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of the persons to whom they are ascribed, we are accepting the testimony 
which has been recorded in early ages, but which was only recorded then as 
being the result of still earlier information and tradition. In that way any one 
who examines the documents must approach that examination with regard to 
the corroboration of evidence, and not as seeking the evidence in the documents 
• themselves. Indeed, it seems to me that the great cause why many critics have 
gone wrong is, their thinking that they had to consider whether a book was or 
was not the work of a particular author, from the examination of its internal 
evidence simply, without considering what has been declared by the voice of 
the Church through the aid of traditional history. They take up a document 
with what they profess to be pure indifference, although they often are, in 
fact, warped by a desire to find out that it is to be ascribed to some other 
than the reputed author. They rely entirely upon the small indications which 
they are able to glean from a writer’s style ; and naturally, when people give 
their close attention to style, they are apt to exaggerate the importance of 
the arguments founded upon it, and so are led astray. The great point is, 
that these subjects have been carefully examined in times when there were 
many means of coming to a correct conclusion, and we are bound not to reject 
the information which then existed and which was thus made available. 
This is entirely in agreement with Mr. Row’s view. With regard to the 
next point, the question of miracles, there is a great deal in this paper with 
which we must all agree. In the earlier part of Mr. Row’s remarks 
on the subject of miracles, there was a parallelism drawn between extra- 
ordinary and miraculous events, and that parallelism was based on an inci- 
dental remark of Bishop Butler’s, in his Analogy, in which he passingly 
compares miracles to such extraordinary occurrences as comets and the like, 
they not being so well understood then as they are now. I have always 
myself thought that this illustration of Bishop Butler’s was not a happy one. 
It appears that anything like a comparison between an extraordinary and 
a miraculous occurrence fails altogether ; the two things are entirely 
different. If we proved that anything which we now call a miracle were 
capable of being reduced to some general law with which men were not 
acquainted at the time of its occurrence, directly it comes under that 
general law it ceases to be a miracle altogether. It is of the essence of 
a miracle that it should be the interruption of some general law, I 
think, ' therefore, that any comparison whatever on this point fails alto- 
gether, because, so far from making a miracle appear credible as a miracle, it 
rather detracts from the peculiar authority with which we wish to invest it. 
The consideration of a miracle seems to me to rest simply upon this ground : 
Is the order of nature due to the effective will of a personal God, who 
wonderfully upholds and superintends the same ? If a personal God 
superintends and upholds the law of nature, there can be no a priori diffi- 
culty in supposing that the same God who ordained the law should at certain 
times suspend it ; and if we once arrive at that, it follows that a belief 
in miracles is only a necessary, natural consequence of a belief in the 
existence of a personal God. When once we accept that, we not only have 
