499 
As the Christian Scriptures are of an historical character, 
they are fair subjects for the application of the principles of 
historical criticism. No well-informed Christian will wish 
that it should be otherwise. All that we can require is, that 
nothing but its strict canons should be applied to them; and that 
considerations wholly alien to its principles, such as a number of 
a priori dogmas and mere conjecture, should not be imported 
into the controversy. Abstract metaphysics have nothing to 
do with historical inquiries. These are simply matters of 
evidence. By the aid of conjecture and imagination we can 
create novels, but we cannot write histories. It is impossible 
to dignify this process by the term rational, and its use is 
no less illicit on the negative than on the positive side of 
criticism. 
There is no piece of history which will better stand the 
test of the application of the fair principles of criticism than 
the four Gospels. They also furnish very large data for the 
exercise of that criticism. I know of no eminent man in 
ancient or modern times, of whose life and actions we have 
four accounts, all written, even on the showing of our oppo- 
nents, so near the times of the events which they profess to 
describe, and which all historical evidence must place at a 
much earlier date. But taking the date assigned to them by 
the German critics, the latest of them comes within the period 
which Sir G. C. Lewis has assigned to that of authentic 
history. When we consider that these are supplemented by 
four letters of St. Paul, of which no one presumes to question 
the authenticity, written certainly within less than a period of 
thirty years from the death of the Author of Christianity, we 
possess data for historical criticism which we shall in vain 
seek for elsewhere. But this is not all. The form of the 
four Gospels, which I think belong rather to the class of 
memoirs than histories, is of the most unique description. 
They embrace, speaking roughly, the last three years of the 
life of our Lord. Three of these contain a parallel narrative 
of the same events, and, what is still more important, a three- 
fold version of the same discourses. Nowhere else within the 
same limits can there be found equal materials for the applica- 
tion of the established principles of historical criticism. The 
application of these principles to the Gospels, although the 
result may not be satisfactory to the believers in verbal or 
mechanical inspiration, will place them on the highest level in 
point of evidence as authentic histories. 
But the so-called rationalist does not confine himself to the 
application of the principles of historical criticism. He sup- 
plements them by a number of a priori dogmas, which are 
