n question
is the occurrence, or the non-occurrence, of certain phenomena at a
certain time and in a certain place. This sudden revelation of the great
gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and the scientific mind is enough
to take away the breath of any one unfamiliar with the clerical organon.
As if, one may retort, the assumption that miracles may, or have, served
a moral or a religious end, in any way alters the fact that they profess
to be historical events, things that actually happened; and, as such,
must needs be exactly those subjects about which evidence is appropriate
and legal proofs (which are such merely because they afford adequate
evidence) may be justly demanded. The Gadarene miracle either happened,
or it did not. Whether the Gadarene "question" is moral or religious, or
not, has nothing to do with the fact that it is a purely historical
question whether the demons said what they are declared to have said,
and the devil-possessed pigs did, or did not, rush over the heights
bounding the Lake of Gennesaret on a certain day of a certain year,
after A.D. 26 and before A.D. 36: for vague and uncertain as New
Testament chronology is, I suppose it may be assumed that the event in
question, if it happened at all, took place during the procuratorship of
Pilate. If that is not a matter about which evidence ought to be
required, and not only legal, but strict scientific proof demanded by
sane men who are asked to believe the story--what is? Is a reasonable
being to be seriously asked to credit statements, which, to put the case
gently, are not exactly probable, and on the acceptance or rejection of
which his whole view of life may depend, without asking for as much
"legal" proof as would send an alleged pickpocket to gaol, or as would
suffice to prove the validity of a disputed will?

"Infidel authors" (if, as I am assured, I may answer for them) will
decline to waste time on mere darkenings of counsel of this sort; but to
those Anglicans who accept his premises, Dr. Newman is a truly
formidable antagonist. What, indeed, are they to reply when he puts the
very pertinent question:--

whether persons who not merely question, but prejudge the
Ecclesiastical miracles on the ground of their want of resemblance,
whatever that be, to those contained in Scripture--as if the
Almighty could not do in the Christian Church what He had not
already done at the time of its foundation, or under the Mosa