knowing all this and admitting it', as a play of reasoning, to be unanswerable, we yet gaze on the rainbow shining there in its sevenfold perfection of divided light, and we shall not only be undisturbed by its possessing a merely subjective reality, but even more than this, we shall accept it still as a symbol of mercy to a sinful and stormy world, and shall joyfully recall that prophecy of redemption, "the rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto the emerald"." As the Predestinarian may prove to us that we are but puppets of the divine will,-clay foredoomed to dishonour by the potter's hands,—but we shall still act as though we were absolutely free; even so when sceptical philosophies have shattered the arguments from final causes, and tried to demonstrate to us that neither from Scripture, nor from any primary intuition, can we be sure of so much as the existence of

drops again, are only empiric phenomena, and then their round form, nay even the space in which they are formed, are nothing in themselves but a mere modification or principle of our sensuous intuition; with all this, however, the object itself remains to us completely unknown." Kant, Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, p. 45, quoted by Chalybäus.

1 As even Dr Brown, the great opponent of Idealism, frankly admits. We may say of metaphysical formulæ and symbols, as Prof. Huxley does of materialistic, that when they are taken for anything but formulæ and symbols, they may “paralyse the energy and destroy the beauty of a life." Lay Sermons, p. 161. For instance, "the two Hegelian conclusions, that God is personal only in man, and the soul immortal only in God, clearly imply that neither is God personal, nor the soul immortal." Janet, Materialism, p. 5 (tr. Masson). Views like these led by a natural sequence of thought to the autolatry of Max Stirner with its motto, Quisque sibi Deus.

2 Rev. iv. 3.

a God, we still simply refuse to be tormented from our unshaken belief by the destructive ingenuity of our own logic; we quietly ignore these Antinomies of Reason, and after listening to Spinoza telling us that "to speak of God's assuming human nature is as absurd as if we said that a circle had taken the nature of a square;" still, in a spirit as invincibly calm as the credo quia impossibile of the ancient Father, we kneel humbly on our knees, and with eyes and hands upraised to heaven, pray to that phantasmal Deity who they tell us is but an idol. of our own fancy,-pray to Him not as to a mere anima mundi or cosmic life, not as to a mere transmutation of matter', not as to a mere "category of the ideal,” least of all, for the sake of some reflex action upon ourselves— but pray to Him as to a living God and merciful Father; knowing by the earnest of the Spirit, knowing by a witness within ourselves, that we shall receive from Him, through His Eternal and Incarnate Son, those daily miracles in the very possibility of which they tell us it is an imbecility to have believed3.

1 Moleschott, who with Büchner and Karl Vogt represents the most advanced school of Materialism, talks of the Allgewalt des Stoffwechsels: "Der Gott Straussens ist der Naturgesetz; der Gott Hegels ist der Begriff; der Gott Feuerbachs ist der illusorische Doppelgänger der Menschen; der Gott Moleschotts ist die Materie. Nachdem diese Götter, die Gebilde den Menschenwitzes und des Menschenwahns, sich,...in der Dämmerung der Grauen Theorie todtgeschlagen haben, darf auch ich den Wunsch hegen, dass...das Morgenroth der Erlösung tagen möge?" Hafermann, Athen oder Bethlehem? p. 125.

2 πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ ̓ ἄνθρωποι. Hom. Od. III. 48. "Deus non est Æternitas vel Infinitas sed æternus et infinitus: non est Duratio vel Spatium sed durat et adest." Sir I. Newton. "J'aime Dieu,

II. Nor are we surprised that metaphysicians themselves should have shrunk back appalled from their own conclusions, and found themselves compelled to rebuild in the region of practical belief what they had demolished in that of philosophical knowledge'. But the rejection

je n'aime pas l'être suprême," said a man of genius, Bungener, Voltaire et ses Temps, p. 241. Compare the admirably truthful and honest remarks of Niebuhr, “ As for that Christianity which is such according to the fashion of modern philosophers and Pantheists, without a personal God, without immortality......it may be a very ingenious and subtle philosophy, but it is no Christianity at all. Again and again have I said that I know not what to do with a metaphysical God, and that I will have no other but the God of the Bible who is heart and heart. Whoever can reconcile the metaphysical God with the God of the Bible may try it...but he who admits the absolute inexplicability of the main point which can only be approached by asymptotes, will never grieve at the impossibility of possessing any system of religion." Leben Niebuhr's, II. 344. "On my way

