y one, whether there was documentary proof that a revelation had
been given. The defence accordingly ceased to be philosophical, and became
historical.(649)

Opinions have changed with regard to the value of evidences in general,
and the historic form of them in particular. When Boyle(650) at the end of
the seventeenth century, and Bampton and Hulse in the latter half of the
eighteenth, established their respective lectures, they looked forward to
the probability of the occurrence of new forms of doubt, and to the
importance of reasoning as the weapon for meeting them. In more recent
times evidences have been undervalued, through the two opposite tendencies
of the present age, the churchly and corporate tendency on the one hand,
which rests on church authority, and the individualising tendency on the
other, which rests on intuitive consciousness.(651) Evidences essentially
belong to a theory, which places the test of truth objectively in a
revealed book, and subjectively in the reason, as the organ for
discovering morality and interpreting the book.(652) While evidences in
general have been undervalued for these reasons, the historic branch of
them has been regarded as obsolete, because having reference only to an
age which doubts the documents and charges the authors with being
deceivers or deceived, and unavailing, like an old fortification, against
a new mode of assault. This latter statement is in substance correct. It
lessens the value of this argument as a practical weapon against the
doubts which now assail us, but does not detract from the literary value
of the works in the special branch to which they apply. If the progress of
knowledge be the exciting cause of free thought, a similar alteration in
the evidences would be expected to occur from causes similar to those
which produce an alteration in the attack, independently of the change
which occurs from the necessity of adjusting the one to the other.

Abstract questions like this concerning the value of evidences find their
solution independently of the human will. The human mind cannot be
chained. New knowledge will suggest new doubts; and if so, spirit must be
combated by spirit. Defences of Christianity, attempts to readjust it to
new discoveries, must therefore continue to the end of time. In reference
to the minor question of the value of the historic evidences, it is
important to remember that these grand works are not simply refutative;
they are indire