the niece's possession. Three distinct lines of expert testimony were invoked. The first was as to whether the contested signatures, compared with other signatures of the testator, were on their face forgeries; and whether (apart from the question of tracing) they bore the marks of the constraint and tremulousness which distinguish forged writings. The testimony being before an examiner, who had no power to exclude on the ground of cumulativeness, the parties ransacked the land for witnesses whose authority, in this respect, would be likely to have weight. Photographers were employed at an enormous expense to reproduce, in various exaggerated scales, the signatures, and then testimony was taken by each side to prove and to disprove the allegation that the photographers employed on the other side were not reliable. Presidents of commercial colleges and popular teachers of penmanship were torn from their classes, and sequestered so as to give weeks of uninterrupted study to the contested writings, and the standards with which they were to be compared. Bank presidents. and bank tellers were examined and cross-examined for the same purpose. A distinguished member of the Coast Survey was brought from Washington, and was called upon to give his observations on the same subject at great length. Engravers, who had spent years in poring over lines of writings and of drawings, and whose eyes were trained to the most exquisite delicacy of perception, so that the faintest aberrations could be discovered by them, were also summoned to give their aid. The result of the combination of testimony was, that about as many experts were produced to swear that the contested sig natures were forged, as there were to swear that these signagenuine.

tures were

But this was followed by a still more extraordinary phenomenon. If there is any thing that is demonstrable, we would hold that whether one line coincides with another could be demonstrated. In the case before us, a million of dollars hung upon the question whether the words of the testator's name, in the contested writings, exactly coincided with the same name in the uncontested will held by the plaintiff. Upon this question Professor Benjamin Pierce, of Harvard College, one of the most deservedly authoritative of living mathematicians, was

called, and testified that the chances of the genuine production of such a coincidence as that of the three signatures was that of one to two thousand six hundred and sixty-six millions of millions of millions of times (2,666,000,000,000,000,000,000). He naturally added that "this number far transcends human experience. So vast an improbability is practically an impossibility. Such evanescent shadows of probability cannot belong to actual life. ... Under a solemn sense of the responsibility involved in the assertion, I declare that the coincidence which has here occurred must have had its origin in an intention to produce it." He added that there were other conditions which multiplied the improbability of undesigned coincidence by at least two hundred millions. His testimony was sustained by that of his son, Professor Charles Pierce, and that of several other microscopists and experts in penmanship, who swore that the two signatures alleged to be spurious coincided exactly with the standard from which it was assumed they were copied. On the other side, to meet Professor Pierce's testimony, the plaintiffs produced a series of signatures of John Quincy Adams, of George C. Wilde, of C. A. Walker, and of the examining magistrate F. W. Palfrey, in which, even when greatly enlarged by photographs, there were many cases of coincidence sworn by experts to be far more exact than those to which Professor Pierce assigned so high a standard of improbability. And as to the particular signatures immediately in dispute, there was a mass of expert testimony to the effect that so far from coinciding, no single letter in them exactly covered the alleged standard. Yet if there be a question as to which we could suppose it possible to obtain demonstration, it would be as to whether a series of lines coincide.

The remaining conflict is, if possible, even still more extraordinary. Were the marks of tracing discoverable under the ink of the disputed signatures? If such tracing is apparent to one microscopist, we would suppose that it would be apparent to other microscopists, using instruments of similar grade, and with the same power of eyesight. Yet we have Dr. Charles T. Jackson, a specialist in this line of extraordinary skill and reputation, and Professor Horsford, well known for his accomplishments in the same line, backed by other experts of dis

tinction, testifying positively and unreservedly that under the ink of the disputed signatures the microscope brought to light marks of tracing; while Professor Agassiz and Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes testified that the microscope brought to light no such marks. It would be impossible to select experts more eminent and more unimpeachable. Yet as to a question which we would suppose to be peculiarly susceptible of demonstration-as to whether a particular microscope can detect certain marks-these experts, in the most unqualified manner swore to contradictory opposites. By Dr. Jackson and Professor Horsford these marks are "demonstrated." By Professor Agassiz and Professor Holmes it is "demonstrated" they do not exist. Of this contradiction there is but one explanation. When even the most exact of physical sciences undertakes to enter into practical life, it is beset with the same incertitudes that beset whatever appeals to our moral judgment. It can demonstrate only things that do not affect our action. As to things that affect our action, the best it can do is to establish a preponderance of proof.

