HAVE said that of all the Freethinking

writers of the last century, Thomas Woolston was the most active and industrious assailant of the Miracles of Christ. But, the Essay on Miracles,' by David Hume, which was written some years later than the 'Discourses' of Woolston, is held by sceptics to be the heaviest and most fatal blow ever dealt against Miracles, by the hand of unbelief. When I disputed with London sceptics, in 1857, their cry, again and again, was 'Answer Hume's Argument against the Miracles!' They seemed to think his argument unanswerable.

It would not be easy to point to a stronger understanding than that of David Hume. His reasonings, almost always, shew an extraordinary degree of subtlety.

You cannot banish the consciousness, while you are reading him, that you

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SELF-LOVE OF FREETHINKERS.

are dealing with a mind of singular penetration and keenness. I-for one-can never speak of great intellects without a degree of reverence-I had almost said, of homage. I could not speak lightly of what I felt sure was a fault, in Shakspere or Milton, in Bacon or Newton. And I should feel no inclination to listen to any one who told me he could shew me their faults. Such is the homage I cannot choose but feel for high genius and intelligence. You will not expect me, therefore, to speak disparagingly of a mind like that of David Hume.

But, a close study of the minds of Freethinkers has taught me that they have a tendency to grow in love with their freethinking. Some of you may think this strange; for as doubt is but darkness, there can be no happiness in it, you may say. Yet there is something that flatters human pride and self-love, in the consciousness that you do not think like other people-above all, that you rise above the superstitious thinkings of other people. And the more this thought is indulged by the Freethinker, the more readily and eagerly he clings to any discovery-or what he thinks a discovery

TERMS OF HUME'S ARGUMENT.

51

that strengthens his confidence in doubt or disbelief. He comes to delight so much in these fancied discoveries that, at length, he becomes self-blinded to the fallacy there is in them. I judge-but I do so timidly-that this was the case with David Hume: that he was self-blinded to his own fallacy, through mere fondness for his own system of doubt-because it was his own.

"A miracle," he says, "is a violation of the laws of Nature; and, as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. For, as there is no such uniform experience of the truth of human testimony, as there is of the uniformity of the laws of nature, the one experience must always be stronger than the other; and no testimony, therefore, can ever render a miracle probable."

In a shorter form, he took the same position in some editions of his "Essay "-"No testimony for any kind of miracles can ever possibly amount to a probability, much less to a proof." But Hume afterwards shaped his position more cautiously:

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HUME'S SELF-CONTRADICTION.

instead of can ever possibly amount, he worded it thus, "has ever amounted." Hume felt he must make this alteration to escape self-contradiction, for, in the second part of his "Essay on Miracles " he has this passage:

"I own there may possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit a proof from human testimony -though, perhaps, it will be impossible to find any such in all the records of history. Suppose all

the authors, in all languages, agree, that from the first of January, 1600, there was a total darkness over all the earth for eight days; suppose that the tradition of this extraordinary event is still strong and lively among the people; that all travellers who return from foreign countries bring us accounts of the same tradition, without the least variation or contradiction; it is evident, that our present philosophers, instead of doubting of that fact, ought to receive it for certainty, and ought to search for the causes whence it must be derived."

Hume thus admits the possibility of a miracle, and yet he terms a miracle an "absolute impossibility" One cannot help feeling astonishment

HIS STRANGE FORGETFULNESS.

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that such an acute and subtle reasoner should so strangely commit himself. It seems wonderful that Hume himself did not see his own self-contradiction: Hume, who could think so shrewdly : Hume, who could write the best English prose of his own time. Not "Saxon," as we call it—not Will Cobbett English-but fine, clear, scholarly, polished English, unencumbered with the ponderous Latinisms of Dr. Johnson, the stately mannerisms of Gibbon, or the over-swelling pomp of Robertson. The keen, clear, acute, and polished writing of Hume constitutes a proof, in itself, of his cleverness as a thinker; for no man can ever write clearly who does not think clearly.

But, passing away from his singular slip of selfcontradiction, the boasted" argument of Hume," as sceptics call it, is really no argument at all. No testimony, he says, can ever render the account of a miracle true, for experience teaches us—mark the word experience-it teaches us, he maintains, that the laws of Nature are unalterable.

Experience teaches us! But what experience? A miracle was contrary to David Hume's experience. But his experience was confined to what he