ld, and
discrepancies neither greater nor more numerous, must be reduced
(ninety-nine hundredths of it) to myth on account of those
discrepancies, while the others may still legitimate their claims
to be considered as genuine history! Your only escape, as I conceive,
from this dilemma, is, by saying that the marks of historic truth
in the New Testament, looked at as mere history, are not so great as
those of other histories, or that the discrepancies are greater; and
I think even you will not venture to assert that. But if you do, and
choose to put it on that issue, I shall be most happy to try the
criterion by examining Luke and Paul, Matthew and Mark, on the one
side; and Clarendon and May, or Hume, Lingard, and Macaulay, on the
other; or, if you prefer them, Livy and Polybius, or Tacitus
and Josephus."

"But I have bethought me of another answer," said Robinson. "Suppose
the sacred writers affirm that every syllable they utter is infallibly
true, being inspired?"

"Why, then," said Harrington, "first, you must find such a passage,
which many say you cannot; secondly, you must find one which says
that every syllable would remain always infallibly true, in spite
of all errors of transcription and corruptions of time, otherwise
your discrepancies will not touch the writers; and lastly, it does
not affect my argument whether you find any such absurdities or not,
since you and I would know what to say, though the Christian would not
like to say it; namely, that these writers were mistaken in the notion
of their plenary inspiration. It would still leave the mass of their
history to be dealt with like any other history. Now I want to know why,
if I reject the mass of that on the ground of certain discrepancies,
I must not reject the mass of this on the score of equal or greater."

After a few minutes Harrington turned to Fellowes and said,--"That in
relation to the bulk of mankind there can be no authentic history of
remote events plainly appears from a statement of Mr. Newman. He says,
you know, after having relinquished the investigation of the evidences
of Christianity, that he might have spared much weary thought and
useless labor, if, at an earlier time, this simple truth had been
pressed upon him, that since the 'poor and half-educated cannot
investigate historical and literary questions, therefore these questions
cannot constitute an essential part of religion.' You, if you recollect,
mentioned it to my uncle the