572 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



order as the highest evidence of its original perfection, need find (as 

 it seems to me) no abstract difficulty in the conception that the author 

 of Mature can, if he will, occasionally depart from it. And hence, as 

 I deem it presumptuous to deny that there might be occasions which 

 in his wisdom may require such departure, I am not conscious of any 

 such scientific " prepossessions " against miracles as would prevent 

 me from accepting them as facts, if trustworthy evidence of their 

 reality could be adduced. The question with me, therefore, is simply, 

 "Have we any adequate historical ground for the belief that such 

 departure has ever taken place ? " 



Now, it can scarcely be questioned that, w^hile the scientific proba- 

 bility of uniform sequence has become stronger, the value of testi- 

 mony in regard to departures from it has been in various ways dis- 

 credited by modern criticism. It is clear that the old arguments of 

 Lardner, and the modern reproduction of them by Prof. Andrews 

 Norton (Boston, New England), which in my early days were held as 

 demonstrating the " genuineness of the Gospels," no longer possess their 

 former cogency. For the question has now passed into a phase alto- 

 gether different from that which it presented a century or two ago. 

 It was then, " Are the narratives genuine or fictitious ? Did the nar- 

 rators intend to speak the truth, or were they constructing a tissue of 

 falsehoods? Did they really witness what they narrate, or were they 

 the dupes of ingenious story-tellers ? " It is now, " Granting that the 

 narrators wrote what they firmly believed to be true, as having them- 

 selves seen (or thought they had seen) the events they recorded, or as 

 having heard of them from witnesses whom they had a right to regard 

 as equally trustworthy with themselves, is their belief a sufficient 

 justification for ours ? What is the extent of allowance which we are 

 to make for ' prepossession ' 1. As modifying their conception of each 

 occurrence at the time ; and 2. As modifying their sx;bsequent remem- 

 brance of it ? And 3. In cases in which we have not access to tlie 

 original records, what is the amount of allowance which we ought to 

 make for the accretion of other still less trustworthy narratives around 

 the original nucleus ? " 



Circumstances have led me from a very early period to take a 

 great interest in the question of the value of testimony, and to occupy 

 myself a good deal in the inquiry as to what is scientifically termed 

 its " subjective " element. It was my duty for many years to study 

 and to expound systematically to medical students the probative value 

 of different kinds of evidence ; and my psychological interest in the 

 curious phenomena which, under the names of mesmerism, odylism, 

 electro-biology, psychic force, and spiritual agency, have been supposed 

 to indicate the existence of some new and mysterious force in Nature, 

 led me, through a long series of years, to avail myself of every oppor- 

 tunity of studying them that fell within my reach. The general result 

 of these inquiries has been to force upon me the conviction that, as 



