consistent with our experience of the veracity of human testimony, the truth is directly on the other side. It is not the belief, but the denial that miracles have ever been wrought, by which your whole experience of the veracity of human testimony is contra-dicted. But again, Is our belief in testimony founded on our experience of its veracity? Prove that it is not, and the whole argument of our author is undermined. The proof is easy. None depend more absolutely upon testimony than those whose experience is almost a nullity. Children are perfect believers in its veracity. All writers on the philosophy of the mind but the one before us consider it an original principle of nature, that we should rely on testimony until there is proof either of suspicious competency to know, or of suspicious honesty to speak the truth. This principle is necessary to human nature long before any experience can be gathered up. Without it, how could children begin to learn? How could they avoid poison, or receive wholesome food, if they must wait for an experience of the veracity of their parents and nurses and teachers before they can believe what they testify? The plain truth is, that instead of experience being our whole dependence for the credibility of testimony, it is just the school that makes us sometimes suspicious of that credibility. It teaches us that testimony may be false, and furnishes the characteristics by which we may distinguish between that which is suspicious and that which may be confidently relied on. We deny therefore, and with evi dent reason, the whole foundation of the argument we are considering. But again, another essential hinge in this argument is the assertion that a miracle, being, as the author defines it, "a violation of the laws of nature," is contrary to experience. Here we might deny that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. It is only a deviation from those laws, or from the customary mode of the divine operations. But waving this, what is meant by a miracle being contrary to experience? Have we or others ever experienced the opposite of any of the miracles of Christ? I cannot conceive how this could be, unless we had been on the spot when the miracle is said to have taken place, as when Lazarus is said to have risen from the dead; and instead of seeing him rise, had seen him continue dead. That is the only way in which I can conceive of opposition between experience and a miracle. The resurrection of Lazarus is not contrary to my experience, any more than a volcano is contrary to it. All I can say of either is, that I have never experienced it. It is beyond, not in opposition to my expe rience. But when our author asserts that miracles are contrary to experience, what are we to understand? Does he mean one's own personal experience, or the experience of all mankind? If the former, then it would follow that testimony can render no event credible to us which we have not personally experienced. But this would be too sweeping even for the most absolute scepticism. On this ground, a native of the torrid zone might refuse the testimony of the rest of the world, in evidence of the fact that water in winter is so congealed that we can drive our carriages upon its surface. He need only say, "It is contrary to my experience. I have never seen it, and therefore no testimony can make it credible.”* But does our author mean to be understood as affirming that miracles are contrary to the experience of all mankind? His argument will then stand as follows: "Belief in testimony is founded on experience. But miracles are contrary to the experience of all mankind. They contradict therefore the credibility of testimony, and cannot be proved by it." But this is a manifest assumption of the whole question. Whether miracles are contrary to the experience of all mankind, is the precise point in debate. We assert that mankind, in different ages and places, have experienced them. Our author is at liberty, if he pleases, to assert the contrary. But it is too much to expect us to receive his assertion until it is proved. And if his argument cannot be sustained without thus taking for granted, in one of its premises, what it seeks to demonstrate in the conclusion, its correctness is certainly very suspicious. The admission of the principle on which the argument under consideration is founded, would lead to perfect absurdity. "There was a time when no one was acquainted with the laws of magnetism; these suspend in many instances the laws of gravity; nor * On Hume's argument, in general, see the references in Horne's Introduction, vol. 1, p. 243. can I see, upon the principle in question, how the rest of mankind could have credited the testimony of their first discoverer; and yet to have rejected it, would have been to reject the truth. But that a piece of iron should ascend gradually from the earth, and fly at last with an increasing rapidity through the air, and attaching itself to another piece of iron ore, should remain suspended in opposition to the action of its gravity, is consonant to the laws of nature. I grant it; but there was a time when it was contrary, I say not to the laws of nature, but to the uniform experience of all preceding ages and countries; and at the particular point of time, the testimony of an individual, or of a dozen individuals, who should have reported themselves eye-witnesses of such a fact, ought, according to the argumentation" of Mr. Hume, "to have been received as fabulous. And what are those laws of nature which, according to this writer, can never be suspended? Are they not different to different men, according to the diversities of their comprehension and knowledge? And if any one of them-that, for instance, which rules the operations of magnetism or electricity—should have been known to you or to me alone, while all the rest of the world were unacquainted with it, the effects of it would have been new and unheard-of in the annals and contrary to the experience of mankind, and therefore ought not in your opinion to have been believed."* If this be the legitimate result of the principle in question-if no testimony could have rendered the pheBishop Watson. * nomena of magnetism credible in the dawn of knowledge on that subject, because they were contrary to experience, it is evident that a certain truth and Hume's principle would have been in that case directly in opposition. But whether the experience of mankind be opposed by phenomena above the laws of nature―miracles—or by phenomena which, though in reality according to those laws, are perfectly new, and to all human view inconsistent with the established order of nature, is of no consequence to the argument. Experience is opposed in both cases alike. It cannot be less absurd in one than in the other to maintain, that because the phenomena have never been experienced, no testimony can make them credible. But if the argument of Hume, with all its assumptions and false statements and equivocal expressions, were true, it would prove not only that miracles cannot be proved by testimony, but that they cannot be proved at all. Now, that it is possible for God to work a miracle, none will deny. Consequently, that it is possible that the miracles related in the New Testament are true, none will deny. Suppose them to be true, how can they be proved to us? If testimony will not do, what remains? Mathematical evidence and the evidence of the senses are perfectly inapplicable. But there is no other description evidence. If, therefore, those miracles are to be proved to us, it must be done by some species of evidence not now in existence, entirely foreign to the In other words, it must be miracu laws of nature. of |