soon as we consider
its object and origin. The rules of evidence current in our law
courts were constructed specially with a view to the protection of
the accused, and upon the assumption that it is better nine guilty
persons should escape, than that one innocent person should be
condemned. Clearly such rules will be inapplicable to the
historical question which of two hypotheses is most likely to be
true. The author forgets that the negative hypothesis is just as
much a hypothesis as the positive, and needs to be defended in
precisely the same manner. Either the Gospels were used, or they
were not used. In order to prove the second side of this
alternative, it is necessary to show not merely that it is
_possible_ that they were not used, but that the theory is
the _more probable_ of the two, and accounts better for the
facts. But the author of 'Supernatural Religion' hardly professes
or attempts to do this. If he comes across a quotation apparently
taken from our Gospels he is at once ready with his reply, 'But it
may be taken from a lost Gospel.' Granted; it may. But the extant
Gospel is there, and the quotation referable to it; the lost
Gospel is an unknown entity which may contain anything or nothing.
If we admit that the possibility of quotation from a lost Gospel
impairs the certainty of the reference to an extant Gospel, it is
still quite another thing to argue that it is the more probable
explanation and an explanation that the critic ought to accept. In
very few cases, I believe, has the author so much as attempted to
do this.

We might then take a stand here, and on the strength of what can
be satisfactorily proved, as well as of what can be probably
inferred, claim to have sufficiently established the use and
antiquity of the Gospels. This is, I think, quite a necessary
conclusion from the data hitherto collected.

But there is a further objection to be made to the procedure in
'Supernatural Religion.' If the object were to obtain clear and
simple and universally appreciable evidence, I do not hesitate to
say that the enquiry ends just where it ought to have begun.
Through the faulty method that he has employed the author forgets
that he has a hypothesis to make good and to carry through. He
forgets that he has to account on the negative theory, just as we
account on the positive, for a definite state of things. It may
sound paradoxical, but there is really no great boldness in the
paradox, when we affir