ter, Grotius, Bengel, may be named.

Grotius, in his

commentary on Mark xvi. 17, refers to many patristic miracles, but does not speak of any similar events in modern times. But Baxter and Bengel give examples of the supernatural in their own days. In the second part of the 'Saint's Everlasting Rest,' Baxter considers the miracles of the Gospel as Christian evidences, and he adduces in support modern cases which he distinguishes from the evangelical miracles, and speaks of rather as wonderful acts of Providence, but which he still asserts to be supernatural. He tells us that when he was minister at Bridgnorth, there fell from the sky in several parts of England a sort of grain like withered wheat corn, but not so long. The skin was of a dark colour, and when this was pulled off the grain tasted somewhat sharp and hot. Baxter himself tasted it, and kept some a long time. It fell, he tells us, upon the roof of his own church, and his own house. He is very full and emphatic in asserting the power of prayer to raise up the sick, when all human means fail, and asserts that this had been his own case more than once or twice or ten times. He refers also to the case of Myconius, who, when supposed to be dying of consumption, was restored upon the earnest prayer of Luther, then at a distance, and lived six years. It is remarkable that Luther was most confident of his recovery. Also the case of

Baynam, who felt no pain in the fires of martyrdom; and that of Bishop Farrar, who said, as he went to the stake, 'If I stir in the fire, believe not my doctrine,' and who did remain unmoved. He quotes also the story of Theodorus, a martyr in the time of the apostate Julian, who when tortured lost all sense of pain, and had a vision of a heavenly figure, as it were a young man ministering to his relief. I may mention here that Dr. Hibbert, in his work upon apparitions, refers to this last history, and considers it in connection with one or two similar cases that have no bearing on religion. Dr. Hibbert1 seems to think these accounts explicable by some revulsion of the nervous system. Dr. Carpenter also speaks of certain conditions of the nervous system as leading to a cessation of pain even under torture, and instances Damien sleeping on the rack.

Baxter, I must add, is copious in his testimonies to the diabolic form of the supernatural. Of these and of other non-christian wonders I will say something by and by. But before leaving this author, I may add that he seems to have thought some of the miracles alleged by Papists to be true. He mentions, for instance, that Carolus Piso had related of a deaf patient that she was cured at the shrine of Our Lady of Loretto.

1 Dr. Hibbert's Philosophy of Apparitions,' p. 369; Carpenter's 'Principles of Physiology,' p. 121.

In Bengel's Gnomon' there will be found, among the remarks upon St. Mark xvi. 17, 18, the following extraordinary account. There was present at church in Leonberg, a town of Wirtemburg, on the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, in the year 1644, a girl of twenty years of age, so disabled as to be scarcely able to creep along upon crutches. She had been thus disabled for nine years. As the Dean Raumier was from the pulpit dwelling on the miraculous power of the name of Jesus, she was suddenly raised up and restored to the use of her limbs. This happened in the presence of Duke Eberhard III. and his courtiers, and was committed to the public records, which are above all suspicion. Bengel's son Ernest, in his edition of the 'Gnomon,' gives the very words of the Dean, and he adds another supposed case of the supernatural. At Lavingen, on Nov. 26, in the year 1606, there was born Joseph Jenisch, of the noble stock of the Kellers. He was without a tongue. But still in consequence, as was supposed, of the earnest prayers of his family, he was able, before he finished his first year, to name distinctly the members of his family. He was dedicated to the ministry, and for forty years discharged the sacred office at Böblingen and Münchingen.

This last case, it is now well known, involves nothing supernatural. The celebrated case of the African confessors called attention to this tongueless speech,

and it is now known that though the loss of part of the tongue may prevent speech, that of the whole does not.1

The cures wrought at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, in the early part of last century, have already been referred to in connection with this subject. A detailed account of eight of these cures was published by a M. Montgeron. This gentleman, it may be observed, supplies the kind of testimony which Paley especially preferred, that of a convert and a martyr. He passed himself through a marked change of life, in consequence of what he saw at the tomb, and he ventured to present his book to King Louis XIV., for which act he was sent to the Bastille. The accounts in question have been valued by others, because the wonders which they relate were subjected to a strict medical investigation, took place in a great seat of modern civilisation, and were opposed to the reigning powers in Church and State. A notice from a hostile quarter appeared in a pastoral of the Archbishop of Sens. Bishop Douglas has carefully examined Montgeron's accounts, comparing them with the Archbishop's

statements.

Four cures he admits, viz., Margaret

1 Dr. J. H. Newman, note on p. 383 of his two 'Essays on Scripture Miracles,' 2nd edit. London, Pickering, 1870; Prof. Huxley, 'Lessons on Elementary Physiology,' p. 207; Milman's Edition of Gibbon,' vol. iv. p. 336.

Thibault and Margaret Francis Duchesne cured of dropsy, Serjeant and Hardouin of paralysis; and it may be added that these recoveries, as he states them, are manifestly too sudden and too immediately connected with the excitement at the tomb to be looked upon as tentative, i. e. cases in which recovery took place without any real connection with what happened at the tomb. The Bishop was a hostile critic, a writer ostensibly engaged in discrediting all miracles except those of the Gospels. He explains the facts by the influence of mental excitement, and to support this view he quotes many examples of this kind of influence upon the body. When quoting examples of the efficacy of the royal touch, he mentions that he had himself known a man who professed to have been cured thereby. As comparatively modern and well-known instances of such cures by mental influence, he quotes the cures performed by Mr. Greatrakes, of Waterford, by stroking with the hand; Sir Richard Bulkley cured of rupture by one of the French prophets; Madame de la Fosse, cured of a long-standing issue of blood by supplication to the host when it was being carried in procession.

Among no body of modern Christians has a higher tone of piety prevailed than among the Moravian Brethren. Paley, in the work which we have now specially in view, has paid them a compliment,