The above table may be accepted as approximately correct. We have summed up the different columns, making allowance for the indefinite dates marked +, in order that the general results may strike the eye all the more forcibly. These results are very significant. The sum-total under Baur is 605, and by comparing with this the numbers under the other names respectively, the reader will notice at once the aggregate retreat in years in each case. It will be seen that the retreat is very substantial, being considerably more than 200 years on the whole, and the movement is still going on in the the same direction. In view of all this, Holtzmann makes the frank confession: We find in the Tübingen. School a universal movement backwards, until at last Hilgenfeld makes the Gospel literature end at the date

Weiss.

at which Baur had only made it begin.'1 It should also be remembered that most of the authors adduced in the table hold that written documents or Gospels existed at a decidedly earlier date than the canonical Gospels, and furnished the main substance of the latter; so that, with regard to their original material, we are carried back to a time quite within the period generally assigned by the Church for the composition of the Gospels.

If we now try to sum up the above in a general way, we have the following striking result. According to Baur and his immediate followers, we have less than onefourth of the New Testament belonging to the first century. According to Hilgenfeld, the present head of Baur's School, we have somewhat less than three-fourths belonging to the first century, while substantially the same thing may be said in regard to Holtzmann. According to Renan, we have distinctly more than three-fourths of the New Testament falling within the first century, and therefore within the Apostolic Age. This surely indicates a very decided and extraordinary retreat since the time of Baur's grand assault, that is, within the last fifty years.

Such are a few of the reverses sustained of late years by the critics of the extreme negative school, and such is their substantial retreat. The general result of the whole is most significant, and confirmatory of the

1 Die synoptischen Evangelien, p. 403.

catholic belief in regard to the age of the leading books of the New Testament. And let it be noted that the strength of the argument is to be seen not so much in the points separately as in the general drift of the whole. Every new discovery has not only fallen in harmoniously with the view commonly held in the Church, but has distinctly tended to confirm it, while in some cases it has been dead against the extreme school of unbelief. Moreover, the distinct and general tendency of the leading authorities on the side of negative criticism, has been to move the date of the chief New Testament books back nearer and nearer to the Apostolic Age, until at last, as we have seen, instead of only one-fourth, they agree that about three-fourths of the New Testament were actually written before the death of the Apostle John.

When the age of historical criticism came, it was impossible that the books of the New Testament could escape the fire. They had of necessity to pass through the ordeal just like other ancient books, and it will be found in the long run that it was well for the Church that it was so. We have reason to believe that the battle of dates is drawing near its close, with the victory obviously inclining to the side of the catholic view, namely, that the Christian Scriptures belong to the Apostolic Age. When the battle has once been fought out, and our sacred books have been proved and ac

knowledged even by negative critics themselves to fall within the first century, we may reasonably hope that a day will dawn of firmer faith than ever in these books. After they have stood the fire of such criticism as no ancient books have ever undergone, and the unwilling testimony of enemies is found substantially to coincide with the testimony of friends, surely all future ages may regard them as practically unassailable. The battle had to be fought out; but the victory is now in view, and fought out once, it is fought out for ever.

VII.

THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES.

IT is our object in the present study to discuss the subject of miracles, which may be emphatically said to be one of the 'burning questions' of the age. In approaching it, it is not at all necessary for our purpose that we enter into any abstruse analysis or elaborate definition of what a miracle really is. Our object is mainly practical, and all that is required is a definition which is essentially correct and sufficient for working purposes.

We find around us everywhere in the world a realm and order of physical nature, in whose network we live. This system is made up of matter, physical force, and the so-called laws of nature. Viewed from the merely scientific side, these laws work by physical necessity, moving on in straight lines, so that their action can be expressed by mathematical formulæ or equations. But when a being possessed of intelligence and free-will interferes with the necessary course of nature, works on or in nature, so as by means of his intelligent