ment, can enter, and that there the lovers of peace and quiet, of sense and decency, are sure of shelter and of rest.

But if the American Episcopal Church suffers herself to continue to be encumbered with doctrines which cannot be made to maintain their hold upon an advancing and enlightened age, if she obstinately clings to the dress and fashions of the past, instead of adjusting her aspect to the present and the future, if she makes no provision for the admission of the new light which breaks from time to time, and ever will continue to break, upon the world, into her ritual and her faith, if she persists in clasping the fading and dying form of Orthodoxy, and shrinks from the presence of reason and inquiry, of knowledge and of truth, if she allows a haughty disregard of the progress of religious opinion and feeling, and a stupid and feeble formality, or extravagant zeal, or sectarian bitterness, or ignorant enthusiasm to usurp her high places, and utter forth her voice, and infect her spirit;-then is her doom settled. Neither pompous titles, nor imposing ceremonies, nor gorgeous architecture, nor funded millions can save her. As education and real Christianity prevail, she will lose the hold she now has upon certain classes of the people and in some sections of the country, and will then quickly sink into a feeble, dwindling, perishing and obsolete sect.

C. W. U.

ART. II. -THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPELS.

THERE is no more striking proof of the Divine origin of our religion, than the singular freedom of its records from all fanaticism. We look through them in vain for marks of over-wrought excitement, of delirious hope, or maddened fear. The most astounding doctrines are taught by the Master with a temperance, and received and repeated by the disciples with a calmness, which can be accounted for only by allowing the supernatural character of Jesus. No one can have read the Gospels, even carelessly, without noticing the unadorned and almost tame manner in which Christ's most wonderful works are recorded. No expressions of surprise, admiration, or excitement escape the writ

ers. The necessary inference is, that their wonder at the miracles was lost in their reverence for and submission to the being that wrought them. Having once recognized the supernatural character of Christ, it does not seem at all strange to them that he should work wonders. But doubtless they took their calmness from Jesus's own self-possession. What can be more impressive than the simplicity, the naturalness, the humility, with which he exercised his marvellous powers! By what less than divine elevation of soul is it, that he succeeds in keeping his moral and spiritual character above the level of his miraculous character? By what less than supernatural wisdom is it, that the wonder-worker keeps down the curiosity and superstition of his disciples, and excites their moral sensibilities and affections? By what incredible temperance does Jesus avoid in any case making the least display of his powers, or ever dissociating for an instant his miracles from the dispositions or the truths, he came to reveal and illustrate? He is never, for a moment, only a mere wonder-worker. Either his benevolence, his universal sympathy, his pity for the despised, or some important truth or illustration of his religion, is the prominent object in every miracle he works. Jesus does not seem to be followed by a gaping, excited and marvelling crowd, so much as by an expecting, anxious and inquiring multitude. The sick and the sorrowing throng his footsteps. The earnest and aspiring silently hang upon his lips. What he says seems more interesting to them than what he does. This, it seems to us, is an indisputable proof of the sincerity, the surpassing excellence, and the divine claims of Jesus.

A mere pretension to miraculous powers is the most vulgar assumption in the world; the easiest to make and support before a credulous multitude, who are as willing to be deceived as their false prophet is anxious to deceive them. The slightest appearance of pride or display in Jesus, would excite our just doubts of his supernatural powers. But he seems to know perfectly the necessary suspicion which attaches to miraculous pretensions. He uses his supernatural gift, therefore, for none of the usual purposes of pretenders. He especially disowns as personal to himself, the power by which his works are performed. He wraps himself up in no mysterious, magnifying and fas

cinating robe of wonder. He carries no conjuror's staff. He introduces his mighty acts without parade. One seems to see a jealous self-respect in the Saviour, prompting him to mix himself up as little as possible with his marvels, as if his personal character disdained the support of external authority. Instead of glorying in his miraculous powers, he uses them, apparently, as little as is consistent with faithfulness to his office. He often puts the admiring crowd aside, when benevolence calls on him to exert his divine faculty. He evidently loves to teach, to pray, and to do good, better than to work wonders. This is what we might expect from a genuine Prophet, and what is entirely inconsistent with the character of a false one.

