f in the
miraculous, on the evidence offered would be simply immoral.

So far as my experience goes, men of science are neither better nor
worse than the rest of the world. Occupation with the endlessly great
parts of the universe does not necessarily involve greatness of
character, nor does microscopic study of the infinitely little always
produce humility. We have our full share of original sin; need,
greed, and vainglory beset us as they do other mortals; and our
progress is, for the most part, like that of a tacking ship, the
resultant of opposite divergencies from the straight path. But, for
all that, there is one moral benefit which the pursuit of science
unquestionably bestows. It keeps the estimate of the value of evidence
up to the proper mark; and we are constantly receiving lessons, and
sometimes very sharp ones, on the nature of proof. Men of science will
always act up to their standard of veracity, when mankind in general
leave off sinning; but that standard appears to me to be higher among
them than in any other class of the community.

I do not know any body of scientific men who could be got to listen
without the strongest expressions of disgusted repudiation to the
exposition of a pretended scientific discovery, which had no better
evidence to show for itself than the story of the devils entering a
herd of swine, or of the fig-tree that was blasted for bearing no figs
when "it was not the season of figs." Whether such events are possible
or impossible, no man can say; but scientific ethics can and does
declare that the profession of belief in them, on the evidence of
documents of unknown date and of unknown authorship, is immoral.
Theological apologists who insist that morality will vanish if their
dogmas are exploded, would do well to consider the fact that, in the
matter of intellectual veracity, science is already a long way ahead
of the Churches; and that, in this particular, it is exerting an
educational influence on mankind of which the Churches have shown
themselves utterly incapable.

Undoubtedly that varying compound of some of the best and some of the
worst elements of Paganism and Judaism, moulded in practice by the
innate character of certain people of the Western world, which, since
the second century, has assumed to itself the title of orthodox
Christianity, "rests on miracles" and falls to the ground, not "if
miracles be impossible," but if those to which it is committed prove
themsel