RIGHT RELATION OF REASON TO RELIGION 237 



hear, and that he did so declare, and that they be- 

 lieved it, as he evidently believed it. There can be 

 no evidence in all this that what they believed was 

 really fact. If it be said that it was enough to wit- 

 ness the manifest character of Jesus, to believe his 

 words beyond all doubt ; that the witnesses were so 

 transfixed and inspired by the evident worth of Christ 

 as to " knozu in whom they had believed," as they 

 firmly testify, — this is to abandon the principle of 

 Authority, and to appeal to the latent Jinman know- 

 ledge of what constitutes a divine character. 



And all this holds, remember, irrespective of the 

 further difficulties which the Method of Authority, 

 with its necessary dependence upon human testi- 

 mony, must meet when we come to the intricate 

 question how testimony, of whatever original au- 

 thenticity and sincerity, can be securely and verifi- 

 ably transmitted ; and to the yet closer question, 

 whether the conditions for such secure and veri- 

 fiable transmission have actually been met in the 

 case either of the Church Tradition or of Holy 

 Scripture. Grave and indeed terrible are these 

 questions ; the more so for the soul that has true 

 piety toward God and faithful love for Christ, yet 

 is habituated to rest its faith on an authority sup- 

 ported by testimony, when it comes to realise, as 

 by a sufficiently wide comparative study it must, 

 how rarely testimony is either exact or exactly trans- 



