SECTION III.-On the Power even of a single Testimony to accredit improbable or singular Events.

1. WE hold ourselves to have abundantly proved, that even a single testimony may be of force, to countervail the improbability which is grounded on the singularity of the event that it records. In opposition to the statement, that no experience has furnished another instance of such an event being true, we might be able to affirm that no experience has furnished another instance of such a testimony being false. We can establish in this way, at least an equipoise, between the unlikelihood of a marvellous occurrence being real, and the unlikelihood of its supporting testimony being deceitful. But we require more than an equipoise between the event and its testimony. We require an overpassing force on the part of the latter, ere we reach the length of a positive evidence in behalf of the former. Now we believe that such an overpassing force may often belong to a single testimony-or, more properly perhaps, to the testimony of a single witness. Not that we need to avail ourselves of this consideration, in demonstrating the historic truth of the Christian miracles. The great strength, as we afterwards hope to prove, of the argument for them lies in the combination and multitude of testimonies. Still, it is an interesting inquiry, in how far a separate testimony, or rather a separate witness may suffice for establishing the truth of a

miracle. We shall therefore bestow some consideration upon this--not so much, because of its being a curious speculation in itself, but because of certain analogies which it suggests between the evidence of testimony and the evidence of the senses in relation to miracles, and which serve for the further enforcement and illustration of our general argument.

2. To illustrate then this evidence of testimony by the evidence of the senses-a man, by a single act of perception, may be convinced of the truth of an event wholly unexampled in history, or of the reality of an object wholly unexampled in Nature. Let him be consciously awake and in possession of his right senses-and, his eye will give him the authoritative intimation of every thing within the range of his vision, however anomalous or unprecedented the thing may be an information, on which be-a he will place instant and implicit reliance. Should there be a low-water at the regular time of highwater, one glance at the shore would convince him of its reality. This breach of the customary successions of Nature would be verified, to him, by a single look—nor is it difficult to explain, why on the principles of experience, he should have full confidence in the truth of what is seen by him. The number of times in which, to his observation, a regular tide never has misgiven, is but an insignificant fraction, when compared with the number of times in which his eye never has deceived him. If he have taken note of a high and low-water a thousand times in his life, he has taken note of the eyes' informations and of their correctness, at least

a million times. This organ is not only his instrument of observation for the alternations of the seabut an instrument of observation for all the visible phenomena that have ever come within the reach of his notice. He is verifying its informations, every minute of his waking history. He does not confine it to any one phenomenon, but is ever gathering new confidence in its accuracy, exercising it as he does on thousands of phenomena. An anomaly, in regard to some one phenomenon, might prove an exception to some regularity that has been observed by us hundreds of times before—yet, if this anomaly have been seen by us, it is instantly and firmly believed notwithstanding-else, we behoved to admit the still more violent and incredible anomaly of deceitful intimation by the eye, or an exception to a regularity that may have been observed many thousands of times before. It is like a tide-gauge that never failed in giving correct intimation; and so had an equal claim to be trusted for its accuracy, as the phenomenon of which it gave the intimation had to be expected for its regularity. Should the same tide-gauge be applied to other measurements besides, should we have observed the unfailing correctness wherewith it indicates the level of fluids ten times oftener than we have observed the regular variations of level in the waters of the ocean- -then the strength of our belief in the testimony of the instrument should more than countervail, it should ten times overpass, the strength of our expectation in that regularity which we suppose to have been violated.

3. Now what is true of the testimony of a material

instrument may be alike true of the testimony of many a moral instrument. In our daily converse with society, we may be called upon, to have greatly more frequent observation of human testimony, than of many a distinct class of phenomena in the territory of nature. We may have much oftener observed that sequence, by which the reality of an event stands related to a faithful testimony, that we have observed the sequence which relates a high-water to a certain position of the moon in the heavens and, on the ground of this arithmetical superiority, we may be justified in believing the one witness who depones to the reverse phenomenon of a low-water when there should have been a high. It is true that we are independent of this point-nor need we labour to establish it. It is not for the mere purpose of vindicating the actual historical evidence for the miracles of Christianity, that we thus insist on the power of one single and unsupported testimony. But it goes to complete and the more to accredit our theory, when we can demonstrate it to be in unison with the felt and undoubted phenomena of human belief. And we must often have been sensible of the unhesitating belief that we give even to an account of one witness, though he should depone to matters altogether unexpected and altogether new, different from or opposite to all former experience. Often, on the single word of one whom we knew to be an honest man, we should believe in any fact or object however special that he might tell us of as of the tide that rises to the height of fifty feet in one part of the world, or of

the wind that blows from the same quarter all the year round in another part, or of stones that have fallen from upper regions of the atmosphere, or of results however unexpected in the processes of science as when the strange and before unheard or unseen evolution of some one experiment is implicitly believed on the faith of but one testimony.

4. The same reason, then, which justifies our belief in the violation of a wonted sequence on the faith of one observation, may justify our belief in that violation on the faith of one testimony. The number of times in which we have experienced such a particular sequence may be greatly overpast by the number of times in which we have experienced the unfailing truth, either of such an observation in the one case, or of such a testimony in the other. And, it serves still farther to establish our vindication of the evidence of testimony, when it is considered that we do it on the same principle, by which we would vindicate the evidence of the senses. The truth is that instances can be alleged of one of our senses having deceived us, as well as of the testimony of others having deceived us. There can be alleged cases of false perception as well as of false testimony-and were Mr. Hume's argument consistently carried out, it might as well be contended, that we should not believe a miracle though we saw it, as that we should not believe a miracle however it may be reported to us. It might be said in the one case as in the other, that we have had no experience of miracles, but we have had experience of the senses being imposed upon. Our reply is the same to both. Testimony may have