It is evident, therefore, that the only course which can be pursued with a professed atheist or pantheist, is to grapple with him on the evidences of theism, and to endeavour to prove the existence of a God possessed of personality, intelligence, volition, and adequate power, before we attempt to deal with the evidences of miracles. Until we have convinced him of this all our reasonings must be in vain. There are four modes of reasoning by which the being of a God may be established. I will simply enumerate them. First, the argument which is founded on the principle of causation; second, that which rests on the order of the universe; third, that from its innumerable adaptations; fourth, that which is derived from the moral nature and personality of man. If the argument from causation fails to prove to those with whom we are reasoning that the finite causes in the universe must have a first cause from whence they have originated; if that from the orderly arrangements in the universe fails to prove that there must be an intelligent being who produced them; if its innumerable adaptations fail to establish the presence of a presiding mind; and if the moral nature of man fails to prove that must be a moral being from whom that nature emanated, and of whom it is the image, it follows that the minds must be so differently constituted as to offer no common ground or basis of reasoning on this question. The whole involves an essential difference of principle, which no argumentation can really reach. To attempt to prove to a mind of this description the occurrence of a miracle, is simply a waste of labour. A work, therefore, on the subject of miracles can only be addressed to theists, because the very conception of a miracle involves the existence of a personal God. To take this for granted in reasoning with a pantheist or atheist is simply to assume the point at issue. It is perfectly true, that a legitimate body of reasoning may be constructed, if the pantheist or the atheist agrees to assume that a God exists for the purpose of supplying a basis for the argument. We may then reason with him precisely in the same way as we would with a theist. But the contest will be with one who has clad himself in armour which no weapon at our disposal can penetrate. After the strongest amount of historical evidence has been adduced, and after all alleged difficulties have been answered, he simply falls back on his atheism or his pantheism, which assumes that all supernatural occurrences must be impossible, and therefore that alleged instances of them are delusions.