not the less to be valued because it was seemingly undesigned. When speaking of the life of the first Christians, he says that it probably resembled theirs.1 Now it is worthy of notice that the resemblance extends to the alleged existence of the miraculous. In a history of the Brethren, by M. Bost, of Geneva, we have the following extract from the words of Count Zinzendorf, the early founder and ruler of the sect. He speaks of their having experienced the following wonderful occurrences:- The discovery of things, persons, and circumstances, which could not humanly have been discovered; the healing of maladies in themselves incurable, such as cancers and consumptions, when the patient was in the agonies of death, and all by means of prayer or of a single word; wild beasts stopped at the moment of attack, by the word of the Lord, without any external aid or their having themselves received any hurt.' These statements are, I allow, uncircumstantial, but still the high character of Count Zinzendorf makes them worthy of attention.

The narrative which I am about to relate has some degree of particularity as to names, places, and dates.

Soon after the foundation of the first settlement of the Brethren by Count Zinzendorf at Herrnhut, there arose an awakening among the descendants of

1 Paley's Evidences,' Part I. chap. i.

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the old Protestant church of Bohemia, which had been almost crushed and exterminated. The new Brethren were much persecuted, and experienced some wonderful deliverances and escapes. Among these the following may be quoted as approaching the miraculous, and also as having some resemblance to narratives in the Acts of the Apostles. It is given by M. Bost, on the authority of an autobiography of the hero, David Nitschman, who died at Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, in the year 1758. The circumstances are also alluded to in a history of the Brethren by Mr. Latrobe.

Nitschman and some of his party were cast into prison, and chained two and two. He, however, was ironed apart. He relates as follows:-'On Thursday evening I told my brethren that I had thoughts of leaving them that night. And "I too," instantly added David Schneider; "I mean to go with you." We had to wait till eleven. Not knowing how I should be able to get rid of my irons, I laid my hand upon the padlock which fastened them, to try and open it with a knife, and behold it was opened! I began to weep for joy, and I said to Schneider, "Now I see it is the will of God that I should go." We removed the irons from our feet, we took leave of the brethren in profound silence, and crossed the court to see if we could find a ladder.

I went as far as the principal passage, which was secured by two doors, and I found the first open and the second likewise. This was a second sign that we were to go. Being out of the castle, we hung our irons on the wall, and we crossed the garden to reach my dwelling, where we waited awhile that I might tell my wife how she should go when I sent one to fetch her.'

Nitschman thus escaped on the night of the 25th of January, 1725, and after being awhile in Silesia, he reached Herrnhut on March 3. Nitschman also relates that on an earlier occasion he was kept in prison three days without any nourishment, and did not suffer hunger.

M. Bost relates other escapes perhaps not so wonderful. The following, however, is singular:-A man, named André Beyer, was in prison with a Brother named David Fritsch. Their imprisonment was to be made more severe, but on the day before this was to be done Fritsch accidentally pushed the door of his prison, the great chain stretched across it outside gave way, the door opened, they saw no sentinels, went forth, and escaped. I do not pretend that there is anything in this account, or yet in the former, which could be at all put forward as a breach of a law of nature, but they are stories of very exceptional events in connection with religion. There are many others in the history of the Moravians, as

happy choices by lot, warnings by dreams, or otherwise.

Another body of men, to whom Paley compared the primitive Christians, were the English Methodists of last century. In their case also accounts of visions, prophecies, strange providences, expulsions of evil spirits, wonderful cures, are also to be met with. Bishop Lavington, in his Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists Compared,' has very fully and with much detail pointed out the resemblance between the wonderful things related of remarkable religious characters in those two bodies of Christians in some respects so remote. And, indeed, he extends the analogy to the Montanists and heathens. A less hostile writer, Mr. Southey, also tells us that Wesley claimed the power of working miracles.1 He believed that he had himself been miraculously recovered from a fever. He had restored a dying man. The meetings of his followers were, it is well known, sometimes attended with great excitement, issuing in some strange physical results, as tremblings, screamings, swoons, convulsions; and it is worthy of notice that these effects showed their epidemic character by sometimes seizing upon persons present, whose minds were not under the influence of Wesley's teaching." There is a story of a Quaker 'Southey's Life,' vol. i. p. 385; Southey quotes 'Wesley's Journal,' vol. iii.

2 Southey's 'Life of Wesley,' vol. i. p. 212.

who was caught by the contagion at one of the meetings, whilst he was inveighing against what he called the dissimulation of the creatures.' A singular story is also related by Southey (as well as Bishop Lavington) of a woman who was thought to be possessed, and was certainly fearfully agitated. This woman told those around her that Wesley was coming galloping to see her when he really was doing so, but was yet three miles off, and she had no natural means of knowing of his coming.1 Coleridge, in a note upon this anecdote, declares that an extensive inquiry had convinced him of the actual occurrence of such apparent anomalies.

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As I have said already, these accounts have not been given because they seem to me by any means to compel the admission of the miraculous. I have no idea of so disproving the negative part of the evidential argument. I quote them to introduce some views as to the origin of such accounts. If we review them the following observation will be made. Wherever and whenever religious faith and earnestness are unusually strong, and the views of modern science are little understood or entertained; whenever, in fact, you have Christians resembling the first believers, then miraculous, or at least wonderful, stories spring up, sometimes in numbers.

We have already seen

this illustrated in very different ages, and coun

tries, and forms, of the Christian faith.

Southey's 'Life of Wesley,' vol. i. p. 254.

Our ex