RIGHT RELATION OF REASON TO RELIGION 265 



crisis — in the history of the Evidences, when a 

 distinguished and accepted Christian thinker first 

 took the step of reversing this order.^ The In- 

 ternal Evidence was then placed first, the weight 

 of proof was made to rest directly upon that, and 

 the evidence of testimony to declaration and to 

 miracle, and of miracle to the primary declaration, 

 was reduced to the role of corroboration and sec- 

 ondary support. At length, in our own times, 

 among the Protestants, particularly among those 

 of them called Liberals, — Liberals of all denomi- 

 nations, — we hear the evidence of personal expe- 

 rience, of inner personal life, of the adaptation 

 of Christianity to rational wants, — in short, the 

 evidence, not of mere reasoning, but of the large 

 and deep rational or spiritual nature as a whole, — 

 put forward on all sides as the real ground of 

 proof; while the free career of what is called 

 Criticism, whether the Lower or the Higher, sets 

 the External Evidences more and more aside, and 

 tends steadily to their final discredit and entire 

 disuse. Meanwhile, in the minds of those who 

 employ these latest methods of Christian Defence, 



1 The late Dr. Mark Hopkins, presitlent of Williams College, in his 

 notable lectures on the Evidences of Christianity, at the Lowell Insti- 

 tute, in Boston. lie follows the lead set by Coleridge in his Confes- 

 sions of an Iiiqtiiring Spirit, though (it must be confessed) haltingly 

 and at a distance. 



