FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 



571 



Jesus ; and of a perception that to attempt to enforce a belief in them, 

 On the part of the rising generation, will be either to alienate from 

 the acceptance of those teachings many of the most cultured and most 

 earnest young people of our time, or to reduce their minds to that 

 state of unreasoning subservience to authority which finds its only 

 logical basis in the Roman Catholic Church. And, moreover, I ob- 

 serve it to be among those, in various religious denominations, who 

 are converging to the conclusion that the " authority " of Christianity 

 most surely consists in the direct appeal it makes to the hearts and 

 consciences of mankind, who most fully recognize in the life, teach- 

 ing, and death of Christ, that manifestation of the Divine [cnravyaana 

 rrjg 66^T]g Koi xO'P(if^''"f]p "^^ vTroardaeoyg avrov ') which constitutes him 

 their Master and Lord, and who most earnestly and constantly aim to 

 fashion their own lives on the model of his that there is the greatest 

 readiness to admit that the records of that life are tinged by the pre- 

 possessions, and subject to the inaccuracies, to which all human testi- 

 mony is liable. 



It was nobly said thirty years ago ^ (I believe by Francis New- 

 man) that " every fresh advance of certain knowledge apparently 

 sweeps off a portion of (so-called) religious belief, but only to leave 

 the true religious element more and more pure / and in proportion to 

 its purity will he its influence for good, and for good only ; " and that, 

 " little as many are aware of it, faithlessness is often betrayed in the 

 struggle to retain in the region of faith that which is already passing 

 into the region of science, for it implies doubt of the value of truth." 

 Thoroughly sympathizing with this view in no spirit of hostility to 

 what is commonly regarded as revealed truth but with a desire to 

 promote the discriminating search for what really constitutes revealed 

 truth, I offer the following suggestions, arising out of the special 

 studies which have occupied a large part of my life, to the considera- 

 tion of such as may deem them worthy of attention. 



That the whole tendency of recent scientific inquiry has been to 

 strengthen the notion of " continuity " as opposed to "cataclysms" 

 and " interruptions," and to substitute the idea of progressive " evo- 

 lution" for that of "special creations," cannot but be obvious to 

 every one who is familiar with the progress of inquiry in astronomy, 

 physical geology, paleontology, and biology. But the scientific theist 

 who regards the so-called " laws of Nature " as nothing else than 

 man's expressions of so much of the divine order as it lies within his 

 power to discern, and who looks at the uninterruptedness of this 



in the divine mind as typified by the well-known illustvation supplied by Mr. Babbage 

 from his calculating-machine. But this obviously puts altogether on one side the notion 

 of miracles as extraordinary interpositions, involving a more direct personal agency than 

 the ordinary uniformity. 



' " The brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person." 



* Prospective Review, vol. i., p. 53. 



