the laws of nature is not based upon my
experience, or yours, but upon the testimony of our teachers; which, so
far from being uniform and invariable as to the supremacy of the
commonplace in nature, is perfectly conclusive as to the repeated
occurrence of the miraculous. The miracles of Scripture are better
authenticated than the facts of science.

Scientific men talk a great deal of nonsense about the laws of nature,
as if they were the only agents known in this world. But every man knows
that he himself possesses the power to control the laws of nature, by
bringing a higher law to arrest a lower; as when the power of vegetation
arrests the law of gravitation, and sends the drop of rain which had
trickled down the outside of the bark of the pine, climbing up again a
hundred feet; or as when the power of animal life converts a hundred
weight of grass into a leg of mutton; or as when the power of the human
intellect transforms a pound of zinc into telegrams, or a ton of niter
and sulphur into death and destruction. Now if man can thus control and
use the laws of nature for human purposes, why can not the God who made
him so cunning do as much? Aye, and as much more as God is greater than
man?

But we are told that no testimony can prove that any wonderful work has
been wrought by God. "No testimony can reach to the supernatural;
testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts; testimony can only
prove an extraordinary, and perhaps inexplicable, phenomenon or
occurrence; that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent
on the previous belief or assumption of the parties."[124]

But when Christ said, "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then
the kingdom of God is come unto you;" or when he said, at the grave of
Lazarus, to Martha, "Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe
thou shouldest see the glory of God?" can we not believe our Lord's
testimony, that he cast out devils, and raised the dead, by the direct
intervention of God? He appeals to his miracles as evidences of his
divine authority: "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear
witness of me." "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But
if I do though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may know
and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him."[125] Now I demand
to know whether this testimony of our Lord is not to be believed? And
whether he does not directly claim to work miracles by the immediat