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THE requirements of our age as to the amount and quality of the evidence necessary to produce credibility differ so widely from that which satisfied our forefathers, that the change is producing a silent revolution in history, science, and even theology. It is strange that to examine the bases upon which an opinion rests, to cut away the weak places and supply better supports, should have been supposed to show a want of respect for truth an irreligious, sceptical spirit. But, voluntarily or involuntarily, the work is going on: slowly, though steadily, all the foundations of our beliefs in every department of knowledge are passing through this testing, analytical process, and we are trying the spirits to know whether they be of God.' 1

A certain training of the mind is, however, necessary to know what really constitutes evidence. If the ideas of ordinary witnesses in a trial be closely followed, it will be seen how the most irrelevant circumstances, the wanderings of the mind to its own feelings, the jumping at conclusions, form the chief part of their testimony. The evidence to the fact is almost always also confounded with evidence to the imagined cause, in the argument of an undisciplined reasoner; and where the question is complicated by any admixture of religious feeling, the case becomes hopeless, as it is considered wicked to examine its grounds too closely.

The majority of the world, however, will always believe, not according to evidence at all, but simply as their previous habits of thought lead them to think a thing probable or the contrary. Take the miracles of the Middle Ages: in the

days when such events were believed to be part of God's ordinary rule, they were seen and experienced every day. Men of the highest powers of mind and the greatest probity, like St. Bernard, worked miracles themselves in the utmost good faith, and were only 'humbly surprised at the great gift vouchsafed to such unworthy instruments.' They were witnessed to habitually by the best and wisest of the time. Men lived in a miraculous atmosphere, when it was no more astonishing to see a direct interference of the Creator than it is now to see a fresh development of science. And as we are easily satisfied with the proof of what no one denies, our ancestors were not exacting as to the evidence which they required in any fresh instance. Their minds generally seem to have been like those of children, utterly unac quainted with law, to whom everything is equally new and wonderful, and equally possible and easy to credit. There is no reason to a child why the earth should not open and Aladdin's garden be discovered underground-there is a dim hope of some day finding a fairy. Because a thing has happened before, is no reason why it should happen again. A child at play is just as much surprised every time it finds its mother behind a curtain. Because a thing has never happened is no reason in its eyes why it should not now come to pass.

God has made a star,' says one child, seeing the bright speck appear suddenly in the evening sky. 'God is sending a storm to brush the sky clean,' says another: every event is to it the result of an immediate personal agency, as in all early mythologies. Law, the inexorable sequence of cause and effect

(whatever meaning we assign to the word 'cause'), is a late growth in the individual's as in the world's thought. The idea cannot, indeed, be reached until a sufficient number of facts have been collected to enable the mind to co-ordinate them into that series which for want of a better name we call 'law.'

Mr. Maine describes how in the times of Homer the judge or chief evidently decided each case by inspiration, as it were, of the God or 'Justice.' He does not seem to have punished B for theft to-day because he had punished A for the same thing yesterday, but 'Justice' argued the whole case over again in his mind, from the beginning each timewhether theft was right or wrong, necessary or prejudicial; and he gave a judgment accordingly. Not only had the fact to be proved, but the principle, with each fresh case.

God's government of the world even down to our own times has been conceived on much the same plan, i.e. that it was conducted according to the circumstances or the caprice of the moment. A man's God must, indeed, be the reflection of his own powers of abstraction and moral perception: the God of the mean man will be a poor, low divinity; the God of the hard man an inflexible tyrant; the God of the weak and ignorant an irresolute, variable being, giving or taking away without reason, capriciously. 'God made man,' it has been said, after His own image, and man has returned the compliment' fearfully. We are only now beginning dimly to conceive the Great God' in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning,' whom St. James told us of 1800 years ago, in whom,' indeed, is rest for our souls.'

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Meantime the haphazard God who damns little babies for all eternity, because it is His will,' reigns supreme in Catholic and Protestant theology alike. There is no more reason to the average thinker of

VOL. IV.-NO. XXII. NEW SERIES.

either faith why God should keep His law than that He should break it-the only difference being that among the Protestants there is an arbitrary line fixed in history, on the farther side of which He was in the habit of interfering, while at present it is conceived not to be (to speak openly) 'His way'whereas the pious Roman Catholic supposes this perpetual lawlessness still to be the habitual course of His government of the world and His dealings with mankind.

The natural history of a miraculous myth, its birth, parentage, and education, is not often to be traced so clearly as in the story of the life of St. Francis Xavier. It is the growth generally of an age when reading and writing are not common: 'litera scripta manet,' and keeps a sort of bridle on the imagination. Absurdities enough remain to us demanding to be believed, but not quite so monstrous as when mere hearsay reigns without control. Xavier is said by his biographers to have worked many miracles, and particularly to have raised several men from the dead.' Here, fortunately, we have the letters written by Xavier himself and his assistant priest at the time, relating how he was called in to a young man sick unto death, how he prayed over him, and the patient recovered. It is not even said that the cure was miraculous, though there may have been a dim notion of this in the mind of Francis. Soon after his death, however, his admirers killed the 'young man,' and by the time that St. Francis is canonised the miracle has been multiplied into 'several dead men,' who have been brought by him to life. Again, Xavier distinctly mentions the inconvenience of not knowing the different languages of the countries he visits, and the necessity of having an interpreter; but in the teeth of his own words he is gifted with the tongues' by

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his biographers, and described as 'speaking them all without learning,' with many curious details-an illustration of the law whereby legends of all kinds grow in definiteness with the lapse of time, the fullness of detail being proportionate to the distance from their source.'

