284 
be the Lord of Nature and Creator of the Universe, He had 
proved His right to call upon us to believe Him when He 
informed us on matters which are altogether outside the range 
of “ common fact and experience.” The strongest reason 
assigned for rejecting miracles appears to be, that “ the 
human mind, as experience widens, is turning against them,” 
an assertion which may or may not be accurate, but is cer- 
tainly hardly conclusive.* It is true that all this is followed 
by an endeavour to put ecclesiastical miracles on the same 
ground as Biblical ones,f and that some prodigies related by 
the heathen historians are mentioned ; but there is no notice 
taken of the entirely different nature of the evidence by 
which these prodigies are supported. We are told, again, that 
St. Paul was mistaken on a matter of fact, in supposing that 
our Lord's second coming would soon take place, forgetting 
that our Lord Himself is reported as having said that no man 
should know the day or the hour of His coming ; and in a 
matter of argument, when he grounded a belief in the coming 
of Christ on the use of the singular instead of the plural 
number in the prophecy in Gen. xii., though how these mis- 
takes, if they be mistakes, which Mr. Arnold does not attempt 
to prove, can invalidate the plain statement that miracles 
were performed, which is repeatedly made in the New Testa- 
ment and underlies the whole of it, I cannot exactly see. He 
tries to make out a contradiction between Acts ix. 7 and Acts 
xxii. 9, and dismisses without examination the explanations 
which have been given. And this is nearly all he gives us as 
a reason for abandoning altogether the belief in miracles. J 
16. We next come to his mode of dealing with the books 
of the Bible themselves. First of all, he refers to the theory 
that the writers of the Old and New Testament “ were mi- 
raculously inspired, and could make no mistakes.” I do not 
propose to enter upon this question, but will content myself 
with the remark, that if the writers of the Old and New Testa- 
ment were wrong on the most important points — wrong in 
their historical narratives, wrong in their prophetical utter- 
ances, wrong in their conceptions of God, wrong in attributing 
miracles to Christ, wrong in believing Him to be God, wrong 
* So we are told, that “ it was not to discredit miracles that Literature and 
Dogma was written, but because miracles are so widely and deeply dis- 
credited already.” — God and the Bible, p. 386. It is therefore “ lost labour 
to be arguing for them.” — Ibid. 
t I have touched upon this objection in the dialogue above-mentioned. 
J Save as regards the Eesurrection, which will be treated below. 
