ple. Besides, were
these people mad? The very fact which is said to have drawn Christ's
pity, viz., their situation in the desert, surely could not have escaped
their own attention on going thither. Think of 7,000 people rushing to a
sort of destruction; for if less than that the mere inconvenience was
not worthy of Divine attention. Now, said I, why not give us (if
miracles _are_ required) one that nobody could doubt--removing a
mountain, _e.g._? Yes; but here the other party begin to _see_ the evil
of miracles. Oh, this would have _coerced_ people into believing! Rest
you safe as to that. It would have been no believing in any proper
sense: it would, at the utmost--and supposing no vital demur to popular
miracle--have led people into that belief which Christ Himself describes
(and regrets) as calling Him Lord! Lord! The pretended belief would have
left them just where they were as to any real belief in Christ.
Previously, however, or over and above all this, there would be the
demur (let the miracle have been what it might) of, By what power, by
whose agency or help? For if Christ does a miracle, probably He may do
it by alliance with some _Z_ standing behind, out of sight. Or if by His
own skill, how or whence derived, or of what nature? This obstinately
recurrent question remains.

There is not the meanest court in Christendom or Islam that would not
say, if called on to adjudicate the rights of an estate on such evidence
as the mere facts of the Gospel: 'O good God, how can we do this? Which
of us knows who this Matthew was--whether he ever lived, or, if so,
whether he ever wrote a line of all this? or, if he did, how situated as
to motives, as to means of information, as to judgment and
discrimination? Who knows anything of the contrivances or the various
personal interests in which the whole narrative originated, or when? All
is dark and dusty.' Nothing in such a case _can_ be proved but what
shines by its own light. Nay, God Himself could not attest a miracle,
but (listen to this!)--but by the internal revelation or visiting of the
Spirit--to evade which, to dispense with which, a miracle is ever
resorted to.

Besides the objection to miracles that they are not capable of
attestation, Hume's objection is not that they are false, but that they
are incommunicable. Two different duties arise for the man who witnesses
a miracle and for him who receives traditionally. The duty of the first
is to confide in his own