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stigmatized by some unwise defenders of revelation, as destroying the essence 

 of a miracle. It is against the hasty adoption of such theories that I was 

 desirous of uttering a caution. All that I intended to assert is, not that I 

 adopt these positions as indubitably established truths, but that I am 

 unable to dispute the general position, that to a higher order of intelligence 

 all supernatural occurrences may seem natural. Any one may see from the 

 context that by the word "supernatural" I mean miraculous. When I 

 speak of the difficulty of discriminating between certain supernatural events 

 and some events deemed miraculous, I mean that there are certain events 

 where it is very difficult, if not impossible, to draw a line accurately dis- 

 criminating to which order they belong. We all know that wonderful cures 

 have been effected in certain classes of nervous complaints. Many of these 

 have been pronounced miraculous. But in many cases they are now known 

 to have resulted from purely natural causes. We are as yet profoundly 

 ignorant of the power and action of the mind on the nervous system, and its 

 influence on the body. Bat while there is a numerous class of events of this 

 description, which it is impossible, with only our present knowledge, to say 

 whether they belong to the miraculous or the natural, there is another class 

 of events, such as the resurrection of a body unquestionably dead, the 

 restoring of a man bom blind by a word, or of an amputated limb, &c., which 

 can only belong to an order which is unquestionably miraculous. These 

 latter are the only ones which I conceive capable of affording an adequate 

 attestation to a revelation. The others may be miraculous, but from the defi- 

 ciency of our knowledge as to whether they are so or not, they are inadequate 

 to furnish us with a sufficient attestation ; I think it most important that we 

 should keep this distinction steadily in view. Dr. Currey's remarks relate to 

 a question quite different from the one I was considering. With respect to 

 those points in the first portion of the paper, on which I am at issue with 

 Dr. Carrey, the only question is, — what is the degree of evidence which 

 entitles a fact to be esteemed as resting on a secure historical foundation ? 

 What I contend for is, that " the philosophic imagination " cannot convert 

 events, whose attestation is imperfect, into historical facts ; or, where a large 

 number of facts have perished, that it is unable to erect a substantial bridge 

 over the empty space. If any large number of the received facts of history are of 

 this description, I am very sorry for it ; but all I can say is, " so much the worse 

 for them." I by no means intended to assert that the principle of historical 

 conjecture has no place in history or criticism. All that I am desirous of 

 doing is to reduce it to its proper level. But at present, to borrow language 

 from a celebrated resolution of the House of Commons, " Its influence is too 

 great, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." I am far from wishing to 

 undervalue the labours of Niebuhr, whose writings I have read with the pro- 

 foundest interest. I once as firmly believed in them as Dr. Currey. But I 

 have renounced a belief in a large portion of his reconstructive conjectures, for 

 the simple and obvious reason that they lack evidence, and the vacant spaces 

 of history may be bridged over by other conjectures equally plausible. When 

 two, three, or four theories will equally account for the same fact, we cannot 



