There is still another kind of cotemporary history, which does not even propose to relate history at all; but is for that very reason entirely removed from the suspicion of making a false statement. By this is meant cotemporary correspondence. The undersigned and incidental use of a name, a date or a quotation often flashes conviction upon the reader's mind in the most forcible manner. If we have the private letters of celebrated men laid before us, we are enabled to look right into them, and see their true characters. Thus Macaulay exhibits to the world the proud, lying, stupid tyrant King, James, displayed in his own letters. Thus the celebrated Voltaire records himself an adulterer, and begs his friend {108} D'Alembert to lie for him, and his friend replies that he has done so. Thus the correspondence of Thomas Paine exhibits him drinking a quart of brandy daily at his friend's expense and refusing to pay his bill for boarding. In the unguarded freedom of confidential correspondence the veil is taken from the heart. We see men as they are. The true man stands out in his native dignity and the gilding is rubbed off the hypocrite. Give to the world their letters, and no just person would hesitate to pronounce Hume a sensualist, or Washington, "the noblest work of God," an honest man. Now we are in possession of this same kind of indisputable evidence concerning the great facts of the New Testament. From the abundant notices of the faith, teachings and practices of the early saints, which are to be found in the works of cotemporaneous writers, historians and poets, philosophers and magistrates, Jewish, Christian and heathen; it may be well to select one, to corroborate and compare with the statements of the New Testament. Lest we should be accused of partiality, let us take the celebrated letter of Pliny to Trajan. This letter is utterly undeniable and admitted by the most skeptical to be beyond suspicion, Pliny, the younger, was born A. D. 61. He lived and died a pagan. In A. D. 106, when a little more than forty-five years of age, he was appointed by the emperor Trajan to be governor of the Roman provinces of Pontus and Bithynia--a vast tract of Asia-Minor, in which {109} were situated the cities and churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis and Philadelphia. The Epistles of Peter "to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia Asia, and Bithynia," brings us to the same mountainous region. Pliny, having taken up his residence in Ephesus, wrote the following letter to the Roman emperor: "Pliny to the Emperor Trajan wishes health and happiness.