of the New Testament. This is a fact utterly unexampled in the history
of manuscripts. There are but six manuscripts of the Comedies of
Terence, and these have not been copied once for every thousand times
the New Testament has been transcribed, yet there are thirty thousand
variations found in these six manuscripts, or an average of five
thousand for each, and many of them seriously affect the sense. The
average number of variations in the manuscripts of the New Testament
examined, is not quite thirty for each, including all the trivialities
already noticed.

We are, then, by the special providence of God, now as undoubtedly in
possession of genuine copies of the Gospels and Epistles, written by the
companions of Jesus, as we are of genuine copies of the Constitution of
the United States, and of the Declaration of Independence. These are
historic documents, of well-established genuineness and antiquity, which
we now proceed to examine as to their truthfulness.

There is no history so trustworthy as that prepared by contemporary
writers, especially by those who have themselves been actively engaged
in the events which they relate. Such history never loses its interest,
nor does the lapse of ages, in the least degree, impair its credibility.
While the documents can be preserved, Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten
Thousand, Caesar's Gallic War, and the Dispatches of the Duke of
Wellington, will be as trustworthy as on the day they were written. Yet
some suspicion may arise in our minds, that these commanders and
historians might have kept back some important events which would have
dimmed their reputation with posterity, or might have colored those they
have related, so as to add to their fame. Of the great facts related in
memoirs addressed to their companions in arms, able at a glance to
detect a falsehood, we never entertain the least suspicion.

If, to this be added, the correspondence of monuments, architecture,
painting, statuary, coins, heraldry, and a thousand changes in the
manners and customs of a people, we become as absolutely convinced of
the truth of the narrative thus confirmed by these silent witnesses as
if we had seen the events described. No man who visits the disinterred
city of Pompeii, and sees the pavements marked by the wheel ruts, has
any doubt that the Romans used wheeled carriages. When he sees the
court-yards adorned with mosaic figures, and the walls with paintings of
the gods, and of the manners