ounterpart, curiously like, of
those of the mediaeval saints. In many instances the
authors of the lives of these saints were their
companions and friends. Why do we feel so sure that what
we are told of Elijah or Elisha took place exactly as we
read it? Why do we reject the account of St. Columba
or St. Martin as a tissue of idle fable? Why should
not God give a power to the saint which he had given
to the prophet? We can produce no reason from the
nature of things, for we know not what the nature of
things is; and if down to the death of the Apostles the
ministers of religion were allowed to prove their
commission by working miracles, what right have we, on
grounds either of history or philosophy, to draw a clear
line at the death of St. John, to say that before that
time all such stories were true, and after it all were
false?

There is no point on which Protestant controversialists
evade the real question more habitually than on
that of miracles. They accuse those who withhold that
unreserved and absolute belief which they require for
all which they accept themselves, of denying that
miracles are possible. That they assume to be the
position taken up by the objector, and proceed easily to
argue that man is no judge of the power of God. Of
course he is not. No sane man ever raised his narrow
understanding into a measure of the possibilities of the
universe; nor does any person with any pretensions to
religion disbelieve in miracles of some kind. To pray
is to expect a miracle. When we pray for the recovery
of a sick friend, for the gift of any blessing, or the
removal of any calamity, we expect that God will do
something by an act of his personal will which otherwise
would not have been done--that he will suspend
the ordinary relations of natural cause and effect; and
this is the very idea of a miracle. The thing we pray
for may be given us, and no miracle may have taken
place. It may be given to us by natural causes, and
would have occurred whether we had prayed or not.
But prayer itself in its very essence implies a belief in
the possible intervention of a power which is above
nature. The question about miracles is simply one of
evidence--whether in any given case the proof is so
strong that no room is left for mistake, exaggeration,
or illusion, while more evidence is required to establish
a fact antecedently improbable than is sufficient for a
common occurrence.

It has been said recently by "A Layman