st and second
gospels.[49] For these agree in making Jesus himself speak of both the
"four thousand" and the "five thousand" miracle. "When I brake the
five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken
pieces took ye up? They say unto him, twelve. And when the seven among
the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces took ye up?
And they say unto him, seven."

Thus we are face to face with a dilemma the way of escape from which
is not obvious. Either the "four thousand" and the "five thousand"
stories are both historically true, and describe two separate events;
or the first and second gospels testify to the very words of a
conversation between Jesus and his disciples which cannot have been
uttered.

My choice between these alternatives is determined by no _a priori_
speculations about the possibility or impossibility of such events as
the feeding of the four or of the five thousand. But I ask myself the
question, What evidence ought to be produced before I could feel
justified in saying that I believed such an event to have occurred?
That question is very easily answered. Proof must be given (1) of the
weight of the loaves and fishes at starting; (2) of the distribution
to 4-5,000 persons, without any additional supply, of this quantity
and quality of food; (3) of the satisfaction of these people's
appetites; (4) of the weight and quality of the fragments gathered up
into the baskets. Whatever my present notions of probability and
improbability may be, satisfactory testimony under these four heads
would lead me to believe that they were erroneous; and I should accept
the so-called miracle as a new and unexpected example of the
possibilities of nature.

But when, instead of such evidence, nothing is produced but two sets
of discrepant stories, originating nobody knows how or when, among
persons who could believe as firmly in devils which enter pigs, I
confess that my feeling is one of astonishment that any one should
expect a reasonable man to take such testimony seriously.

I am anxious to bring about a clear understanding of the difference
between "impossibilities" and "improbabilities," because mistakes on
this point lay us open to the attacks of ecclesiastical apologists of
the type of the late Cardinal Newman; acute sophists, who think it
fitting to employ their intellects, as burglars employ dark lanterns
for the discovery of other people's weak places, while they carefully
kee