The extreme difficulty in sifting such cases, even when the witnesses are thoroughly honest and competent, is shown most remarkably by the miracle of the Holy Thorn at the convent of Port Royal. As Sir James Stephen puts it (though he refuses to abide by the consequences of his admission), 'there is no evidence for any fact in history better or more complete.' A little girl, niece of the great Pascal, residing in the convent, was suffering from malignant cancer in the eye, as testified by several physicians; she was about to undergo an operation of the most serious description, when she was cured, suddenly and completely, by the touch of this most holy relic, taken from the veritable Crown of Thorns, applied at the moment of her receiving the Communion. The greatest genius, the most profound scholar, and the most eminent advocate of the day,' Pascal, Arnauld, and Le Maître, men of the utmost probity, and all three possessing the amplest means of investigation, examined carefully into the miracle and were convinced of its reality. The Abbess of the convent, the Mère Angélique, was not only one of the purest and most high-minded women who ever lived, but she held so anxiously by the truth of her word that she submitted to see the work of her life (which is dearer than even the fruit of one's loins) utterly destroyed-to endure the most cruel persecution and contumely to be turned out of her convent with all her nuns when almost dying-rather than assert that certain propositions were in the writings of Jansenius which the Pope

insisted on her acknowledging to exist there upon his word abne, without reading the book. Yet this woman gave her solemn testimony to the dreadful character of the disease, and to the complete cure of the eye, no other means being employed, mediate or immediate, except the touch of the relic accompanied by the prayers of the community. The united word of the nuns may be considered as worth little, but what can be said of the witness given by the three really good and great men who confirmed the story?

In the face of such a fact as this, what value can we attach to the evidence of the best and cleverest people in cases where their prepossessions and desires are all on one side, and on questions where they probably do not feel themselves at liberty to apply the ordinary rules of what constitutes evidence? The mind has an ingenious way of honestly ignoring that which tells against its view in a matter where it desires to believe—is to its faults a little blind, and to its virtues very kind,' unconsciously forgetting the weak sides of the argument. 'I know it's true; and if there's one thing more than another that I hate,' says one of Mrs. Gaskell's old women, 'it is to have people bringing up a pack of nonsense facts the other way, when I've made up my mind!'

The peculiarity of the Port Royal case consisted in the story having grown up at a bound as it were, in a place where it could be examined into immediately and by its most hostile opponents the Jesuits-whereas the usual concoction of a myth, as in that relating to St. Francis, is very gradual and in out-of-the-way places-and most particularly in having been investigated on the spot by men whom, even according to our own standard, we should consider most competent judges of evidence in any other matter. Yet

there is not a Protestant who would regard the miracle even with doubt: we simply and absolutely disbelieve a thing which is certainly better attested and certified than almost any fact in history.

How entirely our standard of what is required to induce belief has altered may be seen by looking back into those dreary volumes which in the last century and the beginning of this were pre-eminently called 'The Evidences.' They seem to us to be beating the air, proving what no one disputes, avoiding all the knotty parts of the question. Their grand point is the honesty of the witnesses; the present generation would grant this without a word (so was that of the Port Royal recluses undoubted)— that they endured persecution and death for their opinions: 'therefore their opinions were true.' Did the fact of Sir Thomas More dying for the doctrine prove the Papal supremacy to be true? Is the Suttee of the Indian widow evidence of the truth of her faith? or do the tortures borne in defence of every form of belief, Pagan, Jewish, Mahometan, Brahmin, prove all these different creeds to be true? The earnestness of the sufferer is shown by martyrdom, not the value of the belief. And it is curious how, when the faith of the martyr agrees with our own, we conceive that the martyrdom strengthens our case, while when it is endured on the opposite side it makes no impression whatever upon our convictions.

What is now required for the credibility of witnesses is proof that they were capable of judging of what they tell, and that they had the necessary opportunities for forming an opinion: e.g. it is asked which of the writers of the Gospels give the evidence of eye-witnesses. It is clear that Mark and Luke do not profess to have been present at the events which they narrate. Is Mark giving the experience of Peter,

as Justin Martyr supposes? We have probably only a Greck edition of the Works of Our Lord, written by Matthew in Aramaic, as described by the earliest Fathers. There remains the much-contested date of the writing of the Gospel of St. John. These are the questions which our age is asking, reverently, anxiously, even sadly; and the orthodox answers come as of old: 'the miracles prove the inspiration of the narratives,' and 'as the narratives are inspired, the account of the miracles must be true,' repeated over and over again in every variety of circular and elliptical reasoning.

The value set upon internal evidence is, however, evidently increasing the tendency now is to believe the history from the intrinsic merits of the character, and to say that it is strong enough to carry the weight of the miracles, instead of vice versa.

The dying out of this love of the marvellous is shown even among the Hindoos. One of the most enlightened of the Indian missionaries observes that the effect of the Christian miracles as a proof of the truth of Christianity upon the native mind is nil; the reply to such arguments being, that they have much more surprising signs and wonders recounted of their own gods.' The internal evidence afforded by the life of Jesus to His doctrine is the only one which has the least hold upon their minds. And the foundation stone of belief with the new sect of the Brahmo Somaj is the omission of the supernatural element altogether.

What was unknown and marvellous was in the old time always accepted as proof of a miraculous intervention of the gods. Gradually, as the domain of law invades one fresh district after another, now that eclipses no longer 'shed disastrous twilight, with fear of change perplexing monarchs,' or comets from their horrid hair