sense, have come from God, to tell it to us. If God, in the Scripture, has made known religious truth by human agency, the least we can suppose is that He employed men who could use human language so as to convey, to the majority at least of candid readers what they really meant ; and if what you call the current, but mistaken, Christianity, be that meaning, there can be no doubt He has done so; for the style of Scripture, as it is in general wonderfully clear and simple, so it has conveyed this meaning to the immense majority of readers in every age. The miraculous and supernatural "facts," and the "doctrines" of the "current theology" have been generally supposed, by learning and ignorance alike, to be naturally conveyed by the language of the New Testament. Plentifully, I admit, have interpreters differed, as regards modes of Church government, and as regards many minor doctrines; as regards also the philosophy of doctrines which are not minor; but I repeat, in the immense majority of cases, the facts and doctrines you especially dislike have been supposed to be what the Apostles designed to convey to us. If they did not, the Scripture has failed of its object; they who wrote it have hopelessly misled, not enlightened, the world; and I should hold this as a conclusive indication that they did not come from God.

To receive therefore any such system as that you defend, necessitates a much more "intolerable" criticism than any I find employed by "current Christianity." When I have applied it, and compare the results with the documents from which I have so laboriously extracted it, I cannot bring myself to believe that those who penned the documents can have been half as capable of expressing their meaning as nine-tenths of mankind in general ; while it is little less than blasphemy to imagine that men who have so stupidly misled the world can have been employed to communicate a system of divine "Revelation,”—which, after all, was to reveal to the world the contrary of its true import!

No;-the "burden" of such an hypothesis is indeed "intolerable." I could be more easily reconciled to Deism, however unsatisfactory and disputable its meagre doctrines, than, while

holding little more, bind about my neck such a yoke as that of a "Revelation" which can only be understood by supposing its authors did not understand the modes of common speech, by their misuse of which they have actually cajoled the great bulk of their honest and faithful readers, in every age and country, to infer the contrary of what they meant in all their most momentous utterances !

You frankly confessed, in our recent interview, that those who adopt your critical principles have ever been few; and that, few as you are, you occupied every conceivable point between bare Deism and the "current orthodoxy," a result which must naturally be expected from the impossibility of fixing the limit within which different minds will apply your "cumbrous" apparatus of

criticism.

Forgive me for saying that, for similar reasons, "few" you will always be. The generality of people will never endure your intolerable processes of criticism, whether you call its products rationalistic,— on the supposition that the Apostles sincerely delivered a system, nine-tenths of which is to be rejected as fanatical nonsense; or exegetical,—on the supposition that they did not say what nearly everybody is irresistibly led to believe they meant to say! The generality of readers will recoil from the horrible ordeal of logical and critical torture to which you would subject them; they will go on further than you, or take the "current Christianity."-This last, not stereotyped, indeed, will still embrace, under some or other modifications, the "supernatural narratives” of the New Testament, and these doctrines at least, the Preexistence of Christ, the union of two natures in Him, and the atonement for sin by His death. These things are so entwined with the very texture of the New Testament, that, like the supernatural in its history, they cannot be rubbed out without making huge holes in it. I do not say, for I do not think, that men will all agree in the reception of any one theory of the philosophy of these doctrines; for, as to this, Scripture itself is silent. But the doctrines themselves, I feel convinced, cannot be evaded by any one who honestly asks "What is Christianity ?" and when they

cease to be received, it will only be by a cost of criticism which will render readers of the New Testament bankrupts in faith altogether.

To a Young Friend disposed to make the "Discrepancies in Scripture a reason for renouncing Christianity.

My dear young Friend,

1853.

You tell me you cannot reconcile all the discrepancies which may be detected in minute portions of the Scripture history, and that you therefore feel compelled to give up the truth of Christianity!

What a "therefore" is that! I pity your logic. Pardon me, but between the premises and the conclusion there is no connection in the world. It is much as if you said, you cannot demonstrate the compatibility of all the phenomena of the universe with the divine benevolence, and therefore, you must become an Atheist; nay, it is really as absurd as if you were to say that you cannot reconcile all the discrepancies of English historians, and therefore give up the History of England: for discrepancies in a history may be numerous and real, and yet every important fact of it be true.

