It is certain that throughout the whole period during which miracles are said to have been performed, gross ignorance and superstition prevailed, and nowhere more so than amongst the Jews where those miracles occurred. Almost every operation of nature was inexplicable, and everything which was inexplicable was considered supernatural. Miracles seemed as credible to the mind of that age as deviations from the order of nature seem incredible in ours. It is a suggestive fact that miracles are limited to periods when almost every common incident was readily ascribed to supernatural agency. There is, however, one remarkable circumstance which casts some light upon the origin of narratives of miracles. Throughout the New Testament, patristic literature, and the records of ecclesiastical miracles, although we have narratives of countless wonderful works performed by others than the writers, and abundant assertion of the possession of miraculous power by the Church, there is no instance whatever, that we can remember, in which {201} a writer claims to have himself performed a miracle.(1) Wherever there has existed even the comparatively accurate means of information which a person who himself performed a miracle might possess, the miraculous entirely fails, and it is found only where faith or credulity usurps the place of knowledge. Pious men were perfectly ready to believe the supposed miracles of others, and to report them as facts, who were too veracious to imagine any of their own. Even if Apostles and Saints had chronicled their own miraculous deeds, the argument for their reality would not have been much advanced; but the uniform absence of such personal pretension enables us more clearly to trace such narratives to pious credulity or superstition. If we consider the particular part which miracles have played in human history, we find precisely the phenomena which might have been expected if miracles, instead of being considered as real occurrences, were recognized as the mistakes or creations of ignorance and superstition during that period in which "reality melted into fable, and invention unconsciously trespassed on the province of history." Their occurrence is limited to ages which were totally ignorant of physical laws, and they have been numerous or rare precisely in proportion to the degree of imagination and love of the marvellous characterizing the people amongst whom they are said to have occurred. Instead of a few evidential miracles taking place at one epoch of history, and filling the world with surprise at such novel and exceptional phenomena, we find miracles represented as taking place in all ages and in all countries. The Gospel miracles are set in the midst of a series of similar wonders, which commenced 1 This is fully discussed in the third volume. {202}