nesses, it is seldom that it is not possible to pick out apparent or real inconsistencies between them. These inconsistencies are studiously displayed by an adverse pleader, but oftentimes with little impression upon the minds of the judges."

And I know you will also agree that, if we dismiss the hypothesis of the superhuman origin of the Bible in general, and suppose the Book a collection of merely human records, it is a far more puzzling thing that so few discrepancies should exist than that some should; it is far more difficult to account for its wonderful harmony, for the paucity and insignificance of the discrepancies found in it, than to suppose a few permitted to exist, on the theory of its divine origin, as the result of our ignorance of omitted facts or the accidents of transmission; nay, I can imagine some discrepancies permitted for many other reasons; but no causes, known or unknown, will account for the unity of the Bible on the theory of a human origin. Considering that it is a collection of nearly seventy tracts, -written by at least thirty authors,-extending over some thousands of years in time, composed in different languages,-full of the minutest historic details, it is incomprehensible to me that it should exhibit such an astonishing approach to harmony, and that the "discrepancies" to which a searching criticism has reduced the objections of infidelity, should be so few, on the supposition that no superhuman wisdom presided over its composition and compilation.

But these discrepancies, few or many, (which you are called on, however, to "demonstrate" to be contradictions, before you can reject the portions of the Bible in which they are found,)stand on a totally different footing from those "improbabilities (as you call them) in the history, which, as presumed to be marked by "legendary or mythical" characteristics, you also make a stumbling block. Forgive me if I say that here I entirely miss your ordinary good sense, and I am sure that your objections have not a particle of sound logic in them. Why I speak thus strongly, I will tell you in another letter.

Yours ever faithfully,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER XLVII.

To the Same.

Arran, N. B., Aug. 1848.

My dear Friend,

The reason which induced me to speak so emphatically at the close of my last, is that I can discern no one principle, nor shadow of a principle, on which you accept and reject the “ "preternatural." You say you believe the story of Daniel's being thrown into the lion's den, and his getting safe out of it; but not the story of Jonah being swallowed by the great fish, and getting safe out of that: you believe in Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego being cast into the fiery furnace, and coming forth without the smell of fire upon them; but not the story of the serpent speaking to Eve: you believe the manifestation of God in human form to Abraham at Mamre, and of his appearance in the form of an angel to Joshua in the plains of Jericho, and are not even disturbed by the phenomenon of the "drawn sword; " but you do not believe that He ever appeared as an angel "wrestling" with Jacob! Now, why, in the name of wonder, do you believe and disbelieve thus capriciously? What principle guides you in these seemingly random selections and rejections? I can imagine, indeed, two courses, either of which would be consistent enough, though not equally justified by the evidence; but your course is to me utterly unintelligible. 1. I can imagine a man saying, "I reject all miracles, not perhaps as impossible, but as so eminently improbable that no strength of external evidence can establish them; and, therefore, I reject all those things just enumerated, and everything else like them; everything that breaks in upon my little jog-trot of familiar antecedents and consequents.' This man, as we shall shortly see, ought, in sound logic, to go a little further, but, so far, he is at least consistent. 2. Another man may say, "I believe not only that supernatural

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facts may occur, but that they can be proved to have occurred by appropriate evidence; I believe that evidence to have been given in relation to the Scriptural narratives of that kind; all of them, therefore, that I see supported by the same degree of external evidence, I equally believe; for I am a judge of the evidence in their support, and of its equality in the different cases; but, admitting the supernatural to have occurred at all, I am no judge in the world as to the modes in which God may have permitted it to appear. He alone is the adequate judge of the degree and forms in which He shall exhibit it."

I can imagine, as I have said, the first of these two men (still consistently) going a step further, and saying, "I reject all supernatural occurrences as infractions of my little familiar series of 'antecedents and consequents,' and therefore reject all of that nature that appears in the Bible; I cannot conceive, with some halting reasoners, one of these events to be, à priori, at all more probable than another; it seems just as unlikely that Christ should have recalled a little girl of twelve to life the instant after death had done its work, or turned water into wine, or fed five thousand by five barley loaves and a few fishes, as that Balaam's ass should have rebuked his master, or the young prophet's axehead float;-so, further still, nothing can appear a more startling infraction of my snug little experience than that a first man should ever have sprung 'out of the dust,' or been ‘developed 'out of a' tadpole;' or, still more incredible, that there should ever have been a time when my familiar system of 'antecedents and consequents' was non-existent altogether.—I therefore come to the conclusion that it never began,—that' men' and 'tadpoles' are, alike, eternal series, and that the Truth is to be found only in-Atheism!"

