even beheld a person, exhibiting all the common evidences of death, instantly resuscitated merely by being desired to live."

(2.) Testimony of Miracles.—A miracle is the testimony of God, and therefore becomes a proof of the character or mission of him by whom it was wrought, professedly wrought, for the confirmation of either; for, from the perfect veracity of Him who is the Supreme Being, it irresistibly results that He never can give, nor rationally be supposed to give, his testimony to anything but truth; therefore, when a miracle is wrought avowedly in confirmation of anything, or as evidence of anything, we know that that thing is true, because God has given to it his testimony. The miracles of Moses and of Our Lord were thus wrought to prove that their mission and doctrine were from God; therefore, they certainly were from God. Miracles, then, under which we include prophecy, are the only direct evidence which can be given of Divine inspiration. When a religion, or any religious truth, is to be revealed from heaven, miracles appear to be absolutely necessary to enforce its reception among men; and this is the only case in which we can suppose them necessary, or believe for a moment that they ever have been or will be performed. The history of almost every religion abounds with relations of prodigies and wonders, and of the intercourse of men with the gods; but we know of no religious system, those of the Jews and Christians excepted, which appealed to miracles as the great evidence of its truth and divinity. The pretended miracles mentioned by pagan historians and poets, were not even alleged to have been publicly wrought to enforce the truth of a new religion, contrary to the reigning idolatry. Many of them may be clearly shown to have been mere natural events; others of them are represented as having been performed in secret on the most trivial occasions, and in obscure and fabulous ages, long prior to the æra of the writers by whom they are recorded; and such of them as at first view appear to be best attested, are evidently tricks contrived for interested purposes, to flatter power, or to promote the prevailing superstitions. For these reasons, as well as on account of the immoral character of the divinities by whom they are said to have been wrought, they are altogether unworthy of comparison with those of the Scriptures, not to say of examination, and carry in the very nature of them the completest proof of falsehood and imposture.

In the conduct of Providence respecting the Jewish people, from the earliest periods of their existence as a distinct class of society to the present time, we behold a singularity of circumstance and procedure which we cannot account for on common principles. Comparing their condition and situation with that of other nations, we can meet with nothing similar to it in the history of mankind. So remarkable a difference, conspicuous in every revolution of their history, could not have subsisted through mere accident. There must have been a cause adequate to so extraordinary an effect, and what can this cause be, but an interposition of Providence, in a manner different from the course of its general government? For the phenomenon cannot be explained by an application of those general causes and effects that operate in other cases. It may also be observed, that the institutions of the Law and the Gospel may not only appeal for their confirmation to a train of events which, taken in a general and combined view, point out an extraordinary designation, and vindicate their claim to a Divine authority; but also to a number of particular operations which, considered distinctly, or in a separate and detached light, evidently display a supernatural power, immediately exerted on the occasion.

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The miracles of Christianity are all related by eyewitnesses, and that the Apostles could not be deceived, and that they had no temptation to deceive, has been repeatedly demonstrated. So powerful, indeed, is the proof adduced in support of their testimony, that infidels of these later days have been obliged to abandon the ground on which their predecessors stood; to disclaim all moral evidences arising from the character and relation of eye-witnesses; and to maintain upon metaphysical, rather than historical principles, that miracles are utterly incapable, in their own nature, of existing in any circumstances, or of being supported by any evidence. Mr. Hume has insidiously or erroneously maintained that a miracle is contrary to experience; but, in reality, it is only different from ordinary experience. That diseases should generally be cured by the application of medicine, and sometimes at the mere word of a prophet, are facts not inconsistent with each other in the nature of things themselves, nor, when properly considered, even apparently irreconcileable. Each fact may arise from its own proper cause; each may exist independently of the other; and each is known by its own proper proof, whether of sense or testimony. To pronounce, therefore, a miracle to be false, because it is different from ordinary experience, is only to conclude against its existence from the very circumstance which constitutes its specific character; for if it were not different from ordinary experience, where would be its singularity? or what proof could be drawn from it, in attestation of a Divine message? We have been told that the course of nature is fixed and unalterable, and therefore it is not consistent with the immutability of God to perform miracles. But, surely, they who reason in this manner, beg the very point in question. We have no right to assume that the Deity has ordained such general laws for his own operations as will exclude his acting in other modes, and we cannot suppose that He would forbear so to act, when any important end could be answered. Besides, if the course of nature implies the whole order of events which God has ordained for the government of the world, it includes both his ordinary and his extraordinary dispensations, and among them miracles may have their place, as an inseparable part of the universal plan. This is, indeed, equally consistent with sound philosophy and with pure religion. He that acknow. ledges a God, must at least admit the possibility of a miracle. He who admits the creation of the world, believes in the actual occurrence of a miracle. He who concedes that the world is under the control of a wise and beneficent Providence, cannot deny that a particular operation of that Providence for beneficent purposes is both consistent and desirable.

