(_Joel_ ii. 30, 31.) There could not be a state of universal joy among the people, such as is described, as long as the "great and terrible day of the Lord" might overtake them any moment. There could be no happiness where there was constant fear. The Lord promised that a timely warning should be given. Now what has this beautiful and sublime poem to do with the miracle of the cloven tongues? CHAPTER XXIV. Miracles. It is in vain to deny the truth of a miracle on the ground that it is impossible, and contravenes the well-established laws of the universe. The power to create, implies the power to suspend; and as the performance of a miracle is the exercise of creative energy, it is just as easy to exercise it in one case as another. All efforts to demonstrate the impossibility of miracles have failed even in the hands of such men as Hume, because men reason on such subjects in a circle. Still it would be strange if there was no way to expose a false miracle, especially where the results claimed from it are calculated to lead men into error. When some unusual and extraordinary event which amounts to a miracle is said to have occurred one hundred years ago, at a time when intelligent and inquisitive minds were around, and no notice is taken of it by them in giving an account of their own times, nor by any one else, it is safe to conclude that it never did take place, and that those who assert it for the first time at the end of the hundred years are engaged in an attempt to impose some fraud on their fellow-men. From the death of Christ, A.D. 33, to some time near A.D. 140, we claim that no writer of profane or church history makes mention or speaks of the miracles described in the first three Gospels, and not those of the fourth until long afterwards. It is by negative testimony alone that we can arrive at the truth. In the first place, did the great Apostle of the Gentiles perform the miracles that are ascribed to him in the Acts? It is stated that at Lystra he cured a man who had been crippled from his birth by his simple word; he exorcised the evil spirit that was in Lydia; he raised Eutychus, who had fallen from a window; cast from his hand, unhurt, the deadly viper; and such miraculous powers did he possess, "that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them." (_Acts_ xix. 12.)