Staudlin, in closing the preface to one of his works on Christian Morals. "The composition of this treatise has been to myself truly profitable and instructive, pleasant and comforting. In times when so much that was dear to us has sunk away, when so much that merits love is hated, and so much that deserves reverence is despised, when the pretended culture and illumination of the day grows ever worse the further it removes from religion, moral principles, and Christianity, when one with so few can even talk upon these subjects, nothing is more invigorating and refreshing than quiet literary communion with the great men of earlier days, who contemplated these as the highest of all themes, and without them acknowledged nothing great, nothing worthy in science."

WHEN a fact is reported to us, we are not at liberty to pronounce it a violation of the order of nature, merely because it is strange. Its strangeness justifies the demand for a peculiar weight of evidence. But whether it has occurred in obedience to the laws of nature, or in violation of them, is a question not to be determined until the fact is fully established, and all the conditions of its occurrence are ascertained and estimated.

In the meanwhile, the inquiry into its truth must be conducted upon the presumption that it is in some degree, the very lowest perhaps, probable, capable of proof. We cannot advance a hair's breadth, except upon the supposition of some law, fact, or principle in nature, with which the fact reported consists. So much is admitted even by those who define a miracle to be a departure from the order of nature. For they maintain the existence and supremacy of a law, having for its end the education of mind, and they insist that the Christian Miracles, inasmuch as they tend, by attesting the truth of Christianity, to enlighten and elevate the human mind, concur with the highest law of nature.

Is there not, by the way, a very strong presumption that

facts, which accord with the grandest law of all existence, agree also with all the laws of the universe, however great their apparent deviation from them? Nothing is so obvious, so admirable, and so complete as the harmony of things. A fact, then, that agrees with one law, and that the most important, may certainly be suspected to accord with all the laws of nature. Whether it does or does not, however, cannot be settled until it has been thoroughly investigated, and all the particulars of its occurrence have been carefully noted and weighed.

The design of the present article is to inquire, whether the extraordinary facts of the life of Jesus actually occurred, as they are represented. Let us suppose the question now to be, to determine their reality. It is hardly worth while to speculate about them, before their truth is decided. But, if we do not greatly err, our proposed investigation will supersede the necessity of speculation. In examining the claims of the Christian miracles to full and cordial credit, we must needs discover something of their nature, and it will appear more or less clearly, whether they are to be regarded as interruptions or illustrations of the order of things.

The Christian records furnish us with the means of deciding whether these wonderful facts really took place.

The accounts of the miracles of Christ must be either wholly true, or wholly false, or a mixture of truth and falsehood. In other words, if the singular events related did not take place as they are represented, then they must be either ordinary occurrences misapprehended and exaggerated through ignorance, or something worse, in the narrators, or mere inventions of the passion for the marvellous. There is no other supposition.

In either of the last two cases, it is evident, beyond demonstration, that the miracles must violate grossly the moral unity of his being, whose acts they are asserted to be. The general features of his character, as all confess, are grand and noble. His miracles apart, he has neither said nor done anything at variance with a nature singularly simple, generous, and venerable. We could not, indeed, have ventured to tell beforehand the course such a being might pursue, the precise acts he would perform. But when certain things are attributed to him, we may determine whether they are in keeping with his character. We cannot form the remotest idea of the possible

works of any great artist, painter, or poet. We cannot dream even of the forms in which his genius will delight or awe us. "Every genius is an impossibility till he appears. We should not call him new and original, if we saw where his marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it." But when a

work of art is placed before us, it is within our ability to ascertain its genuineness. Through a kindred spirit, and by dint of critical observation, we may discover whether it breathe the spirit, whether it bear the likeness of the mind from which it professes to have sprung. The decision may not be in all cases equally easy. But in the case, with which we are now concerned, it is neither difficult nor doubtful. Putting out of view the miracles ascribed to Jesus Christ, we know enough of him to be able to form a distinct idea of his moral lineaments, of the pervading tone of his character. We know its leading traits; or, at least, we know abundantly enough of him to be instantly struck with the distinction and the contrast between him and the miracles, if those miracles are nothing more than common events, distorted by accident, ignorance, or fraud, or pure fabrications of the craving for the wonderful.

This now we affirm. Were the miracles, Jesus is said to have wrought, only ordinary occurrences exaggerated, or mere fictions, they would at once appear in their real character by their gross inconsistency with his character. They would have, and they would instantly be felt to have, no living connexion with him. As well might you mistake the fetters, fastened upon a man, for natural parts, living members of his living body, as such fabrications for the acts of Jesus; or as easily mix the commonest pebbles with the finest diamonds, and pretend there was no telling one from the other.

