But this, unless it be a proposal to open the whole question afresh,--to examine _the Miracles themselves_,--to consider them one by one,--to inquire into their exact nature,--and to investigate their attendant circumstances,--is unmeaning. For we cannot, as reasonable men, dismiss a vast body of august events, differing so considerably one from another, with a vague inuendo that there was probably "some kind of mistake or deception somewhere, though we do not know where:" (p. 106:) a hint that natural events may have been regarded as supernatural by an unscientific age, (which I believe was Schleiermacher's view:) and so forth. The two miraculous Draughts of fishes,--the Stater found in the fish's mouth,--the stilling of the Storm,--might perhaps, by a little rhetorical sophistry, in unscrupulous hands, be so disposed of. But the _Creative Power_ displayed on the two occasions of a miraculous feeding of thousands,--the giving of sight to a man born blind,--the calling of Lazarus out of the grave where he had been for four days buried;--these are transactions which resist every attempt of the enemy to explain away, as unscientific misconceptions. They may be powerless to produce conviction in some _now_, as they were powerless to produce conviction in some _then_: but they cannot be set aside by an insinuation. There could not have been any mistake when the Five Thousand were fed with five loaves, and twelve baskets full were gathered up; or when the Four Thousand were fed with seven loaves, and fragments enough to fill seven baskets remained over[68]. There was no room for deception in the case of the man born blind; for _that_ case immediately underwent a judicial scrutiny[69]. Lazarus bound hand and foot with grave-clothes required that the bystanders should "loose him and let him go[70]:" but from that moment, neither supposed scientific necessity, nor antecedent considerations, nor the ordinary course of Nature, nor any other creature, will avail to bind him any more! This may suffice on the subject of Professor Powell's Essay. On the great question itself, I have said something in my Seventh Sermon, to which the reader is requested to refer.--The performance now under consideration abounds in incorrect statements, while it revives not a few exploded objections; but I have considered the only points in it which are material.