The deduction, however, does not end here. It is clear that, this large class of Gospel miracles being due to the superstition of an ignorant and credulous age, the insufficiency of the evidence for any of the other supposed miraculous occurrences narrated in the same documents becomes at once apparent. Nothing but the most irrefragable testimony could possibly warrant belief in statements of supernatural events which contradict all experience, and are opposed to all science. When these statements, however, are not only rendered, _à priori_, suspicious by their proceeding from a period of the grossest superstition and credulity, but it becomes evident that a considerable part of them is due solely to that superstition and credulity, by which, moreover, the rest may likewise be most naturally explained, it is obvious that they cannot stand against the opposing conviction of invariable experience. The force of the testimony is gone. We are far from using this language in an offensive sense concerning the Gospel narratives, which, by the simple faith of the writers, present the most noble aspect of the occurrences of which superstition is capable. Indeed, viewed as compositions gradually rising out of pious tradition, and representing the best spirit of their times, the Gospels, even in ascribing such miracles to Jesus, are a touching illustration of the veneration excited by his elevated character. Devout enthusiasm surrounded his memory with the tradition of the highest exhibitions of power within the range of Jewish imagination, {152} and that these conceptions represent merely an idealized form of prevalent superstition was not only natural but inevitable. We shall hereafter fully examine the character of the Gospels, but it will be sufficient here to point out that none of these writings lays claim to any special inspiration, or in the slightest degree pretends to be more than a human composition,(1) and subject to the errors of human history. 2. We have seen how incompetent those who lived at the time when the Gospel miracles are supposed to have taken place were to furnish reliable testimony regarding such phenomena; and the gross mistake committed in regard to the largest class of these miracles, connected with demoniacal possession, seems altogether to destroy the value of the evidence for the rest, and to connect the whole, as might have been expected, with the general superstition and ignorance of the period. It may be well to inquire further, whether there is any valid reason for excepting any of the miracles of Scripture from the fate of the rest, and whether, in fact, there was any special "Age of Miracles" at all, round which a privileged line can be drawn on any reasonable ground. We have already pointed out that the kind of evidence which is supposed to attest the Divine revelation of Christianity, so far from being invented for the purpose, was so hackneyed, so to speak, as scarcely to attract the {153}