t Jesus really said and did is strictly a
scientific problem, which is capable of solution by no other methods
than those practised by the historian and the literary critic. It is a
problem of immense difficulty, which has occupied some of the best
heads in Europe for the last century; and it is only of late years
that their investigations have begun to converge towards one
conclusion.[53]

That kind of faith which Dr. Wace describes and lauds is of no use
here. Indeed, he himself takes pains to destroy its evidential value.

"What made the Mahommedan world? Trust and faith in the declarations
and assurances of Mahommed. And what made the Christian world? Trust
and faith in the declarations and assurances of Jesus Christ and His
Apostles" (l.c. p. 253). The triumphant tone of this imaginary
catechism leads me to suspect that its author has hardly appreciated
its full import. Presumably, Dr. Wace regards Mahommed as an
unbeliever, or, to use the term which he prefers, infidel; and
considers that his assurances have given rise to a vast delusion which
has led, and is leading, millions of men straight to everlasting
punishment. And this being so, the "Trust and faith" which have "made
the Mahommedan world," in just the same sense as they have "made the
Christian world," must be trust and faith in falsehoods. No man who
has studied history, or even attended to the occurrences of everyday
life, can doubt the enormous practical value of trust and faith; but
as little will he be inclined to deny that this practical value has
not the least relation to the reality of the objects of that trust and
faith. In examples of patient constancy of faith and of unswerving
trust, the "Acta Martyrum" do not excel the annals of Babism.[54]

* * * * *

The discussion upon which we have now entered goes so thoroughly to
the root of the whole matter; the question of the day is so
completely, as the author of "Robert Elsmere" says, the value of
testimony, that I shall offer no apology for following it out somewhat
in detail; and, by way of giving substance to the argument, I shall
base what I have to say upon a case, the consideration of which lies
strictly within the province of natural science, and of that
particular part of it known as the physiology and pathology of the
nervous system.

I find, in the second Gospel (chap. v.), a statement, to all
appearance intended to have the same evidential value as an