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. There
is not the slightest evidence that any attempt was made to investigate
the supposed miraculous occurrences, or to justify the inferences so
freely drawn from them, nor is there any reason to believe that the
witnesses possessed, in any considerable degree, the fulness of
knowledge and sobriety of judgment requisite for the purpose. No
miracle has yet established its claim to the rank even of apparent
reality, and all such phenomena must remain in the dim region of
imagination. The test applied to the largest class of miracles,
connected with demoniacal possession, discloses the falsity of all
miraculous pretension.

There is no uncertainty as to the origin of belief in supernatural
interference with nature. The assertion that spurious miracles have
sprung up round a few instances of genuine miraculous power has not a
single valid argument to support it. History clearly demonstrates that,
wherever ignorance and superstition have prevailed, every obscure
occurrence has been attributed to supernatural agency, and it is freely
acknowledged that, under their influence, 'inexplicable' and
'miraculous' are convertible terms. On the other hand, in proportion as
knowledge of natural laws has increased, the theory of supernatural
interference with the order of nature has been dispelled and miracles
have ceased. The effect of science, however, is not limited to the
present and future, but its action is equally retrospective, and
phenomena which were once ignorantly isolated from the sequence of
natural cause and effect are now restored to their place in the unbroken
order. Ignorance and superstition created miracles; knowledge has for
ever annihilated them.

To justify miracles, two assumptions are made: first, an Infinite
Personal God; and second, a Divine design of Revelation, the execution
of which necessarily involves supernatural action. Miracles, it is
argued, are not contrary to nature, or effects produced without adequate
causes, but on the contrary are caused by the intervention of this
Infinite Personal God for the purpose of attesting and carrying out the
Divine design