ubject of
the history, written upon the business to which the history relates, and
during the period, or soon after the period, which the history
comprises. No man can say that this all together is not a body of strong
historical evidence.

_________

* See Peter's speech upon curing the cripple (Acts iii. 18), the council
of the apostles (xv.), Paul's discourse at Athens (xvii. 22), before
Agrippa (xxvi.). I notice these passages, both as fraught with good
sense and as free from the smallest tincture of enthusiasm.
_________

When we reflect that some of those from whom the books proceeded are
related to have themselves wrought miracles, to have been the subject of
miracles, or of supernatural assistance in propagating the religion, we
may perhaps be led to think that more credit, or a different kind of
credit, is due to these accounts, than what can be claimed by merely
human testimony. But this is an argument which cannot be addressed to
sceptics or unbelievers. A man must be a Christian before he can receive
it. The inspiration of the historical Scriptures, the nature, degree,
and extent of that inspiration, are questions undoubtedly of serious
discussion; but they are questions amongst Christians themselves, and
not between them and others. The doctrine itself is by no means
necessary to the belief of Christianity, which must, in the first
instance at least, depend upon the ordinary maxim of historical
credibility. (See Powell's Discourse, disc. xv. P. 245.)

In viewing the detail of miracles recorded in these books, we find every
supposition negatived by which they can be resolved into fraud or
delusion. They were not secret, nor momentary, nor tentative, nor
ambiguous; nor performed under the sanction of authority, with the
spectators on their side, or in affirmance of tenets and practices
already established. We find also the evidence alleged for them, and
which evidence was by great numbers received, different from that upon
which other miraculous accounts rest. It was contemporary, it was
published upon the spot, it continued; it involved interests and
questions of the greatest magnitude; it contradicted the most fixed
persuasions and prejudices of the persons to whom it was addressed; it
required from those who accepted it, not a simple, indolent assent, but
a change, from thenceforward, of principles and conduct, a submission to
consequences the most serious and the most deterring, to loss and
danger