port that he would rather
risk his life upon it than upon the certainty of any mathematical
problem, or of any scientific truth, whatever--that ninety-nine out of
every hundred citizens of the United States are a thousand times more
certain that the Yankees whipped the British in 1776, declared the
Colonies free and independent States, and made Washington President,
than they ever will be that all bodies attract each other directly as
their mass, and inversely as the squares of their distances, that the
sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right angles, or that
the earth is nearer the sun in winter than in summer--and that certainty
about the Bible history is just as attainable, and just as reliable, as
certainty about American history, if he will seek it in the same
way--and if he is really desirous to know how this Book was written,
which alone in the world teaches men how to obtain peace with God, how
to live well, and how to die with a firm and joyful hope of a
resurrection to life eternal, and what part of it is easiest to prove
either true or false--then he will take the inductive mode. He will
begin at the present time, and trace the history up to the times in
which the Book was written. He will ascertain what he can about that
part of it which was last written--the New Testament--and begin with
that part of it which lies nearest him--the Epistles.

By the comparison of the documents themselves, with all kinds of history
and monuments which throw light on the period, he will try to ascertain
whether they are genuine or not. And from one well-ascertained position
he will proceed to another, until he has traversed the whole ground of
the genuineness of the writings, the truth of the story, and the divine
authority of the doctrine.

This is my plan of investigation; one thing at a time, and the nearest
first. It is not worth while to inquire whether it be inspired by God,
if it be really a forgery of impostors; nor whether the gospel story is
worthy of credit, if the only book which contains it be a religious
novel of the third or fourth century. We dismiss then the questions of
the inspiration, or even the truth of the New Testament, till we have
ascertained its authors. We take up the Book, and find that it purports
to be a relation of the planting of the Church of Christ, of its laws
and ordinances, and of the life, death and resurrection of its Founder,
written by eight of his companions, at variou