Therefore the question is one of no small anxiety and interest; and it is not idly nor wantonly that we must speak the truth upon it, even if that truth may to some seem startling; for by God’s blessing, if we do go boldly forward wherever truth shall lead us, our course needs not be interrupted, neither shall a single hair of our faith perish.

The same laws of criticism which teach us to distinguish between various degrees of testimony, authorize us to assign the very highest rank to the evidences of the writings of St. John and St. Paul.  If belief is to be given to any human compositions, it is due to these; yet if we believe these merely as human compositions, and without assuming anything as to their divine inspiration, our Christian faith, as it seems to me, is reasonable;—­not merely the facts of our Lord’s miracles and resurrection; but Christian faith, in all its fulness—­the whole dispensation of the Spirit, the revelation of the redemption of man and of the Divine Persons who are its authors—­of all that Christian faith, and hope, and love can need.  And this is so true, that even without reckoning the Epistle to the Hebrews amongst St. Paul’s writings,—­nay, even if we choose to reject the three pastoral epistles[18]—­yet taking only what neither has been nor can be doubted—­the epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, we have in these, together with St. John’s Gospel and First Epistle,—­giving up, if we choose, the other two,—­a ground on which our faith may stand for ever, according to the strictest rules of the understanding, according to the clearest intuitions of reason.

[Footnote 18:  I say this, not as having the slightest doubt myself of the genuineness of any one of the three, but merely to show how much is left that has not been questioned at all, even unreasonably.]

I take the works of St. John and St. Paul as our foundation, because, in the first place, we find in them the historical basis of Christianity; that is to say, we find the facts of our Lord’s miracles, and especially of his resurrection, and the miraculous powers afterwards continued to the church, established by the highest possible evidence.  However pure and truly divine the principles taught in the gospel may be, yet we crave to know not only that we were in need of redemption, but that a Redeemer has actually appeared; not only that a resurrection to eternal life is probable, but that such a resurrection has actually taken place.  This basis of historical fact, which is one of the great peculiarities of Christianity, is strictly within the cognizance of the understanding; and in the writings of St. John and St. Paul we have that full and perfect evidence of it which the strictest laws of the understanding require.