I have written for those who do not accept them, and who,--as I think rightly,--distrust the conclusions merely forced upon them by ordinary "reflection and experience," and in such important matters demand evidence of a much more tangible kind. I would put it to Mr. Arnold whether, in seeming to depreciate any attempt to systematize and carry to logical conclusions the whole argument regarding the reality of Miracles and Divine Revelation, he does not do himself injustice, and enunciate a dangerous doctrine. No doubt his own clear insight and wide culture have enabled him to discern truth more surely, and with less apparent effort, than most of those whom he addresses, but in encouraging, as he thus practically does, the adoption by others of religious views with very little trouble or thought, which have certainly cost himself years of training and study, he both cheapens his own intellectual labour, and advocates a superficiality which already has too many attractions. Whether he address readers whose belief is already established, or those who are ready to accept it second hand from himself, it seems to me that no work should be unwelcome which supplies evidence of the results, which it has suited his own immediate purpose merely to assume. Mr. Matthew Arnold objects that my book leaves the reader "with the feeling that the Bible stands before him like a fair tree all stripped, torn and defaced, not at all like a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations,"(1) but if this be the case, I submit that it is a necessary process through which the Bible must go, before it can be successfully transplanted into that healthy soil, in which alone its leaves can truly be for the 44 Contemporary Boviow," October, 1874, p. 798. {lxxxii}