know and are forced to believe, that good men will not intention- a]]y deceive ; and, therefore, by a law of our nature we are com- pelled to receive their testimony as to facts within their personal knowledge. Experience, instead of being the foundation of belief in testimony, corrects our credulity by teaching us the conditions under which alone human testimony can be safely trusted. In the second place, Hume assumes that there is a violent antecedent improbability against the occurrence of a miracle, which only a " miraculous " amount of evidence could counterbalance. It is indeed not only incredible, but inconceivable, that a miracle should be wrought without an adequate reason. But that God, on great occasions and for the highest ends, should intervene with the immediate exercise of his power in the course of events, is what might be confidently anticipated. Theism being granted, the diffi- culty about miracles disappears ; but by theism is not meant the mere admission that something is God, whether nature, force, motion, or moral order ; but the doctrine of a personal extramun dane Being, the Creator and Governor of all things, who does according to his own will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth ; a God who is untrammelled by cosmical influences or laws.
In the third place, Hume's argument assumes that our faith in miracles rests exclusively on human testimony. This is not the fact. The miracles recorded in the Scriptures are a competent part of the great system of truth therein revealed. The whole stands or falls together. Our faith in miracles, therefore, is sus- tained by all the evidence which authenticates the gospel of Christ. And that evidence is not to be even touched by a balance of prob- abihties.
§ 4. The Value of Miracles as a Proof of a Divine Revelation. On this subject extreme opinions have been held. On the one hand, it has been maintained that miracles are the only satisfactory evidence of a divine revelation ; on the other, that they are neither necessary nor available. It is argued by some that, as faith must be lounded on the apprehension of truth as truth, it is impossible that any amount of external evidence can produce faith, or enable us to see that to be true which we could not so apprehend without it. How can a miracle enable us to see a proposition of Euclid to be true, or a landscape to be beautiful ? Such reasoning is fallacious. It overlooks the nature of faith as a conviction of things not seen, on adequate testimony. What the Bible teaches on this subject is
636 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. XII. — Miracles.
(1.) That the evidence of miracles is important and decisive (2.) Tliat it is, nevertheless, subordinate and inferior to that of the truth itself. Both of these points are abundantly evident from the language of the Bible and from the facts therein contained. (1.) That God has confirmed his revelations, whether made by prophets or Apostles, by these manifestations of his power, is of itself a sufficient proof of their validity and importance as seals of a divine mission. (2.) The sacred writers under both dispensa- tions appealed to these wonders as proofs that they were the mes- sengers of God. In the New Testament it is said that God con- firmed the testimony of his Apostles by signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. Even our Lord him- self, in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily, was ap- proved by miracles, signs, and wonders which God did by Him. (Acts ii. 22.) (3.) Christ constantly appealed to his miracles as a decisive proof of his divine mission. " The works," he says, " which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." (John V. 20, 36.) And John x. 25, "The works that I do in my Fa- ther's name, they bear witness of me ; " and in verse 38, " Though ye believe not me, believe the works." John vii. 17, " If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." Undoubtedly the highest evidence of the truth is the truth itself; as the highest evidence of goodness is goodness itself. Christ is his own witness. His glory reveals Him, as the Son of God, to all whose eyes the God of this world has not blinded. The point which miracles are de- signed to prove is not so much the truth of the doctrines taught as the divine mission of the teacher. The latter, indeed, is in order to the former. What a man teaches may be true, although not divine as to its origin. But when a man presents himself as a messenger of God, whether he is to be received as such or not depends first on the doctrines which he teaches, and, secondly, upon the works which he performs. If he not only teaches doc- trines conformed to the nature of God and consistent with the laws of our own constitution, but also performs wcrks which evince divine power, then Ave know not only that the doctrines are true, but also that the teacher is sent of God.