_Answer_. The Christian idea is that God made the world, and made certain laws for the government of matter and mind, and that he never interferes except upon special occasions, when the ordinary laws fail to work out the desired end. Their notion is, that the Lord now and then stops the horses simply to show that he is driving. It seems to me that if an infinitely wise being made the world, he must have made it the best possible; and that if he made laws for the government of matter and mind, he must have made the best possible laws. If this is true, not one of these laws can be violated without producing a posi- tive injury. It does not seem probable that infinite wisdom would violate a law that infinite wisdom had made. Most ministers insist that God now and then in- terferes in the affairs of this world; that he has not interfered as much lately as he did formerly. When the world was comparatively new, it required alto- gether more tinkering and fixing than at present. 344 Things are at last in a reasonably good condition, and consequently a great amount of interference is not necessary. In old times it was found necessary fre- quently to raise the dead, to change the nature of fire and water, to punish people with plagues and famine, to destroy cities by storms of fire and brimstone, to change women into salt, to cast hailstones upon heathen, to interfere with the movements of our planetary system, to stop the earth not only, but sometimes to make it turn the other way, to arrest the moon, and to make water stand up like a wall. Now and then, rivers were divided by striking them with a coat, and people were taken to heaven in chariots of fire. These miracles, in addition to curing the sick, the halt, the deaf and blind, were in former times found necessary, but since the "apostolic age," nothing of the kind has been resorted to except in Catholic countries. Since the death of the last apostle, God has appeared only to members of the Catholic Church, and all modern miracles have been performed for the benefit of Catholicism. There is no authentic account of the Virgin Mary having ever appeared to a Protestant. The bones of Protestant saints have never cured a solitary disease. Protest- ants now say that the testimony of the Catholics can 345