THE KERNEL AND THE HUSK. [To TEX EDITOR OF TEM
4. BPROTATOR.".1 era,—The traditions of the Spectator will, I am sure, procure the insertion of a protest from an author who, while quits con- THE KERNEL AND THE HUSK. [To TEX EDITOR OF TEM 4. BPROTATOR.".1 era,—The traditions of the Spectator will, I am sure, procure the insertion of a protest from an author who, while quits con- tent to be misunderstood, cannot be content to be represented in your columns as saying the opposite of what he really said. In the review of "The Kernel and the Husk," in the Spectator of February 19th, there occurs the following sentence :—" Our author, however, affirms that the laws of Nature are only working hypotheses, are mere ideas of the imagination ;' yet these 'ideas' have somehow grown so sacred, and become so in- violable, that a statement involving anything contrary to them is at once to be dismissed as incredible."
If your reviewer can point out any passage in the book where I have said this, I shall be greatly obliged by his doing so, that I may cancel it hereafter; but even if there occurs some careless expression capable of being thus misunderstood, I mast still urge that the whole tenonr of the book shows that miracles are not rejected by the author on the ground of antecedent im- probability, but on the ground of evidence. For example, on pp. 138-9, after describing what would be, if true, a real miracle, I proceed thus :— "I should be obliged to say that the law of gravitation, in this par- ticular instance, did not work. Using a metaphor, I might say that the law was 'suspended,' and the phenomenon itself I should call miracle Yet if we find (1), in past history, a tendency to believe in miracles on very slight evidence ; (2), in the present time, a general and, as many think, a universal refutation of the evidence on which miracles have been accepted; (3), an increasing power of explaining many so-called miracles in accordance with natural laws —it becomes our obvious duty to regard miraculone narratives with a very strong suspicion until cogent evidence has been produced for their truth."
But this is a very different thing from saying that a miracle is "at once to be dismissed as incredible." Again, on p. 224, I
expressly avow myself willing to believe in miracles upon suffi- cient evidence :—
"It is for these reasons, then, that I reject miracles, not because they are impossible, not oven because they are d priori improbable but because the facts are against them. If the evidence showed that miracles had actually occurred, I should be prepared to learn from these materialised parables as reverently as from word-parables, and to believe that God—in order to break down men's excessive faith in the machine-like order of the visible world, and in order to divert their attention from Sequence to Will—foreordained these divergences from the monotonous routine of things. But the evidence does not show this."
Still more explicit is the following disclaimer of the argument from "antecedent probability" (p. 153) :—
" I think you will now perceive the kind of reasoning which has compelled me to give up the miracles of the Old Testament. It is not in any way because I have an d priori prejudice against miracles on the contrary, I started with an d priori prejudice for miracles in the Bible, though against miracles in general. It is not simply because there is not sufficient evidence for them it is in great measure because there is evidence against them. For when you can show how a supposed miracle may naturally have occurred, and how the miraculous account may naturally and easily bare sprung up, I think that amounts to evidence against the miracle."
I have troubled your readers with several quotations (to which I might easily add) from different parts of the book, because your reviewer, while quoting and approving one passage disclaiming the argument from "antecedent probabilities," will have it that these words, instead of representing the author's aversion to that method of arguing, only show "how readily he flings it over- board when he does not need it." "Where," says the passage approved by your reviewer, "we have history and evidence to guide us as to what Jesus said and did, it seems to me we ought to be guided by evidence, and not by 'antecedent probabilities,' especially when these probabilities are derived from nothing but metaphysical considerations." On this, your reviewer's comment is that he wishes the author "had remembered this safe maxim always. If he had, the greater part of his book would never have been written." I think I may fairly reply that if your reviewer had taken the trouble to note how this "safe maxim " is borne in mind throughout the whole of that portion of the book which deals with history and evidence, the greater part of his review would never have been written. But in any case, I shall take it as a favour if he will point out to use where I have said or implied that any "statement involving anything contrary to the laws of Nature is at once to be dis-
missed as incredible."—I am, Sir, &c., " Pnliceunisres."
[Stm,—I frankly admit that the paragraph of which " Philo- christus " complains does him an injustice, which I much regret. What I meant to say was this,—that the ground on which the miraculous is, by " Philochristrus," dismissed as incredible, is, it seems to me, the sacred and inviolable character of the laws of Nature. This is, however, an inference of mine, and not a statement of his, and I ought to have been careful to say so. While I regret this, I still hold that his conception of the fixed order of Nature has determined his view of the whole question, and his treatment of the evidence, and, in the long-run, turns the scale against the miraculous. In the passage I quoted, the sentence occurs :—" In order to believe in Christ, it was now no longer needful to believe in suspensions of the laws of Nature," and there are other passages in the book which show that to him the one principle to be conserved is the inviolable character of the laws of Nature. As to flinging probability overboard, let the following passage testify :—" Now, even when I set aside the Fourth Gospel, and eliminate all miraculous narrative from the first three Gospels, I find myself in the presence of One who I am convinced both said these things and made them good in deeds. I am pene- trated with the conviction that He said them, and had a right to say them, and that this is proved by literary and historical evidence, and by the history of the Church, and by my own experience. The miracles I can disentangle from the life of Christ; but His divine claims to be our Helper and Saviour after death and to all eternity, I cannot." (pp. 131-2.) By literary and historical evidence, by the history of the Church, and by his own experience, he has reached the conclusion that Christ has divine claims to be our Helper and Saviour to all eternity. But one of the things which sent him forth to his quest was this :—" I had been craving a purely historical and logical proof of Christ's divinity, and had felt miserable that I could not obtain it. But now I perceived that I was not intended to obtain it." (p. 17.) I leave the two statements side by side without comment. —I am, Sir, &c., Vona REVIEWER.]
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