INADMISSIBLE

adj : Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Here say evidence is inadmi ible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hear: say evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single a ertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admi ible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there Was such a person as Julius Cæsar, such an empire as As syria. But as records of courts of justice are admi ible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confe ion) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges’ decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human alike destitute of value. reason are 159