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At the very threshold of the discussion there meets us the assertion that miracles are impossible. Now I hold that we cannot believe in a personal God and doubt the possibility of miracles.

1. We have a great deal of learned talk about the inviolability of the laws of nature, which really makes a strait-waistcoat for God of His own laws. But the question is set at rest by facts which science attests. What is the beginning of life but a miracle? Scientific men know that this world was once a molten mass, and that there could not then, by any possibility, be on it any germ of vegetable or animal life. But life by and by appeared and multiplied; and in its appearance we have a distinct and special act of God creating life; and that is a miracle.

2. But there are those who admit all this and yet deny any other miracles. They say that they are not reasonable, that they are a reflection on the wisdom of God. But while God's being makes miracles possible, God's mercy and man's needs make miracles reasonable. If there is a defect in the mechanism of the world, it is not due to God, but to us; the disorder in the universe is not His, but ours. And a special interposition by Him to right what we have put wrong is the reverse of a reflection on His wisdom. A revelation of mercy to a sinful world is a miraculous thing in itself; and if other miracles accompany it, it is just what might be anticipated.

3. But there are those who say that whether wrought or not, miracles cannot be proved. This is Hume's position, which is modified by Huxley, who insists that the proof, if proof can be adduced, must be very strong. Mill further modifies it by admitting that "if a supernatural event really occurs, it is impossible to maintain that the proof cannot be accessible to the human faculties." My contention is that miracles can be proved like other facts, and I proceed to prove that the account of Christ's miracles by the evangelists is true.

I. THEIR NARRATIVE HAS THE AIR OF TRUTHFULNESS. When we are examining witnesses, we must assume that they are truthful until we have found them false; and there are various ways in which they may impress us. They may give their evidence in such an unsatisfactory manner as to arouse the suspicion that it is false; or it may be given with such artless simplicity as to convince us that it is true. On turning to the Gospels, we find the miracles of Christ recorded with as much calmness as if they had been only ordinary events. Their time and place, their nature, their witnesses, and sometimes their moral effects, are minutely recorded. The writers have all the appearance of men who are not making fiction but recording fact.

II. THE DISCIPLES HAD AMPLE MEANS OF KNOWING WHETHER THE ALLEGED MIRACLES WERE REALLY WROUGHT. Witnesses may be truthful and yet give a testimony we cannot accept, because of their having been deceived. But there are considerations which show that it could not have been thus with the disciples. The assertion that Christ tried to impose upon them charges Him with conduct so much at variance with His character as they present it, that we cannot entertain it for a moment, and the miracles were of such a kind that they could not be deceived in regard to them. They were numerous, varied, and striking.

III. THE DISCIPLES HAD NO CONCEIVABLE MOTIVE FOR CONSPIRING TO PALM ON THE WORLD A FALSE HISTORY OF JESUS. It could net exalt their Master to attribute to Him miracles He never wrought; it could not exalt themselves in their own estimation to sit down and carefully construct an elaborate fiction; and they could not expect to gain over the people to Christ by alleging that He had wrought many miracles among them both in Judea and Galilee when they knew that the people had not seen one of them. Just credit them with common sense, and then say if you can conceive of their trying to palm falsehoods on the world. If they had been knaves they would net have taken this course, for there was nothing to gain by it; and if they had been fools they would not have acted as they did.

IV. THEY HAD NOT ONLY NO MOTIVE TO GIVE A FALSE ACCOUNT, BUT THEY HAD THE STRONGEST REASONS FOR NOT DOING SO. There was no worldly honour or wealth to be got by their testimony; it was certain to entail the loss of all things. Is it conceivable, then, with the knowledge of all this that they would publish false accounts.

V. THEY COULD NOT HAVE GAINED ACCEPTANCE FOR THE GOSPELS IF THEY HAD NOT BEEN TRUE. It is Christ's miracles which were appealed to when the apostles urged men to believe in Him. Consider what believing involved. It meant not only accepting His history in the Gospels as true, but taking Him to be the Saviour from sin, and leading, in obedience to His command and after His example, a holy life; and this in the face of the scorn and contempt of the world, with the prospect of temporal ruin, and the risk of a violent death. Now, how could men be persuaded to face the sacrifices all this involved by appeals to miracles which had never been wrought? Corroborative proof I find in the Jews. They did not deny that He wrought miracles, but only tried to explain them away. In their Talmud, which dates back to the third century, it is acknowledged that "mighty works" were wrought by Him, but it is said that these were the results of magical arts which he had learned in Egypt. And the heathen bear similar testimony. Celsus admits Christ's miracles. "Ye think Jesus to be the son of God," he says, "because He healed the lame and the blind, and as ye say raised the dead." And when he tries to deprive His miracles of their value as evidence of a Divine authority, it is by ascribing them, like the Jews, to His having learned magical arts in Egypt.

(A. Oliver, B. A.)

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KJV: There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:

WEB: Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.