say that demons are impossibilities; but I am not more certain about anything, than I am that the evidence tendered in favour of the demonology, of which the Gadarene story is a typical example, is utterly valueless.  I cannot see my way to say that it is “impossible” that the hunger of thousands of men should be satisfied out of the food supplied by half-a-dozen loaves and a fish or two; but it seems to me monstrous that I should be asked to believe it on the faith of the five stories which testify to such an occurrence.  It is true that the position that miracles are “impossible” cannot be sustained.  But I know of nothing which calls upon me to qualify the grave verdict of Hume:  “There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned goodness, education, and learning as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable:  all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testimony of men."[50]

     The preceding paper called forth the following criticism
     signed “Agnosco,” to which I append my reply:—­

While agreeing generally with Professor Huxley’s remarks respecting miracles, in “The Agnostic Annual for 1892,” it has seemed to me that one of his arguments at least requires qualification.  The Professor, in maintaining that so-called miraculous events are possible, although the evidence adduced is not sufficient to render them probable, refers to the possibility of changing water into wine by molecular recomposition.  He tells us that, “if carbon can be got out of hydrogen or oxygen, the conversion of water into wine comes within range of scientific possibility.”  But in maintaining that miracles (so-called) have a prospective possibility, Professor Huxley loses sight—­at least, so it appears to me—­of the question of their retrospective possibility.  For, if it requires a certain degree of knowledge and experience, yet far from having been attained, to perform those acts which have been called miraculous, it is not only improbable, but impossible likewise, that they should have been done by men whose knowledge and experience were considerably less than our own.  It has seemed to me, in fact, that this question of the retrospective possibility of miracles is more important to us Rationalists, and, for the matter of that, to Christians also, than the question of their prospective possibility, with which Professor Huxley’s article mainly deals.  Perhaps the Professor himself could help those of us who think so, by giving us his opinion.