session of many striking evidences which could not at all influence the belief of those who were spectators of the miracles, and which more than counterbalance any imaginary defects in that testimony which records them. The greater miracles that have followed from the influence of the Gospel upon human society, and which have come down to us with accumulating force, through the long period of eighteen hundred years-its effects upon the hearts, the hopes, and the happiness of mankind-these, more than the dominion ascribed to its Author over the physical laws of the universe, cannot fail to strike us with amazement, and to make us say, "What thing is this? What "doctrine is this? For with authority "commandeth he the unclean spirits, " and they do obey him!"

Instead of building the faith of the Gospel upon miracles, it is perhaps more

necessary, in this philosophical age, to defend it against those prejudices which its miraculous occurrences are apt to excite. Men are now generally disposed to question the truth of every incident of this nature, and wherever the trace of such an occurrence is to be found, they are immediately in the habit of exclaiming," this must be imposture and super"stition." That this is a just maxim in most instances, I am not inclined to deny; but we ought to be very cautious how we extend it to every case, particularly to the case of a Divine Revelation, which, from the nature of the thing, must, as I have already remarked, necessarily contain something miraculous. It may still be thought, however, that the frequency of miraculous interpositions exhibited in the Gospels, has somewhat of a suspicious aspect; and although I am unwilling to enter at large into the subject, I

must request your attention to the few following observations, which seem to me sufficient to obviate this prejudice.

In the first place, we ought to recollect, that it is a very confined manner of judging, to examine the dispensations of Providence with a reference solely to ourselves, and to our own habits of thought. Were a revelation introduced into the world in the present age, it is possible that it might be unaccompanied with any multiplicity of miraculous circumstances; the understandings of men might be appealed to, rather than their senses; the Divine Teacher, perhaps, would deliver his instructions in a systematical form; and, instead of proving his authority by suspending the laws of nature, might display a more than human knowledge of all their hidden operations. One of the leading distinctions between the present age and that which preceded the intro

duction of Christianity is this-that, from the progress of knowledge and inquiry, men have learned to consider the order of nature as established upon general laws, and there is no pursuit justly accounted more liberal than the investigation of those laws and arrangements. Facts, the most apparently disjointed and irregular, have thus been found to be harmoniously connected, and, even to the eyes of the vulgar and unlearned, Nature now seems to be one stupendous WHOLE, the temple of the Deity,-whose presence is much rather to be discovered in its regularity than in its deviations.

The universal belief of one God, first introduced by the Gospel, was, perhaps, the leading cause of that strong impulse which has since carried forward the human mind in this splendid course of inquiry; and modern science, amidst all its proud discoveries, may be more indebted

than it is aware, to the humble fishermen of Galilee. One thing, however, is certain, that when the Gospel first arose, no such elevated views were generally entertained. To the Gentile nations, the universe seemed to be parcelled out among an infinite variety of deities, and it was not to the harmony of the whole system that they looked for proofs of the divine agency, but to extraordinary, changes in its subordinate parts. Even the Jews, to whom the knowledge of one God had been revealed, were yet inclined to regard him rather, as the God of their own nation, than as the universal ruler of nature; and it was not when "day uttereth speech unto day, and

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night sheweth unto night wisdom," that they were so sensible of his presence, as when they read in the records of their history, that "when the Lord fought for "Israel, the sun had stood still upon