As the doctrines supposed to be revealed are
beyond Reason, and cannot in any sense be intelligently approved by the
human intellect, no evidence which is of so doubtful and inconclusive a
nature could sufficiently attest them. This alone would disqualify the
Christian miracles for the duty which miracles alone are capable of
performing.
The supposed miraculous evidence for the Divine Revelation, moreover, is
not only without any special Divine character, being avowedly common
also to Satanic agency, but it is not original either in conception or
details. Similar miracles are reported long antecedently to the first
promulgation of Christianity, and continued to be performed for
centuries after it. A stream of miraculous pretension, in fact, has
flowed through all human history, deep and broad as it has passed
through the darker ages, but dwindling down to a thread as it has
entered days of enlightenment. The evidence was too hackneyed and
commonplace to make any impression upon those before whom the Christian
miracles are said to have been performed, and it altogether failed to
convince the people to whom the Revelation was primarily addressed. The
selection of such evidence for such a purpose is much more
characteristic of human weakness than of Divine power.
The true character of miracles is at once betrayed by the fact that
their supposed occurrence has thus been confined to ages of ignorance
and superstition, and that they are absolutely unknown in any time or
place where science has provided witnesses fitted to appreciate and
ascertain the nature of such exhibitions of supernatural power.
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