EVIDENCE. 318 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. is unnecessary to prove facts of which the court will take judicial notice. In general these are facts of such common and universal knowledge that it would be idle to prove them by affirmative testi mony. Thus ( to cite a few of the innumerable cases) it is unnecessary to prove the calendar, the multiplication table, that water will freeze, or that ice will melt. The party sustaining the burden of proof is also aided in making proof by proving one fact or set of facts from which cer- tain consequences are presumed to flow. (See Presumption.) All so-called circumstantial evi- dence is evidence intended for the purpose of creating a presumption of some other fact sought to be proven. In general courts of equity follow the rules of evidence as adopted by the common-law courts. The important exceptions have been noticed above. In the United States tin- Federal courts in civil cases follow rules of evidence applied by the local State courts, unless a different rule is required by Federal statute. In criminal trials they fol- low the common law as interpreted by the Fed- eral courts, and as modified by Federal statutes. In the several States the common-law rules of evidence are generally followed with compara- tively few statutory modifications, the more im- portant of which have been noted. Consult: Greenleaf, Treatise on the Law of Ecidenee (16th ed., Boston, 1899) ; Thayer, Pn Ivminary Treatise on Evidence at Common Lair (Boston, 1898); id., Gases on Evidence (Boston, 1900) ; Stephen, Digest of the Law of Evidence (May, editor, Bos- ton, 1877 I; Abbott. Select Cases on Evidence (New York, 1895): id., Trial Evidence (New York. 1900) ; Powell. Principles and Practice of the Lair of Evidence 1 7th ed.. London, 1899); Best, Principles of Evidence (9th ed., London, 1902). EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. The title given to apologetics, or the defense of Chris- tianity against the objections of its opponents. The occasion for such defense arises from the fact that Christianity, while it is primarily a life in the soul of man, i- also a system of ideas, which are the means by which its distinctive life is produced and maintained. It thus meets the systems of thought already existing in the world, and is found to differ essentially from them. Hence, first, the satisfaction of the rational faculty in the Christian himself calls for an ad- justment of Christian doctrini i" tin- principles and results of human thinking, the result of which is systematic theology; and, second, the practical work of the extension of Christianity calls for a defense of its doctrine against the hostile criticism inevitablj arising, the resull of which is the science of evidences. From the lime of Justin Martyr, the first Christian philosopher, to the present. Christianity Ha- continually given rise to apologel ii I real ises. (1) Tlie defense of Christianity must depend upon the conception of Christianity which the apologisi entertains. Evidences thus begin with definition. Christianity is that religion which saves man from sin and Hie consequences of sin by the interventi f God in bis behalf in send ing His to e human nature, in which He perfectlj revealed (lie will of Cod and laid the foundation of salvation by the sacrifice of T I i>i i II thus defined, < Ihristianity is .. pematural religion, thai is, o religion empli aboA e na tun and man it a chief event, the Incarnation, is a miracle. It surpasses, and in a sense traverses, nature. It is the personal contact of the divine principle with humanity, as distinguished from the impersonal contact which the same principle has with man in nature. (2) Christian evidences begin, therefore, with tli i> fundamental fact of personal contact with the divine. This contact takes place at the cen- tral point of personality in man, the will, which it originally and continually moves to new moral choices. It is thus a matter of consciousness, of experience, and the first series of Christian evi- dences gather about the experiences of the soul which are produced by Christianity' and are char- acteristic of the same. The argument is direct from the revolutionary choice by which the Chris- tian life is ushered in, to its cause — something without the Christian, a person, because adapting motives to his condition ; holy, because leading to holiness; and immeasurably great, because governing him and doing all that is involved in such a government — who is, therefore, God. The evidence of the great feature of Christianity as a personal contact of God with man is, therefore, the fact that the Christian has experience of such a contact in the very act by which he becomes a Christian. This is evidence of the very first degree of certainty to him, and affording the most perfect satisfaction, since it is a matter of immediate consciousness. To every non-be- liever it sustains the character of testimony. It is unassailable by him in respect to its possibility if he accepts the existence of a personal God. He cannot reasonably deny its actuality, because this would be to deny what generations of men, of the most diverse character and under the most diverse conditions, by which both collusion and delusion are equally excluded, assert. He can only reasonably object that he himself knows nothing of such a contact. Christian experience, however, goes still further. As the Christian has experience of the personal contact of God with the world for its salvation in the instance of that contact which is furnished by his own personal participation in the work of Christianity for man, so he experiences the operation in himself of the various forms in which this contact devel- ops in the complete work of Christianity for the world. He comes into contact with Christ, and he thus knows something of the nature of the Saviour by personal experience. Thus the proof of the Incarnation, the chief miracle of Chris- tianity, gains an clement of personal evidence. And as his experience enlarges, the witness of experience to truth enlarges also. In the final result, he may he said to have personal, and. to him, irrefutable, evidence upon every one of the main points of Christianity in the experiences of his own soul. (3) But, as already suggested, this evidence is mit ilin-1-tlv accessible to the unbeliever, and it is In him that the arguments of evidences are addressed, lie may possibly feel himself unable iir unwilling to dispute II"' testimony of Chris- tians; but he cannoi attain any personal cer liinty for himself till other arguments, which do enter into the range of his own thought, are added. Hence the argument of this discipline turns next to the proofs of Christianity from its objective nature. Christianity is incorporated in the person of its founder, and the nature of Chris- tianity is illustrated by His character. The
