question of historical evidence by an assumption of a universal abstract
impossibility, I earnestly beg an unprejudiced attention to the
following considerations:

If it be once admitted that there is a God, and that the soul is not
a mere portion of the body, the existence of miracles becomes at once
probable. Apart from the records of experience, we should in fact have
expected that events which are now termed miraculous would have been
perhaps as common as those which are regulated by what we call the laws
of nature. Let it be only granted that the visible universe is not the
_whole_ universe, and that in reality we are ever in a state of most
intimate _real_ communion with Him who is its Creator; then, I say,
we should have expected to have been as habitually conscious of our
intercourse with that great Being, as of our intercourse with one
another. The true marvel is, that we are not thus habitually conscious
of the Divine Presence, and that God is really out of our sight. If
there is a God, who is ever around us and within us, _why_ does He not
communicate with us through the medium of our senses, as He enables us
to communicate with one another? Our souls hold mutual communion through
the intervention of this corporal frame, with such a distinct and
undeniable reality, that we are as _conscious_ of our intercourse as
of the contact of a material substance with our material bodies. Why,
then,--since it is so infinitely more important to us to hold ceaseless
communication with our Maker,--why is it that our intercourse with Him
is of a totally different nature? Why is it that the material creation
is not the ordinary instrument by which our souls converse with Him? Let
any man seriously ponder upon this awful question, and he must hasten to
the conclusion, that though experience has shown us that the world of
matter is not the _ordinary_ channel of converse between God and man,
there yet remains an overwhelming probability that some such intercourse