Whenever miracles are wrought, they are matters of fact, and are capable of being proved by proper evidence, as other facts are. To those who beheld the miracles wrought by Moses and Jesus Christ, as well as by his Apostles, the seeing of those miracles performed was sufficient evidence of the Divine inspiration of Moses and Jesus Christ. That, abstractedly considered, they are not incredible; that they are capable of indirect proof from analogy, and of direct, from testimony; that in the common and daily course of worldly affairs, events, the improbability of which, antecedently to all testimony, was very great, are proved to have happened, by the authority of competent and honest witnesses; that the Christian miracles were objects of real and proper experience to those who saw them; and that whatsoever the senses of mankind can perceive, their reports may sub-. stantiate, are points which it is impossible for any clear reasoner, or any believer in Revelation, to deny. Should it be asked whether miracles were necessary, and

whether the end proposed to be effected by them could warrant so immediate and extraordinary an interference of the Almighty, as such extraordinary operations suppose; to this we might answer, that if the fact be established, all reasonings à priori concerning their necessity must be frivolous and may be false. We are not capable of deciding on a question which, however simple in appearance, is yet too complex in its parts, and too extensive in its object to be fully comprehended by the human understanding. God is the best, and indeed the only judge, how far his miracles are proper to promote any particular design of his providence, and how far that design would have been left unaccomplished if common and ordinary methods only had been pursued. So from the absence of miracles we may conclude, in any supposed case, that they were not necessary; from their existence, supported by fair testimony, in any given case, we may infer with confidence that they are proper. A view of the state of the world in general, and of the Jewish nation in particular, and an examination of the nature and tendency of the Christian religion, will point out very clearly the great expediency of a miraculous interposition at the very period when the miracles of Our Lord are related to have been performed; and when we reflect on the gracious and important ends that were to be effected by it, we shall be convinced that it was not an idle and useless display of Divine power; but that, while the means effected and confirmed the end, the end fully justified and illustrated the means. If we reflect on the extent and importance of the Christian revelation; what was its avowed purpose to effect, and what difficulties it was necessarily called to struggle with before that purpose could be effected; how much it was opposed by the opinions and the practice of the generality of mankind, by philosophy, by superstition, by corrupt passions and inveterate habits, by pride and sensuality, in short, by every engine of human influence; if we reflect on the almost irresistible force of prejudice, and the strong opposition it universally makes to the establishment of a new religion on the demolition of rites and ceremonies, which authority had made sacred, and custom had familiarized; if we seriously reflect on these things, and give them their due force, (and experience shows us that we can scarcely give them too much,) we shall be induced to admit even the necessity of a miraculous interposition, at a time when common means must inevitably have failed of success.

The revelation of the Divine will by inspired persons is, as such, miraculous; and therefore before the adversaries of the Gospel can employ with propriety their objections to the particular miracles on which its credibility is based, they should show the impossibility of any revelation. In whatever age the revelation is given, that age can have no other demonstration of its authority but miracles, and succeeding ages can know it only from testimony; so that if they admit the one, they cannot deny the other.

