millennium of peace and goodwill, was close at hand, and its advent only retarded by the sinfulness and want of faith of his chosen people. He thought it his bounden duty to do all he could to remove the obstacle and expedite the coming of the kingdom. With this conviction, though fully seeing the risk and counting the cost, when he found that he was making no decided headway by preaching in a remote province, he determined to go to Jerusalem and make there one great effort to accomplish his object. Can it be doubted that he would use every means in his power to carry his mission to a successful conclusion? If, having the power to do so by working a miracle, he had refused, he would from his point of view have been guilty of a great sin—that of preventing the coming of the kingdom of heaven. Again, who were the Pharisees? No doubt there were formalists and hypocrites among them, but the position of the sect in the Jewish nation was almost exactly similar to that of the English Puritans in the reign of Charles. They were the embodiment of the patriotic and religious spirit of the race, the sons of the heroic fathers who fought under Judas Maccabeus against Antiochus, the fathers of the equally heroic sons who made the last desperate stand against the legions of Titus. It was their duty, when a claim to Messiahship was advanced, before departing from the traditions of their ancestors, to require evidence. The universally expected evidence of a temporal deliverer being wanting, there remained only the evidence of miracles, which, moreover, were assigned as the test of a Messiah by all their prophets. To refuse them a sign, if a sign were possible, was to do injustice to many sincere and conscientious men. Nay, more, it was an act of cruelty if leaving them in their old faith entailed eternal punishment. The same thing applies to all records of miracles. They are never wrought under circumstances where they would be the most effective means for attaining proposed ends. They are never wrought under circumstances which leave them clear of the suspicion of being subjective illusions or misinterpretations of effects due to natural causes. They never convince any but those who are more than half convinced already. It would be easy to multiply instances showing the inadequacy of the evidence adduced to establish such an exceptional and extraordinary fact as the occurrence of a real miracle. But it is unnecessary to do so, as all thinking minds have come, or are fast coming, to the conclusion of Dr. Temple, that ‘all the countless varieties of the universe were provided for by one original impress, and not by special acts of creation modifying what had previously been made.’