certainly not the story of the Birth; certainly not the story of the Resurrection; certainly not any incident which involves, or any expression which implies, miracle. But the Birth, the Resurrection, the miracles, every one of them, represent, in the most splendid of imaginative language and portraiture, essential spiritual truths. They are fictions, but vivid representations, in fiction, of fact; splendid truths, therefore, so long as they are understood to be literally fictitious, but perversions of truth, if taken for truth of fact. It is this conception which was set forth not long ago with a singular power and persuasiveness by the author of _The Kernel and the Husk_. The lofty level of thought, the restraint and felicity of language, above all the deeply religious spirit of the author, invest his arguments with a charm of unusual attractiveness. The arguments are not such as it is wholly pleasant to see thus recommended. He deals in detail, in the course of the volume, with much of the narrative of Scripture, with the purpose of shewing how one by one the various records, including of course the Birth and Resurrection, have grown to their present form out of realities which contained no miracle, and which therefore differed essentially from the historical scriptures and faith of the Church. It is no part of our task to enter upon such details. Nor is it necessary. The struggle against such a theory of Christianity will not be fought out on details. It may be conceded that many of the miracles, taken singly, can easily be made to fall in with conjectural theories as to a mythical origin, _if only the antecedent conviction_ against their reality as miracles _be cogent enough_ really to require that the necessary force should be put upon the evidence. Some indeed may lend themselves to the process with a facility which fairly surprises us. Others seem still to be very obstinate, and force the rationalizer into strange hypotheses. But after all, the real question, through one and all, is not how easily this or that miracle can be made, by squeezing of evidence, to square with a rationalizing hypothesis; but what is the strength of the argument for the rationalizing hypothesis itself, which is the warrant for squeezing the evidence at all.