Pursuing the same thought to the Old Testament, I discerned there also no small sprinkling of grotesque or unmoral miracles.  A dead man is raised to life, when his body by accident touches the bones of Elisha:  as though Elisha had been a Romish saint, and his bones a sacred relic.  Uzzah, when the ark is in danger of falling, puts out his hand to save it, and is struck dead for his impiety!  Was this the judgment of the Father of mercies and God of all comfort?  What was I to make of God’s anger with Abimelech (Gen. xx.), whose sole offence was, the having believed Abraham’s lie? for which a miraculous barrenness was sent on all the females of Abimelech’s tribe, and was bought off only by splendid presents to the favoured deceiver.—­Or was it at all credible that the lying and fraudulent Jacob should have been so specially loved by God, more than the rude animal Esau?—­Or could I any longer overlook the gross imagination of antiquity, which made Abraham and Jehovah dine on the same carnal food, like Tantalus with the gods;—­which fed Elijah by ravens, and set angels to bake cakes for him?  Such is a specimen of the flood of difficulties which poured in, through the great breach which the demoniacs had made in the credit of Biblical marvels.

While I was in this stage of progress, I had a second time the advantage of meeting Dr. Arnold, and had satisfaction in finding that he rested the main strength of Christianity on the gospel of John.  The great similarity of the other three seemed to him enough to mark that they flowed from sources very similar, and that the first gospel had no pretensions to be regarded as the actual writing of Matthew.  This indeed had been for some time clear to me, though I now cared little about the author’s name, when he was proved to be credulous.—­Arnold regarded John’s gospel as abounding with smaller touches which marked the eye-witness, and, altogether, to be the vivid and simple picture of a divine reality, undeformed by credulous legend.  In this view I was gratified to repose, in spite of a few partial misgivings, and returned to investigations concerning the Old Testament.

For some time back I had paid special attention to the book of Genesis; and I had got aid in the analysis of it from a German volume.  That it was based on at least two different documents, technically called the Elohistic and Jehovistic, soon became clear to me:  and an orthodox friend who acknowledged the fact, regarded it as a high recommendation of the book, that it was conscientiously made out of pre-existing materials, and was not a fancy that came from the brain of Moses.  My good friend’s argument was not a happy one:  no written record could exist of things and times which preceded the invention of writing.  After analysing this book with great minuteness, I now proceeded to Exodus and Numbers; and was soon assured, that these had not, any more than Genesis, come forth from one primitive witness of the facts.  In all these books is found