276 



THE VERY REV. H. WACE, D.D., ON SOME OF 



best and most sacred in their consciousness, and they recoil, by 

 a deep instinct, from suggestions that would connect this wit- 

 ness with illusion or falsity. Of course, this , is no argument 

 with those who do not recognize the supreme moral force of the 

 ^^"ew Testament, and the argument must always, therefore, rest, 

 in the last resort, upon the response of the individual conscience 

 ito the moral and spiritual claim of our Lord and His Apostles. 

 M this does not penetrate men's hearts and minds, "neither will 

 they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." If the 

 Evangelists and Apostles are ordinary individuals, and they are 

 to be regarded as simply deposing in court with no greater pre- 

 :3umption in their favour than average witnesses, it is quite 

 ■arguable that their evidence is insufficient. But if they are 

 ^spokesmen of a Master and a Society who were the greatest of 

 all witnesses to truth in the deepest moral and spiritual matters, 

 it becomes much more difficult to reject their evidence than to 

 believe the wonders they relate, and Hume's condition for the 

 credibility of miracles is fulfilled. This, I repeat, is the con- 

 sideration *which determines the judgment of the great mass of 

 Christian people, and it should be boldly urged. Unhappily, 

 a tendency has arisen among Christian theologians of late to 

 disintegrate the testimony of the Scriptures, and to depreciate 

 the trustworthiness of the authors of the New Testament on 

 important points. The favourable position in which men of 

 science, like Professor Huxley, had placed us has thus been 

 given away by our own friends, and the line of Christian defence 

 has so far been broken. But the case still remains as he left it. 

 There is no sufficient reason on purely scientific ground for 

 denying any of the miraculous facts on which the Christian 

 Creed rests ; and the simple question remains, being a moral as 

 well as an intellectual question. Is the moral and spiritual force 

 of the New Testament sufficient to outweigh the physical im- 

 probability of the events it records ? From that issue the 

 controversy is never likely to be substantially shifted. 



But since Huxley's time, Science has done more than with- 

 draw its bar against the possibility of the supernatural basis 

 of Christian belief. It has itself opened doors in our physical 

 environment, which have not only impressed upon the minds of 

 men in general the mysterious possibilities which are latent in 

 Nature, but has led brilliant men of science themselves to 

 recognize the reasonableness of some of the assumptions of 

 Christian thought. Perhaps the greatest enlargement of 

 scientific thought has been produced by the discovery of the 

 nature and properties of the ether. Its importance was 



