But this is a monstrous case, with which I will not waste your time. Far more numerous are they, who, admitting that the Authors of the Bible were inspired in quite a different sense from Homer and Dante, are yet for modifying and qualifying this admission after so many strange and arbitrary fashions, that the residuum of their belief is really worth very little. One man has a mental reservation of exclusion in favour of the two Books of Chronicles, or the Book of Esther, or of Daniel.--Another, is content to eliminate from the Bible those passages which seem to him to run counter to the decrees of physical Science;--the History of the Six Days of Creation,--of the Flood,--of the destruction of Sodom,--and of Joshua's address to Sun and Moon.--Another regards it as self-evident that nothing is trustworthy which savours supremely of the marvellous;--as the Temptation of our first Parents,--the Manna in the Wilderness,--Balaam reproved by the dumb ass,--and the history of Jonah.--There are others who cannot tolerate the Miracles of the Old and the New Testament. The more timid, explain away as much of them as they dare. What remains, troubles them. The more logical sweep them away altogether. A miracle (they say) cannot be true because it implies a violation of the fixed and immutable laws of Nature. And then,--(so strangely constituted are some men's minds,)--there are not a few persons who, without exactly denying the inspiration of the Bible in any of its more marvellous portions,--(for _that_ would be an inconvenient proceeding,)--are yet content to regard much of it as a kind of inspired myth. This is a class of ally (?) with whom one really knows not how to deal. The man does not reason. He assumes his right to disbelieve, and yet will not allow that he is an unbeliever. The world is singularly indulgent toward persons of this unphilosophical, illogical, presumptuous class.