The solemn circumstance already adverted to, would have kept me silent altogether. When a writer is no longer able to defend himself, it is ungenerous to attack him: and at a time when he knows far more wonders than are dreamed of by any one on the Earth's surface, it seems unbecoming to stand reasoning over his grave about an "antecedent probability." But I am addressing not the dead, but the living,--to whom, in the pages of 'Essays and Reviews,' Professor Powell "being dead yet speaketh." He entitles his contribution,--"On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity:" but, as often happens with performances of the like nature, the title of his Essay gives a wrong notion of its contents. It ought to have been called "The Validity of THE EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES considered," or rather "denied." There is nothing new in the present attack on the Miracles of Scripture. The author disposes of them by a single assertion. "What is alleged," (he says,) "is a case of the supernatural. _But no testimony can reach to the supernatural._" (p. 107.) The inference is obvious.--Again: "an event may be so incredible intrinsically as to _set aside any degree of testimony_." (p. 106.) Such an event he declares a Miracle to be; and explains that "from the nature of our antecedent convictions, the probability of _some_ kind of mistake or deception _somewhere_, though we know not _where_, is greater than the probability of the event really happening in _the way_, and from _the causes_ assigned." (pp. 106-7.) This merely amounts to asserting that the antecedent improbability of Miracles is so great as to make them incredible. The writer does not attempt to establish this point. "The present discussion," (he says,) "is not intended to be of a controversial kind; it is purely contemplative and theoretical." (p. 100.) And yet, he _cannot_ suppose that the Universal Church will surrender its convictions and reverse its deliberate judgment, at the merely "contemplative and theoretical" suggestions of an individual, however respectable he may happen to be. Against his mere assertion, we claim a right to set the result of Bp. Butler's careful investigation of the same subject:--"_That there certainly is no such presumption against Miracles, as to render them in any wise incredible_: that, on the contrary, our being able to discern reasons for them, gives a positive credibility to the history of them, in cases where those reasons hold: and that it is by no means certain that there is any peculiar presumption at all, from analogy, even in the lowest degree, against Miracles, as distinguished from other extraordinary phenomena[64]."