who amused the court of Pharaoh by their conjuring tricks; and for an object of no greater moment than to persuade a king to allow some of his subjects to emigrate, which object, moreover, notwithstanding the miracle, entirely failed, as the king simply "hardened his heart and persisted in his refusal.

But passing from this class of grotesque and incredible miracles, let us examine those which may be called worthy miracles; that is, miracles disfigured by no absurd details, and wrought for objects of sufficient importance to justify supernatural interference, if ever such interference were to take place. At the head of such miracles munt undoubtedly be placed those of the Saviour's resurrection. The appearances to the Apostles, and above all the bodily Ascension to heaven in the presence of more than 500 witnesses, were a fitting termination to the drama of His life and sufferings, and afforded a conclusive test of the fact which was the foundation-stone of the new religion.

"If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain," says it. Paul; and he proceeds to argue that the whole question of the reality of a future life hinges on the fact that Christ really rose from the dead. His theory is that death came into the world by the sin of the first man, Adam, and has been destroyed and swallowed up in immorality by the victory of the second man, Christ. This theory has, from that day to this, been the key-stone of Christian theology.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that if any miracle is true this must be the one, and, on the other hand, if this miracle cannot be established by sufficient proof, it is idle to discuss the evidence for other miracles. In order to go to the root of the matter therefore, it is necessary to consider, in a calm and judicial spirit, the evidence upon which this miracle of the Resurrection really rests.

In the first place we must consider what sort of evidence is required to prove a miracle. Clearly it must be evidence of the most cogent and unimpeachable character, far more conclusive than would be sufficient to establish an ordinary occurrence. The discoveries of modern science have shown beyond the possibility of doubt that the miracles which former ages fancied they saw around them every day had no real existence, and that, except possibly in the solitary instance of the Christian miracles, there has been no supernatural interference with the laws of Nature throughout the enormous ranges of space, time, and matter. It may be going too far to say with Hume that no amount of evidence can prove a miracle, since it must always remain more probable that human testimony should be false than that the laws of Nature should have been violated. But it is not going too far to say that the evidence to establish such a violation must be altogether overwhelming and open to no other possible construction.

Take the case of the allegation that a man who had really died rose in the body from the grave, ate, drank, and held intercourse with living persons. There are some 1,200 millions of human beings living in the world, and somewhat more than three generations in each century, that is, there are some 3,600 millions of deaths per century, and this has been going on for some forty or fifty centuries, or longer. It is certain, therefore, that at least 150,000 millions of deaths must have taken place, and a large proportion of these under circumstances involving the most heart-rending separations, and the most intense longing on the part of the dying to give, and of the living to receive,

some token of affection from beyond the grave. And yet no such token has ever been given, and the veil which separates the dead from the living has never been lifted, except possibly in one case out of this 150,000,000,000. Surely it must require very different evidence to establish the reality of such an exception, from that which would be sufficient to prove the signature to a will or the date of a battle.

But just when the new views opened up by modern science made it more difficult to believe in miracles, and more exacting in the demand for stronger evidence to support them, the old evidence became greatly weakened. The main evidence which satisfied our forefathers was that the Bible was inspired, and that it asserted the reality of the miracles. This, when critically examined, was really no evidence at all, for how did we know that the Bible was inspired? Because it was proved to be so by miracles. The argument was therefore in a circle, and resembled that of the Hindoo mythology, which rested the earth on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise. But what did the tortoise rest on?

To examine the matter more closely, what is the meaning of inspiration? It means that a certain book was not written, as all other books in the world have been written, by writers who were fallible, and whose statements and opinions, however admirable in the main and made in perfect good faith, inevitably reflected the views of the age in which they lived and contained matters which subsequent ages found to be obsolete or erroneous, but that this particular book was miraculously dictated by an infallible God, and therefore absolutely and for all time true. But, as a chain cannot be stronger than its weakest link, if any one of these statements were proved not to be true, the theory of inspiration failed, and human reason was called on to decide by the ordinary methods, whether any, and if any, what parts of the Volume were inspired and what uninspired.