(3.) Credibility of the Evangelical Records.-The miracles performed by Our Lord and his Apostles are facts which were recorded by those who must have known whether they were true or false. The persons who recorded them were under no possible temptations to deceive the world; and we can only account for their conduct on the supposition of most perfect conviction and disinterested zeal. That they should assert what they knew to be false; that they should publish it with so much ardour; that they should risk everything dear to humanity, in order to maintain it; and at last submit to death, in order to attest their persuasion of its truth in those moments when imposture usually drops its mask, and enthusiasm loses its confidence; that they

should act thus in opposition to every dictate of common sense, and every principle of common honesty, every restraint of shame, and every impulse of selfishness, is a phenomenon not less irreconcileable to the moral state of things than miracles are to the natural constitution of the world.

(i.) Miracles of Our Lord.-Since Our Lord himself constantly appealed to the "wonderful things He did," (Matt. 21. 15,) as the evidences of his Divine mission and character, we may briefly examine how far they justified and confirmed his pretensions. That Our Lord laid the greatest stress on the evidence they afforded; nay, that He considered that evidence as sufficient to authenticate his claims to the office of the Messiah, is manifest not only from his own words, (Matt. 11. 25; John 10. 25,) but also from a great variety of other passages in the Evangelists, especially John 10. 37, "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not; but if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works." This appeal to miracles was founded on the following just and obvious grounds:-First, That they are visible proofs of Divine approbation, as well as of Divine power; for it would have been quite inconclusive to rest an appeal on the testimony of the latter, if it had not, at the same time, included an evidence of the former; and it was, indeed, a natural inference, that the power of working miracles, in support of a particular cause, was the seal of heaven to the truth of that cause. To suppose the contrary would be to suppose that God not only permitted his creatures to be deceived, but that He deviated from the course of his providence purposely with a view to deceive them.

Secondly: When Our Lord appealed to his miracles as proofs of his Divine mission, it pre-supposed that those miracles were of such a nature as would bear the strictest examination; that they had all those criteria which could possibly distinguish them from the delusions of enthusiasm, and the artifices of imposture; else the appeal would have been fallacious and equivocal. This appeal was not drawn out into any laboured argument, nor adorned by any of the embellishments of language. It was short, simple, and decisive. He neither reasoned nor declaimed on their nature or their design; he barely pointed to them as plain and indubitable facts, such as spoke their own meaning, and carried with them their own authority. The miracles which Our Lord performed were too public to be suspected of imposture; and being objects of sense, they were secured against the charge of enthusiasm. An impostor would not have acted so absurdly as to have risked his credit on the performance of what he must have known it was not in his power to effect; and though an enthusiast, from the warmth of imagination, might have flattered himself with a full persuasion of his being able to perform some miraculous work, yet, when the trial was referred to an object of sense, the event must soon have exposed the delusion. The impostor would not have dared to say to the blind, Receive thy sight; to the deaf, Hear; to the dumb, Speak; to the dead, Arise; to the raging of the sea, Be still; lest he should injure the credit of his cause by undertaking more than he could perform; and though the enthusiast, under the delusion of his passions, might have confidently commanded disease to fly, and the powers of nature to be subject to his control, yet their obedience would not have followed his command.

The miracles of Our Lord, then, were such as an impostor would not have attempted, and such as an enthusiast could not have effected. They had no disguise; and were, in a variety of instances, of such a nature as to preclude the very possibility of collusion. They were performed in the midst of his bitterest enemies; and

posed to refer to the same phenomenon: "Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail?" The Hebrew gives more properly, "Waters that are not to be trusted," that is, such as are delusive and disappoint expectation.