“You cannot reconcile,” you say, "all the discrepancies ;" and I may retort, "Who asked you?" Certainly, I should not; for I cannot reconcile all those discrepancies either. But as to giving up Christianity as divine-or the New Testament, as the Word of God on that account, I should as soon think, as some one said, in a somewhat similar case, "of burning down London to get rid of the bugs."

"What are you to do ?" "what can you ask you ; do?" Why, so far from your being compelled to do what you meditate,there are, as the late Sir Robert Peel used to say, no less than "three courses" open to you, any one of which would be infinitely more logical than the renunciation of Christianity.

1. Even if you were to affirm, what perhaps you will affirm, -not only that you cannot reconcile all these discrepancies, but that they are, and will for ever be, irreconcilable; that they are mistakes of the writers, just because "inspiration" did not plenarily protect them against infirmities of intellect, any more than it did against all errors of conduct; still you would not be justified in such a conclusion as you seem to think inevitable. And I say that this is proved even by the conduct of the bulk of those who chiefly insist on this view of the discrepancies, who make the most of them, who often perversely pet them; for even these do not therefore affirm that the entire evidence on behalf of Christianity, as a thing of Divine origin, is nought; they still affirm that the substantial truth of its facts is incontrovertible; and that the office of "criticism" is, at best, only to eliminate the minute portions in which "irreconcilable discrepancy" is to be traced. I know, indeed, that some of these "eliminaters" proceed in this task at a rare rate, and "eliminate" nearly the whole book; "turn the house," as the saying is, "out of the windows;" but many, notwithstanding, do apply the theory within perfectly insignificant and innocuous limits. Now I say not that this is the best method of dealing with such matters; -I think either the second or the third (which I shall presently touch) is better. Still if, as is very possible, those who hold this theory apply the principle honestly, and only to the minute and trivial portions of the New Testament History in which alone anything approaching "irreconcilable contradiction" can, with a shadow of reason, be pretended, — the result is much the same as if the whole book were accepted as divine. So little is rejected, that it does not appreciably affect the sum of what is retained. To ask the difference is of as little significance as to ask whether somebody is richer than you

сс

who has a thousand pounds, when you have the same sum all but a thousandth part of a farthing!

I know, indeed, there are those who parade and exaggerate these difficulties for the very purpose of finding excuses for the conclusion you seem in danger of arriving at. They have accordingly always magnified and multiplied them; but the bulk of those who insist on them in our day do not insist on them as at all affecting the claim of Christianity to be divinely originated, and they therefore prove that it is at least possible to hold this theory and yet not give up Christianity. Nor can you in justice do so, unless you have first confuted the immensely varied and convergent proofs of its truth, and the substantial credibility of its documents;

any more than, in the parallel case, you can set aside the history of England or Greece because you have found variations and contradictions in the recital of particular facts!

But you will, perhaps, say, "Does not this impose upon me the task of eliminating what is false? And does it not compel me to reject the idea of plenary inspiration ?"

Recollect what I have said;

I do not affirm that this first way

is the best possible way of confronting the difficulties which you say perplex you; I am only contending that it is consistent and intelligible, though I prefer another;-of which presently. But as to the above questions, I must answer, on this first theory, in the affirmative. You must, no doubt, diligently and carefully eliminate the fragments of error which you deem such; you must winnow the wheat. "Am I capable of such an exercise of intellect?" you will say. I have nothing to do with that; but this I will say, 1. That it makes not the substantive truth of the New Testament less true, nor justifies you in rejecting the whole, because you think a ten thousandth part doubtful; and 2. That if you reject only what you can call "demonstrably contradictory," I am convinced your task will be light enough, and that the balance which will weigh the difference between your New Testament and mine will be a very delicate one! Further, your task, even on this theory, will in fact involve no other difficulty than you submit to in dealing with any book of authentic history,