bearing of his argument upon Mr. Gladstone's authority. But, as he fully explained, especially in his prefaces to the collected essays, the force of the argument is in the necessary implication. Accept the story, and you must admit the whole system of demonology, which is flatly contradicted by all scientific evidence. Admit its absurdity, and you destroy the authority of the witnesses to the cardinal points of the miraculous story—the supernatural birth and the resurrection—upon which the Christian dogmatic system is founded. The witnesses may record honestly the beliefs of their time, but they do not tell us upon what evidence those beliefs rested; and their whole intellectual attitude prepared them to accept statements which now seem monstrous. The early Christians were still Jews, in theology as well as in demonology. There is no better evidence for the early than for the later miracles—that is to say, there is none worth mentioning. It tickled his sense of humour to call in Newman as an ally. Newman's doctrine of development admits equally that the Christian dogma was not taught by the primitive Christians, and that its growth was a process perfectly intelligible, and requiring no supernatural interference. When the admission of scientific canons of evidence
