ct to the warning that fiction has its share
therein. The modern vast development of fugitive literature cannot be
the unmitigated evil that some do vainly say it is, since it has put
an end to the popular delusion of less press-ridden times, that
what appears in print must be true. We should rather hope that some
beneficent influence may create among the erudite a like healthy
suspicion of manuscripts and inscriptions, however ancient; for a
bulletin may lie, even though it be written in cuneiform characters.
Hotspur's starling, that was to be taught to speak nothing but
"Mortimer" into the ears of King Henry the Fourth, might be a useful
inmate of every historian's library, if "Fiction" were substituted for
the name of Harry Percy's friend.

But it was the chief object of the lecturer to the congregation gathered
in St. Mary's, Oxford, thirty-one years ago, to prove to them, by
evidence gathered with no little labour and marshalled with much skill,
that one group of historical works was exempt from the general rule; and
that the narratives contained in the canonical Scriptures are free from
any admixture of error. With justice and candour, the lecturer impresses
upon his hearers that the special distinction of Christianity, among the
religions of the world, lies in its claim to be historical; to be surely
founded upon events which have happened, exactly as they are declared to
have happened in its sacred books; which are true, that is, in the sense
that the statement about the execution of Charles the First is
true. Further, it is affirmed that the New Testament presupposes the
historical exactness of the Old Testament; that the points of contact
of "sacred" and "profane" history are innumerable; and that the
demonstration of the falsity of the Hebrew records, especially in regard
to those narratives which are assumed to be true in the New Testament,
would be fatal to Christian theology.

My utmost ingenuity does not enable me to discover a flaw in the
argument thus briefly summarised. I am fairly at a loss to comprehend
how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand
or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures.
The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably
interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth
with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the
Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless the