witnesses of Christ's life. We will take this last point as that which most concerns us now, and is most easily treated. In the case of St. Matthew there is the difficulty of identifying our present Gospel with the Hebrew original. With St. Mark we have the testimony of Papias that he was not an eye-witness of Christ's life. With St. Luke this is acknowledged. There remains only St. John. This Gospel is for our present purpose the most important, because its miracles are, as a rule, more decidedly supernatural, that is, less presumably explicable in a natural way than those of the Synoptics. Thus we have the cure of a man who had an infirmity thirty-eight years, the giving of sight to a man born blind, the raising of Lazarus when he had been dead four days. But the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel I do not think that we could expect an adversary to admit. He would probably meet us by some such remarks as the following: The historical evidence for this Gospel is weaker than that for the Synoptics. You cannot fairly quote Justin Martyr or Papias on its behalf. The internal evidence offers serious difficulties. The greater departure from nature in the miracles is of itself an unfavourable sign; it suggests, at least, that growth of the story so common in successive accounts of wonderful things. Then there is an appearance of a doctrinal rather than historical purpose, as, for

instance, in the narration of miracles apparently as introduction to discourses; there is a narration of things, which it is strange that the Synoptics omit, as the raising of Lazarus; there is a discrepancy from them as to facts, as in the day of the crucifixion, and the abode of Lazarus and his sisters, the period and the scene of Christ's ministry; there are discourses attributed to Christ differing both in style and matter from those in the Synoptics; there is a style of language and of thought in the Gospel which we should not expect from St. John, from what we read of him in the other Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, or from the Apocalypse.' I for one could not say that all such objections have so far been adequately answered, nor do I know that the defenders of Johannine authorship have anything to set against them from internal evidence which might not be plausibly explained on the supposition of the Gospel being written by one acquainted with St. John. Upon the whole, in the present state of the controversy, I do not think that the Fourth Gospel can be relied upon for evidential purposes. It does not seem to me right to refuse to recognise these difficulties merely because we feel the spiritual beauty of the Gospel, or hold it part of the canon.

There are other tests of the authenticity of a narrative besides those which Paley's exceptions have brought before us. They may be comprehensively

described as consistency in its statements one with another and with what we know of its subject from other sources. If the Gospels be thus tried, it is well known that a number of discrepancies are found. Still, as regards the Synoptics, a case of general untrustworthiness is not made out. Strauss worked this mode of attack with great skill and industry. No doubt his criticisms make up a very strong objection to the infallibility of the narratives or even their great accuracy. But still his conclusion that they were largely myths generated partly by the action of Old Testament ideas has not been widely accepted. It could, I think, be plausibly applied only to very few New Testament accounts, as, for instance, that of the magi. Nay, I think that we may fairly claim that he has not lowered the historical authority of much the greater part of the Synoptics even to that of legend, that is to say, of imaginative accounts with a basis of historical truth. It is difficult to imagine that the recorded sayings of Christ could have been invented for him, and often those in the Gospels cohere with miraculous narratives, as in the healing of the paralytic-St. Luke v. 18-26, St. Mark ii. 3-12. Indeed, a knowledge of Christ's sayings in the Evangelists plainly makes for a knowledge of his works also. The argument from discrepancy does appear to me stronger against the Fourth Gospel, as I have already said.

I will not dwell longer on these criticisms, but endeavour now to sum up our results in their bearing on the evidential argument. In the first place, I would repeat that this argument involves two positions. You have to establish the evangelical miracles and to discredit others. I have specially considered the reasoning of Paley, because I think that it is the ablest specimen of such argument in our language. His main allegation on behalf of the Gospel miracles is the possession of martyr testimony. I have endeavoured to show that such testimony was not of so high a value as he assumes, and further that it is a question whether the particular miracles recorded in our Gospels possess it. Paley urged certain rules of exception against other miraculous narratives. The first class of these exceptions--(1) not being written at the time, (2) or on the spot, (5) want of particularity, (7) bias in the writers, (11) liability to explanation as exaggerations, are objections which, if we are to be impartial, we must largely apply to the narratives of the New Testament. I cannot allow Paley's reason for not applying them. Now if we do so no miracle except the resurrection of Christ will, I believe, escape. The second class of The second class of exceptions(3) transient rumours, (4) bare statements of history, (6) carelessly believed accounts, also apply to the evangelical miracles with the like exception in some degree. There is a want of corroboration which is

the ground of these objections. Putting aside the resurrection, we cannot well show that any one of the alleged miracles of Christ had much to do with the great fact brought forward in corroboration, viz. the origin of his Church. The case may require that something wonderful occurred in Christ's life, but this is vague. Lastly, our third batch of exceptions, (8) false perception, (9) so-called tentative miracles, (10) natural explanation, are likewise valid against many New Testament accounts. It is allowed that the witnesses of whatever did occur were uneducated men, or at all events strangers to modern science. We find two of the principal of them spoken of in the Acts as ignorant and unlearned men. We learn from sources beyond question that the first Christians were believers in dreams, magic, angelic and diabolic interference even with physical phenomena, that they made inaccurate quotations and uncritical applications of Scripture, of whose authority, at the same time, they cherished the highest ideas; that, in short, they do not seem to have been accurate observers or reasoners according to our notion, and that their minds were filled with those ideas of personal supernatural agency which, as I have said, favour the springing up of miraculous accounts just as a belief in natural law discourages them. That want of accuracy which, as I have said in my consideration of further tests, the discrepancies of the