nds,--their
translation into various languages,--may not only be expected to occur,
but which must occur, unless there be a perpetual series of most minute
and ludicrous miracles--certainly never promised, and as certainly never
performed--to counteract all the effects of negligence and inadvertence,
to guide the pen of every transcriber to infallible accuracy, and
to prevent his ever deviating into any casual error! Such miraculous
intervention, we need not say, has never been pleaded for by any
apologist of Christianity; has certainly never been promised; and, if it
had,--since we see, as a matter of fact, that the promise has never been
fulfilled,--the whole of Christianity would fall to the ground. But
then, from a large induction, we know that the limits within which
discrepancies and errors from such causes will occur, must be very
moderate; we know, from numberless examples of other writings, what the
maximum is,--and that it leaves their substantial authenticity untouched
and unimpeached. No one supposes the writings of Plato and Cicero, of
Thucydides and Tacitus, of Bacon or Shakspeare, fundamentally vitiated
by the like discrepancies, errors, and absurdities which time and
inadvertence have occasioned.

The corruptions in the Scriptures from these causes are likely to
be even less than in the case of any other writings; from their very
structure,--the varied and reiterated forms in which all the great
truths are expressed; from the greater veneration they inspired; the
greater care with which they would be transcribed; the greater number
of copies which would be diffused through the world,--and which, though
that very circumstance would multiply the number of variations, would
also afford, in their collation, the means of reciprocal correction;--a
correction which we have seen applied in our day, with admirable
success, to so many ancient writers, under a system of canons which
have now raised this species of criticism to the rank of an inductive
science. This criticism, applied to the Scriptures, has in many
instances restored the true rending, and dissolved the objections which
might have been founded on the uncorrected variations; and, as time
rolls on, may lead, by yet fresh discoveries and more comprehensive
recensions, to a yet further clarifying of the stream of Divine truth,
till 'the river of the water of life' shall flow nearly in its original
limpid purity. Within such limits as these, the most cons