our own omniscience, we lay down that
these superior beings, of whose laws we know nothing, can only act upon
us in ways precisely similar to those on which we act upon one another.

SECTION XXIV.

COMPETENT WITNESSES.

Another objection which the author of "Supernatural Religion" urges
against the credibility of our Lord's miracles, is that they were not
performed before what he considers competent witnesses.

"Their occurrence [he writes] is limited to ages which were totally
ignorant of physical laws." (Vol. i. p. 201.)

Again, he speaks of the age as one

"in which not only the grossest superstition and credulity
prevailed, but in which there was such total ignorance of natural
laws that men were incapable of judging of that reality [_i.e._ of
miracles]." (P. 204.)

Again:--

"The discussion of miracles, then, is not one regarding miracles
actually performed within our own knowledge, but merely regarding
miracles said to have been performed eighteen hundred years ago, the
reality of which was not verified at the time by any scientific
examination." (P. 208.)

From this we gather that the author of "Supernatural Religion" considers
that the miracles of Christ should have been tested by scientific men;
but we ask, By what scientific men? It is clear that if the testing was
to have been satisfactory to those who think like the author of
"Supernatural Religion," they must have been scientific men who
approached the whole matter in a spirit of scepticism. Our Blessed Lord
(I speak it with all reverence), if He cared to satisfy such men, should
have delayed His coming to the present time, or should have called up
out of the future, or created for this purpose, men who had doubts
respecting the personality of God, who held Him to be fitly described as
the Unknown and the Unknowable; who, to say the least, were in a state
of suspense as to whether, if there be a Supreme Being, He can reveal
Himself or make His will known. In fact, He must have called up, or
created for the purpose, some individuals of a school of physicists
which had no existence till 1,800 years after His time. For, if He had
called into existence such witnesses as Sir Isaac Newton, or Sir
Humphrey Davy, or Cuvier, or Faraday, they would have fallen down and
worshipped.

But, in truth, such witnesses, whether believing or sceptical, would
have found no place for their science, for the miracl