Now it is absolutely certain that portions of the Bible, and those important portions relating to the creation of the world and of man, are not true, and therefore not inspired. It is certain that the sun, moon, stars, and earth, were not created as the author of Genesis supposed them to have been created, and that the first man, whose Palæolithic implements are found in caves and river gravels of immense antiquity, was a very different being from the Adam who was created in God's likeness and placed in the Garden of Eden. It is certain that

no universal deluge ever took place since man existed, and that the animal life existing in the world, and shown by fossil remains to have existed for untold ages, could by no possibility have originated from pairs of animals living together for forty days in the ark, and radiating from a mountain in Armenia.

Another test of inspiration is afforded by the presence of contradictions. If one writer says that certain events occurred in Galilee while another says that they took place at Jerusalem, they cannot both be inspired. They may be both reminiscences of real events, but they are obviously imperfect and not inspired reminiscences, and require to be tested by the same process of reasoning as we should apply in endeavoring to unravel the truth from the confused and contradictory evidence of conflicting historians.

Inspiration is clearly as much a miracle as any of the miracles which it relates, and there is only one way conceivable by which it could be proved, so as to afford a solid basis for faith and give addi

tional evidence in support of the supernatural occurrences said to have taken place; that would be if it carried with it internal evidence of its truth. Such evidence might be afforded in one way, and in one onlyby prophecy. If any volume written many centuries ago contained a clear, definite, and distinct prophecy of future events, which the writer could by no possibility have known or conjectured, such a prophecy must have been dictated by some agency different from anything known in the ordinary course of nature; and future ages, seeing the fulfillment of the prophecy, could scarcely doubt that the volume which contained it was inspired. But such a prophecy must be quite definite, so that there could be no doubt as to whether it had been fulfilled or not, and must not consist of vague and mystic utterances, in which future believers might find meanings, probably never thought of by the prophets themselves, confirming the faith which, from other considerations, they thought it a sin to disbelieve. Nor must it consist of passionate aspirations for deliverance, and predictions of the downfall of cruel conquerors, wrung from the hearts of an oppressed people in times of imminent danger and crushing despair; because such predictions have been partly verified and partly transformed in future ages, so as to receive a new and spiritual significance.

There is one prophecy which affords a test by which to judge of the value of all others as a proof of inspiration, for it is perfectly distinct and definite, and comes from the highest authority-that of the approaching end of the world contained in the New Testament. St. Matthew reports Jesus to have said:

"For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

"Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."

It is certain that all standing there did taste death without seeing the Son of Man coming with His angels. The conclusion is irresistible, that either Jesus was mistaken in speaking these words, or else Matthew was mistaken in supposing that He spoke them.

St. Paul predicts the same event in still more definite terms. He says:

"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."

Here is the most distinct prediction possible, both of the event which was to happen and of the limit of time within which it was to take place; and, to give it additional force, it is specially declared to be an inspired prophecy uttered as "the word of God."

The time is distinctly stated to be in the lifetime of some of the existing generation, including Paul himself, who is to be one of the "we which are alive," who are not to "prevent," or gain any precedence over, those who have "fallen asleep," or died, in the interval before Christ's coming. By no possibility can this be construed to

mean a coming at some indefinite future time, long after all those had died who were to remain and be caught up alive into the clouds. St. Paul doubtless meant what he said, and firmly believed that he was uttering an inspired prophecy which would certainly be fulfilled. But it is certain that it was not fulfilled. Paul and all Paul's contemporaries have been dead for 1,800 years, and the shout, the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God, have never been heard. What is this but an absolutely irresistible demonstration that prophecy not only fails to prove inspiration, but, on the contrary, by its failure disproves it, and shows that St. Matthew and St. Paul were as liable to make mistakes as any of the hundreds of religious writers who, in later times, have prophesied the approaching end of the world or advent of the millennium.