But as for you, what can you or any such inconsistent dabbler in Rationalism say? I know not-except this one thing: "I admit that there is nothing wonderful in miracles-for I admit scores; I admit that it is quite 'natural' that, in a 'supernatural' system, the supernatural should be expected, and that does not trouble me in the least; but I am a judge, from my à priori con

ceptions, my tastes, my fancy (even where the external evidences are just the same),—as to how far God would permit the 'supernatural' to appear, and in what forms; and therefore, I decide, from a certain feeling of intrinsic propriety (a caprice of fancy, I should call it), that God may have let Daniel escape out of the lions' den, but would never have let Jonah slip down the fish's gullet; that He may have saved Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, though they were thrown into the fiery, furnace, but that it is totally inconceivable that He should let Balaam's ass speak good sense!" My dear friend, you really have nothing to go upon here, but certain à priori conceptions and feelings of what God is likely to do ;-of which neither you nor I can judge.

This is, however, the prov eudos - the floating Delos of all Rationalism; and you see, by experience, that it is utterly unstable. You see a thousand different men arriving at a thousand different conclusions, as to how much they shall admit! In this impossible winnowing of the contents of Scripture by their à priori winnowing-fan, some admit more than you do, — some less ; -some almost all the Bible, some hardly any; all measure it with that one deceitful, variable bushel of theirs. They think that, though the external evidence for supernatural facts may be the same in several cases, they yet are justified neither in rejecting all, nor accepting all, (whereas there is no other way out of the dilemma,) but that they may judge it certain God would do this, and would not do that. This is a parallel folly with that famous à priori criticism which, in Germany, has led to such ludicrously variable results in profane literature, and results still more ludicrous (if they were not so serious) in sacred.

If you say, "Well; must I receive every fable that professes to be supernatural,' because I am no judge of what it is probable that God will do or permit ?"-I have abundantly answered that. You are not to receive any supernatural history, unless you have appropriate evidence for it; but if you have it for nine facts you admit, and also for a tenth you reject, you are utterly illogical in rejecting that tenth in virtue of any such fantastical criterion as the à priori human view of the probable in God's administration

of the universe: you need omniscience and infallibility to guide

you.

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But if you really think you can trust any such discerning spirit" within you, be pleased, at least, to let it speak impartially. If you do, I rather fancy you will reject more than half the facts in the constitution of the world around you, in spite of the general evidence for Theism; for how few of them, viewed in their entire relations, are such as man's à priori wisdom would have conjectured! As I said of the consistent objector to all supernatural facts, that he must, if he carry his principles fairly out, ultimately become an Atheist, so he who rejects certain things because he thinks them unlikely to be done or permitted by the Deity, must reject no inconsiderable part of the most notorious phenomena as having originated with Him or as having any sanction of His. Nay, that such a world as this should have been created at all, that so many mysteries of sorrow should have been permitted to overshadow it, that such a bundle of absurdity and misery as man should ever have been permitted to crawl upon it, — that the development and education of an immortal spirit should have been involved in all the humiliating and perilous conditions of such a material existence as ours, (to say nothing of the infinite anomalies in this world's administration,) — seem, looked at à priori, as unlikely as any of those things you make such wry faces at swallowing. Nor is there anything that leads the pseudo-philosopher to think otherwise, except that most foolish of all sophisms, which the philosopher above all men ought to be ever on his guard against, namely, that the things we happen to be accustomed to are to be ruled not at all mysterious, while everything else is! But, depend on it, that the inhabitants of a differently and more happily constituted world than ours, would, unless they were much better philosophers than we are, account the phenomena of this planet (if they were faithfully related to them) much more calculated to pose belief and provoke scepticism, than the stories of Jonah's Fish and Balaam's Ass!

Yours faithfully,

R. E. H. G.