vation are founded rather upon testimony than experience. Let a few of these facts be reviewed: let us consider how much of our stock of information we owe, respectively, to testimony and to experience, and we shall find that the latter will have furnished us with but a comparatively small portion. If, therefore, we were to reject the alleged experience of others, because it might include some things differing from what has ever occurred to us, or, that might be contrary to our notions of possibility, we should make but an inconsiderable progress in many useful sciences, and none at all in that most useful and important.. of all sciences, revealed religion.

Again, the argument asserts, that 'The credit due to miracles rests entirely upon testimony; but that no testimony can be sufficient in this case to produce a rational conviction:' both which propositions are fallacious.

A miracle may derive credit from other sources besides that of testimony. We need no testimony to convince us that innumerable miracles must have been wrought before the world was rendered a fit habitation for man. The deluge, moreover, whatsoever hypothesis we adopt with respect to the cause of it, may be taken as an example of a miracle, of which, independently of the credit it may derive from any traditional or historical account, there is other and abundant proof. He must be unreasonably sceptical who should deny, that a comparatively recent flood of waters, did overwhelm the earth, and did, with few exceptions, destroy the then existing races of men and

animals. Abundant evidence of this fact presents itself in every region of the globe.

6

Here, then, with respect to our earthly abode, was an instance of the entire disruption, as it were, of the ordinary course of things. Here occurred a suspension of those laws by which the world is governed in the ordinary course of God's providence. But, according to the argument of the unbeliever, no such event can have taken place. And herein we perceive the fallacy of such arguments; they prove too much, and, therefore, prove nothing. A miracle,' says he, 'is a violation of the established order of nature, and contrary to all ex-· perience.' That the waters should, contrary to the universal law of gravity, desert their lowly bedsand pass the boundaries which Omnipotence hath set to their proud waves,'-and overtop the hills and mountains of the habitable globe,--and remodel the surface and form of its continents, and islands, is a monstrous supposition; it is a violation of the established course of nature, and contrary to all experience; and since belief is founded upon and regulated by experience,-I am not bound to give credit to any thing opposed to such a criterion, howsoever plausible the evidence for the truth of it may appear.'

It was in this sceptical spirit that an eminent unbeliever asserted that the idea of a universal deluge was absurd. He justly enough represented such an event as contrary to the established course of nature; but he had no authority to infer

* Voltaire.

therefrom, that it was an impossible occurrence, or, that under the government of a Being higher than nature,' it was absolutely improbable. Since his day, however, the prosecution of the science of geology has elicited facts which confirm the testimony of tradition and of scripture..

Again, the objection states, that 'We often experience testimony to be false, but never witness a departure from the order of nature. That men may deceive us when they testify to miracles, is, therefore, more accordant with experience, than that nature should be irregular; and hence there is a balance of proof against miracles a presumption so strong as to outweigh the strongest testimony.'

It is no doubt true, that men often experience testimony to be false, and that we of the present day have never witnessed a departure from the order of nature. But this does not warrant the inference, that hence there is a balance of proof against miracles sufficient to outweigh the strongest testimony. This argument proves too much, and therefore proves nothing.

'If,' says a Christian advocate, I am to reject the strongest testimony to miracles, because testimony has often deceived me, whilst nature's order has never been found to fail then I ought to reject a miracle, even if I should see it with my own eyes, and if all my senses should attest it ;for all my senses have sometimes deceived me, whilst nature has never gone astray; and, therefore, be the circumstances ever so decisive or

* Dr. Channing.

inconsistent with deception, still I must not believe what I see, and hear, and touch;-what my senses, exercised according to the most deliberate judgment, declare to be true. All this the argument requires. And it proves too much; for disbelief, in the case supposed, is out of our power, and is instinctively pronounced absurd;—and what is more-it would subvert that very order of nature on which the argument rests;-for this order of nature is learned only by the exercise of our senses and judgment, and if these fail us, in the most unexceptionable circumstances, then their testimony to nature is of little worth.'

If, indeed, any thing could authorize a man's acting upon the principles laid down in the argument of the unbeliever, it would be wherein the reported miraculous agency should seem to possess no characteristic worthy of the Divine Being,. or to be in no way connected with the chief interests of human life. Let the impugners of Christianity substantiate such a charge against the benevolent miracles of the gospel, and against the doctrines, in attestation of which they were wrought, before they call upon believers to set them aside as delusions,-let them show wherein they are unworthy of God, or unsuitable to the circumstances of man, before they attempt to undermine the faith and hope of their brethren, by alleging the occasional falsehood of testimony, or by asserting that the presumption against a miracle is sufficient to outweigh the strongest evidence from this source.

In this balancing of probabilities, included in the argument of the unbeliever, there is more than bare testimony to be taken into the account. Let the character of the Divine Being, the wants of man, the nature of the interposition, and the effects resulting from the introduction of Christianity into the world, be considered, and the case will assume a very different aspect. Even if we were to lay out of the account, that strong probability of the truth of Christianity, arising from the benevolent nature of Him who placed us in this beautiful world, who daily superintendeth our affairs by his providence, and 'waiteth to do us good:' if we were to lay out of the account, the argument arising from the consideration of man's nature as transient and perishing, and that, while all around and within him speaks of change, and decay, and dissolution, he needs that consoling assurance which is sought in vain from the evidence of natural things, namely, that he shall live again beyond the devouring grave: if we were to lay out of the account that man is a frail creature, urged by impetuous passions, beset with innumerable temptations, and courted to his bane by numberless fallacies: if we were to lay out of the account the peculiar nature of the alleged interposition, and the suitableness of the gospel truths to man's, otherwise, helpless and hopeless condition:-there yet arises a presumption in favour of Christianity, from the effects which its evidences produced upon the minds of those who first embraced it, powerful enough to set aside all the.