St. Columba or St. Martin as a tissue of idle fable?  Why should not God give a power to the saint which he had given to the prophet?  We can produce no reason from the nature of things, for we know not what the nature of things is; and if down to the death of the Apostles the ministers of religion were allowed to prove their commission by working miracles, what right have we, on grounds either of history or philosophy, to draw a clear line at the death of St. John, to say that before that time all such stories were true, and after it all were false?

There is no point on which Protestant controversialists evade the real question more habitually than on that of miracles.  They accuse those who withhold that unreserved and absolute belief which they require for all which they accept themselves, of denying that miracles are possible.  That they assume to be the position taken up by the objector, and proceed easily to argue that man is no judge of the power of God.  Of course he is not.  No sane man ever raised his narrow understanding into a measure of the possibilities of the universe; nor does any person with any pretensions to religion disbelieve in miracles of some kind.  To pray is to expect a miracle.  When we pray for the recovery of a sick friend, for the gift of any blessing, or the removal of any calamity, we expect that God will do something by an act of his personal will which otherwise would not have been done—­that he will suspend the ordinary relations of natural cause and effect; and this is the very idea of a miracle.  The thing we pray for may be given us, and no miracle may have taken place.  It may be given to us by natural causes, and would have occurred whether we had prayed or not.  But prayer itself in its very essence implies a belief in the possible intervention of a power which is above nature.  The question about miracles is simply one of evidence—­whether in any given case the proof is so strong that no room is left for mistake, exaggeration, or illusion, while more evidence is required to establish a fact antecedently improbable than is sufficient for a common occurrence.

It has been said recently by “A Layman,” in a letter to Mr. Maurice, that the resurrection of our Lord is as well authenticated as the death of Julius Caesar.  It is far better authenticated, unless we are mistaken in supposing the Bible inspired; or if we admit as evidence that inward assurance of the Christian, which would make him rather die than disbelieve a truth so dear to him.  But if the layman meant that there was as much proof of it, in the sense in which proof is understood in a court of justice, he could scarcely have considered what he was saying.  Julius Caesar was killed in a public place, in the presence of friend and foe, in a remarkable but still perfectly natural manner.  The circumstances were minutely known to all the world, and were never denied or doubted by any one.  Our Lord, however, seems purposely to have withheld