Though a miracle, or pseudo violation of Nature's laws, be the most certain method of exciting the admiration of the vulgar, it is contrary to reason that anything of the kind should be true; but it is by no means contrary to the testimony of experience, that impostors might have lived two or three thousand years ago, and propagated falsehood. This conclusion is fully corroborated by all modern experience, in which we find that deception and falsehood form the medium through which knavery rules simple ignorance; and to such a degree do these ingredients pervade the whole of society, that they in a great measure constitute the religious and moral element in which man lives at the present day; and so besotted has the breathing of this atmosphere of error and delusion rendered him, that the more outrageous a miracle, or other theological fable, is against rational light and common sense, the more greedily has it ever been received by the unthinking and priest-ridden million, who delight in the marvellous and the incredible--believing everything, and examining nothing:--hence the success of the ludicrous medley that makes up our Christian _Polytheism_. Admitting, for a moment, the possibility of such physical prodigies being true, what do we gain by them,--do they either confer additional authority on moral truth, or prove it false? Can they make right wrong, or wrong right? It is a melancholy fallacy to attribute to them any such power or influence, and implies a lamentably low estimate of the dignity and greatness of moral truth. All that we gain by pretended violations of Nature's laws, is dogmatism, bigotry, spiritual fear, intolerance, and superstition; together with all the other curses which come in the train of religion, when backed by authority.