redemption, to those which lie in the extreme periphery of religious interest. It is a grouping which corresponds with the idea of God just as much as with the idea of miracles; while all other divisions or groupings of miracles according to value, which might take their principle of division and their weight from the greater or smaller conceivableness of the causal connection, from the greater or smaller difference of a miraculous event from all other events, are indifferent in reference to the idea of God, and change the centre of gravity in the idea of miracles. Besides, if these miracles are to be real signs to me which refer me to God, his government, and his ways of salvation, they must, in the first place, in order to secure my conviction, be real events and facts and not mere falsifications and fictions; and this point leads us to the duty and right of criticising and investigating actual circumstances. In presence of all Biblical and non-Biblical miracles, we have the full right and the full duty of using criticism in reference to the confirmation of actual circumstances, and where the latter cannot be established with certainty, the question is in order whether the related event is really of such a character as to legitimate itself as a sign of God and his government. In the preceding section, we have had occasion to use this principle in reference to the investigation of that event which, next to the coming of the Redeemer, offers itself to us as the {368} central miracle of the history of salvation and redemption: namely, in reference to the history of the resurrection of the Lord.