“But I cannot conceive that the historic discrepancies occurring in connection with such topics must not have more weight attached to them than if they occurred in any other history.”

“This is because you have already resolved that miracles are impossible on totally different grounds.  But you may see the fallacy in a moment.  Talk with a man who does not believe miracles a priori impossible, and that, though of course improbable (otherwise they would be none, I suppose), the authentication of a divine revelation is a sufficient reason for their being wrought, and he evades your argument.  You are then compelled, you see, to throw yourself exclusively upon the alleged historic 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,