of John Hunter, ‘Do not think; try.’  That is, in this case, try the only experiment available—­the experiment of faith.  Do the doctrine, and if Christianity be true, the verification will come, not indeed mediately through any course of speculative reason, but immediately by spiritual intuition.  Only if a man has faith enough to make this venture honestly, will he be in a just position for deciding the issue.  Thus viewed it would seem that the experiment of faith is not a ‘fool’s experiment’; but, on the contrary, so that there is enough prima facie evidence to arrest serious attention, such an experimental trial would seem to be the rational duty of a pure agnostic.

It is a fact that Christian belief is much more due to doing than to thinking, as prognosticated by the New Testament.  ’If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God’ (St. John vii. 17).  And surely, even on grounds of reason itself, it should be allowed that, supposing Christianity to be ‘of God,’ it ought to appeal to the spiritual rather than to the rational side of our nature.

Even within the region of pure reason (or the ‘prima facie case’) modern science, as directed on the New Testament criticism, has surely done more for Christianity than against it.  For, after half a century of battle over the text by the best scholars, the dates of the Gospels have been fixed within the first century, and at least four of St. Paul’s epistles have had their authenticity proved beyond doubt.  Now this is enough to destroy all eighteenth-century criticism as to the doubtfulness of the historical existence of Christ and His apostles, ‘inventions of priests,’ &c., which was the most formidable kind of criticism of all.  There is no longer any question as to historical facts, save the miraculous, which, however, are ruled out by negative criticism on merely a priori grounds.  This remaining—­and, ex hypothesi, necessary—­doubt is of very different importance from the other.

Again, the Pauline epistles of proved authenticity are enough for all that is wanted to show the belief of Christ’s contemporaries.

These are facts of the first order of importance to have proved.  Old Testament criticism is as yet too immature to consider.

Plan in Revelation.

The views which I entertained on this subject when an undergraduate [i.e. the ordinary orthodox views] were abandoned in presence of the theory of Evolution—­i.e. the theory of natural causation as probably furnishing a scientific explanation [of the religious phenomena of Judaism] or, which is the same thing, an explanation in terms of ascertainable causes up to some certain point; which however in this particular case cannot be determined within wide limits, so that the history of Israel will always embody an element of ‘mystery’ much more than any other history.