of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies.'—Hume, Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, section viii.

That is, according to Hume, such perfect holiness as that of Christ is not to be found in mere human nature, is in short contrary to 'ordinary experience.' Since, however, in His case, it is a fact, it must therefore be supernatural in the emphatic sense.

NOTE XIX. p. 280.

THE INDEPENDENCE AND CONVERGENCE OF THE

CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

'There is one quality or condition comprehended in these mixed and varied evidences of our religion which deserves to be further considered by itself; a condition highly characteristic of its truth, and, indeed, replete with the strongest confirmation of it. The condition is this, that the evidences are so exceedingly dissimilar in their several descriptions. They are not necessarily connected in their origin; they do not infer each the other; they are connected only in the subject which they conspire to attest. This independence of the component members of the argument is a material consideration. Perhaps it has not been urged in the defences of Christianity with the force it is entitled to. It affords, however, a very decisive criterion of truth, as the following remarks may serve to show.

'If man's contrivance, or if the favour of accident could have given to Christianity any of its apparent testimonies either its miracles or its prophecies, its morals, or its propagation, or, if I may so speak, its Founder-there could be no room to believe, nor even to imagine, that all these appearances of great credibility could be united together by any such causes. If a suc

cessful craft could have contrived its public miracles, or so much as the pretence of them, it required another kind of craft and new resources to provide and adapt its prophecies to the same object. Further, it demanded not only a different art, but a totally opposite character, to conceive and promulgate its admirable morals. Again, the achievement of its propagation, in defiance of the powers and terrors of the world, implied a new energy of personal genius and other qualities of action, than any concurring in the work before. Lastly, the model of the life of its Founder, in the very description of it, is a work of so much originality and wisdom as could be the offspring only of consummate powers of invention; though, to speak more fairly to the case, it seems, by an intuitive evidence, as if it could never have been even devised, but must have come from the life and reality of some perfect excellence of virtue, impossible to be taken from, or confounded with, the fictions of ingenuity. But the hypothesis sinks under its incredibility. For each of these suppositions of contrivance being arbitrary, as it certainly is, and unsupported, the climax of them is an extravagance. And if the imbecility of art is foiled in the hypothesis, the combinations of accident are too vain to be thought of.'- Davison, Discourses on Prophecy, pp. 29 f. (4th edition).

'We have a system of proof; an evidence drawn from testimonies differing in kind but conspiring in effect, and combining together to an accumulated demonstration; in which neither the conclusiveness of any of the branches of the argument taken alone, is charged with the whole weight of the question; nor the imputed insufficiency of any of them, when so taken, can touch the validity of the collective inference.'-Ibid. pp. 34, 35

NOTE XX. p. 323.

STATISTICS BEARING ON THE ALLEGED DECLINE OF MORALITY IN GERMANY.

'It is statistically demonstrated that immorality (Unzucht) has increased in a terrible degree of late years. During the last six years, in the eight older provinces of Prussia, crimes against morality have risen from 1072 to 2378—that is, an increase of 121 per cent. In the jury courts, before which only the more aggravated cases of criminality are brought up for decision, the following are the numbers of sentences passed for crimes against morality: 1871, 501; 1872, 614; 1873, 752; 1874, 982; 1875, 1013; 1876, 1382; 1877, 1975; in other words, an increase of 294 per cent. in six years. In Bavaria the same class of offences rose in the same years from 165 to 556-that is to say, 237 per cent. In Baden, during the period extending from 1872 to 1877, this class of crimes rose from 144 to 321, or 122 per cent. In Saxony, in the six years from 1871 to 1877, from 345 (489, 519, 579, 607, 800) to 972, or 181 per cent. These numbers reveal a truly shocking state of things.

In

'In Prussia, in the eight older provinces, the number of investigations on account of crimes and misdemeanours rose, in the years 1877-1879, from 88,233 to 145,587, or 65 per cent. Amongst these, the cases of perjury rose from 491 to 1017, or 107 per cent.; assaults, from 7883 to 18,361, or 133 per cent.; cases of robbery and extortion, from 168 to 504, or 200 per cent. Saxony, in the years 1860-1877, the civil processes that actually came before the courts rose from 78,539 to 138,817; the number of those condemned on account of crimes and misdemeanours rose from 9363 to 19,354, or more than the double. In Bavaria the sentences passed on account of perjury mounted, in the years 1872-1877,

from 166 to 431, or 159 per cent. In Württemberg, during the same years, the sentences of the different courts rose from 7987 to 14,655, or about 83 per cent. These numbers require no comment.'-Luthardt, Die modernen Weltanschauungen und ihre praktischen Konsequenzen, pp. 100 f.

'In Berlin there stood under police control of women who notoriously lived by prostitution in 1852, 695; 1853, 980; 1854, 1156; 1855, 1338; 1856, 1338; 1866, 1360; 1867, 1447; 1868, 1625; 1869, 1776. The number of those suspected of prostitution increased in the following manner :-In 1853, 4500; 1855, 6000; 1863, 8000; 1864, 10,000; 1865, 12,006; 1867, 12,491; 1868, 13,610; 1869, 14,362; 1870, 11,382 (?); 1871, 15,064. The increase of prostitution amounted to double the increase in the population.'-Ibid., p. 235.

'While the population of Berlin between 1858 and 1863 increased 20 per cent., public prostitution increased during the same time more than 66 per cent.'-Oettingen, Moralstatistik, p. 456. 1868.

The above, according to Luthardt, are some of the consequences of the prevailing atheistic materialism of Germany. It is said that Frederick the Great of Prussia, a most competent and impartial judge in such a matter, towards the close of his life expressed himself as follows: 'I would give my most glorious battle, if only I could again have religion and morality where I found them when I ascended the throne. I see well that I ought to have done more for this purpose.' What would he say if he were living now?

NOTE XXI. p. 333.

THE SADNESS OF ATHEISM.

'Forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who affirm that the twilight doctrine of the "new faith" is a desirable substitute for the waning splendour of "the old," I am not ashamed to confess that, with this virtual negation of God, the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept "to work while it is day" will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words, "the night cometh when no man can work,” yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it, at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible. For whether it be due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the age, or whether it be due to the memory of those sacred associations which to me at least were the sweetest that life has given, I cannot but feel that for me, and for others who think as I do, there is a dreadful truth in these words of Hamilton,-philosophy having become a meditation, not merely of death but annihilation, the precept know thyself has become transformed into the terrible oracle to Edipus-" Mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art."'—Physicus, A Candid Examination of Theism, p. 114.

'Those who flatter themselves that they have shaken off the horror [of religion as a superstition], find a colder, more petrifying incubus, that of annihilation, settling down upon them in its place, so that one of them cries out, "Oh! take away annihilation, that abyss, and give us back Satan."-Natural Religion, p. 239. See also the