FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 241 



'■'■proportion to its purify will be its ifijliience for good, and for good 

 " 07ily; " 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 consideration 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 " cata- 

 clysms " and " interruptions," and to substitute the idea of pro- 

 gressive " evolution" for that of "special creations," cannot but 

 be obvious to every one who is familiar with the progress of in- 

 quiry in astronomy, physical geology, palaeontology, 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 order as the highest evidence of 

 its original perfection, need lind (as it seems to me) no abstract 

 difficulty in the conception that the Author of Nature can, if He 

 will, occasionally depart from it. And hence, as I deem it pre- 

 sumptuous to deny that there might be occasions which in His 

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

 such scientific " prepossession " against miracles, as would pre- 

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

 their reality could be adduced. The question with me, theretore, 

 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 whilst the scientific 

 probability of uniform sequence has become stronger, the value 

 of testimony in regard to departures from it has been in various 

 ways discredited by modern criticism. It is clear that tlie old 

 arguments of Lardner, and the modern reproduction of them by 

 Professor Andrews Norton (Boston, N.E.), which in my early 

 days were held as demonstrating the "genuineness of the Gos- 



