CHAPTER XIII.

HUME'S OBJECTION TO MIRACLES.

Miniature of Hume's theory-Vagueness in his use of term experience—General uniformity of nature's laws proved by human testimony-So may any exceptions to that uniformity-On Hume's theory miracles not to be believed on evidence of our own senses-. -Evidence of senses not more infallible than well sustained testimony of our fellow-men-Man lives in world of miracles and is himself a miracle-No objection to miracles that they are designed to authenticate a system of religion-Such miracles imbued with intrinsic probability-No impostor ever founded new system of faith on miracles.

HUME may, perhaps, be deemed the prince of infidels. His deadly aim at the heart of our holy religion, caused at first some alarm in the christian world. But the bolt has fallen powerless to the earth. By a sort of second sight the Scotch philosopher indulged the assurance that his celebrated essay on miracles would live and reign until the end of time. He says; "I flatter myself that I have discovered an argument which, if just, will with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion; and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will accounts of miracles

and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane." The following is a miniature of the theory on which he so boldly raised his hopes of immortality. He contends that our belief of facts is founded on experience alone; that experience teaches that nature's laws are inflexibly uniform, and that human testimony is lamentably deceptive; that a miracle would be a violation of those fixed laws; that when a miraculous event is affirmed on the credit of human testimony, the affirmation is opposed by our sure experience of the established course of nature; and that in such contest, the evidence against the alleged miracle, arising from the established course of nature controls and overrules the human testimony in its favor, as in a conflict between the fallible and the infallible, the latter must always predominate. From these premises is drawn his confident conclusion, that no accumulation of human testimony whatsoever can establish a miracle, upon which any system of religious faith is sought to be reared.

The skeptical philosopher uses the term experience in a sense not always free from equivocation. He seems to imply by the term, sometimes our own individual experience, and sometimes the experience of mankind in general.

If we are to believe only what we have learned from our own experience, our faith in facts would be confined to limits exceedingly diminutive. Comparatively few know from personal observation, that, on some shores, the tide rises to the height of sixty or seventy feet; or that the wind, so famed for its variableness, blows in certain latitudes from a single point throughout the year; or that meteoric stones of ponderous weight have often fallen from the skies. Yet all justly believe in the existence of these phenomena on the credit of universal report. If personal experience is the only true basis of belief in facts, the Saracen monarch was right in rejecting as fabulous the tale of the northern crusaders, that in their climate, rivers and lakes were sometimes congealed by frost so as to bear the weight of marching armies; and he was wrong in afterwards yielding credence to the seeming prodigy on the faith of human testimony.

Nor are miracles to be discredited because they have not been familiar to the experience of mankind in general. The definition of a miracle implies a departure from laws ordinarily uniform. The arrest of the sun on Gibeon would not have been a preternatural wonder had the luminary of day been accustomed to pause in its career. Mir

acles are exceptions to the general order of the physical universe; and it is to be expected that the witnesses to the exceptions should be the few and not the many. It is a vital element in the infidel theory, that miracles are opposed not only to the general, but also to the universal experience of the human race. A single acknowledged deviation from the laws of nature, in any country or age, would be fatal to the theory. "There must, therefore," says Hume, "be a uniform experience against every miraculous event; otherwise the event would not merit that appellation."

In assuming it as a truism, that miracles are opposed to the immemorial and universal experience of human kind, the philosopher takes for granted the very point in issue between him and christians. We utterly deny the truth of the position, so confidently assumed. The philosopher's palpable offence against the first principles of sound logic is styled in Latin petitio principii, and, in plain English, begging the question. The burden of proving that the laws of nature have been inviolable from the beginning, devolved upon him. He attempts summarily to dispose of this onus probandi by the bare and bold assertion, that their inviolability has been established by "a firm and unalter

able experience." No other proof does he deign to suggest. But how did he ascertain this experience? He could not have acquired it by intuition, or by his own personal observation. He possessed not the attribute of ubiquity; nor did his memory reach back to the birth of time. He must have gathered the materials of his knowledge from history and general report. It was human testimony that gave aliment to what he presumes to call “ a firm and unalterable experience." Excepting the diminutive speck of his personal observation, he had no source save human testimony, from whence he could derive information respecting the experience of the human race.

Human testimony is, then, the basis of the reckless proposition, that miracles are opposed to immemorial and universal experience. Thus human testimony is made, chameleon-like, to change its complexion, according to the point it is called on to support. When sustaining his theory of the immutability of nature's laws, the insidious skeptic affects to regard it as of incontrovertible authority. But he vituperates it as utterly unworthy of credit, when invoked to demonstrate that God, for gracious purposes, has sometimes suspended or varied the physical laws of his empire. Hume expressly