and Science-the want, in fact, of a deeper psychological analysis of the subject-matter of the whole inquiry. Mr. Greg is constantly on the very verge of the truth; and yet unaccountably passes it by. When he tells us, in a beautiful and suggestive passage (p. 225), that we are all of us conscious of thoughts which come to us-which are not, properly speaking, our own-which we do not create, do not elaborate; flashes of light, glimpses of truth, or of what seems to us such, brighter and sublimer than commonly dwell in our minds, which we are not conscious of having wrought out by any process of inquiry or meditation'-he had only to limit this fine remark to the spiritual nature, exclusive of all purely intellectual or logical processes, and he would have laid hold of the true definition of religious inspiration, and discovered the specific element of the prophetic character. That this is not the orthodox view, was a reason, not for rejecting it as he has done, but for putting it forth with the force and clearness which he has so abundantly at his command, as the true view. But when he adopts with apparent approval (p. 238), the words of Theodore Parker, that inspiration is the consequence of a faithful use of our faculties,' he dissolves the specific in a generality which amounts to nothing, and instead of a truth, gives us what is little short of an absurdity.

We cannot wholly pass over without notice, the chapter on Miracles. Some will perhaps deprecate the discussion of the subject, as leading to no practical result: but all will admit, that it is surrounded with difficulties which are felt even where they are not expressed; and it is right, they should be looked firmly in the face. The result of Mr. Greg's inquiry respecting them, is unfavourable to their historical reality. If he admits them at all, it must be rather in a subjective than an objective sense. Among men who dogmatically affirm their necessity to authenticate a religion from God, and who make the literal acceptance of them a qualification for Christian discipleship, it is curious to observe, how obscure and fluctuating is the notion of what they really are; and that under the same name, two men who equally profess a belief in them, will understand facts of a totally different kind,-one seeing in them the violation of known and obvious, the other a fulfil

ment of deeper and unknown, laws. It is plain, that these views directly contradict each other. Of the two, the former seems to us most in accordance with the popular feeling of miracle, and with the efficacy attached to it by theology. The conceptions of the miraculous which have been traditionally handed down, and accepted with successive modifications by the Church, originated at a time when law was not yet recognised as the pervading power of the universe, the fixed condition (a few cases of alleged miracle alone excepted) under which the Supreme Mind has chosen to manifest itself; when subordinate spiritual agencies were believed to have a domain of their own, and might within certain limits not only concur with, but even oppose and thwart, the purposes of the Sovereign agency. Mere control over nature's normal course was not, therefore, supposed of itself necessarily to imply the presence or the sanction of the true God. That must be inferred either from the end to which such extraordinary power was directed, or from the triumph of one power over antagonistic powers. Mr. Locke, if we remember right, in his Essay on Miracles has made this last circumstance the criterion of divine, in conflict with demoniacal, agency, and illustrated his view from the contest between the

Egyptian sorcerers and Moses. This view is also the Scriptural view, evident alike in both the Testaments. It was taken up and heartily adopted by the early Christians, and subsisted through the Middle Ages, as the forms of Exorcism in the ancient ritual, and the existence of the Exorcists as a particular class of Ecclesiastical officers, clearly prove.* The same view survived the Reformation, and was strongly entertained by the first generation or two of Protestants, and among our own Puritans. In the more fanatical sects of the present day, it is not yet extinct.†

*The Exorcists belonged to the Ordines Minores of the Church. They were entrusted with the charge of lunatics, who had a particular place assigned them in the ancient Churches, and over whom they daily offered up special prayers. They sometimes employed these unfortunate beings to sweep the pavement of the sacred edifice, and in other menial offices. Thus a kind of incipient Lunatic Asylum was connected with this benevolent but superstitious function of the ancient Church.

In the matter of Witchcraft and the power of prayer to expel evil spirits, the Puritans were more superstitious than the Prelatists, as the stories of the Witchfinders under the Long Parliament sufficiently attest.

