there for them; and, lastly, that he should descend again at the end of the world to judge the whole human race, on which occasion all that were in their graves should hear his voice and come forth, they that had done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that had done evil unto the resurrection of damnation,—­if this person made these assertions about himself, and all that was done was to make the assertions, what would be the inevitable conclusion of sober reason respecting that person?  The necessary conclusion of sober reason respecting that person would be that he was disordered in his understanding.  What other decision could we come to when a man, looking like one of ourselves, and only exemplifying in his life and circumstances the ordinary course of nature, said this about himself, but that when reason had lost its balance a dream of extraordinary and unearthly grandeur might be the result?  By no rational being could a just and benevolent life be accepted as proof of such astonishing announcements.  Miracles are the necessary complement then of the truth of such announcements, which without them are purposeless and abortive, the unfinished fragments of a design which is nothing unless it is the whole.  They are necessary to the justification of such announcements, which, indeed, unless they are supernatural truths, are the wildest delusions.  The matter and its guarantee are the two parts of a revelation, the absence of either of which neutralises and undoes it.

A revelation, in any sense in which it is more than merely a result of the natural progress of the human mind and the gradual clearing up of mistakes, cannot in the nature of things be without miracles, because it is not merely a discovery of ideas and rules of life, but of facts undiscoverable without it.  It involves constituent miracles, to use De Quincey’s phrase, as part of its substance, and could not claim a bearing without evidential or polemic ones.  No other portion or form of proof, however it may approve itself to the ideas of particular periods or minds, can really make up for this.  The alleged sinlessness of the Teacher, the internal evidence from adaptation to human nature, the historical argument of the development of Christendom, are, as Mr. Mozley points out, by themselves inadequate, without that further guarantee which is contained in miracles, to prove the Divine origin of a religion.  The tendency has been of late to fall back on these attractive parts of the argument, which admit of such varied handling and expression, and come home so naturally to the feelings of an age so busy and so keen in pursuing the secrets of human character, and so fascinated with its unfolding wonders.  But take any of them, the argument from results, for instance, perhaps the most powerful of them all.  “We cannot,” as Mr. Mozley says, “rest too much upon it, so long as we do not charge it with more of the burden of proof than it is in its own nature equal to—­viz.