"It might naturally be expected that the miraculous evidence selected to accredit a divine revelation should possess certain unique and marked characteristics. It must at least, be clearly distinctive of divine power and exclusively associated with divine truth. It is inconceivable that the Deity, deigning thus to attest the reality of a communication from himself of truths beyond the criterion of reason, should not make the evidence simple and complete, because the doctrines proper to such a revelation, not being appreciable from internal evidence, it is obvious that the external testimony for them,--if it is to be of any use--must be unmistakable and decisive. The evidence which is actually produced, however, so far from satisfying these legitimate anticipations, lacks every one of the qualifications which reason antecedently declares necessary. Miracles are not distinctive of divine power but are common to Satan, and they are admitted to be performed in support of falsehood as well as in the service of truth. They bear, indeed, so little upon them the impress of their origin and true character, that they are dependent for their recognition upon our judgment of the very doctrines to attest which they are said to have been designed. "Even taking the representation of miracles, therefore, which divines themselves give, they are utterly incompetent to perform their contemplated functions. If they are superhuman they are not supersatanic, and there is no sense in which they can be considered miraculously evidential of anything. To argue as theologians do, that the ambiguity of their testimony is intended as a trial of our faith is absurd, for reason being unable to judge of the nature either of supernatural fact or of supernatural doctrine it would be mere folly and injustice to subject to such a test beings avowedly incapable of sustaining it. Whilst it is absolutely necessary, then, that a divine revelation should be attested by miraculous evidence to justify our believing it the testimony so called seems in all respects unworthy of the name, and presents anomalies much more suggestive of human invention than divine originality. We are, in fact, prepared by the scriptural account of miracles to expect that further examination will supply an explanation of such phenomena which will wholly remove them from the region of the supernatural.