reover, made it necessary to relegate
miracles to a remote period, while denying them at the present. To
prove at once that there are no miracles now, and that there were a
few miracles two thousand years ago, was really hopeless. In fact, the
argument had come to be stated in an artificial form which had no real
relation to the facts. If the apostles had been a jury convinced by a
careful legal examination of the evidence; if they had pronounced
their verdict, in spite of the knowledge that they would be put to
death for finding it, there would have been some force in Paley's
argument. But then they had not. To assume such an origin for any
religion implied a total misconception of the facts. Paley assumed
that the apostles resembled twelve respectable deans of Carlisle
solemnly declaring, in spite of the most appalling threats, that John
Wesley had been proved to have risen from the dead. Paley might
plausibly urge that such an event would require a miracle. But,
meanwhile, his argument appeared to rest the whole case for morality
and religion upon this narrow and perilous base. We can only know that
it is our interest to be moral if we know of heaven and hell; and we
only know of heaven and hell if we accept the evidence of miracles,
and infer that the worker of miracles had supernatural sources of
information. The moral difficulty which emerges is obvious. The Paley
conception of the Deity is, in fact, coincident with Bentham's
conception of the sovereign. He is simply an invisible sovereign,
operating by tremendous sanctions. The sanctions are 'external,' that
is to say, pains and pleasures, annexed to conduct by the volition of
the sovereign, not intrinsic consequences of the conduct itself. Such
a conception, thoroughly carried through, makes the relation between
religion and morality essentially arbitrary. Moreover, if with 'Philip
Beauchamp' we regard the miracle argument as obviously insufficient,
and consider what are the attributes really attributed to the
sovereign, we must admit that they suggest such a system as he
describes rather than the revelation of an all-wise and benevolent
ruler. It is true, as 'Philip Beauchamp' argues, that the system has
all the faults of the worst human legislation; that the punishment is
made atrociously--indeed infinitely--severe to compensate for its
uncertainty and remoteness; and that (as he would clearly add), to
prevent it from shocking and stunning the intellect, it is