Miracles resolve themselves into the following question (See Hume’s Essay, volume 2 page 121.):—­Whether it is more probable the laws of nature, hitherto so immutably harmonious, should have undergone violation, or that a man should have told a lie?  Whether it is more probable that we are ignorant of the natural cause of an event, or that we know the supernatural one?  That, in old times, when the powers of nature were less known than at present, a certain set of men were themselves deceived, or had some hidden motive for deceiving others; or that God begat a Son, who, in His legislation, measuring merit by belief, evidenced Himself to be totally ignorant of the powers of the human mind—­of what is voluntary, and what is the contrary?

We have many instances of men telling lies;—­none of an infraction of nature’s laws, those laws of whose government alone we have any knowledge or experience.  The records of all nations afford innumerable instances of men deceiving others either from vanity or interest, or themselves being deceived by the limitedness of their views and their ignorance of natural causes:  but where is the accredited case of God having come upon earth, to give the lie to His own creations?  There would be something truly wonderful in the appearance of a ghost; but the assertion of a child that he saw one as he passed through the churchyard is universally admitted to be less miraculous.

But even supposing that a man should raise a dead body to life before our eyes, and on this fact rest his claim to being considered the son of God;—­the Humane Society restores drowned persons, and because it makes no mystery of the method it employs, its members are not mistaken for the sons of God.  All that we have a right to infer from our ignorance of the cause of any event is that we do not know it:  had the Mexicans attended to this simple rule when they heard the cannon of the Spaniards, they would not have considered them as gods:  the experiments of modern chemistry would have defied the wisest philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome to have accounted for them on natural principles.  An author of strong common sense has observed that ’a miracle is no miracle at second-hand’; he might have added that a miracle is no miracle in any case; for until we are acquainted with all natural causes, we have no reason to imagine others.

There remains to be considered another proof of Christianity—­Prophecy.  A book is written before a certain event, in which this event is foretold; how could the prophet have foreknown it without inspiration? how could he have been inspired without God?  The greatest stress is laid on the prophecies of Moses and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and that of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah.  The prophecy of Moses is a collection of every possible cursing and blessing; and it is so far from being marvellous that the one of dispersion should have been fulfilled, that it would have been more surprising if, out of all these,