m 



tion might be obtained from a careful sifting of different family 

 traditions. Multitudes still survive who have heard from their 

 fathers and their grandfathers accounts of the events, though the 

 living interest in them is gone. That knowledge is still suffi- 

 ciently accurate to render the introduction of a large mass of 

 legendary matter impossible. 



The Christian Church of the first century must have been in 

 a still more favourable position to preserve a traditionary history 

 of the life of its founder, than that which I have just considered. 

 It alone, of all the corporate bodies which have ever existed, drew 

 its life from a personal history. Destitute of a knowledge of this 

 life, it must have lost all cohesion. The necessity of its position 

 compelled its members to preserve a recollection of the actions 

 attributed to Jesus Christ. They must have formed an essential 

 portion of its organized instruction, for Christianity is founded on 

 them. It possessed many of the essential characteristics of a close 

 corporation. Such bodies have the means of handing down a 

 knowledge of events, of which popular ones without organiza- 

 tion are destitute. Nor was the transmission of tlieni entirely 

 oral; for we know that memoranda existed prior to the com- 

 position of the Gospels. The most far-going critics of the Scep- 

 tical school do not venture to assign to the synoptic Gospels a 

 later date than from sixty-five to eighty years after the events 

 which they record. This interval, as I have shown, lies within 

 the limit of accurate historical recollection, and is one far too 

 short for a story which excited the profoundest interest, to get 

 buried beneath a mass of legendary inventions. 



Let us now ascend a little higher. I have heard, when a boy, 

 a minute description from one who was an actual witness of an 

 event nearly a century old, — the appearance of the combined 

 French and Spanish fleet off Plymouth, during the American 

 War of Independence, and of the terror which it occasioned. 

 Many persons must be still living who have heard similar 

 accounts from their grandfathers. If I survive twenty -five 

 years, an accurate description of an event 120 years old could 

 be handed down by oral tradition ; and this, under favourable 

 circumstances, might be extended to 130 years. But how far 

 docs this tradition still live in the popular mind ? The know- 

 ledge of the mere fact still remains ; but that of its details is 

 no longer the subject of popular recollection. Still the mate- 

 rials of history exist, supposing them to be properly used. 



But the powder of transmission is increased when events are 

 commemorated by monuments ; but even these are far from 

 being necessary evidences of truth. Even here, after a lapse 

 of time, legendary additions grow up around them, of which 

 many remarkable instances might be adduced. In some cases, 



VOL. VII. Y 



