nt; but there are many instances in
which such conformity itself cannot be denied.' His whole remarks on the
subject, and especially those on the impression to be derived from the
multitude of apparent coincidences, in a long series of prophecies, some
vast, some minute; and the improbability of their all being accidental
are worthy of his comprehensive genius. It is on the effect of the
whole, not on single coincidences, that the argument depends.
____

Once more then; if, from the external evidences of this religion, we
pass to those which the only records by which we know any thing of its
nature and origin supplies, the infidel must believe, amongst other
paradoxes, that it is probable that a knot of obscure and despised
plebeians--regarded as the scum of a nation which was itself regarded as
the scum of all other nations--originated the purest, most elevated, and
most influential theory of ethics the world has ever seen; that a system
of sublimest truth, expressed with unparalleled simplicity, sprang
from ignorance; that precepts enjoining the most refined sanctity were
inculcated by imposture; that the first injunctions to universal love
broke from the lips of bigotry! He must further believe that these men
exemplified the ideal perfection of that beautiful system in the most
unique, original, and faultless picture of virtue ever conceived--a
picture which has extorted the admiration even of those who could not
believe it to be a portrait, and who have yet confessed themselves
unable to account for it except as such.* He must believe, too, that
these ignorant and fraudulent Galileans voluntarily aggravated the
difficulty of their task, by exhibiting their proposed ideal, not by
bare enumeration and description of qualities, but by the most arduous
of all methods of representation--that of dramatic action; and, what is
more, that they succeeded; that in that representation they undertook
to make him act with sublime consistency in scenes of the most
extraordinary character and the most touching pathos, and utter moral
truth in the most exquisite fictions in which such truth was ever
embodied; and that again they succeeded; that so ineffably rich in
genius were these obscure wretches, that no less than four of them were
found equal to this intellectual achievement; and while each has told
many events, and given many traits which the others have omitted, that
they have all performed their task in the same unique style