238 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



mitted ; nay, how almost impossible it is that testi- 

 mony should be so. 



The plain and unavoidable truth seems to be, that 

 there is no way of making out a Divine authority 

 by declaration alone, by ear-witness alone, or by 

 testimony alone, however inerrantly preserved and 

 transmitted. The radical difificulty is with the orig- 

 inal Declaration, and with the original ear-witness : 

 neither of these can possibly come at the indubi- 

 table presence of the invisible, inaudible, altogether 

 supersensible reality of the divine Eternal Essence. 

 Our mind, following the indications of the evidence 

 offered, searches and reaches for the unmistakable 

 presence of God at the back of the sense-signals, 

 and is met by — vacancy. 



A perception of this led the early apologists of 

 Authority to supplement the evidence of declaration 

 and testimony by the evidence of miracle. Thus it 

 was — and from an intelligent motive — that miracles 

 came to constitute an integral factor in the accepted 

 historic system of Apologetics. The miracle was 

 supposed to demonstrate the actually present power 

 of the eternal Creator. The claimant, declaring him- 

 self God's authentic messenger, had his declaration 

 verified by the manifest presence of God, — manifest 

 by the clear exercise of that power which made the 

 world, and ordained and sustains its order ; mani- 

 fest by the interruption of that order and the 



