214 AGNOSTICISM VII 



"made the Christian world/' must be trust and 

 faith in falsehood. No man who has studied 

 history, or even attended to the occurrences of 

 everyday life, can doubt the enormous practical 

 value of trust and faith ; but as little will he be 

 inclined to deny that this practical value has not 

 the least relation to the reality of the objects of 

 that trust and faith. In examples of patient 

 constancy of faith and of unswerving trust, the 

 " Acta Martyrum " do not excel the annals of 

 Babism. 1 



The discussion upon which we have now _ 

 entered goes so thoroughly to the root of the 

 whole matter ; the question of the day is so 

 completely, as the author of " Robert Elsmere " 

 says, the value of testimony, that I shall offer no 

 apology for following it out somewhat in detail ; 

 and, by way of giving substance to the argument, 

 I shall base what I have to say upon a case, 

 the consideration of which lies strictly within the 

 province of natural science, and of that particular 

 part of it known as the physiology and pathology 

 of the nervous system. 



I find, in the second Gospel (chap, v.), a state- 

 ment, to all appearance intended to have the 

 same evidential value as any other contained in 



1 [See De Gobineau, Les Religions et les Philosophies dnns 

 rAsie Centrale ; and the recently published work of Mr. E. G. 

 Browne, The Episode of the Bab.] 



