, seeing how well their fathers had succeeded, merely imitated
them by catching up new ones, or enlarging upon the old account. By a
sort of infection, therefore, we find what purports to be a revelation.
Whatever harmony there is, was the result of an aim which was not lost
sight of for a moment. Nature was the first teacher; and though she was
competent, we have been poor disciples. She is instructing us all the
time, though we have listened less to her than to the other auditors who
sit about us. Lichtenberg says in poetical language, that "When man
considers Nature the teacher, and poor men the pupils, we listen to a
lecture and we have the principles and the knowledge to understand it.
But we listen far more to the applause of our fellow-students than to
the discourse of the teacher. We interlard the lecture by speeches to
the one who sits next us; we supply what has been poorly heard by us;
and enlarge it by our own mistakes of orthography and sentiment."

No branch of Scriptural faith attracted more of the wrath and irony of
the Rationalists than miracles. They saw how important their service was
to the authority of the Bible, and therefore bent all their energies for
their overthrow. They denied their possibility in the strongest terms,
averring that they degrade the character of God, and violate that noble
nature of the human mind, which is necessarily bound to the most certain
laws of experience, and can discern no positive marks of supernatural
agency.[49] The miracles of the New Testament receive no better
treatment than those of the Old. In every case they have no foundation
in history. Various reasons are assigned for their presence in the
Bible; in some cases they are only legends of mythologic days; in
others, the pure fancy of the writer; and in others, hyperbolical
descriptions of natural occurrences. Thus, while there was a diversity
of opinion concerning the narratives, there was perfect union as to the
purely natural character of the events.

We may particularize, in order to present more clearly the Rationalistic
method of interpreting miracles. When Korah, Dathan and Abiram, with
their fellow-unfortunates, were swallowed up, they only suffered what
many others have done since,--destruction by a natural earthquake. This
was the opinion of Michaelis. Others, more ingenious, thought that Moses
had taken care to undermine privately the whole of the ground on which
the tents of the sinners were; and, t