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chronicler, but he will not accept the Bible. Does he find 
here and there in other works quotations from Sanchoniathon, 
Berosus, and Maretho, he will put his trust in them, and also 
in those who quoted them ; but he will not give the same trust 
to the Bible, and those who quote it, — nay, he actually shuts 
his eyes to the testimony borne to the truth of the Scripture 
narrative by the Assyrian inscriptions as interpreted. Or if 
a writer of his own days composes a Hebraistic romance, and 
substitutes it for the simple narratives of the Messiah's 
ministry, he will accept it ; he will give a credence to Strauss 
and Renan which he refuses to John and Paul, to Clement 
and Justin. Ever credulous where man is concerned, and 
man alone, he declines to believe where the work of the Deity 
is made to appear. 
It would be impossible for me even to attempt to go into 
the minutiae of sceptical criticism of the Bible and the 
Christian faith, and to show that in nearly every case the 
sceptic attaches credence to something, which something is 
at least not more credible, and very often actually less credible, 
than the Sacred records. Such a work would fill volumes. 
I cannot, however, forbear directing your attention to one 
matter of detail. I must bear humble witness to the masterly 
manner in which a well-known writer has shown this credulity 
of the incredulous to be displayed in their treatment of the 
Book of Daniel. This book (Dr. Pusey's Daniel) has already 
become a standard work amongst us. It has not been 
answered, for it is unanswerable. The book of Daniel is 
confessedly, if the expression can be allowed, the least pro- 
bable book in the Bible. Its being written in two different 
dialects, its definite historical narrative, and its equally definite 
prophecy, the miracles it records, and the foreign expressions 
which it of necessity contains, make it the mark at which the 
first arrows of doubt would naturally be levelled. If Daniel 
be proved genuine and authentic, the same proof as regards 
the rest of the Scripture will be easy ; there is no other so 
assailable. And assailed it accordingly is. It is a romance, 
it is a forgery ; it is a history, and an incorrect one, pretending 
to be prophecy. It is a late production, later than the times 
of the Maccabees. Its language is late, its theology Rab- 
binical. The learned writer examines each one of these points 
carefully and dispassionately, and clearly shows that to hold 
any one of them, far more to hold them all, involves a greater 
amount of readiness to assent to mere probabilities and hypo- 
theses than the rational believer ever requires or indeed pos- 
sesses. He shows that it cannot be later than the period to 
which it is referred, and is exactly what it would have been if 
