341 



tion to an untrained mind. This appropriately leads to the 

 contemplation of the subject of Part IV., the spiritual world, 

 in considering which we must abandon the weights and scales, 

 the thermo-electric pile, the mathematical reasoning as to the 

 luminiferous ether, and receive proof by a totally different 

 method of conviction, — that of human testimony. 

 This leads to my final discussion. 



Part V. — On Christian Evidence. 



57. I have been describing various methods of arriving at the 

 truth of scientific facts, and the measure of credence to be 

 accorded thereto ; but, when I turn my attention to the 

 Christian religion, I find myself on diff'erent ground altoge- 

 ther, — that of testimony : and though wholly diverse from the 

 philosophy of experiment and induction, I am bound to say 

 that belief in human testimony is the mode by which almost 

 all knowledge, whether of a secular or of a spiritual nature, 

 reaches us from our earliest infancy. What, indeed, would be 

 the amount of our acquirements, if we individually believed 

 nothing but that which we had either observed or excogitated 

 by ourselves alone ? 



58. In the New Testament, then, I find that all our blessing is 

 made to rest, not on the sandy foundation of innate ideas and 

 feelings, gradually superinduced from a lower origin, but on 

 testimony, in the first place divine, and then human. Thus, in 

 the Gospel of John* we are told that God so loved the world 

 that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 

 Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.^^ He that 

 believeth on Him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is 

 condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name 

 of the only begotten Son of God.^^ Everything is made to 

 depend upon the reception or rejection of an authoritative 

 testimony, borne in the first place by an authorized Testimony- 

 bearer from the bosom of God. " He that hath received his 

 testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.^^ t The Apostles 

 were called to be in their special place testimony-bearers, and 

 thus the Apostle John records and registers (as it were in 

 court) his witness to what he saw when he stood by the cross : 



And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true, and he 

 knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believeJ^X 



* J ohn i., iii., vi , &c. f John ill. 33. J John xix. 35. 



