th have been believed and doubted by men of equal
intelligence. Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain,
surround us on every hand; life itself is the miracle of miracles.
Miracles in the sense of events that violate the normal course of our
experience are vouched for every day: the flourishing Church of Christ
Scientist is founded on a multitude of such miracles. Nobody believes
all the miracles: everybody believes some of them. I cannot tell why
men who will not believe that Jesus ever existed yet believe firmly that
Shakespear was Bacon. I cannot tell why people who believe that angels
appeared and fought on our side at the battle of Mons, and who believe
that miracles occur quite frequently at Lourdes, nevertheless boggle
at the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, and
reject it as a trick of priestcraft. I cannot tell why people who will
not believe Matthew's story of three kings bringing costly gifts to the
cradle of Jesus, believe Luke's story of the shepherds and the stable.
I cannot tell why people, brought up to believe the Bible in the old
literal way as an infallible record and revelation, and rejecting that
view later on, begin by rejecting the Old Testament, and give up the
belief in a brimstone hell before they give up (if they ever do) the
belief in a heaven of harps, crowns, and thrones. I cannot tell
why people who will not believe in baptism on any terms believe in
vaccination with the cruel fanaticism of inquisitors. I am convinced
that if a dozen sceptics were to draw up in parallel columns a list
of the events narrated in the gospels which they consider credible
and incredible respectively, their lists would be different in several
particulars. Belief is literally a matter of taste.

FASHIONS OF BELIEF.

Now matters of taste are mostly also matters of fashion. We are
conscious of a difference between medieval fashions in belief and modern
fashions. For instance, though we are more credulous than men were in
the Middle Ages, and entertain such crowds of fortunetellers, magicians,
miracle workers, agents of communication with the dead, discoverers of
the elixir of life, transmuters of metals, and healers of all sorts, as
the Middle Ages never dreamed of as possible, yet we will not take
our miracles in the form that convinced the Middle Ages. Arithmetical
numbers appealed to the Middle Ages just as they do to us, because they
are difficult to deal with, and