"Those foundation-stones for the denial of all miracles which were laid by Spinoza and Hume, and on which the critics of the present day still take a defiant stand, have crumbled away piecemeal before our eyes. Spinoza's axiom, that the 'laws of nature are the only realisation of the Divine will,' stands or falls with the pantheistic conception of the Deity--a conception which is not only unworthy of God and of man, but also contrary to reason. The Source of all freedom is supposed to have no freedom, but to be immured in His own laws! And to this Spinoza adds the conclusion: 'If anything could take place in nature contrary to its laws, God would thereby contradict Himself.' We have seen that just the converse is true, namely, that if God performed no miracles, and left the world to itself, He would contradict Himself; that He must perform miracles in order to maintain the end for which the world was created, and to bring it to the destiny which was originally intended. His miraculous action contradicts not nature and its laws, but the unnatural, which has entered the world through sin, and counteracts its destructive consequences in order to restore the life of the world to holy order. Only those who, like Spinoza, deny the reality of sin and its destructive power, can question the necessity of the miraculous. The present condition, not only of the human world, but also of nature, gives such opinions the lie at every step" (p. 327). "Hume, in like manner, bases his attack against the miraculous on a series of false assumptions. First: 'Miracles are violations of the laws of nature.' This is false, since miracles, far from violating, serve to re-establish the already violated order of the world, and do not injure the laws of nature. Second: 'But we learn from experience that the laws of nature are never violated.' This is false, because we ourselves immediately interfere with our higher will in the laws of nature, and interrupt them without their being violated. Third: 'For miracles we have the questionable testimony of a few persons.' This is false, because the entire Scriptures are full of miracles, and the historical testimony for them is unquestionable, since the appearance of Israel and of the Christian Church is perfectly incomprehensible without miracles. 'But,' he goes on, 'against them we have universal experience; therefore this stronger testimony nullifies the weaker and more questionable.' The pith of Hume's argument, then, is simply this: Because, according to universal experience, no miracles now take place, therefore none can ever have occurred. This proposition, in the first place, involves a begging of the question, since it is not at all certain that no miracles are performed now-a-days; and, second, it ignores the fact that different periods are subject to different laws, and with their varied wants may demand varied kinds of revelatory action on the part of God. Certainly, the negro who should affirm that