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nal evidence renders it, as we have already said, far more impressively convincing. The principal evidence of testimony which the preacher will have to use is that derived from Scripture, of which we spoke in the last letter; but besides this, there is the testimony of history. All the facts of history are derived from testimony; the accounts of things in other countries, the facts contained in books, those handed down by tradition, the experiments of science which cannot be made again, and the current events of the day—all these rest on testimony. Universal consent is a species of testimony, though, perhaps, rather partaking of the nature of authority.

Another argument which may be useful to the preacher is induction, or the bringing forward a mass of instances. The argument in Paley's Hora Paulinæ is an induction: one instance of unintentional harmony between the book of the Acts and the Epistles would prove nothing; but several hundreds are morally conclusive of their authenticity.

In some respects similar to induction, as depending on number rather than on weight, is what Archbishop Whately calls a "Galaxy of evidence:" that is, a body of evidence of different sorts, which convinces rather by the accumulated weight of the whole than by the force of any particular part. This is well put by Davison in the following passage: "Before an audience, many of whom are highly exercised in the application of their minds to a complex evidence, and

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to the decision of great interests dependent upon it, where nothing but a complete conviction will satisfy, I speak with submission to their judgment, but with no fear of that judgment making against me, when I appeal to them whether they have not had occasion to know how conviction is improved by converging reasons, and the more so as those reasons arise from considerations differing in kind: how the succession of new matter of proof, even light in itself, reduces any supposed uncertainty left in the earlier stages of the inquiry; how the contingency of error is gradually excluded by checks upon the first conclusion, and the conspiring probabilities of a subject run together into perfect conviction. Let this reasonable process be applied to the examination of Christianity by men who challenge it to the proof, and I will not say it, but they have every thing to hope from the trial 1."

This cumulative evidence is not, however, well suited to the ignorant and illiterate; if used at all before them, it must be carefully set forth, and fully, yet simply, explained. It requires great pains to make a jury comprehend a long train of circumstantial evidence; one tolerably conclusive argument will often have more weight than the most perfect process of coincident reasoning. So it is with the evidences of religion. The educated and practised reasoner will be more readily convinced by the process so ably de

1 Davison on Prophecy, p. 30.

scribed by Davison; but the illiterate man, not seeing the deductions which may be made from the weight of each argument separately considered, would be better satisfied with any one branch of evidence, if it were plainly laid before him. Yet there are cases in which cumulative evidence may be made sufficiently plain. Thus in confirmation of prophecy: it would not have been a decisive proof of inspiration, for a prophet to declare with truth that Tyre or Babylon, Egypt or Jerusalem, should one day be destroyed; but when we find it foretold that Tyre should become a place for fishermen to spread their nets on', Babylon, the lair of beasts', Egypt the "basest of the kingdom 3, " the Jews dispersed throughout the world, the Christian Church triumphant; and when we find, not one only, but all of these predictions exactly fulfilled, an irresistible proof is presented to our minds. Bishop Horne, in his eighth sermon, sums up the principal predictions concerning our Saviour, and adds: "In the application of a single prophecy, especially if it be a figurative one, interest and ingenuity may raise many doubts and difficulties, but against the accumulated weight of evidence, καθ ̓ ὑπερβολὴν εἰς UTEρßoλnv, afforded by so many plain and literal predictions, all pointing to one person, all punctually and exactly fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and in him alone, no tolerably plausible objection can ever

1 Ezek. xxvi. 14.

2 Jer. 1. 39.

3 Ezek. xxix. 15.

be made. Let candour and integrity, reason and common sense, be judges in the cause, and they must determine, they have already determined by the virtuous Nathanael, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.'”

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LETTER X.

ON ILLUSTRATION.

It is not easy to distinguish precisely between matter used by the speaker for the conviction of the reason, and that which is intended for explanation, or mere ornament to say where argument ends and illustration begins. The frontier line must be drawn somewhere in the regions of analogy. Analogy is in part argument, in part merely illustration. In fact there are two sorts of analogy, as may be shown from the following examples mentioned in Aristotle': "Surely," said an Athenian orator, 'you would not choose the chief magistrates by lot; you might as well choose the pilot of a vessel by lot."" The other instance is this, "Once upon a time, a fox fell into a ditch, and could not get out; as he lay there, a swarm of insects

1 Arist. Rhet. lib. ii. cap. xx.

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