every case the fact of the miracle is asserted in the most direct and positive terms. There can be no mistake either as to the meaning or intention of the narrative, and there is no symptom whatever of a thought on the part of Augustine to avoid the responsibility of his statements, or to give them as mere vague report. If wo compare these accounts with those of the Gospels, we do not find them deficient in any essential detail common to the latter. There is in the synoptic Gospels only one case in which Jesus is said to have raised the dead. The raising of Jairus' daughter(1) has long been abandoned, as a case of restoration to life, by all critics and theologians, except the few who still persist in ignoring the distinct and positive declaration of Jesus, "The damsel is not dead but sleepeth." The only case, therefore, in the Synoptics is the account in the third Gospel of the raising of the widow's son,(3) of which, strange to say, the other Gospels know nothing. Now, although, as might have been expected, this narrative is much more highly coloured and picturesque, the difference is chiefly literary, and, indeed, there are really fewer important details given than in the account by Augustine, for instance, of the restoration to life of the daughter of Bassus the Syrian, which took place at Hippo, of which he was bishop, and where he actually resided. Augustine's object in giving his list of miracles did not require him to write picturesque narratives. He merely desired to state bare facts, whilst the authors of the Gospels composed the Life of their Master, in which interesting details were everything. For many reasons we refrain here from alluding to the artistic narrative of the raising {179} of Lazarus, the greatest miracle ascribed to Jesus, yet so singularly unknown to the other three Evangelists, who, so readily repeating the accounts of trifling cures, would most certainly not have neglected this had they ever heard of it.