The utter uselessness of miracles—­supposing them to be possible—­is worthy of remembrance.  They must not be accepted as proofs of a divine mission, for false prophets can work them as well as true (Deut. xiii., 1-5; Matt. xxiv., 24; 2 Thess. ii., 9; Rev. xiii., 13-15, etc.) and it may be that God himself works them to deceive (Deut. xiii., 3).  Satan can work miracles to authenticate the false doctrines of his emissaries, and there is no test whereby to distinguish the miracle worked by God from the miracle worked by Satan.  Hence a miracle is utterly useless, for the credibility of a teacher rests on the morality that he teaches, and if this is good, it is accepted without a miracle to attest its goodness, so that the attesting miracle is superfluous.  If it is bad, it is rejected in spite of a miracle to attest its authority, so that the attesting miracle is deceptive.  The only use of a miracle might be to attest a revelation of otherwise unknowable facts, which had nothing to do with any moral teaching; and seeing that such revelation could not be investigated, as it dealt with the unknowable, it would be highly dangerous—­and, perhaps, blasphemous—­to accept it on the faith of the miracle, for it might quite as likely be a revelation made by Satan to injure, as by God to benefit, mankind.  Allowing that God and Satan exist, it would seem likely—­judging Christianity by its fruits—­that the Christian religion is such a malevolent revelation of the evil one.

The objection we raise is, however, of far wider scope than the assertion of the lack of evidence for the New Testament miracles; it is against all, and not only against Christian, miracles.  “As far as the impossibility of supernatural occurrences is concerned, Pantheism and Atheism occupy precisely the same grounds.  If either of them propounds a true theory of the universe, any supernatural occurrence, which necessarily implies a supernatural agent to bring it about, is impossible, and the entire controversy as to whether miracles have ever been actually performed is a foregone conclusion.  Modern Atheism, while it does not venture in categorical terms to affirm that no God exists, definitely asserts that there is no evidence that there is one.  It follows that, if there is no evidence that there is a God, there can be no evidence that a miracle ever has been performed, for the very idea of a miracle implies the idea of a God to work one.  If, therefore, Atheism is true, all controversy about miracles is useless.  They are simply impossible, and to inquire whether an impossible event has happened is absurd.  To such a person the historical inquiry, as far as a miracle is concerned, must be a foregone conclusion.  It might have a little interest as a matter of curiosity; but even if the most unequivocal evidence could be adduced that an occurrence such as we call supernatural had taken place, the utmost that it could prove would be that some most extraordinary and abnormal fact