HUME'S

DENIAL OF MIRACLES.

The plausible and sophistical argument of Hume, in his Essay on Miracles, in which he contends that 66 a miracle, however attested, can never be rendered credible," since "it is contrary to experience that a miracle should be true, but not contrary to experience that testimony should be false," has been ably answered by Drs. Campbell, Adam, Hey, Price, Douglass, Paley, Whately, Dwight, Alexander, Professor Vince, and others. The following brief notices seem all that it is necessary to insert in this volume.

"Independent," says Douglass in his 'Errors regarding Religion,' "of the reductio ad absurdum which Hume's own philosophy affords against his favorite argument, and which is undermined by the very system from which it springs, it may be observed that it contains within itself a complication of blunders, more numerous, perhaps, than ever were crowded into the same brief space. The argument of Hume against miracles is as follows: A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, but we learn from experience that the laws of nature are never violated. Our only accounts of miracles depend upon testimony, and our belief in testimony itself depends upon experience. But experience shows that testimony is

sometimes true and sometimes false; therefore, we have only a variable experience in favor of testimony. But we have a uniform experience in favor of the uninterrupted course of nature. Therefore, as on the side of miracles there is but a variable experience, and on the side of no miracles a uniform experience, it is clear that the lower degree of evidence must yield to the higher degree, and therefore no testimony can prove a miracle to be true.

66 Every one who has attacked this sophistry has pointed out a new flaw in it, and they are scarcely yet exhausted. Paley showed that it was necessary to demonstrate that there was no God, previously to de monstrating that there could be no miracles. Campbell showed that so far from belief in testimony being founded on experience alone, it was diffidence in testimony that we acquire by experience. Others have pointed out the sophism in the double use of the word experience, and the confusing of the experience of a particular individual with the universal experience of mankind; for to assert that miracles are contrary to experience in the last sense, is most pitifully to beg the question. Others have observed upon the complete misapprehension of the argument of Tillotson, and upon the sophism in the use of the word "contrary," for as it is a begging of the question to say that miracles are contrary to the experience of mankind, so it is a sophism to say that they are contrary to the experience of Mr. Hume himself, unless he had been personally present at the time and place, when and where all the miracles recorded in the Bible are said to have been wrought, from the days of Moses to the time of our Savior. Our experience, so far from being

contrary to miracles, is decided in favor of them. Both our reason and our experience are altogether in favor of the veracity of testimony, where there is no motive to deceive, and no possibility of being deceived. Such was the case with the apostles. Their personal experience, and that of many others, is invincibly in favor of miracles. There is no experience-no, not even of a single individual, against miracles. No one was ever placed in the situation where miracles might be reasonably expected, to whom miracles were not vouchsafed. Thus so far from miracles being contrary to experience, the whole range of the experience we possess is altogether, and without one. solitary exception, in favor of miracles.

"But to take entirely new ground, miracles, philosophically speaking, are not violations of the laws of nature. The miracles of the Bible, which are the only true miracles, so far from being violations of nature, are as natural as the lifting up of a stone from the ground, or impelling a vessel along the waves by the stroke of an oar. None would call it a violation of the laws of nature when human agents set a body in motion which was previously at rest, and which would have remained at rest without their interference; still less can it be called a violation of the laws of nature, when the Divine Agent, who is the lawgiver of nature, impresses an additional force upon creation, and gives a new direction to its movements. But it would be endless to go over all the variety of mistakes which are involved in the sophistry against miracles, and to point out the many vulgar and unphilosophical notions which are implied in Hume's

reasonings, both concerning nature and her inviolable laws."

The proofs in Campbell's admirable treatise are summed up by the author in the following words:

"What is the sum of what has been now discussed? It is briefly this, that the author's favorite argument, of which he boasts the discovery, is founded in error, is managed with sophistry, and is at last abandoned by its inventor, as fit only for show, not for use; that he is not more successful in the collateral arguments he employs, particularly that there is no peculiar presumption against religious miracles; that, on the contrary, there is a peculiar presumption in their favor; that the general maxim, whereby he would enable us to decide betwixt opposite miracles, when it is stript of the pompous diction that serves it at once for decoration and for disguise, is discovered to be no other than an identical proposition, which, as it conveys no knowledge, can be of no service to the cause of truth; that there is no presumption, arising either from human nature or from the history of mankind, against the miracles said to have been wrought in proof of Christianity; that the evidence of these is not sub verted by those miracles which historians of other nations have recorded; that neither the Pagan nor the Popish miracles, on which he has expatiated, will bear to be compared with those of holy writ; that, abstracting from the evidence of particular facts, we have irrefragable evidence that there have been miracles in former times; and, lastly, that his examination of the Pentateuch is both partial and imperfect, and conse quently stands in need of a revisal."

STARKIE'S EXAMINATION OF HUME'S ARGUMENT.

Starkie, an author of great eminence in the legal profession, in his "PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE LAW OF EVIDENCE," under the head of "Force of Testimony," ‚” vol. 1, p. 471, appends the following note, than which nothing can be more conclusive.

"In observing upon the general principles on which the credibility of human testimony rests, it may not be irrelevant to advert to the summary positions on this subject advanced by Mr. Hume. He says in his Essay, vol. 2, sec. 10, A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable expe › rience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. As a matter of abstract philosophical consideration, (for in that point of view only can the subject be adverted to in a work like this,) Mr. Hume's reasoning appears to be altogether untenable. In the first place, the very basis of his inference is, that faith in human testimony is founded solely upon experience; this is by no means the fact; the credibility of testimony frequently depends upon the exercise of reason, on the effect of coincidences in testimony, which, if colusion be excluded, cannot be accounted for but upon the supposition that the testimony of concurring witnesses is true; so much so, that their individual character for veracity is frequently but of secondary importance, (supra, 466.) Its credibility also greatly de