himself, of the human and the divine, by exhibiting a heavenly mind within the conditions of our mortal life? This is a question for the spiritual nature alone, and God forbid that we should disturb in any man's soul the blessed conviction that the Christ is divine, that Jesus is indeed the "Word made Flesh," and deprive him of this spiritual and obligatory faith by any dogmatical or philosophical views of our own respecting the manner of God's connections with his mind. We ought to be cautious how we pluck from any soul the saving belief that the character of Jesus is divine, the stamp of God upon humanity,—and surely our sympathy with the man who possesses that belief ought to be stronger than any feeling of difference that can possibly exist between us, arising out of a question purely critical, historical, and philosophical. We are agreed as to the spiritual results: we differ as to the means which God has employed. If Mr. Wood accepts every Christian idea in its practical relations to the soul of man,-who is cruel or bold enough to attempt to persuade him that he has no reason for considering Christ to be divine? Rather let us rejoice that he sees in Jesus the harmony of the heavenly and the human; however he may refuse our explanation of the manner in which Providence effected the union. There may be an inconsistency in Mr. Wood's mind, his philosophy may not be in harmony with his Christian Faith, but he professes this faith, he manifests his deep feeling of it by the energy and quickening power with which he breathes it into words, and is his faith, his spiritual allegiance to Christ, to pass for nothing, because he questions something, not connected with the divine soul of Jesus,but merely with the manifestations of his external life? We differ with Mr. Wood, but our difference is not one that affects the essence of Christianity. We do not understand how he can accept Jesus as the Son of God and the Son of Man along with his other views of his history, but it is for him, not for us, to make peace between his spiritual nature and his philosophy. Mr. Wood, however, does not deny the special, and therefore in effect the supernatural formation of Christ's mind,-but only the miracles usually believed to be wrought by Jesus for the purposes of self-manifestation and of evidence. Neither of the replies to his Lecture has given him the advantage of this distinction. Mr. Wood does not deny the great miracle of Christ himself. "What is the miracle on which we all take our stand? The miracle which is inseparable from our faith, as its deepest and most interior ground, and without which every thing natural within the sphere of the spirit, however admirable it may be, would lose its true value in our sight? It is the miracle of Christ himself. It is the miracle that the Word was made flesh,-the

miracle that the glory of the only begotten son was displayed in a human form, while all others without exception had sinned, and come short of the glory of God. It is the miracle that Christ not only possessed the glory of the only begotten son, but from the beginning has given, and still gives, to all who believe on him, the power to become the children of God. To this miracle we cannot cleave too fast; into this we cannot go too deep. Every new glimpse which we obtain of it must increase our wisdom and power; the more we look into it, the greater will be our power to become Children of God; for just in that proportion do we gain in the faith that is the fountain of blessedness. But what shall we say concerning those miraculous deeds of Christ, of which so many are described at length in the history of his life, and, still more, mentioned in general, without a detailed account? These miracles are connected in Christ with that great miracle; but, manifested in history among the phenomena of human life, they were early separated from that, and have never been completely united. Ten lepers were healed by the Redeemer; only one returned to give glory to God; the others, they remained cleansed; they were free from their bodily disease, but they obtained no share in the spiritual miracle. Many paralytics were cured; many blind made to see; many deaf again heard; but only those who listened to another word than that, 'Thy faith hath saved thee,'-only those who because they desired it from the heart, heard also another word, Thy sins are forgiven thee,' obtained a part in the great spiritual miracle of God."*

As we think this controversy, in the present state of opinion, of great importance, and do not find our own views fully represented by any of those who have taken part in it, we shall briefly examine these Lectures and Sermons-and then more distinctly state what we conceive to be the present relations of Miracles to the Evidences of Christianity.

We shall place in the foreground Mr. Wood's confession of faith. He is "constrained to believe that Jesus Christ was the chosen servant of Almighty God," and he thinks, "that whenever in ages after Jesus Christ, a firm faith in God, in his being, his spirituality, and his providence, and a fervid hope of a future life have been cherished, they may be traced to the influence of his ministry." From this faith Mr. Wood separates every thing of a miraculous nature, except what may have taken place within the soul of Christ. Even this, he thinks, cannot be distinguished from any ordinary communication of God to the soul

* Schleiermacher, as quoted by Ripley.

of Man. This is the first argument that occurs in Mr. Wood's pages. He says, "it is not conceivable that any communication should take place between the divine mind and the human mind, except such as must be resolved into the bestowment on that human mind by the divine mind, of peculiar power, unusual wisdom, foresight, knowledge and virtue." We understand the purport of this to be, that Christ could have no certainty of God's immediate communication with him,-and only collected his Mission from his qualifications. He felt his capacities, and inferred his office. This is utterly gratuitous and arbitrary. What is there to prevent the conceivableness that it is within the limits of God's power to make a distinct and definite communication to the soul of man? The element of Christ's spirit was the consciousness that he had a mission from God,-a consciousness not derived from inference, but the result of inspiration, the voice of God in him which he never ceased to hear. This was the secret of his Power, his Love, his Elevation. He felt himself sent to be the Saviour of the world. How can an a priori argument make us doubt God's power to convey the certainty of such a divine mission to the spirit of Christ? For ourselves we could not "conceive" the possibility of Christ's Life and Character, without such a communication. The miracles of manifestation we could part with more easily than with his certain indubitable sense of intimate union with the spirit of God. And with Mr. Hincks, "we can have no doubt that, if required for his purposes, God can command the means of access to the mind which he has himself formed."

