Canon Taylor was very unwise in trying to diminish the
weight of Canon MacColl's argnment against him on the question of Islam v. Christianity, by taunting him with " being able to discern impaled Christians where his fellow-travellers are only able to discern scarecrows and beanstalks." He has brought down both Canon Liddon and Canon MacColl himself upon him in triumphant replies, against which we venture to say that he will be utterly unable to bring the smallest scrap of evidence, unless it be evidence to prove that another traveller, like Mr. Glenuie, making the same journey a week or so earlier, did not see the impaled man, which may be easily accounted for by the explanation that he had not then been impaled. Such disproof is like the sheep-stealer's defence against the accusation of sheep-stealing, sworn to by three witnesses,—namely, to bring twenty persons to swear that they did not see him steal the sheep. Canon Liddon declares, in Monday's Times, that he distinctly saw the impaled man on the Bosnian bank of the Save, in a quite wild district, and that his attention was called to the dreadful sight by a fellow-traveller; and that, as for the beanstalk or scarecrow theory, "Bosnian do not net up bean- stalks or scarecrows in an entirely uncultivated district." And Canon Liddon adds very pertinently Men have asked how, if our Saviour really rose from the dead and was seen by a great many persons, it was possible for the Jews and others to reject his claims as they did. Our experience shows that when the human will is strongly disposed to ignore the practical con- sequences of a fact, it has a subtle and almost unlimited power of blinding the intellect to the most elementary laws of evidence."
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