really put these stories into our hands as history? Are these marvellous
tales to be regarded as poetry, romance, superstitious dreaming, or as
historical realities? If you profess to believe in their truth, how do
you reconcile their character with the universal aspect of human life,
as it appears _to us and to our friends?_ And finally, if you claim for
them the assent to which proved facts have a right from every candid
mind, to what extent of detail do you profess to believe in their
authenticity?" To these and similar questions I reply by the following
observations:

The last of these questions may be answered briefly. The lives of Saints
and other remarkable personages, which are here and elsewhere laid in
a popular form before the English public, are not all _equally_ to be
relied on as undoubtedly true in their various minute particulars. They
stand precisely on the same footing as the ordinary events of purely
secular history; and precisely the same degree of assent is claimed
for them that the common reason of humanity accords to the general
chronicles of our race. No man, who writes or edits a history of distant
events, professes to have precisely the same amount of certainty as to
all the many details which he records. Of some his certainty is all but
absolute; of others he can say that he considers them highly probable;
of a third class he only alleges that they are vouched for by
respectable though not numerous authorities., Still, he groups them
together in one complete and continuous story, and gives them to the
world as _history;_ nor does the world impute to him either dishonesty,
ignorance, credulity, or shallowness, because in every single event he
does not specify the exact amount of evidence on which his statement
rests.

Just such is the measure of belief to be conceded to the Life of St.