341 
tion to an untrained mind. This appropriately leads to the 
contemplation of the subject of Tart 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 different 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 alreaSy, 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.” f 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 believe.”% In his 
J John xix. 35. 
John i., iii., vi , &c. f John iii. 33. 
