Dean Six,—-Your recent correspondent "Waverer"" accuses me of begging the question. I beg his pardon; I do nothing of the kind. He charges the apostles with being credulousand superstitious. Thereby he falls into the pit. which he digyed for me. That is to say, he only assumes that they were credulous, he nowhere attempts to prove it. My position in my first letter was as follows:-~That the witnesses to Chirist's resurrection are credible because they were honest and reasonable men. More than that, they only believed in the Resurrection when they had conclusive proof of it. At first they doubted. Well, where is the petition principia here? T fail to see it,
was an age when belief in the supernatural "Waverer," says that the apostolic age and the miraculous was practically universal. Be it so, It is so in every age. The possibility of miracles has always been admitted, save by afew. To-day the majority of persons believe fully that miracles ocourred. Nor is this fact without its ial value. The judicious Hooker"
characteristic judiciousness when he writes; "The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God self. For that which all men at all times learned, nature herself must needs have taught; and'God being the author of nature, her voice is but His instrument." Wide-spread and continuous beliefs nearly always have a substratum of truth, Witness, for instance, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.
That the age in which the Re occurred was not as marked by "superstition and credulity," as Waverer" affirms it to have been, may be seen from one or two patent facts. Thus: one of the main religious sects of the period was that of the Sadducees. They were avowed rationalists, Their belief included neither angel, nor resurrection, Agnosticism finds itself anticipated in them. Not only so: they were meu of mind and of influence. Even the Sanhedrim was largely composed of these same Sadducees. Again: what does your correspondent make of that brave and aflectienate man, Thomas, called Didymus?- What changed him from an avowed sceptic of the Resurrection into a vehement believer in it? Look, too, at Paul. How came it to pass that he was transformed from a persecuting foe into a devoted friend of the Gospel? He repeatedly: tells us, it was because he had seen Christ. lis tendencies, certainly, were anything but "'credulous." None had a more robust, manly mind, Visions and revelations," as he calls them, were no theme of exultation with him, Again and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.