unless we can cease to be finite.  The objections to the evidence itself are, as the same great author observes, ’well worthy of the fullest attention.’  The a priori objection to miracles we have already briefly touched.  If that objection be valid, it is vain to argue further; but if not, the remaining objections must be powerful enough to neutralise the entire mass of the evidence, and, in fact, to mount to a proof of contradictions; ’not on this or that minute point of historic detail,—­but on such as shake the foundations of the whole edifice of evidence.  It will not do to say, ’Here is a minute discrepancy in the history of Matthew or Luke as compared with that of ‘Mark or John;’ for, first, such discrepancies are often found, in other authors, to be apparent, and not real,—­founded on our taking for granted that there is no circumstance unmentioned by two writers which, if known, would have been seen to harmonise their statements.  We admit this possible reconciliation readily enough in the case of many seeming discrepancies of other historians; but it is a benefit which men are slow to admit in the case of the sacred narratives.  There the objector is always apt to take it for granted that the discrepancy is real; though it may be easy to suppose a case (a possible case is quite sufficient for the purpose) which would neutralise the objection.  Of this perverseness (we can call it by no other name) the examples are perpetual in the critical tortures which Strauss has subjected the sacred historians.*”—­

It may be objected, perhaps, that the gratuitous supposition of some unmentioned fact—­which, if mentioned, would harmonise the apparently counter-statements of two historians—­cannot be admitted, and is, in fact, a surrender of the argument.  But to say so, is only to betray an utter ignorance of what the argument is.  If an objection be founded on the alleged absolute contradiction of two statements, it is quite sufficient to show any (not the real, but only a hypothetical and possible) medium of reconciling them; and the objection is, in all fairness, dissolved.  And this would be felt by the honest logician, even if we did not know of any such instances in point of fact.  We do know however, of many.  Nothing is more common than to find, in the narration of two perfectly honest historians,—­referring to the same events from different points of view, or for a different purpose,—­the omission a fact which gives a seeming contrariety to their statements; a contrariety which the mention of the omitted fact by a third writer instantly clears up.+

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* The reader may see some striking instances of his disposition to take the worse sense, in Beard’s ‘Voices of the Church.’  Tholuck truly observes, too, in his strictures on Strauss, ’We know how frequently the loss of a few words in one ancient author would be sufficient to cast an inexplicable obscurity over another.’  The same writer well observes, that there never was a historian who,