B0'8 
many parsons presents as wide a difference as their faces ; and 
the assertion is generally true that a man/’s mental charac- 
teristics, if he has any, display themselves in his style. Thus it 
is impossible to mistake between Johnson and Macaulay, Hume 
and Gibbon, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Demosthenes; and 
we are safe in pronouncing that the minds which produced the 
one set of writings could not have produced the other. The 
style of the sacred writers is no less widely distinguished from 
that of their contemporaries and successors, and from one another. 
The imitation of St. PauPs style would, I think, have been impos- 
sible; and we may assert with the strongest confidence that those 
who composed the spurious gospels could not have composed the 
canonical ones. Writers of distinctive individuality can hardly 
fail to impress that individuality on their pages ; and it is 
hardly possible for a man of a different order of mind to 
imitate it. It seems to me unquestionable that such diver- 
gencies of style prove differences of authorship. 
But large numbers of modern critics carry this principle be- 
yond all legitimate bounds in inferring from minute differences 
of style differences of authorship. It is a certain fact that au- 
thors do not conceive at all times alike, and that within certain 
limits their mode of writing varies, not only in conformity with 
the subject-matter of their compositions, but with the different 
periods of their life. Criticism founded on minute points of 
style is of very little value except when supported by strong 
external evidence. 
I have noticed this subject because it is one on which modern 
criticism exercises the most unlimited license with respect to the 
Sacred writings. Different portions of them are boldiy pro- 
nounced spurious on account of minute differences of style. Of 
this the last edition of Dr. Davidson's Introduction to the New 
Testament forms the most striking illustration. Admitting, 
as he does, that the external testimony that the fourth Gospel 
and the first epistle by St. John were composed by the same 
author is exceedingly strong, he boldly denies that the epistle 
was composed by the author of the gospel, on the ground 
of certain minute differences of style w 7 hich it requires 
critical eyes of a high magnifying power even to perceive. 
This species of criticism can, however, be brought to a test of 
direct verification, and when thus tested it utterly fails. Let 
books which have been indubitably written by the same author 
be subjected to the same process, and far greater divergencies 
will be found in them. No difference of style, therefore, will 
avail to prove difference of authorship which is not capable of 
undergoing this test. What is compatible with sameness in the 
one case cannot be incompatible with it in the other*. 
