It is clear that no event which can be ac counted for on natural principles, can prove a supernatural interposition, or contain a divine attestation to the truth of a prophet's claim. But when we look at an event which cannot be traced to the laws of nature, and is clearly above them, such as the burning of the wood upon the altar in the case of Elijah's controversy with the false prophets, or the resurrection of Lazarus, we can not avoid the conviction, that the Lord of heaven and earth does, by such a miracle, give his testi mony, that Elijah is his prophet, and that Jesus is the Messiah. The evidence arising from mir acles is so striking and conclusive, that there is no way for an infidel to evade it. but to deny the existence of miracles, and to hold that all the events called miraculous may be accounted for according to the laws of nature.
(5) Uniform Experience. Hume arrays uni form experience against the credibility of miracles. But the shallow sophistry of his argument has been fully exposed by Campbell, Paley and many others. We inquire what and how much he means by uniform experience. Does lie mean his own experience? But because he has never wit nessed a miracle, does it follow that others have not? Does lie mean the uniform experience of the greater part of mankind? But how does he know that the experience of a smaller part has not been different from that of the greater part? Does he mean, then, the uniform experience of all mankind in all ages? How, then, does his argument stand? He undertakes to prove that no man has ever witnessed or experienced a mir acle, and his real argument is, that no one has ever witnessed or experienced it. In other words, to prove that there has never been a miracle, he asserts that there never has been a miracle. This is the nature of his argument—an instance of petitio principii, to which a man of Hume's logical powers would never have resorted, had it not been for his enmity to religion.
(6) Genuineness. The miraculous events re corded in the Scriptures, particularly those which took place in the times of Moses and Christ, have all the marks which are necessary to prove them to have been matters of fact, and worthy of full credit, and to distinguish them from the feats of jugglers and impostors. This has been shown very satisfactorily by Leslie, Paley, Douglas, and many others. These miracles took place in the most public manner, and in the presence of many witnesses; so that there was opportunity to sub ject them to the most searching scrutiny. Good men and bad men were able and disposed to ex amine them thoroughly, and to prove them to have been impostures, if they had been so.
A large number of men of unquestionable hon esty and intelligence constantly affirmed that the miracles took place before their eyes. And some of these original witnesses wrote and published histories of the facts, in the places where they were alleged to have occurred, and near the time of their occurrence. In these histories it was
openly asserted that the miracles, as described, were publicly known and acknowledged to have taken place; and this no one took upon him to contradict, or to question. Moreover, many per sons who stood forth as witnesses of these mir acles passed their lives in labors, dangers, and sufferings, in attestation of the accounts they delivered, and solely in consequence of their be lief of the truth of those accounts; and, from the same motive, they voluntarily submitted to new rules of conduct ; while nothing like this is true respecting any other pretended miracles. (See Paley's Evidences.) (7) Wicked Spirits. It has been a long agi tated question, whether miracles have ever been wrought, or can be consistently supposed to be wrought, by apostate spirits.
It is sufficient to say here, that it would be evidently inconsistent with the character of God to empower or to suffer wicked beings to work miracles in support of falsehood. And if wicked spirits in the time of Christ had power to pro duce preternatural effects upon the minds or bodies of men, and if those effects are to be ranked among real miracles (which, however, we do not affirm), still the end of miracles is not contra vened. For those very operations of evil spirits were under the control of divine providence, and were made in two ways to subserve the cause of Christ. First, they furnished an occasion, as doubtless they were designed to do, for Christ to show his power over evil spirits, and, by his su perior miracles, to give a new proof of his Mes siahship. Secondly. the evil spirits themselves were constrained to give their testimony, that Jesus was the Christ, the Holy One of Israel.
(8) Close of Dispensation. As to the time when the miraculous dispensation ceased, wz can only remark that the power of working miracles, which belonged preaninently to Christ and his apostles, and, in inferior degrees, to many other Christians in the apostolic age, subsided gradually. After the great object of supernat ural works was accomplished in the establishment of the Christian religion, with all its sacred truths, and its divinely appointed institutions, during the life of Christ and his apostles, there appears to have been no further occasion for miracles, and no satisfactory evidence that they actually oc curred. Wardlaw, On Miracles, 1852, N. Y.; Trench, Miracles of Our Lord; Evans, Christian Aliracles, Lond., i861; McCosh, The Supernat ural in Relation to the Natural; Mozley, Lectures on Miracles (Bampton, 1865) ; Mountford, Mir acles, Past and Present (Boston, 187o) ; Upham, Star of Our Lord (N. Y., 7873); Fowle, Religion and Science 0873); Christlieb. Alod. Doubts, i874; Smith, First Lines of Christian Theol.
of Kadesh-barnea (Num. xx :t ), where her sepul cher was still to be seen in the time of Eusebius.
2. Son of Mered, a man of Judah, a descendant of Caleb and Ezra (1 Citron. iv:17), B. C. about 1658.