The evidence for miracles, therefore, must be taken on its own merits, without aid from any preconceived theory that it is sinful to scrutinize it because the books in which it is contained are inspired. Applying to it impartially the ordinary rules of evidence, let us see what it amounts to, for that which is really the test case of all other miracles, that of the Resurrection.

The witnesses are St. Paul and the authors of the four Gospels according to St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. Of these, St. Paul is in some respects the best. When a witness is called into court to give evidence, the first question asked is, "Who are you? Give your name and description." St. Paul alone gives a clear answer to this question. There is no doubt that he was an historical personage, who lived at the time and in the manner described in the Acts of the Apostles, and that the Epistle to the Corinthians is a genuine letter written by him. In this Epistle he says:

“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

"And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

"And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:

"After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

"After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

"And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."

This is undoubtedly very distinct evidence that the appearances described by St. Paul were currently believed in the circle of early Christians at Jerusalem within twenty years of their alleged occur

rence.

This is strong testimony, but it is weakened by several considerations. In the first place, we know that Paul's frame of mind in regard to miracles was such as to make it certain that he would take them for granted, and not attempt to examine critically the evidence on which they were founded, and this was doubtless the frame of mind of those from whom he received the accounts. Again, he places all the appearances on the same footing as that to himself, which was clearly of the nature of a vision, or strong internal impression, rather than of an objective reality. Upon this vital point, whether the appearances which led to the belief in Christ's resurrection were subjective or objective—that is, were visions or physical realities-Paul's testimony

therefore favors the former view, which is quite consistent with the laws of Nature and with experience in other cases.

And finally, St. Paul's account of the appearances is altogether different from those of the other witnesses, viz., the four Evangelists.

When we come to consider the testimony of the four Gospels we are confronted by a first difficulty: Who and what are the witnesses? What is really known of them is this: Until the middle of the second century they are never quoted, and were apparently unknown. Somewhere about 150 A.D., for the exact date is hotly disputed, we find the first quotations from them, and from that time forwards the quotations become more frequent and their authority increases, until finally they superseded all the other narratives current in the early Church, such as the "Gospel of the Hebrews," and the "Pastor" of Hermas, and are embodied in the canon of inspired writings of the New Testament. From the earliest time where there is any distinct recognition of them, they appear to have been attributed to the Evangelists whose names they bear, viz., Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

When we look to internal evidence to give us some further clue as to their authorship and date, we at once meet with a great difficulty. The three Gospels of St. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called "Synoptic," because they give what is substantially the same narrative of the same facts arranged in the same order, and the same sayings and parables giving the same view of the character and teaching of Jesus. In whole passages this resemblance is not merely substantial but literal, so that we cannot suppose it to arise merely from following the same oral tradition, and cannot doubt that the authors must have copied verbatim either from one another or from some common manuscript. But then comes in this perplexing circumstance. After passages of almost literal identity come in statements which are inconsistent with those of the other Gospels and narratives of important events which are either altogether wanting or quite differently described in them.

Thus, in the vital matter of the Resurrection, Matthew says that the disciples were especially commanded to "go into Galilee; there shall you see him," and that they did go accordingly, and there saw Him on a mountain where He had appointed them to meet Him; while Luke distinctly says that "he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem," and describes them as remaining there and witnessing a number of appearances, including the crowning miracle of the Ascension (the same, doubtless, as that which St. Paul describes as having taken place in the presence of more than 500 witnesses), of which Matthew, Mark, and John apparently know nothing. And yet the final injunction of Jesus to preach the gospel in His name to all nations is given in almost the same words in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, showing that they must have had before them some common manuscript describing the course of events after the Crucifixion.

So in minor matters, Mark mentions the cure of one blind man, Bartimæus, who sat by the roadside begging; in Matthew there are two blind men, and yet the dialogue that passed-"What will ye that I shall do unto you?" "Lord, that our eyes may be opened "-is almost word for word the same. It would seem that if they did copy from an original manuscript, they felt themselves free to take any liberties with it they liked, in the way of omission and alteration.

The only light thrown on this perplexing question of the origin of the Gospels is that afforded by the celebrated passage from Papias