seen alive, has been many times ably discussed. English readers who desire to see what can be said against it, may consult Charles Hennell's "Inquiry on the Origin of Christianity," Strauss' "Life of Jesus," or W. R. Greg's "Creed of ChristenFrom the last-named we extract the following, p. 216:

"A marked and most significant peculiarity in these accounts, which has not received the attention* it deserves, is, that scarcely any of those who are said to have seen Jesus after his resurrection recognised him, though long and intimately acquainted with his person.

(Mark xvi. 12.) After that he appeared in another form to two of them.' Now if it really were Jesus who appeared to these various parties, would this want of recognition have been possible? If it was Jesus, he was so changed that his most intimate friends did not know him. How then can we know that it was himself?"

The defence put in by our divines does nothing but show the shifting and untangible nature of their argument. They say, that the risen Jesus had a glorified body which could pass through shut doors, and of course was sufficiently different from his former body to embarrass recognition. We began by avowing that human testimony was imaginable that might prove the restoration of a dead man to life. But we must modify the avowal, by adding, that no common testimony could ever prove the sort of resurrection here tendered to us: for if the risen body is not a body of flesh and blood, but "glorified" and ethereal, and so unlike the former body of Jesus that his friends identify him only by the symbolical action of breaking bread, as the two disciples at Emmaus (Luke xxiv.), their testimony is unavailing. To what do they affect to bear witness? They do not lay before us the impressions on their sight or hearing, but merely the inferences of their mind, that the person who broke bread in a certain way must have been Jesus, though he looked very unlike him. And this leads naturally to the important point, which Mr. Hennell has so well made prominent :

"It seems probable (says he, p. 204, second edition) that the original belief among the Apostles was merely that Christ had been raised from the dead in an invisible or spiritual manner: for where we can arrive at Peter's own words, viz., in his 'Epistle,' he speaks of Christ as being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit (1 Pet. iii. 18)—θανατωθεὶς μεν σαρκί ζωοποιηθεὶς de TVεvμATI. That the last phrase signifies a mode of operation invisible to human eyes, appears from the following clause, which describes Jesus as preaching, also in the spirit (ev ŵ), to the spirits in prison. But some of the disciples soon added to this idea of an invisible or spiritual resurrection, that Jesus had appeared to many in a bodily form.

Hennell touches the topic in a short but decisive paragraph, p. 239, second edition.

Men who have seen and heard another man, have a certain power of identifying him when they see him and hear him again; and when by eye or ear they do identify him, we call their declaration concerning it testimony or witness, and assign a certain weight to it. But if they declare that they do not identify him by eye or hear, but only by the inferences of their mind, it is an abuse of language to call this testimony. If the glorified spirit of a deceased friend were to appear to one of us-whether in ecstatic vision or in what seemed to be our waking senses-we could not claim that other men should accept as testimony" our statement that it was he: for though they have experience of the trustworthiness of sense to recognize and identify ordinary bodies in their ordinary states, they know nothing of the trustworthiness of sense when it pretends to identify a form now ethereal and glorified with what was once a human body. And as it is not only in Peter's epistle and in Paul's vision (as, indeed, in Paul's doctrine of the "resurrection-body"), that this idea of a merely spiritual resurrection of Jesus is suggested, but the same occurs in all the Gospels-partly in the difficulty of recognizing Jesus, partly in his vanishing out of their sight or suddenly coming through walls and doors-the whole is removed beyond the sphere of testimony, even if the declarations were consistent and distinct, and were laid before us on the authority of the original eye-witnesses.

Thus those two cardinal events which Protestantism undertakes to prove and recognizes as its basis,-when their alleged Scriptural evidence is examined fail of satisfying the demands of ordinary scientific reasoning; after which we need not wonder that Protestantism cannot win intelligent converts. For it does not, like Catholicism, tell people that they must not reason at all concerning religion. On the contrary, it excites their reasoning powers-bids them to examine-professes to give proofs-lays before them the Scripture as decisive-talks high of private judgment-and yet gives no evidence which can bear the tests of ordinary historical and scientific inquiry. When hereto it adds unseemly threats, denouncing Divine judgment on all whose intellect rises against its imbecility, none can wonder that the freer-thinking Catholics say they may as well remain under the old Church as go into another which, while it affects to appeal to reason, is as essentially unreasonable as the old one. "My child," said a Catholic bishop to a Protestant in his neighbourhood, "did I rightly hear that you called the sacred doctrine of

Transubstantiation irrational ? Oh, folly! If, in order to receive the doctrine of the Trinity, you have crucified vain reason, what avails to build again that which you have destroyed. by setting reason to carp at another doctrine which is too hard for it?"

Besides the miracles which inhere in the person of Jesus, there are two great classes of miracles wrought by him, and by or in his disciples, which may deserve a few words here. First we have the casting-out of devils-a miracle very prevalent in the three first Gospels, though unknown to the fourth. No educated physician, Catholic or Protestant, can well listen with gravity to a truly orthodox discourse on this subject. Indeed, many wellinformed divines are ashamed of it, and declare that popular ignorance mistook epilepsy, catalepsy, madness, and other diseases, for a possession by evil spirits. They are aware that the superstition was learned by the Jews in Babylon, and still exists in very ignorant countries; and they tell us that the Evangelists accommodated their dialect to that of the ignorant, but made no substantial error. Hence, according to them, as we accept the phrase, that "the sun rises," even if astronomically questionable; so must we tacitly interpret the "possession by a devil" into. epilepsy, or some other disease. But such divines are rather well-informed than candid; for they cannot but be aware that it is impossible to get rid of the "devils" by interpretation. Divines more candid, but sometimes worse-informed, have far more cogently argued, that the discerning of Jesus, as Son of God, which is attributed to demoniacs-and still more decisively, the passing of a legion of devils from a man into a herd of swinedemonstrate the narrators to have had a definite belief in the supernatural knowledge, power, and personality of the "devils" who dwelt in the demoniacs.