This very remarkable phenomenon, the mirage, has been noticed by numerous travellers in the East, some few of whose statements we shall extract: Sir John Chardin says, "There is a vapour or splendour in the plains of the desert formed by the repercussion of the rays from the sand, that appears like a vast lake. Travellers afflicted with thirst are drawn on by such appearances, but coming near find themselves mistaken; it seems to draw back as they advance or quite vanishes." Buckingham, in his Travels in Mesopotamia, speaks much to the same effect: "To the south-east, at a distance of four or five miles we noticed on the yellow sands two black masses, but whether they were the bodies of dead camels, the temporary hair tents of wandering Bedouins, or any other objects magnified by the refraction, which is so strongly produced in the horizon of the desert, we had no means of ascertaining. With the exception of these masses, all the eastern range of vision presented only one unbroken waste of sand, till its visible horizon ended in the illusive appearance of a lake, thus formed by the heat of a midday sun upon a nitrous soil, giving to the parched desert the semblance of water, and reflecting its scanty shrubs upon the view, like a line of extensive forests; but in no direction was either a natural hill, a mountain, or other interruption to the level line of the plain, to be seen."

Dr. Edward Daniel Clarke, in his Travels in the Holy Land, &c., gives us the following graphic description of the mirage in the north of Egypt. "We arrived at the wretched solitary village of Utko, near the muddy shore of the lake of that name. Here we procured asses for all the party; and setting out for Rosetta, began to scour the desert, now approaching like an ocean of sand, but flatter and firmer as to its surface than before. The Arabs, uttering their harsh guttural language, ran chattering by the side of our asses, until some of them calling out 'Raschid,' or Rosetta, we perceived its domes and turrets, apparently upon the opposite side of an immense lake or sea, that covered all the intervening space between us and the city.

"Not having in my own mind at the time any doubt as to the certainty of its being water, and seeing the tall minarets and buildings of Rosetta, with all its groves of dates and sycamores, as perfectly reflected by it as by a a mirror, inasmuch that even the minutest detail of the architecture and the trees might have been delineated thence, I applied to the Arabs to know in what manner we were to pass the water. Our interpreter, although a Greek, and therefore likely to have been informed of such a spectacle, was as fully convinced as any of us that we were drawing near to the water's edge, and became indignant when the Arabs maintained that within an hour we should reach Rosetta, by crossing the sands in the direct line we then pursued, and that there was no water. 'What!' said he, giving way to his impatience, 'do you suppose me to be an ideot, to be persuaded contrary to the evidence of my own senses? The Arabs, smiling, soon pacified him, and completely astonished the whole party, by desiring us to look back at the desert we had already passed, when we beheld a precisely similar appearance. It was in fact the mirage, a prodigy to which every one of us were then strangers, although it afterwards became more familiar. Yet, upon no future occasion did we behold this extraordinary illusion so marvellously displayed. The view

of it afforded us ideas of the horrible despondency to which travellers must be exposed, who in travelling the interminable desert, destitute of water and perishing with thirst, have sometimes this deceitful prospect before their eyes."

tance.

Belzoni describes the mirage as appearing like a still lake, so unmoved by the wind, that everything above is to be seen most distinctly reflected by it. If the wind agitate any of the plants that rise above the horizon of the mirage, the motion is seen perfectly at a great dis"If the traveller stand elevated much above the mirage, the apparent water seems less united and less deep; for, as the eyes look down upon it, there is not thickness enough in the vapour on the surface of the ground to conceal the earth from the sight; but if the traveller be on a level with the horizon of the mirage, he cannot see through it, so that it appears to him clear water. By putting my head first to the ground, and then mounting a camel, the height of which from the ground might have been about ten feet at the most, I found a great difference in the appearance of the mirage. On approaching it, it becomes thinner, and appears as if agitated by the wind, like a field of ripe corn. It gradually vanishes as the traveller approaches, and at last entirely disappears when he is on the spot."

