poses that if the miracles had not really happened they would have
been challenged, he is assuming that a state of mind existed in which
it was possible for miracles to be challenged; and thus commits an
anachronism as monstrous as if he had attributed the knowledge of some
modern invention, such as steamboats, to those early ages.

Mr. Rogers seems to complain of M. Renan for "quietly assuming" that
miracles are invariably to be rejected. Certainly a historian of the
present day who should not make such an assumption would betray his lack
of the proper qualifications for his profession. It is not considered
necessary for every writer to begin his work by setting out to prove the
first principles of historical criticism. They are taken for granted.
And, as M. Renan justly says, a miracle is one of those things which
must be disbelieved until it is proved. The onus probandi lies on
the assertor of a fact which conflicts with universal experience.
Nevertheless, the great number of intelligent persons who, even now,
from dogmatic reasons, accept the New Testament miracles, forbids that
they should be passed over in silence like similar phenomena elsewhere
narrated. But, in the present state of historical science, the arguing
against miracles is, as Colet remarked of his friend Erasmus's warfare
against the Thomists and Scotists of Cambridge, "a contest more
necessary than glorious or difficult." To be satisfactorily established,
a miracle needs at least to be recorded by an eyewitness; and the mental
attainments of the witness need to be thoroughly known besides. Unless
he has a clear conception of the difference between the natural and the
unnatural order of events, his testimony, however unimpeachable on the
score of honesty, is still worthless. To say that this condition was
fulfilled by those who described the New Testament miracles, would be
absurd. And in the face of what German criticism has done for the early
Christian documents, it would be an excess of temerity to assert
that any one of the supernatural accounts contained in them rests on
contemporary authority. Of all history, the miraculous part should be
attested by the strongest testimony, whereas it is invariably
attested by the weakest. And the paucity of miracles wherever we have
contemporary records, as in the case of primitive Islamism, is a most
significant fact.

In attempting to defend his principle of never accepting a miracle,
M. Renan has indeed g