n on
Trinity Sunday,--whether I preached at St. James's, or in a country
village.

Ib. pp. 374-378.

As a reason why we should doubt our own judgment, it is quite fair to
remind the objector, that the same difficulty occurs in the scheme of
God's ordinary providence. But that a difficulty in a supposed article
of revealed truth is solved by the occurrence of the same or of an
equivalent difficulty in the common course of human affairs--this I find
it hard to conceive. How was the religious, as distinguished from the
moral, sense first awakened? What made the human soul feel the necessity
of a faith in God, but the apparent incongruity of certain dispensations
in this world with the idea of God, with the law written in the heart?
Is not the reconciling of these facts or 'phaenomena' with the divine
attributes, one of the purposes of a revealed religion? But even this is
not a full statement of the defect complained of in this solution. A
difficulty which may be only apparent (like that other of the prosperity
of the wicked) is solved by the declaration of its reality! A difficulty
grounded on the fact of temporal and outward privations and sufferings,
is solved by being infinitely increased, that is, by the assertion of
the same principle on the determination of our inward and everlasting
weal and woe. That there is nothing in the Christian Faith or in the
Canonical Scriptures, when rightly interpreted, that requires such an
argument, or sanctions the recourse to it, I believe myself to have
proved in the Aids to Reflection. For observe that "to solve" has a
scientific, and again a religious sense, and that in the latter, a
difficulty is satisfactorily solved, as soon as its insolvibility for
the human mind is proved and accounted for.

Ib. (Disc. XIV. pp. 500-502.)

Christianity proved by Miracles.

I cannot see and never could, the purpose, or 'cui bono', of this
reasoning. To whom is it addressed? To a man who denies a God, or that
God can reveal his will to mankind? If such a man be not below talking
to, he must first be convinced of his miserable blindness respecting
these truths; for these are clearly presupposed in every proof of
miracles generally.

Again, does he admit the authenticity of the Gospels, and the veracity
of the Evangelists? Does he credit the facts there related, and as
related? If not, these points must be proved; for these are clearly
presupposed in all reasoning on the particular m