agony of death, and hear his last prayer for his persecutors: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

When natural religion has viewed both, ask which is the prophet of God? But her answer we have already had, when she saw part of this scene through the eyes of the centurian who attended at the cross; by him she spake and said, "Truly this man was the Son of God." *

The character of Mohamed is not the only one among those who assumed to be founders of a new religion, which cannot bear to be brought in contrast with that of Jesus Christ. None can bear the contrast. Will the masters of the philosophical sects, the sages of ancient Greece and Rome, bear to be thus contrasted? Zeno, Socrates, Diogenes, Epictetus, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero, Xenophon, the Catos and Seneca; select from them all one who will bear to be contrasted with Jesus of Nazareth. No perfectly pure and untainted character is to be found among them: but inconsistency, vanity, profligacy, folly, cowardice, revenge, idolatry, stain the characters of all. Search for a perfect character in the history of the human family. You may search, but you cannot find, except in the founder of Christianity; of whom, in defiance of the force of all evidence, moral and historical, the Infidel Olmsted dares to assert that his character was that of a designing impostor, who, by the basest of means, attempted to decoy his countrymen, the Jews, into acts of violence, treason, and rebellion, which must have resulted in their own destruction. But the character of Christ being vindicated from the foul aspersions of this rash Infidel, the resort of himself and his coadjutors is to assume a position equally untenable, viz. that the apostles and primitive disciples of Jesus Christ were a band of impostors, who imposed upon the credulity of mankind. But having already shown the unreasonableness and absurdity of this assumption, we will follow them no farther; but after stating and answering some objections, necessarily omitted, we will close this branch of the argument and proceed to consider the claims of the Scriptures to the inspiration of the Spirit of God.

* Bishop Sherlock's Sermons, vol. i. p. 271.

CHAPTER V.

OBJECTIONS STATED AND ANSWERED.

HAVING, by a two-fold process, established the credibility of the New Testament Scriptures, we might well leave the subject with the reader; but that all reasonable minds may be perfectly satisfied, we will now notice the objections necessarily omitted; and it is believed that even a few general remarks are, of themselves, sufficient to sweep them away like chaff before the wind. Infidels pretend to have found many erroneous statements and contradictory accounts in the New Testament Scriptures. Sixteen hundred years ago, Porphyry, the learned and malignant Syrian, as we have seen, wrote a number of books against them. One of them was entirely consecrated to collecting all the contradictions which he pretended he had found in the sacred writings. And from his day down to the English Infidels of the eighteenth century, and from them down to Paine, Taylor, English, and Olmsted, in search of new contradictions, Infidels have compared scripture with scripture, line with line, word with word, and detail with detail. And when it is considered that the New Testament is eminently composed of brief narratives, many of them of the same events, but repeated under different forms, and by different historians, it is not surprising that they should have succeeded in finding many seeming contradictions; and some of them, at first sight, very specious. To attempt a refutation of each of these would be an endless task, for they must be taken up in detail and refuted by detached answers. But as these pretended contradictions are only imaginary, and the passages in which they seem to be involved require only a little reflection to reconcile them, an answer to a few examples will serve for the whole.

That excellent writer, M. Gaussen, treating of this subject, says: "The complement of the circumstances of two events which occurred in the East eighteen centuries ago, remains unknown, because the sacred historians relate them to us with an admirable brevity. Yet men have hastened, because the story does not explain the mode of reconciling two of their features, to pronounce them contradictory. Nothing is more irrational. Suppose, to give an example not in the Scriptures, that a Hindoo Pundit had just been reading three succint but very accurate histories of the illustrious Napoleon. The

first shall inform him that the taking of Paris, preceded by a great effusion of blood at the gates of the capital, made his abdication necessary, and that an English frigate was to transport him immediately to an island of the Mediterranean. A second relates, that this great captain, conquered by the English, who took possession of Paris without a blow, was transported by them to St. Helena, whither general Bertrand wished to follow him, and where he finished his days in the arms of this faithful servant. A third relates, that the fallen emperor was accompanied in his exile by the generals Gourgaud, Bertrand, and Mentholon. All these statements are accurate, and yet how many flat contradictions in so few words, exclaims the learned citizen of Benares. St. Helena in the Mediterranean! who does not know that it rises a great rock in the Atlantic? First contradiction: one of these books is false, it must be rejected. And again, Paris taken without a blow; and Paris taken after a bloody combat at its gates! Second contradiction. And again, here one general, there three generals! Third contradiction."*

Many objections urged by Infidels against the narratives of the evangelists, although at first sight very specious, upon a close examination will be found to be of no greater force than the supposed contradictions adduced by Gaussen. This writer has taken pains to select as examples, some of those, which, by the enemies of Revelation, are considered the most formidable, three of which are here presented to the reader; and the answers given to them by our learned author will enable him to detect the fallacy of many other objections urged by Infidels, but which are to be traced to precisely the same origin with these.