The second class of miracles is the speaking with tongues, which so abounds in the book of the "Acts of the Apostles," and on which there is ample discussion in "Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians." We should in vain try here to abridge Mr. Greg's able summary of the phenomenon, in pp. 169-178 of the 66 Creed of Christendom." It is clear, both from the details given by Paul, and from many other considerations, that these "tongues were not real foreign languages, but were gibberish, such as used to be heard in the late Mr. Edward Irving's congregation-a gibberish which Paul felt to be "most probably nonsensical, unworthy, and grotesque" (Greg)—which he desired to repress, yet did not dare to forbid.

"We are driven to the painful but unavoidable conclusion, that those mysterious and unintelligible utterances, which the Apostles and the early Christians looked upon as the effects of the Holy Spirit, the manifestation of its presence, the signs of its operation, the especial indication and criterion of its having fallen upon any one, were in fact simply the physiologically natural results of morbid and perilous cerebral exaltation, induced by strong religious excitement acting on uncultivated and susceptible minds; results which in all ages and nations have followed in similar circumstances and from similar stimuli; and that these signs to which Peter appealed, and to which the other brethren succumbed, as proving that God intended the Gospel to be preached to Gentiles as well as to Jews, showed only that Gentiles were susceptible to the same excitements, and manifested that susceptibility in the same manner as the Jews."-Greg, p. 178.

There are other doctrines, common to the creed of all the national Churches, which, though too cardinal to omit, are too vast to discuss here in detail. We allude especially to the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement. These are rejected from Christianity by the followers of Dr. Priestley, who can fight powerfully against "Orthodoxy," when they go the full length. of avowing that the Epistles of Paul were of no authority in the Church at large for two centuries, and that the fourth Gospel is full of profanities, which would have shocked the earliest Christians. But nothing can be so opposed to the creed of European Christendom as this avowal; and without disrespect to some great Unitarian writers, when we speak of Christianity or Protestantism, we do not and cannot mean their scheme of thought and religion. The accomplished and variously-gifted scholars who hold places as bishops or deans among us, will justify us in treating these difficult doctrines, with the resurrection and the miraculous conception, as essential to Protestant Christianity. But since they are aware that the laws of evidence are coeval with the human mind, and that the evidence strictly and rightfully needed to establish a marvel now was always strictly and rightfully needed, even before men's minds had ripened to discern it; we may fairly propose to one of these learned persons, in the calm retirement of his library, to put down on paper the kind of evidence which, if tendered, would satisfy his mind that the holiest and noblest man now living is the Eternal (or an Eternal) Divine Being, Creator of this world and of all worlds, future Judge of mankind, who will give eternal life to some, and award condemnation to others—a Being towards whom we may exercise absolute trust and hope, and supreme adoration. If he seriously undertake the task we suggest, we should not be greatly surprised if his meditation threw unex

pected light on Edward Irving's apophthegm, "Intellectual evidence is the egg of infidelity;" or if it even reconciled him to the distinguished Mr. Keble's advice to his friend Arnold, as homely good sense, to "put down" his doubts concerning the Trinity "by main force," and take a curacy to get rid of them.

At the same time, nearly the same problem as the above rests on Unitarian Christians, whether their philosophy grovel or aspire; who after giving active aid to demolish the gorgeous fabric of magical ecclesiasm, now struggle to sustain its central shining minaret-the unapproachable, absolute moral perfection of him, whom they elaborately maintain to be merely human, and limited by human conditions. But we will vary our demand. Suppose the East and West so far to change places, that missionaries of Buddhism come to England to convert us to their religion. Let them proclaim that Sakya Muni called Buddhawhom, by reason of his virtue, his followers unwisely have worshipped as God-was truly divine in goodness, the incarnate image of absolute divine purity; that, as such, his Person enters into the substance and obligations of human religion; on which account they call upon us to listen, while they preach his life, person, and pre-eminence; and, moreover, thoughtfully to study the ancient books which record his sanctity. This hypothesis is, in fact, so closely akin to the real Buddhism, that it might on any day become a case of reality. Now, we ask of Unitarian Christians on what prima facie evidence should we be bound to explore the Oriental books, and listen with religious hope to the argument, that Buddha is the Head of mankind, and unique type of perfection? To reply that we have found in Jesus, called Messiah, such a Head already, and do not want another, may be practically good, but is scientifically weak; for it avails equally to them, and would justify them in exploding the perfect Christ, because they already believe in a perfect Buddha. Is the intrinsic unplausibility of a doctrine never a reason for exploding it, without sacrifice of valuable time and research ?-or can any fancy concerning an Apollo, who is physically a God and morally a libertine, be more unplausible than the Unitarian notion, that Jesus was mentally a dwarf and morally the unique manifestation of God?

The present condition of theological "philosophy" among us (if the phrase be allowable) indicates that the old school is dying out. From fifty to thirty years ago the doctrines of Paley (as regards Christian "Evidences") were dominant in both Univer