342 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix 



occasional impostures disprove the genuine mani- 

 festations (that is to say, all those which have not 

 yet been proved to be impostures or delusions) ? 

 And, in this, they unconsciously plagiarise from the 

 churchman, who just as freely admits that many 

 ecclesiastical miracles may have been forged ; and 

 asks, with calm contempt, not only of legal proofs, 

 but of common- sense probability, Why does it 

 follow that none are to be supposed genuine ? 

 I must say, however, that the spiritualists, so far 

 as I know, do not venture to outrage right reason 

 so boldly as the ecclesiastics. They do not sneer 

 at " evidence " ; nor repudiate the requirement of 

 legal proofs. In fact, there can be no doubt that 

 the spiritualists produce better evidence for their 

 manifestations than can be shown either for the 

 miraculous death of Arius, or for the Invention of 

 the Cross. 1 



From the " levitation " of the axe at one end 

 of a period of near three thousand years to the 

 " levitation " of Sludge & Co. at the other end, 

 there is a complete continuity of the miraculous, 

 with every gradation, from the childish to the 

 stupendous, from the gratification of a caprice to 

 the illustration of sublime truth. There is no 



1 Dr. Newman's observation that the miraculous multipli- 

 cation of the pieces of the true cross (with which "the whole 

 world is filled," according to Cyril of Jerusalem ; and of which 

 some say there are enough extant to build a man-of-war) is no 

 more wonderful than that of the loaves and fishes, is one that I do 

 not see my way to contradict. See Essay on Miracles, 2d ed. 

 p. 163. 