Another modern traveller states, "We have suffered very much from the fatigue of this day's journey, and have still five days' march through this waterless desert. The only object to interest us, and relieve the weariness of mind and body, has been the mirage so often described. Some travellers state that this phenomenon has deceived them repeatedly. This I am surprised at, since its peculiar appearance, joined to its occurrence in a desert, where the traveller is too forcibly impressed with the recollection that no lakes or standing pools exist, would appear to me to prevent the possi bility, that he who has once seen it, can be a second time deceived. Still, this does not diminish the beauty of the phenomenon; to see amid burning sands and hills an apparently beautiful lake, perfectly calm, and unruffled by any breeze, reflecting in its bosom the surrounding rocks, is, indeed, an interesting and wonderful spectacle; but it is a tantalizing sight, traversing the desert on foot, always with a scanty supply of water, and often, owing to great imprudence, wholly destitute

of it."

MIRIAM, 5 Sept. Mapiap, (Exod. 2. 4) was the sister of Moses and Aaron. When her brother Moses was exposed on the banks of the Nile, Miriam watched the ark, and offered Pharaoh's daughter to fetch her a nurse when the child was discovered. The princess accepting the offer, Miriam fetched her own mother, to whom the infant Moses was given. (Exod. 2. 5-10.) We next read of her as leading the songs and dances of the women on the occasion of the destruction of the host of Pharaoh. (Exod. 15. 20.) It is thought that Miriam married Hur, of the tribe of Judah, (Exod. 17. 10,11,) but it does not appear that she had any dren by him. Miriam had the gift of prophecy, but this did not prevent her from joining with others in "speaking against Moses, saying, Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us?" (Numb. 12. 2.) For this she was stricken with leprosy, and was for a while shut out of the camp, but was healed upon the earnest prayer of her brother.

MIRROR. See LOOKING-GLASS.
MISHNAH,

chil

or Repetition, as the word signifies, is a collection of various traditions of the Jews, and of expositions of Scripture texts, which they pre

tend were delivered to Moses during his abode on the Mount, and transmitted from him, through Aaron, Eleazar, and Joshua, to the prophets, and by them to the men of the Great Sanhedrin, from whom they passed in succession to Simeon, Gamaliel, and ultimately to Rabbi Judah, surnamed the Holy. The Mishnah forms a part of the Jewish Talmud, being the text; while the Gemara is the commentary; so that the Gemara is, as it were, a gloss on the Mishnah. See GEMARA; TALMUD. MIST, TN id, (Gen. 2. 6,) signifies a rising mist, a fog, or cloud, which again distils upon the ground. (Job 36.27.) The Chaldee paraphrase renders it Ny anana, a cloud.

MITE, NETTOV, was the name of the smallest coin current among the Jews in the time of Our Saviour; its value was half a kоdpavтns, or the eighth part of an accaptov, which latter was equal to about three far

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widow, who threw into the Temple treasury "two mites, which make one farthing." The word rendered "farthing" in this place is different from that so rendered in Matthew 10. 29; Luke 12. 6. There it is ασσάριον, or the Roman as; here it is koopavτns, or the Roman quadrans, so called from being the fourth part of the preceding. The Romans had no coin of which, like the "mite" of the above passage, two were equal to the quadrans; although they had one, the uncia, worth a third of that coin. Some writers think that the mite (ETTOV) was a native coin, as it was not lawful to take heathen coins to the Temple treasury.

The Roman Quadrans.

MITRE, S mitznepheth, (Exod. 28. 4,) is the name given in our translation to a sacerdotal ornament worn by the ancient Jewish high-priest. See HIGHPRIEST.

In modern times, the term mitre refers to a head-dress worn by bishops and certain abbots, being a sort of turban or cap cleft at the top. The mitre is frequently met with in early Christian manuscripts, in illuminated missals, and upon the oldest ecclesiastical monuments; it was sometimes called σTepavos, corona, crown, Kidapis, diadema, and Tiapa, tiara. A statue of St. Peter, erected in the seventh century at Rome, bears this mark of distinction in the shape of a round, high, and pyramidal cap, and offers, perhaps, one of the earliest instances of its use. The Pope wears four different mitres, which are more or less richly adorned, according to the nature of the festivals on which they are assumed.