intercourse with society, who does not know several individuals on whom he would rely as much as on the testimony of his own senses. There are individuals whom we should believe, if they told us that they had seen an angel descending from heaven, or a demon starting up out of the earth. The incredulity of age arises also from experience; it has been oftener deceived.

Hume's actual paralogism lies in his confounding the lowest degree of testimony with the highest, and drawing his conclusion as if the lowest alone existed. "It is not contrary to experience that testimony should be false." Doubtless, it is not contrary to experience, that common rumour should be false. But it is totally contrary, that the testimony of individuals in whom we have experienced the most unimpeachable virtue, honour, and understanding, should be any thing but strictly true. Having equally clear evidence that the Evangelists possessed those qualities in the most remarkable degree: upon that evidence we are fully justified, by the common principles of human conduct, in receiving their statements of the miracles as facts beyond all question. The truth is, that if we were to be solely dependent on the evidence of our own senses, society could not go on for a day. Testimony is the Divine expedient for extending the narrowness of individual observation, by adding to it the observation of all. It is the addition of the senses of other men to our

own; and, in its higher states, with an authority practically equal to that of our own.

On testimony we continually repose for the most important concerns of our lives.

Still, the force of testimony, though obviously unresisted and irresistible in actual life, does not seem to be sufficiently impressed on our later theologians. Thus we find it declared (Hulsean Lectures) that no possible force of testimony can establish the fact of a miracle by an evil spirit. Yet, why not? unless it be an impossibility. But where is the impossibility? When our Lord is reproached with casting out devils through Beelzebub, he does not repel the charge by asserting the impossibility, which would be the most direct of all answers. He replies by asking, whether the evil spirit would work miracles to defeat himself?

When the demons took possession of the human body, was not this a contradiction of the course of nature, a miracle? When they passed from the human body into the brute, was not this a miracle, though only by sufferance? When Satan bore our Lord from the desert, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple', was not this a miracle, which,

'It has been said, that the view of the kingdoms of the world, given by Satan from the pinnacle of the temple, was not a miracle, because the oikovμern may mean only Palestine, and thus he showed only "the four Tetrarchies." But, besides the

whether the purpose or the person is considered, exhibited the most extraordinary degree of power? Thus, there can be no doubt that the evil spirit has worked miracles. The only limit that we can be authorized from Scripture in assigning to them, is, that they cannot be wrought but by Divine sufferance, and that they cannot be wrought but with an intention of evil 1.

fantasy of this circumscription of the power of a being who is declared to be the "God of this world," and who was then using "the glory of all his kingdoms" as a temptation; what human eye could see the extent, even of Palestine, from the temple, without a miracle? The question of more or less, in works palpablyabove man, is inadmissible.

1 Douglas, Criterion. Campbell, Dissertation. Paley's Evidences. Profess. Vince, Sermon on Credibility, &c. &c. Bp. Gleig, Notes to Stackhouse; his observations, however, chiefly refer to miracles wrought by the application of natural materials, of which we have scarcely an instance, except, perhaps, in the cure of Hezekiah. The touching of the blind man's eyes with clay, was evidently a mere form.

T

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE EGYPTIAN ENCHANTERS.

THE curious question, whether Pharaoh's magicians worked real miracles; a question as old as Justin Martyr, if not as old as controversy itself, is still the subject of dispute. Farmer' holds, and justly, that their arts were merely human. But his argument against their being devices of the evil spirit, that there is no reason why Satan should have stopped at the third plague, more than at the first, is palpably insufficient; for, as all the power of the evil spirit must be permissive, it might have been the Divine will to interfere at that point. The majority of Divines also hold that the enchantments were matters of human dexterity; but, on the principle, that the evil spirit cannot work miracles; a principle palpably contradicted (as has been already observed,) in the instance of the demoniacs, the temptation,

'Dissertation on Miracles. Sect. 1.

and the Pythoness, from whom the prophetic spirit was expelled by the Apostle'.

But, the secure answer is to be found only in an authority, not always remembered in the war of argument, the plain narrative. Moses comes to Pharaoh, declaring himself the bearer of the command of "Jehovah, God of Israel," that he should let his people go." No man in his senses would stand upon his own determination, against the declared command of a God; especially in Egypt, where superstition had arrived at its height. Pharaoh, therefore, does not deny the fitness of obedience to a command of Deity, but he denies the existence of "Jehovah," (the sacred name, which was, probably, not known beyond the Israelite border.) "And Pharaoh said, who is Jehovah? that I should obey his voice. I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go." Moses then declares the more usual name, "the God of the Hebrews.' But the result of the demand once repelled, is only the immediate adoption of severer measures towards the Israelites.

The

After an interval of national suffering, Moses and Aaron are sent to repeat the command. king now, without questioning the name of their God, fixes his refusal upon their want of authority to ask in that name, and requires a miracle as the evidence. A miracle is wrought; Aaron throws

Acts xvi. 16.