pretended revelation could have been nothing else than a conspiracy of crafty statesmen for political purposes.  It was sagely remarked, that it was not wonderful that a doctrine had been believed, and had rapidly diffused itself, which had all the prestige of rank, and power, and statesmanship in its favor; that if, indeed, it had appeared amongst the poor and ignorant portion of mankind, and the had been witnessed by such as from their situation were rather likely to be persecuted by the great and powerful than to be favored by them; and lastly, if the pretended revelation had vanquished such resistance instead of being suspiciously allied with it, something more might be said in its behalf; but as it was, the whole thing was evidently—­a lie.

“Really,” said I, “it seems a more difficult thing for God to make known his will to mankind than I had supposed.”

“It is,” said he, “on those conditions to which his wisdom for man’s own sake has restricted him, and apart from which condition I have already stated that a revelation would be worthless.  It is a far more difficult matter than those who have not reflected upon the subject would suppose, and you would have more reason to say so still, if you knew, as I do, how ludicrously, as well as how utterly, many other attempts have failed.”

He then amused me with an account of a sage, who, seeing the ill consequences which had followed from the very local or limited character of miracles (when a few generations had passed by), resolved to remedy this by a series of wonders so stupendous and magnificent, that the very echo of them, as it were, should reverberate through the hollow of future ages, and so impress all tradition as to render them independent of the voice of individual historians.  He accordingly passed to the very extreme limit (if he did not go beyond it) by which a miracle is necessarily restricted,—­ that of not disturbing general laws.  He succeeded perfectly in the place in which these phenomena were witnessed; though, as there were multitudes who knew nothing of the operator, but were only conscious that nature was playing some strange pranks, no connection was established in their minds between the doctrine and the miracles.  But the consequences in the future were the direct contrary of what the sanguine philosopher had contemplated.  If the impression of those who saw these splendid wonders could have been prolonged, all had been well; but so far from the report of them conciliating the regard of posterity, their very grandeur and vastness were the principal arguments against them, and condemned them to universal rejection.  Who could believe, men said, that phenomena so strange and so portentous—­not only so different from, and so contrary to, the uniform course of nature, but so much beyond the limited purpose which must have been contemplated by a truly miraculous interposition—­had ever happened?  If they had been single events, very transient and local disturbances of the laws of nature for a high object, the case, they candidly avowed, would have been wholly different; but such wholesale infractions of the fixed laws of the universe were at once to be summarily rejected.  They were unquestionably the offspring of an age of fable and superstition.