Mr. Wood presents a list of the most startling miracles connected with Christianity,-and, without reason given, announces his rejection of them all. Mr. Hincks exercises his reason and critical judgment upon this list, and accepts some, and rejects others, thus adopting what Dr. Hutton calls "the gross absurdity of the supposition that we can both use the Gospelrecords as history, and treat them as fiction." Of course we cannot use the same portions in both these ways; but in the use both of the higher and of the lower Criticism, we may legitimately exercise this discrimination on the Gospel history, and every other history. The only question between Mr. Hincks and Mr. Wood is to what extent should this be done. Mr. Wood does not state his principle of rejection; we only know it to be universal. Mr. Hincks is guided in his selections by critical considerations, and internal evidences of genuineness, fidelity, and consistency. Both Mr. Hincks and Dr. Hutton press hardly upon Mr. Wood with the difficulty, that if the miraculous portions of the history are fictitious, then no reliance

can be placed upon any part of it. Yet Mr. Hincks admits some degree of fiction,-and it is not necessary to charge intentional falsehood on the historians, unless it can be proved that these passages were written by the immediate attendants on Jesus, and that there was no time for awe-struck tradition and sincere enthusiasm to give to the narratives their present form. Mr. Hincks and Dr. Hutton have both strangely fallen into the error and the injustice of attributing to Mr. Wood the view that the miracles are not only fictitious, but also the fabrications of the first disciples. Mr. Wood would answer, we suppose, "that it is impossible to establish the existence of the Gospels within the first century of Christianity, or to prove their authorship. The magnitude of the effects produced by Christianity, in the absence of fixed records, and authentic accounts, may in the course of time readily have confused the simplicity of causes, without intentional fraud. The thousand and one dissertations on the origin of the Gospels are sufficient to show that the Books are not individuals, and that their evidence is not that of single, credible, responsible witnesses, whom we can identify in the persons of the Apostles. Oneness of date, and singleness of authorship, it is not possible satisfactorily to assign to these narratives." We mention this from no belief that it substantially affects the Gospel accounts, but in common justice, to protect Mr. Wood from the monstrous supposition which Dr. Hutton arbitrarily attributes to him, that the immediate Apostles of Jesus Christ were "Mendacious," and "that he could not teach his own followers common honesty." This is the common error, from no quarter however to be less expected than from the perfectly truthful and gentle mind of Dr. Hutton, of imputing to an opponent our own inferences from his views.

We must acknowledge in Mr. Wood's Lecture, for the most part, an admirable spirit, no little ability and eloquence, and the vivid evidence of a deep-felt sympathy with the spiritual Christ,but as an exposition of the complicated, delicate, and difficult question of "Miracles," it is at all points unworthy alike of the Subject and of the Place from which it was uttered, slight, declaratory, self-willed, and not only not grappling with, but not even mentioning the main considerations on which Judgment hangs. So profound a subject demanded a fuller, a more respectful treatment from an oral Teacher. No man led by this Lecture alone, to reject Miracles from Christianity, could give a reason against the faith that is not in him. We suppose Mr. Wood has already sufficiently repented of his inconsiderate, wanton, and altogether discreditable mention of Lardner. Giving him credit for such penitence, we spare him the reiteration of

Mr. Hincks' honest indignation, or of Dr. Hutton's good humoured and restrained, yet scourging satire.

We could have wished that this controversy had taken another form;-that it had been, not upon the reality of Miracles, but upon their present relations to Christianity. What is the exact meaning of the assertion that "miracles are the proper and only sufficient proof of Revelation?" Does it mean that the miracles must be proved first, and that, then, they establish every thing, said or done in connection with them, to be divine? If this is not the meaning, the whole assertion amounts to nothing,-yet this is evidently not reconcileable either with logic or with facts. There is no necessary connection between a miracle performed, and the truth of a doctrine uttered. The Apostles wrought miracles at the very time when they entertained sensual, unspiritual notions of the Messiah's Kingdom, and uttered them too. Peter had miraculous power at the moment he was guilty of desertion and falsehood. The Gospels would lead us to suppose that Judas Iscariot could have healed the sick by supernatural energy, at the hour in which he was betraying Christ. Nay, what are we to say to the Miracles which the Christian records themselves attribute to the enemies of Christianity, to the miracles which Christ himself attributes to his Jewish persecutors,-" if I cast out devils through the prince of the devils, by whom then do your children cast them out?" Miracles then, in themselves considered, are so far from being the only, that they are not any proof of a Revelation. We find them in the same Books that convey to us the works of Christ, "the works of his Father," in connection with views and deeds which God would disown.

Neither would it be possible to prove the miracles of Christianity on external historical testimony alone. It is the spiritual, the heavenly, the true divine in Christ, that requires, and proves the supernatural. It is certainly true that it is largely from a miraculous manifestation that this divine Image is reflected to us, but it is the picture that reconciles us to the magnitude of the frame, not the magnitude of the frame that proves the value of the picture,-it is the reality, the consistency, the perfection of the divine excellence that forbids us to question or disturb the external forms in which God exhibited it, and from which we have collected it. But this is a totally different thing from the assertion that miracles are the only proofs of a revelation, for in fact the miracles are rather proved by, accepted with, than proofs of, the moral and spiritual Christ, who

* Hincks' Sermon. p. 8.