80(3 
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 winch 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 of Him who wrought the miracles in the Gospels ; and 
that it is possible, without accusing either Eusebius or Constan- 
tine 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 ; 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 different. 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. 
IY. 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 
