natural to those who have no knowledge of the means. And shall we say that beings superior to man may not have powers of a more considerable extent, which they may exercise in a more summary way,—which produce effects far more wonderful, such as shall be truly miraculous with respect to our conceptions, who have no knowledge of their means?

Then, for Scripture, it is very explicit in asserting the existence of an order of beings far superior to man; and it gives something more than obscure intimations, that the holy angels are employed upon extraordinary occasions in the affairs of men, and the management of this sublunary world.

But the Pharisees went farther: their argument sup posed that even the apostate spirits have powers adequate to the production of preternatural effects. And, with respect to this general principle, there is nothing either in reason or Scripture to confute it.

Reason must recur again to analogy. And we find not that the powers which men exercise over the natural elements, are at all proportioned to the different degrees of their moral goodness or their religious attainments. The stoic and the libertine, the sinner and the saint, are equally adroit in the application of the telescope and the quadrant,—in the use of the compass,-in the manage. ment of the sail, the rudder, and the oar,-and in the exercise of the clectrical machine. Since, then, in our own order of being, the power of the individual over external bodies is not at all proportioned to his piety or his morals, but is exercised indiscriminately, and in equal degrees, by the good and by the bad, we have no reason from analogy to suppose but that the like indiscrimination may obtain in higher orders, and that both the good and evil angels may exercise powers far transcending any we possess, the effects of which to us will seem preternatural: for there is nothing in this to disturb

the established order of things, since these powers are, no less than our own, subject to the sovereign control of God, who makes the actions of evil angels, as of bad men, subservient to the accomplishment of his own will, and will not suffer the effects of them finally to thwart his general schemes of mercy.

The Scriptures, again, confirm the principle. We read, in the book of Exodus, of an express trial of skill, if we may be allowed the expression, between Moses and the magicians of Egypt, in the exercise of miraculous powers, in which the magicians were completely foiled, not because their feats were not miraculous, but because their power, as they were at last driven to confess, extended not to those things which Moses did. They performed some miracles; but Moses performed many more and much greater. When the wands of the magicians were cast upon the ground, and became serpents, the fact, considered in itself, was as much a miracle as when Aaron's rod was cast upon the ground and became a serpent; for it was as much a miracle that one dry stick should become a live serpent as another. When the magicians turned the water into blood, we must confess it was miraculous, or we must deny that it was a miracle when Aaron turned the water into blood. When the frogs left their marshy bed to croak in the chambers of the king, it was a miracle, whether the frogs came up at the call of Moses and Aaron, or of Jannes and Jambres. And the sacred history gives not the least intimation of any imposture in these performances of the magicians: it only exhibits the circumstances in which Moses's miracles exceeded those of the magicians; and marks the point where the power of the magicians, by their own confession, stopped, when Moses's went on, as it should seem, without limits. Now, whoever will allow that these things done by the magicians were miraculous,i. e. beyond the natural powers of man,

must allow that they were done by some familiarity of these magicians with the Devil: for they were done in express defiance of God's power; they were done to discredit his messenger, and to encourage the king of Egypt to disregard the message.

It was not, therefore, in the general principle, that miracles may be wrought by the aid of evil spirits, that the weakness lay of the objection made by the Pharisees to our Lord's miracles, as evidence of his mission. Our Lord himself called not this general principle in question, any more than the writers of the Old Testament call in question the reality of the miracles of the Egyptian magicians. But the folly of their objection lay in their application of it to the specific instance of our Lord's miracles, which, as he replied to them at the time, were works no less diametrically opposite to the Devil's purposes, and the interests of his kingdom, than the feats of Pharaoh's magicians, or any other wonders that have at any time been exhibited by wicked men in compact with the Devil, have been in opposition to God. Our Lord's miracles, in the immediate effects of the individual acts, were works of charity: they were works which, in the immediate effect of the individual acts, rescued the bodies of miserable men from that tyranny, which before the coming of our Lord, the Devil had been permitted to exercise over them; and the general end and intention of them all, was the utter demolition of the Devil's kingdom, and the establishment of the kingdom of God upon its ruins. And to suppose that the Devil lent his own power for the furtherance of this work, was, as our Lord justly argued, to suppose that the Devil was waging war upon himself.

There is, however, another principle upon which the truth of our Lord's miracles, as evidence of his mission from the Father, may be argued,-a principle which applies to our Lord's miracles exclusively, and gives

them a degree of credit beyond any miracles, except his own, and those which after his ascension were performed by his disciples, in his name, in the primitive ages. To this principle we are led, by considering the manner in which the particular miracle to which my text relates affected the spectators of it, who seem to have been persons of a very different complexion from any that have yet come before us.

"They were beyond measure astonished;"-so we read in our English Bibles; but the better rendering of the Greek words of the evangelist would be, "They were superabundantly astonished, saying, He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak."

They were superabundantly astonished;-not that their astonishment was out of proportion to the extraordinary nature of the thing they had seen, as if the thing was less extraordinary than they thought it; but their astonishment was justly carried to a height which no astonishment could exceed. This is that superabundant astonishment which the evangelist describes, not taxing it with extravagance. It was not the astonishment of ignorance: it was an astonishment upon principle and upon knowledge. It was not the astonishment of those who saw a thing done which they thought utterly unaccountable. They knew how to account for it: they knew that the finger of God himself was the efficient cause of what they saw; and to that cause, they, without hesitation, yet not hastily and in surprise, but upon the most solid principles of belief, referred it. It was not the astonishment of those who see a thing done which they thought would never come to pass: it was the astonishment of those who find a hope which they had entertained of something very extraordinary to be done, satisfied in a degree equal to or beyond their utmost expectations: it was the astonishment of those

who saw an extraordinary thing, which they expected to take place some time or other, but knew not exactly when, accomplished in their own times, and under their own inspection: it was that sort of astonishment which any of us, who firmly expect the second coming of our Lord, but knowing not the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power, look not for it at any definite time,-it was that sort of astonishment which we should feel, if we saw the sign of the Son of Man this moment displayed in the heavens: for, observe the remark of these people upon the miracle, "He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak." To have done a thing well, is a sort of commendation which we bestow, not upon a man that performs some extraordinary feat, which we had no reason to expect from him, but upon a man who executes that which by his calling and profession it is his proper task to do, in the manner that we have a right to expect and demand of him, who pretends and professes to be a master in that particular business. This is the praise which these people bestowed upon our Lord's performances. "He hath done all things well;" he hath done every thing in the most perfect manner which we had a right to expect that he should do, who should come to us assuming the character of our Messiah.

The ancient prophecies had described all the circumstances of our Saviour's birth, life, and death; and, with other circumstances, had distinctly specified the sort of miracles which he should perform. This is the circumstance which, I say, is peculiar to our Lord's miracles, and puts the evidence of them beyond all doubt, and supersedes the necessity of all disputation concerning the general evidence of miracles. Our Lord, and of all persons who have ever appeared in the world, pretending to work miracles, or really working miracles