bility, appealing to
histories written more than a thousand years after the alleged event, to
forged documents and vague rumours. I was willing to doubt the
sufficiency of my research; till I found its defenders, instead of
alleging and establishing by evidence what God was by them said to have
done, contenting themselves with asserting his omnipotence, in proof
that the doctrine implied no impossibility; dwelling on the fitness and
reasonableness of his working such a miracle in the honour of her who
was chosen to be the mother of his eternal Son; and whilst they took the
fact as granted, substituting for argument glowing and fervent
descriptions of what might have been the joy in heaven, and what ought
to be the feelings of mortals on earth.

At every step of the inquiry into the merits of this case, the principle
recurs to the mind, that, as men really and in earnest looking onward to
a life after this, our duty is to ascertain to the utmost of our {300}
power, not what God could do, not what we or others might pronounce it
fit that God should do, but what He has done; not what would be
agreeable to our feelings, were it true, but what, whether agreeably or
adversely to our feelings or wishes, is proved to be true. The very
moment a Christian writer refers me from evidence to possibilities, I
feel that he knows not the nature of Christianity; he throws me back
from the sure and certain hope of the Gospel to the "beautiful fable" of
Socrates,--"It were better to be there than here, IF THESE THINGS ARE
TRUE."

But let us inquire into the facts of the case.

First, I would observe that it is by no means agreed among all who have
written upon the subject, what was the place, or what was the time of
the Virgin's death. Whilst some have maintained that she breathed her
last at Ephesus, the large majority assert that her departure from this
world took place at Jerusalem. And as to the time of her death, some
have assigned it to the year 48 of the Christian era, about the time at
which Paul and Barnabas (as we read in Holy Scripture) returned to
Antioch; whilst others refer it to a later date. I am not, however,
aware of any supposition which fixes it at a period subsequent to that
at which the canon of Scripture closes. Epiphanius indeed, towards the
close of the fourth century, reminding us that Scripture is totally and
purely silent on the subject as well of Mary's death and burial, as of
her having accompanied St. Joh