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All pious Christians feel, and all the New Testament proclaims, that
Faith is a moral act and a test of the moral and spiritual that is
within us; so that he who is without faith, (faithless, unfaithful,
"infidel,") is morally wanting and is cut off from God. To assent to
a religious proposition _solely_ in obedience to an outward miracle,
would be Belief; but would not be Faith, any more than is scientific
conviction. Bishop Butler and all his followers can insist with much
force on this topic, when it suits them, and can quote most aptly
from the New Testament to the same effect. They deduce, that a really
overpowering miraculous proof would have destroyed the moral character
of Faith: yet they do not see that the argument supersedes the
authoritative force of outward miracles entirely. It had always
appeared to me very strange in these divines, to insist on the
stupendous character and convincing power of the Christian miracles,
and then, in reply to the objection that they were _not_ quite
convincing, to say that the defect was purposely left "to try people's
Faith." Faith in what? Not surely in the confessedly ill-proved
miracle, but in the truth as discernible by the heart _without aid of
miracle._

I conceived of two men, Nathaniel and Demas, encountering a pretender
to miracles, a Simon Magus of the scriptures. Nathaniel is guileless,
sweet-hearted and of strong moral sense, but in worldly matters rather
a simpleton. Demas is a sharp man, who gets on well in the world,
quick of eye and shrewd of wit, hard-headed and not to be imposed upon
by his fellows; but destitute of any high religious aspirations or
deep moral insight. The juggleries of Simon are readily discerned by
Demas, but thoroughly deceive poor Nathaniel: what then is the latter
to do? To say that we are to receive true miracles and reject false
ones, avails not, unless the mind is presumed to be capable of
discriminating the one from the other. The wonders of Simon are as
divine as the wonders of Jesus to a man, who, like Nathaniel, can
account for neither by natural causes. If we enact the rule, that men
are to "submit their understandings" to apparent prodigies, and
that "revelation" is a thing of the outward senses, we alight on the
unendurable absurdity, that Demas has faculties better fitted than
those of Nathaniel for discriminating religious truth and error, and
that Nathaniel, in obedience to eye and ear,