"Thou shalt love God ligion of the human heart. thou shalt love thy neighbor;"- these things men had known always. In the third place, we do not mean, that all the most vitally important truths in the christian record, were revealed. The two precepts just mentioned, Jesus declares to be the spiritual substance of religion; and certainly they were not revealed. What was com municated, I hold, was supplementary to what was known - the supernatural was subsidiary to the natural; and the known and natural was more important than the supplementary and supernatural. The truth already in the human heart was more important than any miracles could be. And the reason is plain and irrefragible. It is not only, that this truth involved the very substance of goodness and happiness; but that without it, no communication from above could have been understood. And all this being true, to what purpose is it triumphantly to ask, whether inspiration or miracle or the authority of Christ, is necessary to establish these ground-truths of all natural religion? Nothing of the kind is pretended can be pretended. For the christian teachers them. selves always take these things for granted. And on the other hand, what greater mistake can there be, than to confound the christian dispensation, the christian peculiarity, whatever it be, with this presupposed truth this truth presupposed by the system itself? this basis on which it builds? It is as if a man should say that the whole peculiar significance and beauty of St. Peter's church or of York Minster lay in the Grecian or the Gothic arch; or that in the axiom" things equal to the same thing are equal to one another consisted the whole peculiarity and merit of Euclid's Elements; or that VOL. XVI. NO. 182. 2 any one or two metaphysical or moral axioms, universally admitted, embodied the whole power and charm of each system of mental or moral philosophy that has been builded upon them. No, the question is upon the great basis truths of all religion, upon the permanent, indisputable, universal, eternal truths of natural religion, what did Jesus build, and how did he build? Did he build as Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Seneca did — by the unaided force of natural reason or was there some peculiar mark and signature of the divine hand upon him? In short, was there divine interposition was there miracle in his system? - And here let it be observed, that if the system was any thing more than natural religion, it must have involved miracle. Natural religion is a collection of truths developed by our nature or gathered from an observation of the surrounding universe; it is simply an induction from all the known general laws of the spiritual and material creation, Now if more was to be communicated it must have been by other means by means out of the of range general laws that is, by departure from those laws — in other words, by miracle. The supplement itself must have been miraculous. Or, if there were no additional truth revealed, yet if any new and specific sanction were to be given to old truths, that must have been miraculous. Thus the idea of immortality was not new; the human mind had exhausted itself to attain conviction on this momentous point. Now, if it had pleased God to lend some positive assurance to human hope, some distinct additional evidence to the teachings of nature and of the mind, it would be done only by miracle. Who will venture to say that it might not have pleased - the Creator, to do this, or that it was not possible for him to do it. Admitting then, that it might be done, and perceiving, as I think all must perceive, that a revelation could be made only by miracle; let us now look into the New Testament and see what is there. Is not miracle spread over it, interwoven with it, every where? I confess that I cannot reason at length a matter so very plain. There lies the book! If any man can tear miracle from the face of it, without mutilation and destruction of the whole record without making the book ridiculous, the writers of it imposters, and the religion a foolish legend, he must possess an ingenuity which, I think, has never yet been brought to bear upon the subject. Miracle is there, clear and indisputable - veritable miracle-open and public often repeated-often distinctly appealed to by our Saviour in support of his claims constantly attested by eye-witnesses and by the very eye-witnesses on whose fidelity and sobriety our faith in the religion reposes and I repeat it, inextricably interwoven with very texture of the narrative, with the entire fabric, of the system. the Something that is called miracle, it must be admitted at the least, is found in the New Testament. What is it? Certainly, it is something very wonderful; to all appear. ance it touches the very order of nature; so it strikes the minds of the astonished beholders; and they say, "since the world was, it hath not been heard that any man hath opened the eyes of one born blind," and " we know that thou art a teacher come from God; because no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him ;" and our Saviour does not reject this conclusion but admits it as true. What then, I say again, is this thing that is done? And I must confess that I know not what to think of the state of that mind which, professing to receive the religion, can say that the conclusion was all a mistake; that the thing done was a miracle only to the ignorance of the people; that there was no departure from the order of nature; that the sick were healed, and the dead raised, by the vitality of some powers of which we are ignorant; that the reality of a miracle cannot be admitted. This way of thinking, in one who professes to reverence Christianity and its Founder, is to me utterly incomprehensible. It would drive me farther from all religion, from all faith. If such things can be permitted, if such delusions can be effected under the government of God, I should distrust the very evidence of natural religion. If I did not believe in the miracles with my view of the matter-I should not only be no Christian, but in a fair way to be no religionist of any sort. But once more, and in fine, if these are admitted to be veritable miracles, to be what they profess to be, then I cannot understand how they should be lightly regarded; how their importance should be decried or diminished or spoken of with indifference or scorn. What if natural religion can stand without them? What if they do not prove that we ought to love God or to love one another? What if they address, and therefore presuppose, as most certainly they do, a natural reverence and religion in the human heart? Is it nothing that such a communication is made? a miraculous communication, or a communication sealed by miracles? Is it any thing less than a most amazing and delightful fact? Suppose that miracle added nothing to natural religion in any way noth ing either of light or of confirmation; suppose that it was merely a seal which it had pleased the Almighty Being to set upon the excellence of Jesus Christ and the importance of his teachings; would it not be unspeakably precious? A voice from the infinite silence! an interposition, breaking through the staid uniformity of nature, to express the paternal interest which heaven takes in our welfare! - what could be more interesting? Nay, it is precisely the manifestation that the cultivated mind of the world needs, and for which, in fact, it was reserved. It is often referred, I know, for its proper sphere to dark and ignorant times. But I deny that position. I main. tain that miracle is especially needed by enlightened ages. Among rude savage tribes there has always been a sufficient disposition to believe in unseen powers, and to invest them with personality. But as nations emerge from barbarism, a contrary tendency often manifests itself. Speculations, philosophies, falsely so called, come in — subtile questionings about the nature of God- vague, mystic, pantheistic dreamings doubts about the care and watch. of Providence principles that sap the foundations of all public and private virtue and happiness. This was very much the character of all Grecian and Roman refinement, when Christ appeared. Something of this has been breaking out from time to time ever since — marking periods of rash speculation and immature thought and it was likely, in particular, to reveal itself in the first outburst of a nation's literature, like that of Germany. There was, therefore, special need of a miraculous manifestation in the time of Christ; and I shall venture to add, that German Naturalism stands in the same need now, of the very faith which it denies. The very state of the |