go; once loose the living strands of existence, and no human skill is able to join them again-we cannot create life.

"Once put out thine,

Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume. When I have plucked thy rose
I cannot give it vital breath again
It needs must wither."

Othello, Act v. sc. 2.

Hidden powers weave the lion and the swallow, plant and man. Marvellously intricate processes go forward in apparently structureless matter. Things are done for which neither means nor causes are seen in operation. Matter and its forces come from the unseen, are a birth from the invisible. There are influences which we cannot fathom, nor mete, but their inscrutable operations, obtain an important place among the facts of existence. The same means and instruments are not always used to effect the same ends. The means are changed, the tools are broken, littles come from the great and great from the small, many from the few or few from the many, nor can we tell why or how. Observe the rain : it falls on mountain slopes, collects in rills, combines in streams and rivers, hides underground, bubbles in fountains; and now-leaping in music-cuts new channels; and, finding a way to the desert, gladdens the barren ground with fruitful beauty. The blessing is distilled out of invisible watery particles which ascended from the earth to render heaven beneficent. There is a secret affinity between the lightning of heaven and the conductor which brings it down to the earth, between the steel and the magnet, why not between man

and God? Our spirit indeed lays hold of the Divine Will, and draws out a blessing by being itself drawn to God. A hidden work-but we feel and know it well. It changes earthly thoughts into heavenly ideas, turns flesh into spirit, carries our prayers to Heaven, and brings down angels to bless our heart and home.

PLAUTUS, Trinummus, Act i. sc. 2.

"Science is their forte, omniscience their foible."-SYDNEY SMITH.

MIRACLES are asserted to be so improbable, that "no amount of testimony suffices to make a scientific thinker entertain, for a moment, any idea of their reality."

The assertion must be met with plain speakingTo refuse all testimony, seeing that, as to ancient miracles, evidence is the chief proof; and that, to most people, testimony is the only proof they can have as well concerning science and philosophy as theology; stamps such pretentious scientific thinkers as wholly unreasonable. We, theologians, contend that the kind of scientific inference, called historical, compels belief that at certain epochs there has been an intervention by supernatural causes. Hence, science itself enforces us to accept, as matters of fact, the accounts of miracles which are supported by historic proof. Scientific thinkers,

the greatest and furthest sighted of men, the most experienced and prudent persons in the world, whether of past or present time, have received and do receive miracles, as one of the modes in which God reveals Himself to men.

The miracles of Holy Scripture are not connected with silly credulous prattle, but associated with imperishable words and facts; are not united to low ignorant superstition, but to highest morality, and to those exalted views of life which honour and bless human existence. "They are not feigned by trifling understandings, who think to serve God with a well-meant lie; nor promoted by the credulity of such persons in whose hearts easiness, folly, and credulity are bound up" (Jerem. Taylor, “Life of Christ," Part II. sec. 10). They are parts of the faith and life and doings of men whose sagacity and experience placed them above deception; whose purity and greatness rendered them incapable of deceit. Miracles-as revealing and confirming truths which could only be miraculously known; as actslinked with words of knowledge that instruct and win dominion over profoundest minds; as doings, received by purest hearts-approved by strongest intellects— producing the most sacred and useful lives-have that testimony which appears to reason irresistible. With the truth of miracles Christianity stands or falls. It began with a miracle, its progress depends upon miracles, its consummation will be by miracles.

Rothe ("Studien und Kritiken ") says, "Miracles are not adjuncts appended from without to a revelation in itself independent of them, but constitutive elements of the revelation itself." Van Mildert ("Boyle Lectures,"

Serm. xxi.) states, "The possibility of miracles cannot be denied without denying the very nature of God as an all-powerful Being; their probability cannot be questioned without questioning His moral perfections; and their certainty, as matters of fact, can only be invalidated by destroying the very foundations of human testimony." Hey ("Lectures on Divinity") wrote, "If we suppose such a case as the publication of a new religion like the Christian, there is more to be presumed in favour of miracles than against them." Christlieb ("Christian Belief") argues, "He who believes in a living God must logically believe in miracles: for God is the miracle of miracles. . . There can be nothing more illogical than to admit, as rationalism does, the miracle of creation, and at the same time to deny the possibility of other miracles. What God has done once He must always be able to do, otherwise He would cease to be God." Mansel ("Essay on Miracles") thinks, “If the spiritual restoration of mankind has in any degree been promoted by means of a religion professing to have been introduced by the aid of miracles, and whose whole truth is involved in the truth of that profession, we have a sufficient reason for the miraculous interposition, superior to any that can be urged for or against it from considerations of the material world."

Indeed, all testimony must be repudiated, if this evidence is refused; the wisest men charged with folly, if believers are to be accounted silly; the most stupendous and sacred acts in the world are rendered contemptible, if these be deemed a lie; all religion is declared false, if Christianity be accounted untrue; all our faith, all our hope, all our future, our knowledge of God, of