ordinary statements upon very slight evidence, both because our experience prepares us to believe that they are true, and because we do not much care whether they are true or not. If life, or even succession to an estate, depended upon either event, the demand for evidence, even in such simple matters, would be immensely intensified. The converse of the statement, however, would not meet with the same reception. Would anyone believe the affirmation that Alfred the Great, for instance, did not die at all? What amount of evidence would be required before such a statement could be pronounced sufficiently attested? Universal experience would be so uniformly opposed to the assertion that such a phenomenon had taken place, that probably no evidence which could readily be conceived could ensure the belief of more than a credulous few. The assertion that a man actually died and was buried, and yet afterwards rose from the dead, is still more at variance with human experience. The prolongation of life to long periods is comparatively consistent with experience; and if a life extending to several centuries be incredible it is only so in degree, and is not absolutely contrary to the order of nature, which certainly under present conditions does not favour the supposition of such lengthened existence, but still does not fix hard and fast limits to the life of man. The resurrection of a man who has once been absolutely dead, however, is contrary to all human experience, and to all that we know of the order of nature. If to this we add the assertion that the person so raised from the dead never again died, but after continuing some time longer on earth, ascended bodily to some invisible and inconceivable place called Heaven, there to "sit at the right hand of God," the shock to reason and common {404} sense becomes so extreme, that it is difficult even to realize the nature of the affirmation. It would be hopeless to endeavour to define the evidence which could establish the reality of the alleged occurrences.