GROUNDS OF DISBELIEF. 187 



whoever was sent by God must have the power of 

 working them; but no one dreamed that such power 

 sufficed by itself as proof of a divine mission, and 

 St. Paul expressly warned the churches, if any one 

 came to them working miracles, to observe what he 

 taught, and unless he preached " Christ, and him 

 crucified," not to listen to the teaching. There is no 

 reason, therefore, that timid Christians should shrink 

 from accepting the logical canon of the Grounds of 

 Disbelief. And it is not hazarding much to pre- 

 dict that a school which peremptorily rejects all 

 evidences of religion, except such as, when relied upon 

 exclusively, the canon in question irreversibly con- 

 derrms ; which denies to mankind the right to judge 

 of religious doctrine, and bids them depend on mira- 

 cles as their sole guide ; must, in the present state 

 of the human mind, inevitably fail in its attempt to 

 put itself at the head of the religious feelings and 

 convictions of this country: by whatever learning, 

 argumentative skill, and even, in many respects, 

 comprehensive views of human affairs, its peculiar 

 doctrines may be recommended to the acceptance of 

 thinkers. 



3. It appears from what has been said, that the 

 assertion that a cause has been defeated of an effect 

 which is connected with it by a completely ascertained 

 law of causation, is to be disbelieved or not, according 

 to the probability or improbability that there existed in 

 the particular instance an adequate counteracting cause. 

 To form an estimate of this, is not more difficult than 

 of any other probability. With regard to all known 

 causes capable of counteracting the given causes, we 

 have generally some previous knowledge of the fre- 

 quency or rarity of their occurrence, from which we 



