l, 'Because I said I saw thee under the
fig-tree, dost thou believe?' ... When He entered the temple He
called it 'His Father's house,' [speaking] as the Son. In His
address to Nicodemus He says, 'So God loved the world,' &c....
Moreover, when John the Baptist was asked what he happened [to know]
of Jesus, he said, 'The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all
things into His Hands. He that believeth,' &c. Whom, indeed, did He
reveal to the woman of Samaria? Was it not 'the Messias which is
called Christ?' ... He says, therefore, 'My meat is to do the will
of Him that sent me, and to finish His work,'" &c. &c. (Against
Praxeas, ch. xxi.)

SECTION XX.

THE EVIDENCE FOR MIRACLES.

It does not come within the scope of this work to examine at any length
the general subject of miracles. The assertion that miracles, such as
those recorded in Scripture, are absolutely impossible, and so have
never taken place, must be met by the counter assertion that they are
possible, and have taken place. They are possible to the Supreme Being,
and have taken place by His will or sufferance at certain perfectly
historical periods; especially during the first century after the birth
of Christ. When to this it is replied that miracles are violations of
natural law or order, and that it is contrary to our highest idea of the
Supreme Being to suppose that He should alter the existing order of
things, we can only reply that it is in accordance with our highest idea
of Him that He should do so; and we say that in making these assertions
we are not unreasonable, but speak in accordance with natural science,
philosophy, and history.

And, in order to prove this, we have only to draw attention to the
inaccuracy which underlies the use of the term "law" by the author of
"Supernatural Religion," and those who think as he does. The author of
"Supernatural Religion" strives to bring odium on the miracles of the
Gospel by calling them "violations of law," and by asserting that it is
a false conception of the Supreme Being to suppose that He should have
made an Universe with such elements of disorder within it that it should
require such things as the violation, or even suspension, of laws to
restore it to order, and that our highest and truest idea of God is that
of One Who never can even so much as make Himself known except through
the action of the immutable laws by which this visible state of things