460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Anglican doctor, John Henry Newman, is compendiously stated 

 by himself in the following passage : 



If the miracles of church history can not he defended by the arguments of 

 Leslie, Lyttleton, Paley, or Douglas, how many of the Scripture miracles satisfy 

 their conditions ? (p. cvii). 



And, although the answer is not given in so many words, little 

 doubt is left on the mind of the reader that in the mind of the 

 writer it is : None. In fact, this conclusion is one which can not 

 be resisted, if the argument in favor of the Scripture miracles 

 is based upon that which laymen, whether lawyers, or men of 

 science, or historians, or ordinary men of affairs, call evidence. 

 But there is something really impressive in the magnificent con- 

 tempt with which, at times, Dr. Newman sweeps aside alike those 

 who offer and those who demand such evidence. 



Some infidel authors advise us to accept no miracles which would not have a 

 verdict in their favor in a court of justice ; that is, they employ against Scripture 

 a weapon which Protestants would confine to attacks upon the Chnrch, as if 

 moral and religious questions required legal proofs, and evidence were the test of 

 truth * (p. cvii). 



" As if evidence were the test of truth " ! — although the truth in 

 question is the occurrence or non-occurrence of certain phenomena 

 at a certain time and in a certain place. This sudden revelation 

 of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and the scientific 

 mind is enough to take away the breath of any one unfamiliar 

 with the clerical organon. As if, one may retort, the assumption 

 that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a religious end in 

 any way alters the fact that they profess to be historical events, 

 things that actually happened ; and, as such, must needs be ex- 

 actly those subjects about which evidence is appropriate and 

 legal proofs (which are such merely because they afford adequate 

 evidence) may be justly demanded. The Gadarene miracle 

 either happened, or it did not. "Whether the Gadarene "ques- 

 tion " is moral or religious, or not, has nothing to do with the 

 fact that it is a purely historical question whether the demons 

 said what they are declared to have said, and the devil-possessed 

 pigs did or did not rush over the cliffs of the Lake of Gennesa- 

 reth on a certain day of a certain year, after a. d. 26 and before 

 A. D. 36 ; for, vague and uncertain as New Testament chronology 

 is, I suppose it may be assumed that the event in question, if it 

 happened at all, took place during the procuratorship of Pilate. 



compile a primer of " infidelity," I think I should save myself trouble by making a selec- 

 tion from these works, and from the " Essay on Development " by the same author. 



* Yet, when it suits his purpose, as in the introduction to the " Essay on Develop- 

 ment," Dr. Newman can demand strict evidence in religious questions as sharply as any 

 "infidel author"; and he can even profess to yield to its force (" Essays on Miracles," 

 1870, note, p. 391). 



