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The author of "Ecce Homo" [Latin for "Behold the Man"] says on the subject of miracles.

[crossed out] (selves, extremely) ... Miracles are in themselves extremely improbable things, and cannot be admitted unless supported by a great concurrence of evidence. For some of the Evangelical miracles there is a concurrence of evidence which, when fairly considered, is very great indeed; for example [crossed out] (St. P) for the Resurrection, for the appearance of Christ to St Paul, for the general fact that Christ was a miraculous healer of disease. The evidence by which these facts are supported cannot be tolerably accounted for by any hypothesis except that of being true. And if they are once admitted, the antecedent improbability of many miracles less strongly attested is much diminished. ..... Nevertheless nothing is more natural than that exaggerations and even inventions should be mixed in our biographies with genuine facts!! Now the miracles of the baptism are not among those which are attested by the strong external evidence.

There is nothing necessarily miraculous in the appearance of the dove, and a peal of thunder might be shaped into intelligible words by the excited imagination of men accustomed to consider thunder as the voice of God. Of the incidents of the temptation it is to be remembered that they are not described to us by eye-witnesses; they may have been communicated to his followers by Christ himself, the best of witnesses; but we have no positive assurance that they were so communicated.

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But the mighty power of living purity had done its work. He had refused to judge a woman, but he had judged a whole crowd. He had awakened the slumbering conscience in many hardened hearts, given them a new delicacy, a new ideal, a new view and [crossed out] (re) reading of the Mosaic law.

................................... Ecce Homo

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Faraday speaking of silica says ... It startles us by the strange places in which we find it. These things unaccountable at present, but show us that with all our knowledge, we know little as yet of that which may be know[n].

Speaking of putrefaction and decay, he says: ... Repulsive as these are in some points of view, they are in others full of beauty and of power, and evidence of a wisdom which the more a man knows the more freely will he acknowledge he cannot understand.

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................. The Moss Agate.

The filaments giving the appellation are not petrified vegetation as they appear, "but particles of clay suspendent in the pure silicious matter of the Agate whilst yet in a liquid state."

................... King's Natural History

of Gems.

The Agates from India were greatly admired "because they represented rivers, groves of trees ... cattle and even more defined objects, such as chariots and ornaments worn by horses. As these figures were suggested to the imagination by the capricious "Egyptian Pebble" which latter, indeed, often presents images as accurately defined that it is difficult to believe them ... the more unaided freaks of Nature: In the case of Jaspers, in the British Museum, may be seen the exact portrait of Chaucer in such a pebble; the Strawberry Hill Collection possessed another of Voltaire; De Boot had one no longer than the nail of the middle finger, marked with a perfect circle of a brown colour, within which was the veritable figure of a bishop with his mytre on

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on turning the stone a little, a different image became visible; and again turning it, two more, of a man and [added above] (a) woman. Numerous other examples equally illusive will occur to the [crossed out] (mind) recollection of very mineralogist.

................... ibid.

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Gympie fossils. Upper Devonian formation.

............................. Daintree.

It was a profound saying of William Humboldt that "Man is Man only by means of speech, but in order to invent [crossed out] (Mans) speech he must be already Man"

....................... Sir Chas. Lyell.

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........... Last of all came what he considered the head of his discourse - the application ... A sermon that did not induce any body to do anything he considered a Sermon thrown away. The object of preaching, in his view, was not merely to enlighten the understanding, or even to induce pleasing and devout contemplation, but to make people set about a thourough [sic] change of heart [crossed out] (but) and life. These elating portions of his sermons were the peculiarity of his preaching. He warned, he entreated, he pleaded, urging now this motive and now that, talking as if his audience were one individual, whom he must, before he left the pulpit, persuade to take a certain step. "If these things are so," he would say, "you, my friend have neglected this matter too long. Are you not convinced that you ought to do something now tonight, this moment? Do you say, 'what shall I do?' One thing I will tell you, that if you do not do something more than you have, you will be lost. That you acknowledge, do you not? Now there is one thing you can do: you can resolve before God, from this moment, that the salvation of your soul shall be your first object, and that, whatever it may mean to be a Christian, you will not rest till you are one. You can do that. Are you not conscious that you can? I put it to you - will you do it? You can not refuse without periling your salvation. When you have this place tonight you can avoid