore any amount of it may prove false, is much like saying that water has been known to evaporate, and therefore the ocean may dry up.

Hume appeals to general experience to disprove general belief. But whence does the general belief in miracles come? If miracles have occurred, we can see why they are believed, and why spurious ones have gained credit. But if no miracles have occurred, why are they so generally believed by men who have in their breasts an infallible test of their incredibility? That Locke and Newton, and Butler and Pascal, should have believed what experience demonstrates to be incapable of proof is passing strange.

In arguing from experience, as a sure ground of belief, and contrasting it with testimony, Mr. Hume puts out of sight the fact, that testimony enters to a vast extent into what he calls the experience of the laws of nature. No man knows that there are universal laws of nature by his own experience. How do I know that water ran down hill in Palestine two thousand years ago? Certainly not by my own experience. It is by testimony. If a man's own observation of the laws of nature had never been confirmed by testimony, he would believe, on a very moderate degree of testimony, that the laws of nature vary in different places. The universality of the laws of nature is established mainly by testimony, and testimony may show that they have been interrupted.

The science of geology furnishes indisputable proofs of many miraculous changes in the order of nature. It demonstrates, from the animal remains imbedded in the earth, that the inhabitants of the earth have been often changed by the extinction of the races existing at certain periods, and the creation of new ones. So that expe

VOL. XLIX.

4TH S. VOL. XIV. NO. I.

5