EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 69 into that which is direct and positive, and that which is presumptive and cir- cumstantial. The former is that which is proved by some writing containing a positive statement of the facts and bind- ing the party whom it affects; or that v/hich is proved by some witness, who has, and avers himself to have, positive knowledge thereof by means of his senses. Whenever the fact is not so directly and positively established, but is deduced from other facts in evidence, it is presumptive and circumstantial only. The following are the leading rules re- garding evidence in a court of law: (1) The point in issue is to be proved by the party who asserts the affirmative. But where one person charges another with a culpable omission this rule will not apply, the person who makes the charge being bound to prove it. (2) The best evidence must be given of which the nature of the thing is capable. (3) Hearsay evidence of a fact is not admis- sible. The principal exceptions to this rule are: Death-bed declarations, evi- dence in questions of pedigree, public right, custom boundaries, declarations against interest, declarations which ac- company the facts or are part of the res gestse (things done), etc. (4) Insane persons and idiots are incompetent to be witnesses. But persons temporarily in- sane are in their lucid intervals received as witnesses. Children are admissible as witnesses as soon as they have a com- petent share of understanding and know and feel the nature of an oath and the obligation to speak the truth. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY may be divided broadly into two great classes, viz., external evidences, or the body of historical testimonies to the Christian revelation; and internal evi- dences, or arguments drawn from the nature of Christianity itself as exhibited in its teachings and effects, in favor of its divine origin. In the 16th and 17th centuries the in- fluences of the Renaissance and the Reformation gave rise to a spirit of in- quiry and criticism which developed English deism as represented by Herbei't and Hobbes in the 17th century, and Collins and Bolingbroke in the 18th. The general position of English deism was the acceptance of the belief in the exis- tence of God, and the profession of natural religion along with opposition to the mysteries and special claims of Christianity. It was in confutation of this position that the great English works on the evidences of Christianity of Butler, Berkeley, and Cudworth were written. In France the new spirit of inquiry was represented by Diderot, EVOLUTION D'Holbach, and the encyclopaedists, whc assailed Christianity mainly on the ground that it was founded on imposture and superstition, and maintained by sacerdotal trickery and hypocrisy. No reply of any great value was produced in the French Church, though in the pre- vious age Pascal in his "Thoughts" had brought together some of the profound- est considerations yet offered in favor of revealed religion. The 19th century was distinguished by the strongly ration- alistic spirit of its criticism. The works of such writers as Strauss, Bauer and Feuerbach, attempting to eliminate the supernatural and mysterious in the origin of Christianity, were answered by the works of Neander, Ebrard, and Ullmann on the other side. The historical method of investigation, represented alike by the Hegelian school and the Positivists in philosophy, and by the Evolutionists in science, is the basis of the chief attacks of the present time against the super- natural character of Christianity, the tendency of all being to hold that, while Christianity is the highest and most per- fect development to which the religious spirit has yet attained, it differs simply in degree of development from any other religion. Notable among later apologists of Christianity have been Paley (Natural Theology), Chalmers (Natural Theol- ogy), Mansel, Liddon, and others, lec- turers of the Bampton Foundation; in Germany Luthardt, Ewald, Baumstark, and others. EVOLUTION, the act of unrolling or unfolding. The word is used as a term in science and philosophy to indicate the development of an organism toward greater differentiation of organs and functions, and a more complex and high- er state of being. Some regard Herbert Spencer {q. v?) as the author of the Doctrine of Evolution, others Charles Darwin (q. v.) In astronomy, the nebular hypothesis, which regards the planetary bodies as evolved from nebular or gaseous matter, is an example of evolution; in geology the old view, which considered the ani- mal and vegetable life of each geological period as a new and separate organic creation, has given place to the evolu- tionary theory of a process of develop- ment from earlier types to those of the later periods. But the evolution of the more complex from the simple organisms probably never exhibits a linear series of advances. Evolution is a law, the operation of which is traceable through- out every department of nature; it is equally well illustrated from the history of philosophy or the arts, or from the historical development of society. Evola-