And here it strengthens this statement to remark, in passing, that as the authors of the Christian records have not studied consistency, as they show not the faintest appearance of having been influenced in the selection or relation of the details of their histories, by any anxiety for the effect those details might have upon the moral unity of Jesus, we may regard the accounts of the miracles, supposing them to be false, as neither softened, nor qualified, nor shaped, in order to their being made consistent with his character. They are given, we may infer, in all their native extravagance. If misrepresentations, then are they gross misrepresentations; if effusions of the passion

for the wonderful, then no cunning art has been used to give them shaping and consistency. So far as it goes, the ignorance or the deception is thorough-going and unqualified. We repeat, therefore, were they really false, their falsehood would stand out in their palpable want of keeping with him to whom they are referred. They would break in upon his individuality, and this so rudely that, we cannot but think, they would, like the apocryphal miracles, long ago have lost all credit. They would have fallen out of the text and mouldered away into oblivion.

It appears never to have been considered to what a complete and decisive test the miracles of Christ are subjected, by their avowed connexion with him, by being explicitly referred to his agency. They thus occupy a point, they are placed in relations by which their falsehood, were they false, must be glaringly exposed. In defending them, it is customary to lay great stress upon the circumstance, that they took place openly, in the light of day. But the presumption for their truth, resulting from this consideration, is not a thousandth part so strong as that afforded by their juxtaposition to the penetrating illumination of the character of Christ. Purporting to be his acts, they are placed at once in the very focus of the strongest light ever yet poured on the eyes of man. And were they mere earthly exhalations, they would have been dissipated by it long ago, or they would have remained only to be exposed in all their deformity by a light far above the brightness of the In professing to be the works of one, not unknown to us, and, so far as known, seen to possess certain decisive and original qualities of mind and heart, they furnish us with the means of trying their truth by their correspondence with the truth so singularly bright in him.

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They have stood this test. Whatever repugnance may sometimes have been expressed or felt at the bare idea of representing Jesus Christ as a wonderworker, yet when the particular miracles ascribed to him are fairly considered, no one can say that they violate the moral consistency of his character, or that they are obviously not of a piece with him. No man can read, or hear read, the account of the raising of Lazarus, for instance, and say, that, supposing this event to have taken place just as it is represented, it outrages our idea of him. We are not shocked by any want of fitness to our conception of Jesus. There is nothing here little, puerile,

ridiculous. As much may be said of nearly all the accounts of his miracles. Let us be as skeptically biassed as you please, still they do not create in us that instantaneous and unequivocal feeling of a want of keeping, which would be produced, were they mere fictions or misrepresentations. Here is a most important consideration. Most reinarkable is it that the relations of the miracles do not do gross violence to the general tenor of the history. No seam appears. In this way, a very strong presumption in favor of their truth is created. To our mind it is all but decisive of the point in hand. It should as least command for them our awakened and respectful attention. But this is not all. It is only the foreshadow of the argument in their behalf. Not only do they not mar the wholeness of the character of him, whose works they are declared to be, they positively illustrate it. They actually disclose,-lay bare the divinest principles of his being. Of all the sayings and acts attributed to him, his miracles are, by far, the most complete and splendid illustrations of the laws and order of his inner life. Inasmuch as they are novel, they are supernatural. They are above what we have witnessed of nature, commonly so called. Still they are not nonnatural. On the contrary, they are eminently and emphatically natural. They contain and exhibit a new and abundant portion of the purest spirit of Nature.*

It is common to speak of man, in an uncultivated state, as in a state of nature. But this representation has very fairly been objected to; and it has been asserted, on the other hand, that the true state of nature is disclosed in man educated, elevated, with all his faculties, intellectual and moral, vigorously developed. Accordingly, in the most finished man nature is most expressively revealed, and her profoundest laws demonstrated. And those of his acts, which illustrate his highest powers, are precisely the most natural manifestations of his being, the most luminous facts in nature. We say again, then, that the miracles of Jesus are, in the fullest sense of the word, natural facts. And just so far as their naturalness is felt, they are felt to be supernatural also, new facts added to nature, and in

* We do not wish to restrict the term " supernatural" to the sense given above. It has other senses. But this meaning is clear and admissible. See a short Essay, entitled "The Sanity of True Genius," by C. Lamb. Elia. English edition.