Evidence of Christianity | Page 4

certainty? Is it a probability of any great
strength or force? Is it such as no evidence can encounter? And yet this
probability is the exact converse, and therefore the exact measure, of
the improbability which arises from the want of experience, and which
Mr. Hume represents as invincible by human testimony.
It is not like alleging a new law of nature, or a new experiment in
natural philosophy; because, when these are related, it is expected that,
under the same circumstances, the same effect will follow universally;
and in proportion as this expectation is justly entertained, the want of a

corresponding experience negatives the history. But to expect
concerning a miracle, that it should succeed upon a repetition, is to
expect that which would make it cease to be a miracle, which is
contrary to its nature as such, and would totally destroy the use and
purpose for which it was wrought.
The force of experience as an objection to miracles is founded in the
presumption, either that the course of nature is invariable, or that, if it
be ever varied, variations will be frequent and general. Has the
necessity of this alternative been demonstrated? Permit us to call the
course of nature the agency of an intelligent Being, and is there any
good reason for judging this state of the case to be probable? Ought we
not rather to expect that such a Being, on occasions of peculiar
importance, may interrupt the order which he had appointed, yet, that
such occasions should return seldom; that these interruptions
consequently should be confined to the experience of a few; that the
want of it, therefore, in many, should be matter neither of surprise nor
objection?
But, as a continuation of the argument from experience, it is said that,
when we advance accounts of miracles, we assign effects without
causes, or we attribute effects to causes inadequate to the purpose, or to
causes of the operation of which we have no experience of what causes,
we may ask, and of what effects, does the objection speak? If it be
answered that, when we ascribe the cure of the palsy to a touch, of
blindness to the anointing of the eyes with clay, or the raising of the
dead to a word, we lay ourselves open to this imputation; we reply that
we ascribe no such effects to such causes. We perceive no virtue or
energy in these things more than in other things of the same kind. They
are merely signs to connect the miracle with its end. The effect we
ascribe simply to the volition of Deity; of whose existence and power,
not to say of whose Presence and agency, we have previous and
independent proof. We have, therefore, all we seek for in the works of
rational agents--a sufficient power and an adequate motive. In a word,
once believe that there is a God, and miracles are not incredible.
Mr. Hume states the ease of miracles to be a contest of opposite

improbabilities, that is to say, a question whether it be more improbable
that the miracle should be true, or the testimony false: and this I think a
fair account of the controversy. But herein I remark a want of
argumentative justice, that, in describing the improbability of miracles,
he suppresses all those circumstances of extenuation, which result from
our knowledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the Deity;
his concern in the creation, the end answered by the miracle, the
importance of that end, and its subserviency to the plan pursued in the
work of nature. As Mr. Hume has represented the question, miracles
are alike incredible to him who is previously assured of the constant
agency of a Divine Being, and to him who believes that no such Being
exists in the universe. They are equally incredible, whether related to
have been wrought upon occasion the most deserving, and for purposes
the most beneficial, or for no assignable end whatever, or for an end
confessedly trifling or pernicious. This surely cannot be a correct
statement. In adjusting also the other side of the balance, the strength
and weight of testimony, this author has provided an answer to every
possible accumulation of historical proof by telling us that we are not
obliged to explain how the story of the evidence arose. Now I think that
we are obliged; not, perhaps, to show by positive accounts how it did,
but by a probable hypothesis how it might so happen. The existence of
the testimony is a phenomenon; the truth of the fact solves the
phenomenon. If we reject this solution, we ought to have some other to
rest in; and none, even by our adversaries, can be admired, which is not
inconsistent with the principles that regulate human affairs