Jesus's use of his miraculous powers served to illustrate his moral and personal character, as much as his possession of them served to establish his official claims. In all spurious pretensions to divine authority in the successful or unsuccessful-founders of religions, miracle has supplied every other deficiency, and swallowed up and destroyed all evidence, but its own. In Christianity, now that the religion is established, if there were any thing we would part with in the evidence, it is the miracles. But we cannot. We retain them, not so much because Jesus now needs them as the seal of his commission, as because they are so inextricably bound up with his character and history. He who is satisfied with the internal evidences of Christianity and asks not about its historical truth, he who cares nothing about its origin, so he can enjoy its precepts, principles and hopes, he who wants not the miracles as proofs, may yet value them as illustrations of the character of Christ and the spirit of his religion. For we see not wherein Jesus's temper, his virtue, holiness and greatness are so apparent, as in the use he made of his miraculous powers. The miracles, then, become invaluable to our religion, both when considered as proofs of its origin, or, to those who deny this, as illustrations of its character. And it seems more incredible that miracles should have been forged or superstitiously attributed to Jesus and then used as they are used in the Gospels, than that they should have occurred. Had miracles been either fanatically or fraudulently ascribed to Jesus by his followers, (and this is the only plausible supposition which accounts for their existence in the record, VOL. XXXVII. 4TH S. VOL. II. NO. I.

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except their truth,) they would not have been so temperately and modestly used. Neither enthusiasm nor cunning could have stopped where this marvellous narrative stops. It is contrary to all known principles of human character, to subordinate miraculous pretensions to any others, as they are in the New Testament. With perhaps one instance difficult of explanation, the blasting of the barren figtree, there is not a miracle described in the New Testament which does not harmonize with and illustrate Jesus's moral character in the most beautiful and impressive manner; and this, too, without ever being adduced as illustrative of any thing but his official character, and therefore undesignedly and incidentally.

If fraud and fanaticism are thus consistent, possess such lofty ideas of goodness, keep themselves so within the bounds of nature, feign and contrive for the best purposes such moving, beautiful and holy falsehoods or fictions, as Jesus, the inspired and miraculous Teacher of truth; they are so much wiser than any honesty and strict history that we possess, that we see not why they ought not to have all the reverence usually supposed to belong exclusively to reality and divine truth.

If the miracles can be struck from the New Testament without injuring the moral character of Jesus Christ, or mutilating the spiritual truth of his religion, we will consent that they shall go. For it seems to us, that the only good reason for believing that a miracle has occurred, is that you cannot help it. We believe that this was the evidence upon which they were originally received by eye-witnesses, who saw and could not but see that they were works wrought by superhuman powers. That they were not jugglery, illusion, or the effect of superior human knowledge, was apparent to eye-witnesses from a thousand nameless circumstances of reality, which convince independently of reflection. Among these, doubtless, were as principal, the artless and truthful manners of Christ, the strict morals, the lofty and holy truths he taught. Add the entire absence of machinery and the nature and circumstances of the miracles themselves, as, for instance, the feeding of the five thousand, or that carefully sifted miracle of the man born blind and healed. We see therefore, that instead of denying the reality of his works, his enemies question only the

power by which they were wrought. They say he casteth out devils by the power of the prince of devils. And this they say, evidently only as the less absurd supposition; for his benevolent and holy character must have prevented them from thinking as they spoke.

We do not say that false miracles cannot find believers, or that the testimony of eye-witnesses is in all cases satisfactory evidence that a miracle has been performed; but certainly the involuntary evidence of bitter enemies, who can find no refuge from acknowledging the authority of a supernatural messenger from God, but in ascribing his miracles to the devil is very good proof that the miracles themselves occurred. The enemies of Jesus believed in his miracles, whatever they may have done in regard to other wonders, only because they could not help it. Their testimony therefore is really more satisfactory and important than the evidence of Jesus's friends. Those who received the truths and reverenced the personal character of Christ might accept his miracles, without severe scrutiny; for they must have been so entirely satisfied of the utter incapacity of Jesus to make unreal pretensions, as to have been off their guard. But whether their faith in the Master was not well-founded, whether they were not justified by Jesus's character and the nature of his revelation in giving an unsuspicious assent to any miraculous claims of his, we leave to any honest mind to judge. They could not help, any more than his enemies, crediting his mighty acts, though for different reasons; the foe, because his senses were satisfied and his objection confounded; the friend, because it was absurd, in his judgment, that the holiest and most awe-striking of all beings he had known, the purest and best man, the wisest and most eloquent teacher of truth and righteousness, should descend to deception, to legerdemain, to downright falsehood.

The miracles, then, were received by eye-witnesses, not because they satisfied any known and established tests of wonders, for no such tests existed, but because they could not be disbelieved. Prior to experience, it seems to us that Hume's hypothesis, that if a miracle should occur, it ought not and could not be believed, or at any rate, by any but eye-witnesses, is a very natural supposition. Had no miracle ever occurred, there would be very little reason to