e utmost care. He who could
fill up a chasm by the restoration of words which were only partially
remembered, or could contribute the least text that had been forgotten,
was regarded as a sort of public benefactor. At length, a great public
movement amongst the divines of all denominations was projected, to
collate the results of these partial recoveries of the sacred text.
It was curious, again, to see in how various ways human passions and
prejudices came into play. It was found that the several parties who
had furnished from memory the same portions of the sacred texts had
fallen into a great variety of different readings; and though most
of them were of as little importance in themselves as the bulk of
those which are paraded in the critical recensions of Mill, Griesbach,
or Tischendorf, they became, from the obstinacy and folly of the men
who contended about them, important differences, merely because they
were differences. Two reverend men of the synod, I remember, had a
rather tough dispute as to whether it was twelve baskets full of
fragments of the five loaves which the five thousand left, and seven
baskets full of the seven loaves which the four thousand had left,
or vice versa: as also whether the words in John vi. 19 were "about
twenty or five and twenty," or "about thirty or five and thirty
furlongs."

To do the assembly justice, however, there was found an intense
general earnestness and sincerity befitting the occasion, and an equally
intense desire to obtain, as nearly as possible, the very words of
the lost volume; only (as was also, alas! natural) vanity in some;
in others, confidence in their strong impressions and in the accuracy
of their memory; obstinacy and pertinacity in many more (all
aggravated as usual by controversy),--caused many odd embarrassments
before the final adjustment was effected.

I was particularly struck with the varieties of reading which mere
prejudices in favor of certain systems of theology occasioned in
the several partisans of each. No doubt the worthy men were
generally unconscious of the influence of these prejudices; yet,
somehow, the memory was seldom so dear in relation to those texts
which told against them as in relation to those which told for
them. A certain Quaker had an impression that the words instituting
the Eucharist were preceded by a qualifying expression, "And Jesus
said to the twelve, Do this in remembrance of me"; while he could
not exactly recollect