The conclusion, then, is, that even by physical science, facts, as facts, while capable of proof, are incapable of demonstration. If, therefore, we are to accept as binding the sceptical axiom that nothing is to be believed that cannot be demonstrated, then as the facts testified by physical science cannot be demonstrated, it follows that they are not to be believed. But as they are to be believed-as on them we depend for most of our practical conclusions-then it follows that demonstration is not the test of moral proof. And when we find that there is no fact of any class that is demonstrated to us, then we rise by induction to the general rule that proof, not demonstration, is the condition of belief.

Bishop Butler devoted his great intellect to proving that we cannot stab the God of Revelation without first piercing through the heart of the God of Nature. I have endeavored, in the preceding pages, to show that there are other manifestations of Deity which intervene, interposing themselves as shields between Christ and those by whom Christ is assailed. Divinity exhib

1 For an interesting review of this important case see 4 Am. Law Jour. 625.

iting itself in jurisprudence stands in the way. It is not that human laws and human governments are jure divino; but that feature in human law which makes duty and responsibility questions of fact, to be determined on probable evidence, and always open to doubt, is part of our divine system of education, and must be destroyed if we establish the principle that only that which is to be demonstrated is to be believed. So divinity exhibiting itself in physical science stands in the way. It is not that any speculations of science are inspired, vastly as those speculations have contributed to increase the stores of knowledge, and to stimulate the movement of thought. But it is because the physical sciences, when they touch man in the concrete, are eminently among the ministers of Providence for the amelioration of humanity. "Counsel is mine and sound wisdom," says Christ, in the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs, " by me kings reign and princes execute justice; when He prepared the heavens I was there, rejoicing in the habitable parts of His earth; and my delights were with the sons of men." Through what physical science has done in the multiplication of the comforts of life, in the relief of its pains, in the extension of its delights, in the opening of invigorating fields of activity and exulting spheres of thought -through all these agencies Christ works. But each of these agencies, when approaching human action, and offering itself to human choice, passes through the region of the shadows. Demonstrate it cannot. Prove it may, yet its proof is always open to doubt. Educated by doubt and temptation we must be; by exercise our reasoning faculties must grow; by resistance must our moral powers be strengthened; choice, which involves alternatives for choosing, we must always have; and whatever approaches us, offering to us bounties no matter how great, subjects itself to this law. Jurisprudence does this; and Physical Science does this. If demonstration is essential to the reception of the teachings of either, then the teachings of neither can be received. Scepticism, requiring demonstration for its satisfaction, must pass over dead Jurisprudence and dead Science before it reaches a dead Christ.

FRANCIS WHARTON.

IN

METHODS OF HOME-EVANGELIZATION.

N the history of the world we are but too familiar with the fact that many a piece of work that appeared to be done. once for all has to be done over again. Jerichos that seemed to be levelled with the ground never to rise have a wonderful knack of restoring themselves; while holy cities like Jerusalem, that appeared to be built on immovable foundations and surrounded with impregnable bulwarks, are constantly tending to become dilapidated. Who that lived in the days of Luther and Calvin could have dreamt that the rotten superstition which, like Babylon the Great, seemed to be crushed and cursed forever, would regain its courage and its power, and seriously threaten the liberties of the world? Who that saw old giant Pope in the days of John Bunyan gnashing his toothless jaws would have believed that towards the end of the nineteenth century he would have renewed his youth, gulled millions into the belief of his infallibility, and revived and sent forth his old claims to supreme dominion, urbi et orbi? Who would have thought that after witches and witchcraft had got their quietus in the seventeenth century, and the ashes of many a wretched creature done cruelly to death had shown what was thought then of pretended or real intercourse with spirits and devils, Spiritualism would become a great fact in this enlightened age? Here, as elsewhere, it is the unexpected that happens. We are not done with the influences that make the first last, and the last first. And we are not done with the military necessity that demands a constant vigilance over the positions both of our enemy and ourselves. In short, we must fix it in our minds as an axiom, that old enemies have a wonderful power of coming back to life, and that old battles must often be fought anew.