at He fed five thousand
with five loaves and two small fishes. M. Renan accepts the first
statement, without examination, and denies the second, without
examination. He does this because he has made up his mind beforehand
that _prima facie_ a miracle is impossible. But that carries us out of
the line of historical investigation altogether. That is a question of
metaphysics. M. Renan's decision of the question is not admitted by an
means universally, not even frequently. The truer decision as well as
the more philosophical is that, _prima facie, all things are possible_,
except contradictions.

At all events, we hold that the Four Evangelists stand on their own
merits. They are not to be declared impostors, either in whole or in
part, beforehand, in order to save a metaphysical theory.

The same logical viciousness shows itself in M. Renan's treatment of the
Prophets. Daniel never could have written the book attributed to him, he
says, because that book contains statements of fact which occurred long
after Daniel! That is to say, M. Renan does not believe in such a thing
as prophecy, and, by consequence, Daniel never wrote the book of Daniel!
This is taking things for granted with a witness.

And, by the way, we may as well ease our minds just here concerning
another trick of the school to which M. Renan belongs, and of which he
furnishes many marked examples. We mean the trick of arbitrarily
deciding by what they are pleased to call 'philological criticism,' all
about all the books and nearly all the chapters in the Bible. 'Learned
men are agreed that such and such chapters were not written by Isaiah.'
'It is clear, from internal evidence of style, that this book was made
up of earlier scattered memoranda.' 'These chapters, it is evident, were
not written till such and such a time.' 'The best critics are agreed
that this narration was added long after the writing of the book.' This
is the way they write, to the astonishment of the simple.

When we were younger, this sort of talk seemed to our simplicity to be
exceedingly imposing. We actually believed that there were a set of
people, in Germany, at least, who could look at a Hebrew chapter and
tell you who wrote it, when he wrote it, how he wrote it, and why; and
the who, when, how, and why, should be each different from those
mentioned by the author of the book himself. As years removed the
credulous simplicity of childhood, we found out that this was only a
trick