superhuman power. Though man may possess, under some circumstances, any given degree of wisdom or power, it does not follow that he may also possess the same power under other and very different circumstances; or that the same power under those different circumstances may not indicate a superhuman agency.

But though this be so, and though it may not always be impracticable to state the circumstances under which man cannot do that which he can do under more favourable circumstances, yet the stating of them must be often a matter of difficulty. They must be stated, no doubt, in the great question of the internal evidence. They are the very basis on which that evidence rests. And that question is properly also a question of miracles, it being the whole meaning of all those who contend for an internal evidence of the truth of Christianity, that they can produce, on the face of the religion itself, indications of which it may be affirmed that, under all circumstances, they argue the exercise of a superhuman power.

In the question before us, however, of what may be called external miracles, or of all those miracles which are addressed to the senses (a

question ordinarily disjoined from the internal evidence), this consideration of the distinction between those powers which man possesses under some circumstances, and those which he possesses in different circumstances, is a distinction which we may account a superfluous nicety. For the present purpose we may neglect it altogether, and may state universally that, to substantiate a revelation, a work must be proved to be superhuman absolutely, not merely superhuman in the given circumstances. The miracles of the Gospel can safely spare this concession, and we shall not need to retract it, till it can be proved that even the raising the dead, the giving of sight, and by a sudden act, to the blind, the ascending into heaven, and other miracles which the Gospel records, are not, universally, beyond the power of man.

II. I have now to prove, secondly, that no imaginable improvement of the powers of human invention or artifice can ever bring man a single step nearer to the performance of such miracles as those of the Scripture.

Here then I have to observe that however splendid may be our anticipations of the future progress of science, though we may readily ac

knowledge that man may one day become equal to the performance of acts which, under present circumstances, would appear to indicate a superhuman power, yet all that we can anticipate of the progress of science in future must of course be in the analogy of its progress in time past. That progress has been always what Paley calls tentative in the words of Bacon, it has been always palpatio quædam. Man's inventions have never leapt out at once to their final consequence and effect, but have always been prepared and preceded by numberless failures and unsuccessful experiments. But the miracles of the Gospel all succeeded at once, without failure, without error, without previous experiment:and still more than all this, without any machinery, without any scientific instruments or apparatus. For it is very material in this place to remark, that the new powers which have been acquired by science have been acquired only by the invention of better instruments, or of better methods of working. If we had not been aided by these advantages, we should scarcely have been advanced in practical science beyond the contemporaries of Moses or of Christ. Even in theory the perfection of our instruments has

done much for us. But for the invention of the telescope we might have known little more of astronomy than was known by Hipparchus, or by the ancient Chaldeans. But for that of the pump, we might have been ignorant at this day of all we know concerning the pressure of the atmosphere. In all arts of practice the case is still stronger and to practice, not theory, it is our business to look, if we would attempt to find any parallels to the Gospel miracles, from which we may argue that those miracles may have been performed by human skill or empiricism.

In matters of practice it may, I believe, be affirmed universally, that all the accessions to human power, which have been acquired during the last eighteen, or I might say, the last thirty centuries, or during the longest period of which there are any traces in history, have been acquired solely by an improved method of working, or by means of the improvements which have been made in instruments and machinery.. The physical powers of the human body and mind are in all ages very nearly the same. Jugglers and charlatans, who make a common trade of practising on, and deceiving, vulgar credulity, have probably been at all times nearly alike. At

all events we have no reason to suppose that the progress or the diffusion of knowledge contributes to increase their influence or ability. All they can do now they did quite as well in ancient Memphis or Babylon :-and if in the liberal arts, or in those connected with science the case is different, this arises only, as I have said, from improvements in method, or from the improvements introduced either by science, or accident, into all kinds of instruments or machinery. If the chemist have acquired new agents in chemistry, it is because they are furnished to him by his improved methods of analysis. If the modern surgeon extract the stone successfully, it is because his art has found a fit minister in the form and temper of the knife which he employs.

And so, if it were held that past improvements in medicine might render it a probable or a possible expectation that future improvements may even place it within man's power to resuscitate a body really dead, or to heal the most aggravated and rooted diseases.-Nothing can be vainer than to pretend any such analogies: -we may, I believe, assert with entire confidence that there are none such.-But, allowing them to exist, yet in all the facts on which they