whole body of his afflicted countrymen: but for that very reason he was also a creditor; a creditor entitled to draw upon the amplest funds of indulgence; and privileged to congregate his countrymen wherever he moved. Here opened suddenly a broad avenue to social intercourse, without which all communication for purposes of religious teaching would have been sealed against Christ. As a _hakim_, Christ obtained that unlimited freedom of intercourse with the populace, which, as a religious proselytizer, he never could have obtained. Here, therefore, and perhaps by the very earliest exemplification of the serpent's wisdom and foresight engrafting itself upon the holy purposes of dovelike benignity, Christ kept open for himself (and for his disciples in times to come) the freedom of public communication, and the license of public meetings. Once announcing himself, and attesting his own mission as a _hakim_, he could not be rejected or thwarted as a public oracle of truth and practical counsel to human weakness. This explains, what else would have been very obscure, the undue emphasis which Christ allowed men to place upon his _sanatory_ miracles. His very name in Greek, viz., Ιησδς, presented him to men under the idea of the _healer_; but then, to all who comprehended his secret and ultimate functions, as a healer of unutterable and spiritual wounds. That usurpation, by which a very trivial function of Christ's public ministrations was allowed to disturb and sometimes to eclipse far grander pretensions, carried with it so far an erroneous impression. But then, on the other hand, seventy-fold it redeemed that error, by securing (which nothing else could have secured) the benefit of a perpetual passport to the _religious_ missionary: since, once admitted as a medical counsellor, the missionary, the _hakim_, obtained an _unlimited_ right of intercourse. If medical advice, why not religious advice? And subsequently, by the continuance of the same _medical_ gifts to the apostles and their successors, all exercised the same powers, and benefited by the same privileges as _hakims_. ON HUME'S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES. [1839.] Hume's argument against miracles is simply this:--Every possible event, however various in its degree of credibility, must, of necessity, be more credible when it rests upon a sufficient cause lying within the field of what is called _nature_, than when it does not: more credible when it obeys some mechanical cause, than when it transcends such a cause, and is miraculous.