tion, by being applied from time to time,—against the decays of age; in the same manner as ordinary food from day to day supports us against death and from famine; or as, in some persons, the habitual use of certain medicines is found to keep off some particular disease. It is not at all incredible, that the Creator may have bestowed on some fruit such a virtue; which is not, in itself, at all more wonderful than that opium, for instance, should produce sleep, or strong liquors a temporary madness.

Supposing then this to have been the true state of the case, our first Parents, though they had eaten of the Tree of Life, would, of course, when afterwards debarred from the use of it, not live for ever. But it is worth remarking, that if we were to hazard a conjecture on the subject, we should expect to find that persons whose constitution had for a time been thus fortified, though they would at length die, yet would live much longer than Man's natural term of years; and that they would even be likely to transmit such a constitution to their descendants as should confer on these also a great degree of longevity; which would only wear out gradually, in many successive gene

rations.

We know indeed that no such medicine does now exist; but we know this, only from experience. And to maintain that therefore none such ever did, or could exist, is a mere assumption, and a very rash and groundless one.

'Once believe that there is a God, and miracles are not incredible.'

A remarkable change has taken place in the antichristian world since Paley's time. In his day, and long before, the far greater part of those who denied the Gospel, were what are called Deists. They professed belief in a God in the ordinary acceptance of the word—namely, a personal intelligent agent, the Maker and Ruler of the universe. And many of them professed to believe also in a future state. Those again, who denied all this, plainly professed themselves Atheists.

Now however, and for the last half-century, it is rare to meet with a Deist in the above sense. The opponents of Christianity generally reject the belief of a personal Deity; and yet they do not usually call themselves Atheists; but

apply the term 'God' to the system of the Universe itself. And the greater part of them assume the title of Christians. They believe in Christianity, all but the history and the doctrines. The history they consider as partly true, but partly a Myth, and partly an exaggerated and falsified report; and the doctrines as a mixture of truth with errors and pious frauds. Yet though in reality much further removed from Christianity than a Jew or a Mahometan, they are quite ready to take that oath, on the true faith of a Christian,' which many have regarded as the great bulwark of the christian character of our Legislature! And we should observe that, with hypocrisy (against which, it has been most truly remarked, no legal enactments can afford security) these persons are not at all chargeable. They are to be censured indeed for an unwarrantable use of the terms they employ; for inventing a new language of their own, and calling it English. But since they tell us what it is they do mean by Christianity, they cannot fairly be accused of deceit.

I am told that the school or sect to which most of these Writers belong is called 'Positivity,' and that its doctrine is the worship of Human Nature. If the reader has no clear notion concerning this system, he is probably, so far, on a level with its authors.

Here is a specimen (to which many more might have been added) of the transcendental style in which some of these philosophers seek to enlighten mankind.

'It [Religion] is a mountain air; it is the embalmer of the world. It is myrrh, and storax, and chlorine, and rosemary. It makes the sky and the hills sublime; and the silent song of the stars is it. . . . . Always the seer is the sayer. Somehow his dream is told, somehow he publishes it with solemn joy, sometimes with pencil on canvas, sometimes with chisel on stone; sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul's worship is builded. . . . . . Man is the Wonder Maker. He is seen amid miracles. The stationariness of religion, the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing Him as a Man, indicate with sufficient clearness, the falsehood of our theology. It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was-that He speaketh, not spoke. The true Christianity - a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of

Man-is lost.

None believeth in the soul of Man, but only in some man or person old and departed! In how many churches, and by how many prophets, tell me, is Man made sensible that he is an infinite soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; and that he is drinking for ever the soul of God! The very word Miracle, as pronounced by christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster; it is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. . . Man's life is a miracle, and all that Man doth. . . . . A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments. The gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, but a sweet natural goodness like thine and mine, and that thus invites thine and mine to be, and to grow.'

'If thou hast any tidings,' says Falstaff to Pistol, 'prithee deliver them like a man of this world.'

