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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 them 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 
does 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 ot history exist, supposing them to be properly used. 
But the power 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 
