t the greater part are doubtful, and many are wicked
impostures. These last, of course, give occasion to the enemy to
disparage the whole system of which they are assumed to be a part, but
they tell against Christianity only in the same sense in which all
tolerated falsehood or evil in the Church obscures its witness to those
eternal truths of which it is "the pillar and the ground."

Now, all this is equally applicable to Superstition generally in
relation to the supernatural. As the counterfeit miracles of the later
ages witness that there must have been true ones to account for the very
existence of the counterfeit, so the universal existence of Superstition
witnesses to the reality of those supernatural interpositions of which
it is the distorted image. If Hume's doctrine be true, that a miracle,
_i.e._ a supernatural interposition, is contrary to universal
experience and so incredible--if from the first beginning of things
there has been one continuous sequence of natural cause and effect,
unbroken by the interposition of any superior power, how is it that
mankind have ever formed a conception of a supernatural power? And yet
the conception, in the shape of superstition at least, is absolutely
universal. Tribes who have no idea of the existence of God, use charms
and incantations to propitiate unseen powers.

Now, the distortion witnesses to the reality of that of which it is the
distortion; the caricature to the existence of the feature caricatured.
And so the universality of the existence of Superstition witnesses to
the reality of these supernatural revelations and interpositions to
which alone such a thing can be referred as its origin.

SECTION XXII.

JEWISH CREDULITY.

Another argument which the author of "Supernatural Religion" uses to
discredit miracles, is the superstition of the Jews, especially in our
Lord's time, and their readiness to believe any miraculous story. He
seems to suppose that this superstition reached its extreme point in the
age in which Christ lived, which he calls "the age of miracles." He also
assumes that it was an age of strong religious feeling and excitement.
He says:--

"During the whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the
religion, it must be borne in mind that they took place in an age,
and among a people, which superstition had made so familiar with
what were supposed to be preternatural events, that wonders awakened
no emotion, o