Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/45

Rh maintain that in religion a sincere mind will discover the truth with or without scientific knowledge. Many believe that John Bunyan saw as far into spiritual matters as even Newton or Locke, and much farther than Laplace ever did. Some of the highest statesmen and lawyers in Great Britain imagined that they could get more good from the direct and homely appeals of Moody than from those select dilettant meetings in London of savants and littérateurs who have abandoned Christianity, and are seeking to catch some higher religion which evanishes as they would lay hold of it.

Everybody acknowledges that all witnesses are not to be trusted; yet in the common affairs of life, in trials, in history, we do find testimony which we implicitly believe. To the great body even of educated men, scientific knowledge depends on the trustworthiness of those who have made the observations and experiments. Notwithstanding all their preconceptions, there are declarations of men of science as to matters of fact which we can trust; and it would be a violation of their whole nature, in fact it would be a miracle, were they to deceive us. Dr. Carpenter is entitled to credit for having helped to expose the fooleries and the rogueries of spirit-rapping, rope-tying, and of levitation. But he seems to think that it is possible by the same method to undermine the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. All who have inquired carefully into the subject see that the testimony in favor of spiritualistic manifestations cannot stand the common tests of evidence. But it has been maintained by many of the greatest and most sagacious minds, and by the highest moral minds which our world has produced, that the testimony in behalf of the essential events of the New Testament cannot be set aside without undermining the whole of ancient history. Even at first sight the spiritual séances and performers have no moral prestige in their favor. The products are unworthy of God, and inconsistent with his mode of operation in Nature. We can discover motives enough to induce them to act as they do—such as the desire to create wonder—with some the hope of getting money. How different with our Lord, who, so far from taking advantage of the wonder-loving spirit of the Jews, actually restrained it! The wonders of the spiritualists are performed in rooms prepared for the purpose or in darkness, whereas the miracles of our Lord were performed in open day, in unexpected circumstances, and before all men. Then the whole teaching of Jesus was totally above and altogether opposed to the spirit of his age and nation, and only exposed him and his followers to opprobrium, poverty, and suffering.

But Dr. Carpenter has discovered that there is no stronger evidence in behalf of the events of our Lord's life than we have in favor of the miracles attributed to St. Columba. This is a proof that, amid his multifarious employments, Dr. Carpenter has not carefully surveyed or minutely examined the whole body of Christian evidences. The