“And in such a case, we might say, he does the very opposite of what you do.”

“Neither can I help admitting that.”

“The miracles, then, and other evidence, not only play the part of equally supporting truth and falsehood, but, what is still more wonderful, convert the same things, in different men, into truth and falsehood alternately.  Miracles they must verily be if they can do that!  A wonderful revelation it certainly is, which thus accommodates itself to the varying conditions of the human intellect and conscience, and demonstrates just so much as each of you is pleased to accept, and no more.  No doubt the whole ‘corpus dogmatum,’ so supported, will, by the entire body of such believers, be eaten up; just as was the Mahometan hog, so humorously referred to by Cowper; but even that had not all its ‘forbidden parts’ miraculously shown to be ‘unforbidden’ to different minds!  I do not wonder that such a revelation should need miracles; that any should be sufficient, is the greatest wonder of all; if indeed we except two;—­the first, that Supreme Wisdom should have constructed such a curious revelation, in which he has revealed alternately, to different people, truth and falsehood, and has established each on the very same evidence; and the second (almost as great), that any rational creature should be got to receive such a revelation on such evidence as equally applies to which he says it does not prove, and to points which he says it does; these points, however, being, it appears, totally different in different men!  But I will now go to your friend, who has got a point further in his belief, and graciously accepts all the ’religious elements’ in this revelation.”

“Excuse me,” said the last; “before you go to him, permit me to mention a difficulty which occurred to me while we were speaking.”

“By all means; but I do not promise to solve it.  Perhaps I on this occasion shall prove the ‘wise man,’ though I am sure you will not be the fool.”

“You recollect,” said the other, blushing, “our dismissing those who, while contending, like myself, that such and such doctrines are to be rejected, differ from me in this, that they contend that the said doctrines are not contained in the records of the supposed revelation at all; while others contend that they are.  Now, if, while the two parties admit the general evidence which is to substantiate all that is in the records, they arrive by different interpretation at such very different results as to the supposed truth which it supports, are they in any better condition than I?  There is the same difference, though arrived at in different ways; and the revelation still remains indeterminate.”

“Your objection is ingenious,” replied Harrington.  “First, however, it is rather hard to ask me to solve a difficulty with which I am in no way concerned, who profess to be altogether sceptical on the subject.  Secondly, it certainly does not at all mend your case to prove that there are other men who possibly are as inconsistent as yourself.  It makes your theory neither better nor worse.  But, thirdly, if I were a Christian, I should not hesitate to contend that there was an obvious and vital difference in the two cases.”