Aids to Faith Author:Henry Longueville Mansel Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: chapter{Section 4chapter{Section 5ON MIRACLES AS EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 1. What is the exact position of Miracles among the Evidences of Christianity, ... more »is a question which may be differently answered by different believers, without prejudice to their common belief. It has pleased the Divine Author of the Christian religion to fortify His revelation with evidences of various kinds, appealing with different degrees of force to different minds, and even to the same mind at different times. The grounds of belief consisting, not in a single demonstration, but in an accumulation of many probabilities, there is room, in the evidences as in the doctrines of Christianity, for special adaptations of different portions to different minds ; nor can such adaptation be regarded as matter of regret or censure, so long as the personal preference of certain portions does not involve the rejection of the remainder. The question, however, assumes a very different character when it relates, not to the comparative importance of miracles as evidences, but to their reality as facts, and as facts of a supernatural kind. For if this is denied, the denial does not merely remove one of the supports of a faith which may yet rest securely on other grounds. On the contrary, the whole system of Christian belief with itsevidences, the moral no less than the intellectual influences, the precept and example for the future no less than the history of the past? all Christianity, in short, so far as it has any title to that name, so far as it has any special relation to the person or the teaching of Christ, is overthrown at the same time. 2. For this question must be considered, not mere chapter{Section 6ly, as is too often done, in relation to a purely hypothetical case, to a supposition of possibl...« less