Nature being but the. plastic medium through. which. God's will is ever manifested to 11A, and the design of that will being, as it neceasarily must be, tho good 'of his creatures, that theory of miracle is certainly most rational which does not represent the ideas of laws, and of the will of God as separate and opposing forces, but which represents the divine will as working out its highest moral ends, not against, but through law and order, and evolving from these a new issue, when it lies a special beneficent purpose to serve. And thus, too, we are enabled to see in miracle not only a wonder and a power, but a sign —a revelation of divine character, never arbitrary, always generous and loving, the char acter of one who seeks through all the ordinary courses of nature and operation of law to further IIls creatures' good, and whose will, when that end is to be served, is not restricted to any one necessary mode or order of expression. Rightly interpreted, miracle is not the mere assertion of power, or a mere device to impress an impressible mind; it is. the revelation of a will which, while leaving nature es a whole to its established course, can yet witness to itself as above nature, when, by doing so, it can help man's moral and spiritual being to grow into a higher perfection.
The evidence for the Christian miracles is of ii,twofold kind—external and internal. As alleged facts, they are supposed to rest upon competent testimony,ihe testimony of eye witnesses, who were neither deceived themselves, nor had any motive to deceive others.
They occurred not in privacy, like the alleged supernatural visions of Mohammed, but for the most part in the open light of day, amidst the professed enemies of Christ. They were not isolated facts; nor wrought tentatively, or with but the repeated, the over flowing expression, as it were, of an apparently supernatural life. It seems impossibqe to conceive, therefore, that the apostles could have been deceived as to their eharmteter. They had all the means of scrutinizing and forming a judgment regarding them that they could well have possessed; and if not deceived themselves, they were certainly not deceivers. There is no historical criticism that would now maintain such a theory; even the most positive unbelief has rejected it. The career of the apostles forms throughout an irref ragable proof of the deep-hearted and incorruptible sincerity that animated them. The gospel miracles, moreover, are supposed in themselves to be of an obviously divine character. They am, in the main, miracles of healing, of beneficence, in which the light equally of the divine majesty and of time divine love shines—witnessing to the eternal life which underlies all the manifestations of decay, and all the traces of sorrow in the lower world, and lifting the mind directly to the contemplation of his life.