177 
whom it appears idle to compare it with the moral force of 
other religious leaders. It touches at once the strongest and 
the tenderest fibres of the heart. It controls the fiercest 
passions and supports the gentlest. It is associated, in a 
manner which no similar influence has approached, with what- 
soever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
things are of good report. To those who are sufficiently sen- 
sible of this intense moral illumination, the supposition that 
it is associated with false testimony on matters of supreme 
moment is inconceivable. The case completely fulfils Hume’s 
condition that, to establish a miracle, “ the testimony be of 
such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than 
the fact which it endeavours to establish.” It seems idle to 
draw “ psychological parallels,” as has recently been attempted, 
between a moral giant like St. Paul and a worthy gentle- 
man like Sir Matthew Hale, and still worse to compare the 
dark and confused morality of other Eastern religions with 
the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ. His 
Apostles appeal to my whole being, to every moral sense 
of which I am conscious, to my weakness and my strength, 
my sin and my repentance, my intellect and my heart, 
and evoke towards themselves, and still more to One beyond 
themselves, that complete allegiance of the whole man which 
is designated Faith.* I do not pretend to have a scientific 
There could hardly be a better illustration of the claim of the Apostles 
in this respect than is afforded by the two following parables, which I take 
the liberty of extracting from Sir James Stephen’s article on Authority 
in the current number of the Nineteenth Century. He appears to suggest 
their application to the claims of modern religious authorities. Whether 
or not those authorities would have occasion to shrink from such a test, there 
is nothing they would more desire than that it should be applied to the 
Apostles. Perhaps the strongest claim of Christ and His Apostles is that 
“ they have proved themselves to be our superiors by appealing to the 
faculties” — above all the moral faculties — “which we have in common” : — 
A blind man and a seeing man were once discussing the existence of sight. 
The seeing man told the blind man that he had a faculty by which he could 
perceive innumerable things which he could neither hear, touch, smell, nor 
taste, and which were at a great distance from him. The blind man chal- 
lenged the seeing man to prove his assertions. “ That,” said the seeing man, 
“ is easily ‘done. Hold me by the hand. You perceive that I am standing 
by you. I affirm that if you will walk fifty steps along the side of this wall, 
which you can touch with your hand, so as to be sure that you are moving 
straight on, you will find such and such objects, which I specifically describe, 
and as to the existence of which you can satisfy yourself by your own 
fingers.” 
The blind man admitted that the seeing man had proved his assertion, 
VOL. XI. N 
