history seemed to pass without signs and wonders; miraculous powers were attributed to most great men; and many a reformer was also a thaumaturge. And that is a simple bit of history which people don't like to be told, and so the clergy as a rule don't tell them. It is supposed that when godless men, puffed up with the pride of learning, talk in this way, they want, by claiming evidence for disputed miracles, to throw discredit upon the Christian miracles. They may or may not. If that is their object, I think they fail. All I am concerned with now is the remarkable fact that-if evidence, and close historical evidence, is worth anything-unaccountable things have happened in all ages of the world. You may explain away a vast number of cases, but you will find a residuum left that you cannot explain away. And if I wanted any proof of this, I should simply say the superstition about the miraculous, if superstition it be, is as rampant as ever amongst us. The scientific world itself has not escaped the taint. It is all very well for some writers to insist that a belief in the miraculous is growing extinct—that no one now believes this or that odd occurrence to be possible; that all such fancies are out of date, or can be easily explained. Facts are unfortunately against such assertions. Of course, when anything which cannot be at once explained is said to have happened yesterday, the very same people who are abjectly credulous about what happened 1,800 years ago, are as abjectly incredulous about what is said to have happened yesterday, although the evidence for yesterday's event is twice

as good as any evidence for events 1,800 years ago can possibly be.

In some circles the very rumour that spiritualism is to be scientifically investigated raises a hoot of indignation throughout vast Philistine communities, who pride themselves on common sense. Yet there has never been an age-this age least of any-when we have not heard a great deal about the supernatural—when things have not happened which nobody could explain; nor can it be maintained that the sort of explanations which the scientific world has hitherto offered us are at all adequate to account for the phenomena of spiritualism. The explanations which have been put forward sufficiently prove the amount of imposture that is associated with the word 'spiritualist ;' but then we knew all that before. We wanted the scientific men to explain the residuum which puzzles most people who have paid any attention to the subject; but they prefer to discourse beside the mark to people who are already satisfied that the whole thing is imposture. We will not say 'They are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark;' they are rather like shy horses; they refuse to approach the hand that is stretched out to them, for fear of being caught.

I am propounding no theory about spiritualism. I hardly know what it means, or why it is called spiritualism. I merely affirm that occurrences which cannot be confounded with conjuring tricks-seeing that conjurors and men of science are alike challenged to investigate them-seem to me to occur, and they certainly seem to me still to await some adequate explanation. I will

commit myself to no theory. I have none. I merely aspire to be honest enough to admit what I believe-that a class of phenomena are daily occurring in our midst which have not been explained; and perhaps I may be allowed to indulge in the vague hope that many hundreds of thousands who are so far of my opinion throughout the civilised world, are neither born fools nor confirmed lunatics, although I regret to say that some who are believers are impostors as well.

But whatever truth or untruth there may be in these opinions, one thing is tolerably evident to my mind, and it is this that if you accept the Christian miracles you cannot reject all others. You must know that the keenest intellects of the day tell us that the evidence for many of the medieval miracles is just as strong as the evidence upon which we receive the Christian miracles, and in many cases far stronger; therefore, if you do receive the Christian miracles, you may be led a little further than you like, and have to accept the miraculous in other ages as well. On the other hand, it is open for you to reject the miracles, all miracles whatever, as a priori impossibilities in any sense. Personally, as to many questions in and out of the Bible connected with the miraculous, I prefer to hold my mind in a state of suspense; for in these days thought is so rapid and many-sided, that a man is unwise who pretends to make up his mind about everything upon which he is called to give an opinion. When I know very little about a thing, I say I know very little about it; and when I am in doubt about things which are being fiercely discussed

upon other platforms, I say I am in doubt about them; and when I know nothing at all about them, I say so.

Of course this makes my teaching, such as it is, very unsatisfactory to those who want to know all about everything. There are numbers of clergymen in every sect and party who can supply that information, but I do not profess to be one of them. There are, perhaps, few who really prefer the malady of thought' to 'the deep slumber of a decided opinion.' Yet I will cast in my lot with these.

29. And, now, do any of you feel disposed to ask what is left of Christianity? I answer, three things are left. Ist, so much of its history as will stand the test of fair criticism; or, in other words, so much of its history as is true. 2ndly, a system of ethics tending to form a peculiar and original type of character. And 3rdly, an actual and substantial, moral and spiritual influence, exercised from the time of Christ down to the present moment. These three things remain, and they cannot be taken away from us.

30. I will close this morning with a few words on Christian influences. As we look back through the ages which have elapsed since the coming of Jesus Christ, we can trace the influences of a divine spirit superintending the moral development of the world, sympathising with man, and acting upon him through the ideal personality of Christ. It is indeed wonderful to observe how Christianity has been working its way through all kinds

of misconception: parodied by its professors; a cloak for abuse, bigotry, violence, and shame, and all kinds of vindictive persecution; trampled upon again and again, and often brought into contempt through the confused notions and the muddle-headedness of men who knew not what spirit they were of. It has been despised and rejected, and has come out of great tribulation; it has been brought into contempt by the priests, broken and wasted by the people, and we in these latter days have now to gather up the fragments that remain. It has been twisted into every kind of contorted creed and dogma, and cast in the strange moulds of a dozen different philosophies; yet historically, ethically, and potentially, it has survived.

Christ is not responsible for all that we call Christianity. If we want to discover the origin of dogmas about the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Procession of the Holy Ghost, we must go to the Greek schools of Alexandrian philosophy, not the Gospel. Our theology, as an historical fact, is not derived directly from Christ or even his apostles; it is the result of the Greek mind at work upon the Gospel materials. We Westerns are actually looking at Christ and his followers and his Gospel through Eastern, not Western eyes. The Greek mind has done our theological thinking for usdone it in a way we should never have done it for ourselves; and to this day we are repeating and pretending to understand distinctions of Greek metaphysics perfectly natural to the Greek and as completely unreal to the modern European. The Greek mind could not bear to