more readily associates itself with spiritual ideas, than with external evidence or physical events: and it is generally admitted, that many points of important religious instruction, even conveyed under the form of fictions, as in the instances of doctrines inculcated through parables, are more congenial to the spirit of faith than any relations of historical events could be.

The more knowledge advances, the more it has been, and will be, acknowledged that Christianity, as a real religion, must be viewed apart from connection with physical things.

The first dissociation of the spiritual from the physical was rendered necessary by the palpable contradictions disclosed by astronomical discovery with the letter of Scripture. Another still wider and more material step has been effected by the discoveries of geology. More recently, the antiquity of the human race and the development of species, and the rejection of the idea of "creation," have caused new advances in the same direction.

In all these cases, there is, indeed a direct discrepancy between what had been taken for revealed truth and certain undeniable existing monuments to the contrary.

But these monuments were interpreted by science and reason; and there are other deductions of science and reason referring to alleged events, which, though they have left no monuments or permanent effects behind them, are not the less legitimately subject to the conclusions of positive science, and require a similar concession and recognition of the same principle of the independence of spiritual and of physical truth.

Thus far, our observations are general; but, at the present moment, some recent publications on the subject seem to call for a few more detailed remarks. We have before observed, that the style and character of works on the evidences" has, of necessity, varied in different ages. Those of Leslie and Grotius have, by common consent, been long since superseded by that of Paley. Paley was long the text-book at Cambridge: his work was never so extensively popular at Oxford; it has of late been entirely disused there. By the public at large however once accepted, we do not hesitate to express our belief, that, before another quarter of a century has elapsed, it will be laid on the shelf with its predecessors: not that it is a work destitute of high merit, as is pre-eminently true also of those it superseded, and of others again anterior to them, but they have all followed the irreversible destiny, that a work, suited to convince the public mind at any one particular period, must be accommodated to the actual condition of knowledge, of opinion, and mode of thought, of that period. It is not a question of abstract excellence, but of relative adaptation.

Paley caught the prevalent tone of thought in his day. Public opinion has now taken a different turn; and, what is more important, the style and class of difficulties and objections honestly felt has become wholly different. New modes of speculation - new forms of scepticism-have invaded the domain of that settled belief which a past age had been accustomed to rest on the Paleyan syllogism. Yet, among several works which have of late appeared on the subject, we recognize few which at all meet these requirements of existing opinion. Of some of the chief of these works, even appearing under the sanction of eminent

names, we are constrained to remark, that they are altogether behind the age; that, amid much learned and acute remark on matters of detail, those material points on which the modern difficulties chiefly turn, as well as the theories advanced to meet them, are, for the most part, not only ignored, and passed over without examination or notice, but the entire school of those writers, who, with infinitely varied shades of view, have dwelt upon these topics, and put forth their attempts-feeble or powerful, as the case may be to solve the difficulties, to improve the tone of discussion, to reconcile the difficulties of reason with the high aspirations and demands of faith, are all indiscriminately confounded in one common category of censure; their views dismissed with ridicule as sophistical and fallacious, abused as infinitely dangerous, themselves denounced as heretics and infidels, and libelled as scoffers and atheists.

In truth, the majority of these champions of the evidential logic betray an almost entire unconsciousness of the advance of opinion around them. Having their own ideas long since cast in the stereotyped mould of the past, they seem to expect that a progressing age ought still to adhere to the same type, and bow implicitly to a solemn and pompous but childish parade and reiteration of the one-sided dogmas of an obsolete school, coupled with awful denunciations of heterodoxy on all who refuse to listen to them.

Paley clearly, as some of his modern commentators do avowedly, occupied the position of an advocate, not of a judge. They professedly stand up on one side, and challenge the counsel on the other to reply. Their object is, not truth, but their client's case.

The whole argument is one of special pleading. We may admire the ingenuity and confess the adroitness with which favorable points are seized, unfavorable ones dropped, evaded, or disguised; but we do not find ourselves the more impressed with those high and sacred convictions of truth, which ought to result rather from the wary, careful, dispassionate summingup on both sides, which is the function of the impartial and inflexible judge.

The one topic constantly insisted on as essential to the grounds of belief, considered as based on outward historical evidence, is that of the credibility of external facts as supported by testimony. This has always formed the most material point in the reasonings of the evidential writers of former times, hower imperfectly and unsatisfactorily to existing modes of thought they treated it; and to this point their more recent followers have still almost as exclusively directed their attention..

In the representations which they constantly make, we cannot but notice a strong apparent tendency and desire to uphold the mere assertion of witnesses as the supreme evidence of fact, to the utter disparagement of all general grounds of reasoning, analogy, and antecedent credibility, by which that testimony may be modified or discredited. Yet we remark, that all the instances they adduce, when carefully examined, really tend to the very conclusion they are so anxious to set aside. Arguments of this kind are sometimes deduced from such cases as, e. g., the belief accorded on very slight ground of probability in all commercial transactions dependent on the assumed credit and character of the negotiating parties; from the conclusions acted upon in life-assurances, notwithstanding the

proverbial instability of life; and the like: in all which, we can see no other real drift or tendency than to substantiate, instead of disparage, the necessity for some deeply seated conviction of permanent order as the basis of all probability.

A great source of misapprehension in this class of arguments has been the undue confusion between the force of testimony in regard to human affairs and events in history, and in regard to physical facts. It may be true, that some of the most surprising occurrences in ordinary history are currently, and perhaps correctly, accepted on but slight grounds of real testimony; but then they relate to events of a kind, which, however singular in their particular concomitant circumstances, are not pretended to be beyond natural causes, or to involve higher questions of intervention.

The most seemingly improbable events in human history may be perfectly credible on sufficient testimony, however contradicting ordinary experience of human motives and conduct; simply because we cannot assign any limits to the varieties of human dispositions, passions, or tendencies, or the extent to which they may be influenced by circumstances of which, perhaps, we have little or no knowledge to guide us. But no such cases would have the remotest applicability to alleged violations of the laws of matter, or interruptions of the course of physical causes.

The case of the alleged external attestations of revelation is one essentially involving considerations of physical evidence. It is not one in which such reflections and habits of thought as arise out of a familiarity with human history and moral argument will suffice.

These, no doubt, and other kindred