c discrepancies; they become your sole weapon;
and if it pierces the New Testament history, I want to know whether
it does not equally pierce all other remote history too? In truth, if,
as you and Mr. Fellowes agree,--I only doubt,--a miracle is impossible,
nothing can (as I think) be more strange, than that, instead of reposing
in that simple fact, which you say is demonstrable, you should fly to
historic proofs."

"And do you not think that miracles are impossible and absurd?"

"I think nothing, because, as I told Fellowes the other day, I am
half inclined to doubt whether I doubt whether a miracle is possible
or not, like a genuine sceptic as I am. And this doubt, you see,
even of a doubt, makes me cautious. But to resume. If that principle
be sound, it seems much more natural to adhere to it than to attack
the Gospels as history. Strauss, however, has thought otherwise; and
while he has left this main dictum unproved,--nay, has not even
attempted a proof of it,--he has endeavored to shake the historic
character of these records, treating them like any other records. I
say, therefore, that to adduce the circumstance that the narrative is
miraculous, is nothing to the purpose, until the impossibility of
miracles is proved; and then, when this is proved, it is unnecessary
to adduce the discrepancies. If on the other hand, a man has no
difficulty (as the Christian, for example) in believing miracles to
be possible, and that they have really occurred, Strauss's argument,
as I have said, is evaded; and the seeming discrepancies can do no
more against the credibility of the New Testament history, than equal
discrepancies can prove against any other document. I will, if possible,
make my meaning plain by yet another example. Let us suppose some Walter
Scott had compiled some purely fictitious history, professedly laid in
the Middle Ages (and surely even miraculous occurrences cannot be more
unreal than these products of sheer imagination); and suppose some
critic had engaged to prove it fiction from internal evidence supplied
by contradictions and discrepancies, and so on, would you not think it
strange if he were to enforce that argument by saying, 'And besides
all this, what is more suspicious is, that they occur in a work
of imagination!' Would you not say, 'Learned sir, we humbly thought
this was the point you were engaged in making out? Is it not to assume
the very point in debate? And if it be true, would it not be b