taken down before a magistrate of known integrity and acuteness:
would all this constitute even presumptive evidence that C.D. had worked
a miracle? Unquestionably not. For the most important link in the whole
chain of evidence is wanting, and that is the proof that A.B. was really
dead. The evidence of ordinary observers on such a point as this is
absolutely worthless. And, even medical evidence, unless the physician
is a person of unusual knowledge and skill, may have little more value.
Unless careful thermometric observation proves that the temperature has
sunk below a certain point; unless the cadaveric stiffening of the
muscles has become well established; all the ordinary signs of death may
be fallacious, and the intervention of C.D. may have had no more to do
with A.B.'s restoration to life than any other fortuitously coincident
event.

It may be said that such a coincidence would be more wonderful than the
miracle itself. Nevertheless history acquaints us with coincidences as
marvellous.

On the 19th of February, 1842, Sir Robert Sale held Jellalabad with a
small English force and, daily expecting attack from an overwhelming
force of Afghans, had spent three months in incessantly labouring to
improve the fortifications of the town. Akbar Khan had approached within
a few miles, and an onslaught of his army was supposed to be imminent.
That morning an earthquake--

"nearly destroyed the town, threw down the greater part of the
parapets, the central gate with the adjoining bastions, and a part
of the new bastion which flanked it. Three other bastions were also
nearly destroyed, whilst several large breaches were made in the
curtains, and the Peshawur side, eighty feet long, was quite
practicable, the ditch being filled, and the descent easy. Thus in
one moment the labours of three months were in a great measure
destroyed."[27]

If Akbar Khan had happened to give orders for an assault in the early
morning of the 19th of February, what good follower of the Prophet could
have doubted that Allah had lent his aid? As it chanced, however,
Mahometan faith in the miraculous took another turn; for the energetic
defenders of the post had repaired the damage by the end of the month;
and the enemy, finding no signs of the earthquake when they invested the
place, ascribed the supposed immunity of Jellalabad to English
witchcraft.

But the conditions of belief do not vary with tim