these have examined the Christian's belief by the dim light and in the hostile spirit with which the Christian criticises theirs, he would have been puzzled to reconcile the profession of monotheism with the belief of a Trinity of nominal equality, of a personal demon who (in the moral world at least) was plainly paramount, of a virgin mother of God more devoutly worshipped by many than God himself, of archangels, of angels without number, and of saints as holy and as numerous as the dii inferiores of any polytheistic system, or as the apotheosised ancestors of the wildest savage. Could the theologian of our own day have changed places with the theologian of Abraham's, the latter might, without presumption, have concluded that his own creed was the simpler and perhaps purer of the two.

My aim, in the last four letters, has been to indicate the vestiges preserved by language of original relationship between the primary stocks of mankind, and to mark how, with the linguistic affinities, mythological agreements also coexisted. From the resemblance of these mythologies and cosmogonies to the cosmogony and to other legends in the Bible, the inference is drawn that, the religion of the Hebrews possesses no exceptional features that entitle it to special claims upon our reverence. Critical investigation has brought the Semitic people completely within the legitimate scope of universal history. Henceforth, when this truth is recognised, the Jewish religion will take its place as a fractional phenomenon in the vast integral of civilisation. It grew out of preceding ages as surely and as gradually as any other phase of human belief; and if that which it possesses in common with other systems can no longer be traced to actual or probable contact, we must seek the explanation of similarity in the laws of our common nature.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

LETTER XI.

THAT creed which I have maintained to be without attestation in the Old Testament is held to be miraculously established in the New.

If the personal existence of God and the immortality of the soul are not proved by the Gospels, then (as we have no other direct evidence to support these dogmas) they cease to rest upon any basis save conjecture.

It may be thought, and is thought by most people, that a Creator and Governor of the World is evinced by the Order of Nature. This opinion will be examined hereafter. For the present I have merely to remark that nature cannot be said to afford direct evidence of a God. The order which pervades the universe appears to indicate a guiding intelligence, and nature presents to us the similitude of design. Still, in reasoning from these appearances to a divine intelligence, our deductions are founded solely upon analogy. The inference is drawn from a balance of probabilities, and in these days men are as apt to find the weight in one scale, as they are to find it in the other.

For the immortality of the soul, the argument from analogy is not available. Here we depend entirely upon revelation; and the revelation of the New Testament depends, in turn, on the miracles, and especially on the Resurrection, of Christ.

The existence of God and the immortality of the soul, being of the highest conceivable importance, justify direct communication from God; and not being otherwise ascertainable, required it. Required it because human intelligence unaided is conversant with nature only; and some power or principle other than nature could alone impart knowledge of the supernatural. The only credentials of the supernatural, the only proof that what is taken for the supernatural is not some higher mode of the natural, with which we might become acquainted in the ordinary course of things, must consist in the subversion of the natural; and this it is which constitutes a miracle.

Upon this point it is essential to be very explicit at the outset, for theologians are not always clear as to what a miracle is, or how it should be defined. Since every step of modern science has tended to establish the uniformity and ubiquity of physical law, and has succeeded in bringing under this law phenomena which were once thought to be arbitrary, the ablest theologians have forsaken the old attitude of defence-such as that assumed by Paley-for a new one which seems to me to surrender all that is worth fighting for. Thus, Canon Row, one of the latest to speak, considers "that the whole exigencies of modern thought render such a change of front absolutely necessary." He holds "that the moral evidences of Christianity ought to occupy the first place, and its miraculous attestation the second," &c.1 Such a thorough change of front as this is enough to ensure defeat. The superhuman nature of Christ, and the divine revelations which depend thereon, must stand or fall with the physical miracles. This opinion is fully endorsed by Canon Row himself when he speaks of the Resurrection as "the one great evidential miracle of Christianity, on the reality of which its truth rests. If they could prove that this was a fiction, they would force the entire Christian position." 2 This also is the meaning of the Archbishop

1 Christian Evidences Viewed in Relation to Modern Thought.

2 P. 23.

of York, who declares: "It is plain that all historical Christianity contains the supernatural element; a Christianity without it would be, not a history, but a speculation," and "it is clear that the controversy about miracles is knit up with the controversy about Christ.” 1 The physical miracle, therefore, is what theologians have to deal with. Such being the case, the exigencies of modern thought have put the defenders of miracles to considerable straits. With what success they come out of them now remains to be seen.

The most implacable opponent of miracles cannot pretend there is any a priori reason against the existence of a Being capable of performing them. The question is, whether we have any evidence of such a Being through miraculous manifestations of his power; or, in other words, what degree of credibility may be claimed for the evidence on this head contained in the New Testament.

The famous argument of Hume states the case in its aptest form. "That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish." To deal here with general principles only, we may ask: Whether any testimony could be of the requisite kind? Whether the falseness of any testimony whatever could be so anomalous as a miracle? "It is experience only," says Hume, "which gives authority to human testimony, and it is the same experience which assures us of the laws of nature." But while experience proves the laws of nature to be constant (constant that is as a rule, for the believers in miracle deny the absolute constancy), experience also proves testimony to be exceedingly fallacious. So that, in believing miracles, one really chooses the least probable alternative.

Hume's proposition has been well elucidated by the 1 The Synoptic Gospels, p. 117