through the darker ages, but dwindling down to a thread as it has
entered days of enlightenment. The evidence was too hackneyed and
commonplace to make any impression upon those before whom the Christian
miracles are said to have been performed, and it altogether failed to
convince the people to whom the Revelation was primarily addressed. The
selection of such evidence for such a purpose is much more
characteristic of human weakness than of Divine power.

The true character of miracles is at once betrayed by the fact that
their supposed occurrence has thus been confined to ages of ignorance
and superstition, and that they are absolutely unknown in any time or
place where science has provided witnesses fitted to appreciate and
ascertain the nature of such exhibitions of supernatural power. There
is not the slightest evidence that any attempt was made to investigate
the supposed miraculous occurrences, or to justify the inferences so
freely drawn from them, nor is there any reason to believe that the
witnesses possessed, in any considerable degree, the fulness of
knowledge and sobriety of judgment requisite for the purpose. No
miracle has yet established its claim to the rank even of apparent
reality, and all such phenomena must remain in the dim region of
imagination. The test applied to the largest class of miracles,
connected with demoniacal possession, discloses the falsity of all
miraculous pretension.

There is no uncertainty as to the origin of belief in supernatural
interference with nature. The assertion that spurious miracles have
sprung up round a few instances of genuine miraculous power has not a
single valid argument to support it. History clearly demonstrates that,
wherever ignorance and superstition have prevailed, every obscure
occurrence has been attributed to supernatural agency, and it is freely