I found the God of the Pantheists, but I could make nothing of him. This poor visionary creature is interwoven with, and grown into the world, indeed is almost imprisoned in it, and yawns at you, without voice, without power. To have will one must have personality, and to manifest oneself, one must have elbow-room." Heine (quoted Trench on Miracles, p. 71, 9th ed.). Claudius compared an ideal relation without personality, to a painted horse which you can admire but not ride. Jacobi wanted to know nothing of a God who made the eye but does not see, the ear but does not hear, the understanding but neither knows, nor wills, and therefore is not. Hagenbach, Germ. Rat. pp. 296, 298.

1 Chalybäus, Speculative Philosophy, Eng. Tr. p. 49. Strauss, Leben Jesu, III. p. 144, seems aghast at the results of his own criticism, and endeavours "to re-establish dogmatically, what has been destroyed critically." The best account of the manner in which Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, &c. reconciled their theories with the objective historical existence of Christ, may be found in Dorner's Entwickelungsgesch. der Lehre der Person Christi.

of the supernatural is due also in no small degree to direct and often-repeated arguments founded on the alleged inadequacy of all testimony and immutability of all laws. And before dealing with these let us understand that the issue before us is distinct and definite. However skilfully the modern ingenuity of semi-belief may have tampered with supernatural interpositions, it is clear to every honest and unsophisticated mind that, if miracles be incredible, Christianity is false. If Christ wrought no miracles then the gospels are untrustworthy; if Christ rose not, which is a stupendous miracle-then is our preaching vain, and your faith is vain, and ye are yet in your sins, and we are found liars to God, and theyhowever desolate, however heartrending the belief-they that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished'. If the Resurrection be merely a spiritual idea, or a mythicised hallucination, then our religion has been founded on an error and a sham. We accept the issue. Eliminate miracles, and then though there still remain a moral system singularly noble and singularly pure-yet it is a moral Deism alone. A Christianity without its Redeemer, without its sanctions, without its hopes-a Christianity dissevered from the promises of the future and the history of the past-a Christianity based on

1 1 Cor. xv. 18. The last prayer of Thistlewood, the Cato Street conspirator, "Oh God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul," rings with the echoes of an intense despair; but it is an abyss far lower than this to affirm dogmatically that there is no soul, no salvation, and no immortality. Strauss ends his Glaubenslehre with the remark that the belief in a future life is the last enemy (!) which speculative criticism has to overcome.

the credulity of superstitions, and disseminated by the potency of lies, is not the Christianity of our convictions, not a Christianity for which we care to retain the name. If it be true that the growth of science and civilisation are incompatible with a belief in the miraculous, then must science and civilisation listen for the voice of some new deliverer, for then Christianity is dead'.

i. Now as regards the inadequacy of testimony to establish a miracle, modern scepticism has not advanced one single step beyond the blank assertion. And it is astonishing that this assertion should still be considered cogent, when its logical consistency has been shattered to pieces by a host of writers as well sceptical as Christian. For, as the greatest of our living logicians has remarked, the supposed recondite and dangerous formula of Hume -that it is more probable that testimony should be mistaken than that miracles should be true—reduces itself to the very harmless proposition that anything is incre

1 "Strauss hat ganz Recht wenn er die Wunderfrage als die Existensfrage des Christenthums behandelt." Uhlhorn, Die Mod. Darstell. des Lebens Jesu, p. 106.

2 Mill's Logic, II. 157–160. Dr Whewell points out most clearly that in Inductive inferences a new element is added to the combination of facts, "a conception of the mind is superinduced on the general proposition which did not exist in the observed facts." In fact, as Mr Mill says, this kind of Induction is “merely a shorthand registration of the facts known," and not an inference from facts known to facts unknown. "Induction," to use Dr Whewell's metaphor, "moves upwards and Deduction downwards, on the same stair, but they move differently. Deduction descends steadily and methodically step by step; Induction mounts by a leap beyond the reach of method, and bounds to the top of the stair.”