3ut3 



what He will do^ and what His character leads Him to do. This 

 seems like a truism ; but the consequences of the practical dis- 

 regard of the caution are lamentable, and it is one which is 

 frequently disregarded by persons who attempt to defend 

 revelation. "We reject the great mass of supernatural occur- 

 rences with which certain portions of history are flooded^ 

 because, in the great majority of cases^ they have no adequate 

 attestation ; but where the evidence for them is as strong as 

 that on which we would accept an ordinary event, we reject 

 them from their repugnance to the Divine character, or because 

 they were not performed for the purpose of attesting a divine 

 commission. In one word, we do not believe that God will work 

 miracles of this description. It is on these grounds that I feel 

 myself compelled to reject the alleged miracle at the conversion 

 of Constantine, which is one of the best attested of this kind. 

 It seems to me that the miracle in question is contrary to the 

 character bf Him who wrought the miracles in the Gospels ; and 

 that it is possible^ without accusing either Eusebius or Constan- 

 tino of deliberate falsehood, to explain it on the principle of 

 peculiar physical phenomena acting on a highly excited state 

 of the imagination. 



The above considerations render it evident that the presence 

 of a single mythological or a miraculous story does not justify 

 us in rejecting the entire context in which it occurs. Some of 

 them can be accounted for by mistakes as to physical pheno- 

 mena J a still larger number can be referred to mental causes. 

 Yet their presence unquestionably shakes our confidence in the 

 judgment of the person who reports them. When^ however, they 

 occur in large numbers, the case is diflPerent. They naturally 

 produce great suspicion of the truth of the facts with which they 

 are connected. In prehistoric ages they are the result of the 

 play of poetic imagination. Still, however, it is impossible to 

 lay down a general rule which will render unnecessary careful 

 rational inquiry as to the degree in which the presence of a 

 mythic element invalidates a fact otherwise credible. 



lY. I cannot conclude this paper without offering a few remarks 

 on literary forgeries, and the rules of criticism applied to them. 

 In this department of criticism conjecture has been invoked to a 

 degree which no rational principles will justify. It frequently 

 happens that writers who have a particular theory to maintain, 

 pronounce a book or a passage to be a forgery, or assert 

 that an author has misrepresented a fact, for no other reason 

 than that it opposes their own views ; and then seek for a num- 

 ber of reasons to render the assertion plausible. Thus, because 

 the facts referred to in Pliny^s letter to Trajan, and in Taci- 

 tus^s description of the Neronian persecution, are not agreeable 