It has been often remarked as a curious phenomenon in human nature, that some religious enthusiasts have been men of good sense in all matters but one; and yet will say, and write, and approve, the most astounding absurdities in what relates to religion. But, it is equally true, and a no less curious fact, that some anti-religious enthusiasts will exhibit equally strange anomalies. For example, an able Writer on other subjects has argued that such miracles as are ascribed to Jesus could not have been wrought by Him; since, if they had been, the Jews could not have avoided believing in Him. Yet, almost in the same breath, he declares that he himself would not have believed in Jesus, even if he had been an eye-witness of those miracles! But, apart from this inconsistency, we might point out to him that he has before his eyes strong evidence of the force of Jewish prejudice. He sees Jews clinging to a religion which he believes to be false, and to be proved false in a most striking manner-clinging to it for ages together in

1 Greg's Creed of Christendom, pp. 204-207. His reason is, because, though we cannot account for such facts now by natural causes, science may discover a natural account for them hereafter. It would be shorter to say at once, that we cannot believe any fact of ancient history, because something may be discovered hereafter to refute the truth of it-or that we cannot believe any man to be honest, because he may turn out a rogue-or, indeed, trust any moral evidence, because all moral evidence leaves a possibility of the fact being otherwise. But see Lessons on Evidence, Lesson v., s. 2, p. 32, 10th edition.

spite of the clearest rational evidence, and even the sensible proof afforded by the destruction of their Temple, and their own dispersion over the earth. In reality, we have no difficulty in accounting for the rejection of Christianity by the majority of the Jews. It is he who should account for its reception by so many of them. The rejection of Christianity by the Jews no more shows that Christianity had not good proof to offer, than the rejection by the same people of pure deism or atheism, or whatever else they dislike, proves that nothing inconsistent with their prejudices can be supported by clear and cogent reasons. The reception of Christianity by them supposes prejudice overcome by something; and the question is, by what? The rejection of it implies nothing but the steady action of a principle known by plain fact to exist, and known by plain fact also to be capable of resisting the strongest evidence.

'Mr. Hume states the case of miracles to be a contest of opposite improbabilities;—a question whether it be more improbable that a miracle should be true, or the testimony false.'

In reference to Hume's essay on miracles, it is worth observing that many persons have overlooked the circumstance that though he doubtless meant his readers to accept his argument as valid, he must himself have perceived that it is, on his own principles, elsewhere maintained, utterly futile, and a mere mystification. For he speaks of our 'experience of the course of Nature,' while, according to his views, there is no such thing as 'a course of nature;'—at least, any that can be known by us: and we cannot have any reasonable belief of anything, except what he calls the ideas in our own minds; so that, on his system, a miracle that is believed, has as much reality as anything at all, whether miraculous or not, can have.

But as for the question what he did really believe, probably he would have been as much at a loss as any one else to answer it with truth. For he seems to have so long indulged the habit of writing (as the phrase is) for effect,' and considering merely what might be so plausibly stated as to gain admiration for ingenuity, that he ultimately lost all thought of ever inquiring seriously what is true, or of really believing or disbelieving anything.

His argument respecting miracles, stated clearly, and in regular form, would stand thus:

Testimony is a kind of evidence very likely to be false:
The evidence for the christian miracles is testimony:
Therefore it is likely to be false.

Now it is plain that everything turns on the question whether what is meant be all testimony, or some. The former is what no one in his senses would maintain. If a man were to carry out this principle, and reject all testimony to anything that is in itself improbable,' he would be consigned to a madhouse. But if the meaning be some testimony, this is true enough, but involves a gross fallacy: [Some] testimony is likely to be false; and the evidence for the christian miracles is [some] testimony,' proves nothing. One might as well say 'books [viz. some books] consist of mere trash; Hume's Works are books; therefore they consist of merè trash.'

'

Of course, if any narrative is rejected on the ground of its being more improbable in Hume's language, more miraculous"—than the falsity of the testimony to it, this is a fair procedure. And whether this is or is not the case, is the very question on which, in each instance, issue is to be joined.

It is worth remarking by the way, that Hume has, in treating of evidence, fallen into a blunder which most schoolboys would detect. He lays down as a principle, that any witnesses, or other evidences, on one side of a question, are counterbalanced and neutralized by an equal number (supposing them individually of equal weight) on the opposite side; and that the numerical excess on the one side is the measure of the probability. Thus, if there are ten witnesses on the one side, and fifteen on the other, ten of these are neutralized by the opposite ten; and the surplus of five gives the amount of the probability. A mere tyro in Arithmetic, could have taught him that the measure of the probability is the proportion-the Ratio of the two numbers to each other. But by his rule, if in some case there were two witnesses on the one side, and four on the opposite, and in

1 As, for instance, the existence and the exploits of Buonaparte. See Historic Doubts.

2 The fallacy is (in the language of Logicians) that of a 'Middle-term undistributed; or, as some express it, taken twice particularly.'

3 See Historic Doubts, p. 24, and Hume's Essays, 8th and 10th.

E.C.

D