is conceivable that those three honest men--(the _only_ true men, it might be, in the Colony, after all,)--would carry to their grave the imputation of untruth. Here and there, a generous heart would be found to say to them,--_I_ share not in the vulgar cry against you! _I_ nothing doubt that it all fell out precisely as you assert. Either, the clocks in Oxford went wrong that day;--or there had been some trick played with the clocks;--any how, _I_ believe _you_, for I have evidence that you are marvellously exact in all your little statements; and you cannot have been mistaken in a plain matter like this. I have heard too that you are not the ordinary men you seem.... The men make no answer. _They_ care nothing for _your opinion_, and _my opinion_. The rashness of mankind may astonish the Angels perhaps; but the Apostles and Evangelists of CHRIST are already safe within the veil! The difficulty supposed is not an imaginary one. St. John says that when Pilate sat in judgment on the LORD of Glory, "it was about the sixth hour[362]." But since St. Mark says that at the third hour they crucified Him[363],--the two statements seem inconsistent. The ancients,--(giants at interpretation, babes in criticism,)--_altered the text_. Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, A.D. 300, says that he had seen it in the very autograph of St. John[364]. A learned man of our own, however, a hundred years ago, ascertained that, in the Patriarchate of Ephesus, the hours were not computed after the Jewish method: but, (strange to say,) exactly _after our own English method_[365]. And yet, not so strange either; for the Gospel first came to us from there.--You see at a glance that all the four mentions of time of day in St. John[366], which used to occasion so much difficulty, become beautifully intelligible at once. To come then to the three samples of difficulty propounded a moment ago. And first, for the blind men of Jericho. I. The difficulty lies all on the surface. Listen to a plain tale. Our SAVIOUR, attended by His Disciples and followed by a vast concourse of persons, had reached the outskirts of Jericho. A certain blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. He heard the noise of a passing crowd, and inquired what it meant? He was told that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. He rose at once,--hastened down the main street through which, in due time, CHRIST perforce must come; joined another blind man, (named Bartimæus,--a well-known character, who, like himself, was accustomed to sit and beg by the road side;) and the two companions in suffering, having stationed themselves at the exit of Jericho, waited till the Great Physician should appear.