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Rh authenticated by miracles. Mankind, particularly in rude ages, want not only truth but authority — not only truth but the certainty that it is truth — or, not being embraced with sufficient confidence, it will do them no good.

"Jesus returned from his forty days' seclusion possessed of supernatural wisdom, which guarded him from all mistake, and enabled him in all circumstances to say and to do the thing which his present condition required; he came with miraculous knowledge of the manner, for instance, and circumstances of his death, the success of his religion, and the spiritual power to which he was to be exalted. He came with supernatural control over the order of nature, such as is most striking to the unsophisticated understandings of mankind, to persuade them of the connection of its possessor with God. His touch healed the sick, his will changed the elements, his command stilled the tempest, his voice raised the dead. But what was quite as striking to those with whom he associated, he could read men's most secret thoughts, and tell them the transactions of their past lives, and foresee what they were hereafter to do.

"But the system, though perfect in itself, existed nowhere but in his own mind. How was it to be introduced? The human mind was not a blank on which might be written the institutions and principles of the new religion. It was already preoccupied. What was already there could not be annihilated or effaced. How could the new be made to supersede the old? It could not be done at once. It