right one, to insert anything into the sacred Text
which does not proclaim too glaringly its own unfitness--in a word, to
invent happily--is plainly a matter of much greater difficulty.
Therefore to increase the Class of Insertions or Additions or
Interpolations, so that it should exceed the Class of Omissions, is to
go counter to the natural action of human forces. There is no difficulty
in leaving out large numbers of the Sacred Words: but there is much
difficulty in placing in the midst of them human words, possessed of
such a character and clothed in such an uniform, as not to betray to
keen observation their earthly origin.

A few examples will set this truth in clearer light. It is remarkable
that efforts at interpolation occur most copiously amongst the books of
those who are least fitted to make them. We naturally look amongst the
representatives of the Western school where Greek was less understood
than in the East where Greek acumen was imperfectly represented by Latin
activity, and where translation into Latin and retranslation into Greek
was a prolific cause of corruption. Take then the following passage from
the Codex D (St. Luke vi. 4):--

'On the same day He beheld a certain man working on the sabbath, and
said to him, "Man, blessed art thou if thou knowest what thou doest; but
if thou knowest not, thou art cursed and a transgressor of the law."'

And another from the Curetonian Syriac (St. Matt. xx. 28), which occurs
under a worse form in D.

'But seek ye from little to become greater, and not from greater to
become less. When ye are invited to supper in a house, sit not down in
the best place, lest some one come who is more honourable than thou, and
the lord of the supper say to thee, "Go down below," and thou be ashamed
in the presence of them that have sat down. But if thou sit down in the
lower place, and one who is inferior to thee come in, the lord also of
the supper will say to thee, "Come near, and come up, and sit down," and
thou shalt have greater honour in the presence of them that have sat
down.'

Who does not see that there is in these two passages no real 'ring of
genuineness'?

Take next some instances of lesser insertions.]

Sec. 6.

Conspicuous beyond all things in the Centurion of Capernaum (St. Matt.
viii. 13) was his faith. It occasioned wonder even in the Son of Man. Do
we not, in the significant statement, that when they who had been sent
returned to the house, 'they fo