“But did none attempt to remedy this defect of the unhappy speculator?”

“O, yes; another attempted to establish in a second community of our reasonable shadows a revelation on the same basis of miracles; but instead of trusting to one witness, he recorded the results by ten; and with such perfection of art, that all the ingenuity of all the critics of succeeding ages could not detect a single variation other than in language; the records themselves and their contents were precisely the same.

“And what was the result.”

“Much the same as before; for this identity of substance and almost of manner showed most evidently, said the critics, that there had been collusion between the several parties who had framed the revelation:—­and in the course of three or four generations it was universally rejected, as totally unworthy of belief.”

“I see not, then, how a revelation by any such means could be authenticated at all?”

“Why, our reasonable creatures require a great deal of management, —­that is the truth.  There is no way in which you cannot prove to your own satisfaction, that no one of any divine communications (given under the conditions aforesaid) is to be believed; but perhaps after all, the method would have been more sure, had these sages confined these communications to different testimonies, in which the general harmony and undesigned coincidences should be manifest, but which should contain slight discrepancies, and even some apparent contradictions, which the parties, if there had been collusion, would certainly have obviated.  This would, perhaps, have been the best guaranty that there could not be any fraud in the case.”

“But this,” I remarked, “was just the mode in which the Gospels of Christ were consigned to mankind.”

“And you see with what mixed result.  It was sufficient, indeed, to justify the method, if it was attended with less disastrous effects than any other mode.  For it is a problem of limits even at the very best.”

Prompted, I suppose, by some recollection of Woolston’s opinion, that the miracles of Jesus Christ would have been better worthy of attention, and more likely to be credited by posterity, if they had been performed on royal or notable public characters, or in their presence, I felt curious to know if any one had been determined to guard against a similar error.  I was told that there had been; and for a time every thing went on well.  This sage’s doctrine and pretensions were rapidly propagated within certain limits of space and time.  But alas! while even in his lifetime the zeal of some of the royal or noble converts caused the doctrine to be regarded with considerable suspicion among the rival great, to whom the fame of the miracles was known only by hearsay, its early success proved an insurmountable objection in a few generations; for several learned infidels showed to the satisfaction of the entire community, that the