from
those that are?"

"I must admit that I have no criterion of this kind."

"For aught you know, then, since you know nothing of Christianity
except from those documents in which the miracles and the doctrines are
alike consigned to you, the said miracles, together with the other
evidence, do equally establish the truths which you say are a part
of divine revelation, and the errors which you say your 'spiritual
faculty,' 'moral intuitions,' or what you will, tells you that you
are to reject. You believe, then, in the force of evidence, which
equally establishes truth and falsehood?"

"You can hardly expect me to admit that."

"But I expect you to answer a plain question?"

"Why," said the youth, with a little flippancy, but with a good-humored
laugh too, "the proverb says 'Even a fool may ask questions which a
wise man cannot answer.'"

"I acknowledge myself to be a fool" said Harrington, with a half
serious, half comic air; "and you shall be the wise man who does not
--for I will not say cannot--answer the fool's question."

"I beg your pardon," said the other. "I acknowledge that it was an
uncourteous expression."

"Enough said," replied Harrington; "and now, since you are not pleased
to answer my question, I will answer it myself; and I say, it is plain
that the evidence to which you refer does affirm equally the truths
you declare thus revealed to you, and the errors you declare you must
reject. Now either the evidence is not sufficient to prove the one, or
it is sufficient to prove both. So far, then, I think we may say, and
say justly, that the supposed revelation is so constructed that you
cannot accept a part and reject a part, on such a theory. But to make
the case a little plainer still, if possible. There have been men, you
know, who have taken precisely opposite views of the two doctrines you
have mentioned; who have declared that the doctrine, not of man's
immortality, but of the resurrection, so far from being conceivable,
is, in their judgment, a physical contradiction; but who have also
declared that the doctrine of atonement, in some shape, is instinctively
taught by human nature, and has consequently formed a part of almost
every religion; that it is in analogy with many singular facts of this
world's constitution, and is not absolutely contradicted by any principle
of our nature, intellectual or moral. Such a man, therefore, might take
the very opposite of the course you have taken. He wou