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Aramaic tongue, in some of which he retained the Aramaic 
Aloho, and in some substituted the great name which he 
had been taught (mrp) Jehovah, the self-existent, for the 
mere (i6jn) Ba’al, the lord of existence, a name already 
desecrated by its use in what Dr. Williams would term 
u the fierce ritual of Syria.” But I forbear. We are not a 
theological society, and such a discussion would be theological. 
I repeat the words which I uttered as your Chairman (I am 
glad to be able to say with applause) at the beginning of 
this session, that we are a scientific, not a theological society. 
I refrain, therefore, from a theologico-critical examination 
of this form of scepsis. But scientifically speaking, I may 
ask the sceptic, How do you account, philosophically, for 
the fact of the remarkable coincidences between these non- 
coherent books ? On ray principles, I can explain a seeming 
discrepancy. Indeed I think I can prove that no real dis- 
crepancy exists. But a coherence is a more difficult fact to 
deal with than a difference. If Nathan (or some one of that 
time, for I will not discuss authorship) tells us that David 
promised an inheritance to Chimham, and Jeremiah writes of 
the inheritance of Chimham, how can we explain the agree- 
ment, except on the hypothesis of truth ? Can we believe 
that a forger, or a set of forgers, would be possessed of such 
superhuman acuteness as to concoct statements agreeing with 
one another in this minute manner, and of such astounding 
self-denial as not to draw attention to these agreements, as 
being proofs of the veracity of the concoctions ? If there is 
credulity anywhere, it must be, not with one who believes 
that these statements agree because they are both true, but 
with one who maintains that so preternaturally clever a 
set of forgers could exist, and could exert themselves to 
maintain — what ? not an easy-going, man-flattering system, 
but a system against which its enemies have ever alleged 
that it is too man- depressing, too God-exalting, too super- 
human. Are the Scriptures not to be considered as a whole ? 
Why, the separation of them actually weakens the sceptical 
argument. If they are a whole, they might (hypothetically) 
have proceeded from an intelligence lower than the highest ; 
but if not a whole, there is a unity and a coherence in them, 
which can only be explained, without resort to the grossest 
credulity, on the view of their authors having been guided 
by one and the same Supreme Intelligence. “ It is easier,” 
says Bacon, “to accept the Talmud, the Koran, and the 
legends, than to allow that the universe exists without God ” : 
and so we may say, It is less credulous to believe that the 
so-called Scriptures are what they pretend to be, than to hold 
that they are other than the Revelation of the Most High. 
VOL. IV. Z 
