l to certainty. An
experiment, however, should always admit of being repeated.
What a man has done once he should be able to do again,
and in miracles there can be no question of ease or difficulty.
The performer would be requested to repeat the operation
under other circumstances upon other bodies; and if he
succeeded on every occasion, two points would be established:
first, that there may be in this world such things as
supernatural operations; and, secondly, that the power to
perform them is delegated to, or belongs to, particular
persons.

But who does not perceive that no miracle was ever
performed under such conditions as these?

We have quoted this passage because it expresses
with extreme precision and clearness the common-sense
principle which we apply to all supernatural stories of
our own time, which Protestant theologians employ
against the whole cycle of Catholic miracles, and which
M. Renan is only carrying to its logical conclusions in
applying to the history of our Lord, if the Gospels are
tried by the mere tests of historical criticism. The
Gospels themselves tell us why M. Renan's conditions
were never satisfied. Miracles were not displayed in
the presence of sceptics to establish scientific truths,
When the adulterous generation sought after a sign,
the sign was not given; nay, it is even said that in the
presence of unbelief our Lord was not able to work
miracles. But science has less respect for that
undoubting and submissive willingness to believe; and it
is quite certain that if we attempt to establish the truth
of the New Testament on the principles of Paley, if
with Professor Jowett "we interpret the Bible as any
other book," the element of miracle which has
evaporated from the entire surface of human history will
not maintain itself in the sacred ground of the Gospels,
and the facts of Christianity will melt in our hands like
a snow-ball.

Nothing less than a miraculous history can sustain
the credibility of miracles, and nothing could be more
likely if revelation be a reality and not a dream than
that the history containing it should be saved in its
composition from the intermixture of human infirmity.
This is the position in which instinct long ago taught
Protestants to entrench themselves, and where alone
they can hope to hold their ground: once established
in these lines, they were safe and unassailable, unless it
could be demonstrated that any fact or facts related in
the Bib