"First Example.-Mark (xvi. 5.) tells us, That the women saw YOUNG MAN, (one only,) seated on the right side... who said to them, Be not afraid you seek Jesus of Nazareth who was

crucified. . . . he is risen again.

And Luke relates (xxiv. 4.) that, Two MEN presented themselves to them... who said to them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen.

They present these passages to us as irreconcilable; but wherefore? There is a difference unquestionably; but there is neither contradiction nor disagreement between the statements. Must they be identical in order to be true? It is sufficient that they are true, especially in histories so admirably succinct. Does it not often hap

Gaussen on the Plenary Inspiration of the Scriptures, pp. 113, 114.

pen to us, without ceasing to be exact, that we relate to two different persons, successively, the same story in two different ways? And why might not the apostles do the same? St. Luke tells us that two persons met the women; while St. Mark speaks only of that one, who having alone rolled away the stone, was seated at the right side of the sepulchre, and who spoke to them. Thus, one of Napoleon's biographers mentions three generals, whilst the other, without ceasing to be accurate, speaks of Bertrand alone. Thus Moses, after having shown us three men in the apparition of Manore (Genesis xviii.) im- . mediately represents one of them speaking as if he were alone. Thus I might relate the same event successively, and in a very different manner, without ceasing to be true. "I met three men who showed me the direct road. I met a man who put me on the right way.". If, then, there is in the quoted passages, a striking difference, yet there is not even the appearance of contradiction.

Second Example.—Matthew (xx. 19.) says: That as Jesus was going out of Jericho, followed by a great multitude, two blind men, sitting by the way-side, hearing that Jesus was passing, cried, saying, Have mercy on us.

And Mark (x. 46.) tells us: As Jesus went out of Jericho with his disciples, and a great multitude of people, blind Bartimeus sat by the way-side begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus have mercy on me. also (xviii. 35.) speaks only of one blind man.

Luke

What is there here, we still ask, of contradiction or inaccuracy? Of these two blind men whom Jesus, in the midst of so many other works, healed at Jericho, one was more remarkable than the other, perhaps better known than the other; and who spoke to Jesus in the name of both. Mark speaks of him alone, he even tells us his name; but does not say that he was alone. Matthew then has named them both. The narratives of the three evangelists are equally true, without being exactly alike. What is there extraordinary in this?

But we are told there is still a greater difference in this same narrative; let us hear it-in a third example. Matthew and Mark informs us that the event occurred as Jesus was going out of Jericho; whilst Luke tells us that it took place as Jesus was drawing, nigh to Jericho. Palpable contradiction! has been uttered more than once.

How can you prove that? what do you know about it? must be the reply. The details of this event are unknown to you; how can you show that these statements are irreconcilable? while on the con

trary, it is perfectly easy to harmonize them by a very simple supposition. St. Luke, as he does so often in the whole course of his gospel, has united in his narrative two successive circumstances of the same event. Observe, that it is he alone of the three historians who mentions the first question of Bartimeus. Having heard the multitude who were passing, he enquired what it was? This question was proposed by the blind man before Jesus entered the city of Jericho. Informed then as to the character of this great prophet, whom he had never known until then, he followed them, and joined the crowd, who during the repast at the house of Zacheus, were waiting to meet Jesus as he should go out. It was then they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing, (these words are in St. Luke.) He followed him thus for some time; the other blind man joined him; and their healing was not effected until the moment when Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, was going out of Jericho, where he had stopped only to visit the happy Zacheus at his own house. This simple explanation dissipates all the pretended contradiction of these three

texts.

Fourth Example. St. Matthew (xxvii. 5.) says, that Judas hung himself; Peter, in the Acts (i. 18.) says, that falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

Some have said here is contradiction. We remember that at Geneva, in a public conference, when we were defending this very thesis with our dear friend, Professor Monard, then pastor at Lyons, he cited three analogous features of a lamentable death of which he had been almost the witness. The unhappy man in Lyons, to be more sure of his destruction, and to give himself a double death, placed himself upon the window sill of the fourth story, and then shot himself in the mouth with a pistol. The very narrator of this sad event might, said he, have made three different statements, and yet all the three exact. In the first, he might have described the entire occurrence; in the second, he could have said, this man died by a shot; and in the third, he threw himself down from the window.

Such was also the voluntary punishment by which the wretched Judas went to his own place. He hung himself and fell down headlong; his body burst open and all his entrails gushed out. The statement of only one more circumstance of this frightful death, would have given us the connecting link. It has not been given us; but who would therefore venture to maintain that there is contradiction?""*

*Gaussen on Inspiration, pp. 114-117.