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assume that any one of them is the true account of it. I cannot relate a 
more striking illustration of this than Niebuhr’s theories on the Decemviral 
legislation. What the real facts were w’e have no real historical evidence, 
all knowledge of them has perished ; and I contend that it is impossible by 
mere analogical conjectures to recreate the facts which have perished. These 
principles are abundantly applicable to many attempts of sceptics to set 
forth new lives of Jesus Christ. I am quite sure that if our Gospels are not 
trustworthy, their conjecturers are much less so. If the real facts have 
perished, as they say they have, I defy them to reconstruct a true history 
out of a few detached hints, by the power of philosophical conjecture. 
I am far from wishing to apply the principles of abstract or mathe- 
matical science, to history, or its evidence ; what I wish to apply to them 
is the common sense by which we conduct our daily ]ives. If the pro- 
cesses which I would apply to history destroy any of the charms of the 
study, I am very sorry for it, for I am intensely fond of it. But my love of 
history prompts me to utter a warm protest against any theory which tends to 
convert it into a novel or a fiction. I am far from wishing to reduce history 
to a mere string of dates or events. Let the philosophic mind exert its 
utmost powers in rearranging, and if you like, reconstructing, the past from 
any adequate data ; but let the distinction be kept clear as to what are facts 
and what are conjectures. I do not think that there is any real disagreement 
between Dr. Currey and myself respecting Ewald’s history. We are indebted 
to Ewald for showing that the Old Testament contains a mass of substantial 
history, and that vulgar assertions that its narratives are fictions, are absurd. 
In dealing with the principle of conjecture, I could not help expressing my ad- 
miration that this great writer could have brought himself into the belief, that, 
if the Pentateuch is a mass of fragments, it is possible now, in this nineteenth 
century of the Christian era, and after the complete destruction of the whole 
mass of Jewish literature so frequently alluded to in the Old Testament, to 
pick out each separate fragment, and confidently to assign it to its respective 
author. This is philosophic conjecture gone mad : and it is deeply to be 
lamented that the presence of things of this description in this great writer’s 
works has a tendency to persuade his readers that many of his most 
unquestionable facts rest on an equally sandy foundation. I am aware 
that the subject is not without its difficulties, when we adduce the character 
of the agent as a portion of the test of the truth of a fact. Still, when I 
survey the range of history, and the multitudes of lying miracles which have 
been invented, I cannot avoid taking refuge in the great principle, that what- 
ever contradicts all our great conceptions of the character of God must be 
regarded as incredible. My moral convictions are the firmest portions of 
my beliefs ; and I am sure that “ the same fountain cannot send forth fresh 
water and salt.” To revert to the example which T have taken. It is, in my 
view, inconsistent with the moral character of the Creator to believe that 
He caused a cow to bring forth a lamb under the circumstances mentioned 
by Livy. This would cause me to reject it, despite of fifty decrees of the 
Roman Senate, while I could trust one of them for the truth of an ordinary 
