To this argument, if somewhat limited in the extent of its conclusion, I believe that most Unitarians would yield their assent. Certain it is that their best writers constantly reason from the miraculous acts, to the doctrinal inspiration of the first preachers of Christianity; and Dr. Priestley calls it “egregious trifling”[66] to question the soundness of the proof. Yet it is surely difficult to reconcile it with fact and Scripture; and not less so to state it logically in words. In whatever form it is expressed, it rests upon a postulate which I hold to be false and irreligious; viz., that the supernatural is Divine, the natural not Divine; that God did the miracles, and since the creation has done nothing else; that Heaven gave a mission to those whom it thus endowed, and has given no mission to those who are otherwise endowed. All peculiar _consecration_ of miracle is obtained by a precisely proportioned _desecration_ of nature; it is out of a supposed contrast between the two, that the whole force of the impression arises. The imagination which overlooks and forgets all that is sacred in the common earth and sky, that gives itself over to the dream, that all is dead mechanism,—downright clock-work, wound up, perhaps at creation, but running down of itself till doom; the heart that feels nothing divine in life, and nothing holy in man; that has lost, from Epicurean sloth and sickness of soul, the healthy faculty of spontaneous wonder, and worship ever fresh,—are the pupils most ripe for this tutelage. The Deity must be thrust from the universe, or else benumbed there, in order to concentrate his energies in the preternatural. The speculative convert to miracles, is the practical Atheist of nature. I need not remind any reader of the Gospels, of the accordance of this view with the general temper of our Lord’s mind. His miracles, surely, sprung from compassionate, not proselytizing impulses; had a practical, not a didactic air; were not formally wrought as preliminaries to a discourse, but spontaneously issued from the quietude of pity; they were not syllogisms, but mercies. Nay, where conviction was most needed, what is said of him? “He did not many mighty works there, _because of their unbelief_;”[67] unless he wished them to continue in unbelief, he must have regarded miracles as an improper instrument of overcoming it. And can we forget his language of rebuke, “except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,”[68] When he appeals to his “_works_,” it is to his “_many good works_;”[69] to the benevolence of his acts, not their marvellousness chiefly, to their being “the works of his Father,”[70] conceived in the spirit of God, and bearing the impress of his character.