that He is the source of all existence, the Creator
of the substance of things, so too does it assert that He gave all
things their special properties and the laws of those properties, and
that not only the original creation, but all the subsequent history of
all things has been the outcome of His design, and that He has thus
prescribed the government of the whole universe. And yet again the
Revelation from the beginning to the end maintains His living Presence
in and over all things that He has thus formed, and denies that He has
parted with His power to do fresh acts of creation, fresh acts of
government, whenever and wherever He sees fit. For He is necessarily
free and cannot be restrained by anything but His own holiness. And
unless He expressly revealed to us that His own holiness prevented Him
from interfering with His own creation, we could not put limits to what
He could do. The Revelation that He has given us says just the contrary,
and from end to end implies that He is present in the government of the
creation which He has made.

What evidence, then, is there in the world of phenomena that He has ever
thus interfered? Putting aside as untenable all idea of _a priori_
impossibility, admitting that God can work a miracle if He will,
admitting that a miracle avowedly worked in the interest of a divine
revelation stands on a totally different footing from a miracle avowedly
worked in any other interest, putting the breach of the law of
uniformity made by a miracle on the same footing as the breach of the
same law made by a human will; we have to ask what evidence can be given
that any such miracles as are recorded in the Bible have ever been
worked?

It is plain at once that the answer must be given by the New Testament.
No _such_ evidence can now be produced on behalf of the miracles in the
Old Testament. The times are remote; the date and authorship of the
Books not established with certainty; the mixture of poetry with history
no longer capable of any sure separation into its parts; and, if the New
Testament did not exist, it would be impossible to show such a distinct
preponderance of probability as would justify us in calling on any to
accept the miraculous parts of the narrative as historically true.

But in the New Testament we stand on different ground. And we have here
first the evidence which Paley has put together to show that the early
Christians spent their lives and finally surrendered their lives