The modern doctrine of miracles, as the infallible token and authentic seal of revealed truth, compelling its acceptance by a force external to the mind itself-acquired its peculiar power and prominence in Christian theology, as a consequence of the change introduced by the Reformation, when it was found necessary to replace the ancient authority of the Church, by some equivalent influence which should equally subjugate the wilfulness of the individual judgment. But it is remarkable, that in the early Protestant Confessions, miracles do not occupy the position which our later systems assign them, as an evidence of divine truth :-they are deemed of subordinate value to the witness of the Spirit, and the inward and outward signs accompanying the present operation of truth itself. The increasing importance attached to them, indicates the growth of a rationalising tendency in the Church, not content with proofs adapted to the spiritual nature of man, but craving material premises from which a logical inference could be forced upon the reluctant mind. Two difficulties obstructed the complete development of the philosophic conception of miracle: first, the subsistence of a doubt, what supernatural effects could be certainly ascribed to God, and what might be owing to inferior and hostile powers; secondly, the violation which miracle was believed to imply, of pre-ordained and uniform law a supposition which the progress of physical science made thinking men more and more averse to admit. The first was removed by the assertion of absolute monotheism, in a line of argument pursued by Mr. Farmer in his well-known Essay on Miracles, where he endeavoured to show, with great learning and ability, that every proved control over the established course of nature, could only proceed from the Power which originally established that course. The second led to the theory which Mr. Babbage put forth in his 'Ninth Bridgewater Treatise,' that miracles entered into the original design of Providence, and form the exceptional expressions of a natural law. In this he was anticipated nearly a century ago, by Bonnet of Geneva; and the late Dr. Thomas Brown threw out a similar suggestion in his Essay on Cause and Effect. Now admitting at once the necessary truth of the first of these views, and the possibility of the

second-we may still question, whether miracles are by nature fitted to answer the purpose, which theology assigns to them-whether their assumed importance, as tests of a divine revelation, does not rest on that confusion in the popular mind between wisdom and mere power, to which Mr. Greg has so pertinently called attention (p. 194.) Whatever view be taken of them, therefore, as historical facts, we are disposed to agree with some distinguished clergymen of the present day, that they can furnish no proper evidence of spiritual truth; and we subscribe altogether to these words of Archdeacon Hare"The notion that miracles have an argumentative and demonstrative efficacy, and that the faith of Christians is to be grounded upon them-is in fact the theological parallel to the materialist hypothesis, that all our knowledge is derived from the senses.'

It is the unspiritual view of religious truth-the assumption, that it has no natural affinity with the human mind, which has thrust up miracles into such undue prominence; and the more we go back to intuitive sources for the primary elements of religious belief, the less we shall feel discomposed and alarmed at any turn which the question of miracles may take, as knowing that Christianity is not, and cannot be, built upon them: for, in the language of Mr. Trench, however evidences drawn from without, may be welcome as buttresses, we can know no other foundations of our Faith, than those which itself supplies.' The question is altogether one of evidence, and must be decided by a simple reference to its laws, without respect to consequences. The argument that has weighed most strongly with us on behalf of the miracles recorded in the New Testament, we freely admit to be this;—that the miraculous enters so deeply into the very substance of Christ's history-the miraculous and the common are so closely interwrought, like the cross threads of one and the same web, that we are unable to conceive of any critical process by which one element could be ejected and leave the other untouched-which would not in fact destroy the very texture itself. Still there are some points connected with this question, which deserve a more candid and dispassionate consideration, than they have yet received. It does not seem reasonable (arbitrary assumptions apart) to

accept literally and without hesitation the miraculous of Scripture, and yet refuse like credence to the portion of it which has perpetuated itself in Ecclesiastical History; for the line of historical development is unbroken; and the distinction which is usually drawn between the apostolic, and all succeeding, ages seems to us altogether gratuitous.* Wherever in history we read of some new and great development of the religious life, we almost invariably meet with an account of phenomena, bearing a close affinity to the miraculous of Scripture. The facts are rarely indicated with sufficient distinctness, or at least have not yet been sufficiently compared, to justify any positive opinion respecting them; but they point most clearly, in our judgment, to the necessity of a more thorough and unprejudiced study both of the psychology and of the history of Religion. We think the importance of the miraculous as a sanction greatly over-estimated. To what particular part of the Scriptures does the sanction apply? Men select out of them-to a great extent, quite arbitrarily― certain elements which they recognise as divine, and either overlook or explain away or cast aside all the rest; Trinitarian and Unitarian alike setting the seal of the miraculous on their own individual conclusions. Human reason first takes upon itself to discriminate truth from error; and the miracle then only tells as a confirmation, when a decision has already been pronounced, which renders it nugatory-like the ancient Parliaments of Paris that ratified with a show of constitutional authority, the absolute decrees of their Sovereign. The real power of the Christian miracles-the only thing which gives them a hold on the religious heart-consists in their intense and concentrated reflection of the moral spirit of Christ himself. Whoever finds in this influence a genuine strength

* The unreasonableness of this distinction has been pointed out with great subtlety and acuteness by the Rev. John Henry Newman, in his Essay on the Miraculous,' prefixed to a new edition of Fleury's Ecclesiastical History.' The older Protestant divines were more rigidly_consequential, if less philosophical, than their rationalising successors. Jortin could not wholly reject the miraculous, which he found recorded in the three first centuries; and old Dr. Aikin of Warrington, perhaps the most learned and accomplished divine among the Nonconformists of his day, fully believed, that those who went forth at the present time to preach the Gospel to the heathen, would be accompanied by the miraculous signs of the apostles. See 'Gilbert Wakefield's Life.'