Further, it is necessary to repeat what was briefly remarked in a
previous Lecture, that the position which miracles take as regards us
who read them many centuries after, and as regards those who witnessed
and recorded them at the time, is quite different. To them the miracles
were the first and often the chief proof that the man who wrought them
had been sent by God, and that His message was a revelation, not an
imposture; to us they are, if accepted at all, accepted as a part of the
revelation itself. There are no doubt a few minds that are convinced by
Paley's argument, and beginning with accepting the miracles as proved by
sufficient external evidence, go on to accept the conclusion that
therefore the teaching that was thus accompanied must be divine. But
most men are quite unable to take to pieces in this way the records in
which Revelation is contained, and to go from external evidence taken
alone to the messengers who thus proved their mission, and thence to the
substance of the message which they taught. To most of us, on the
contrary, the Revelation is a whole, capable of being looked at from
many sides, and found to be divine from whatever side it is seen; and
one of its aspects is this supernatural character by which it appears
to assert its identity with that Moral Law which claims absolute
supremacy over all the physical world.
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