II. Let me now be permitted to lay before you a somewhat different view of the office of Inspiration. Since the illumination of Science, falsely so called, and the process of Common Sense, would seem to have resulted in the extinction of the deposit, I ask your patience while I try to shew, that common sense, informed by a somewhat loftier Theological Instinct, may give such an account of the matter as will enable us to preserve every word of the deposit entire. You call my attention to the catalogue of the Dukes of Edom, and tell me that it required no supernatural aid to enable Moses to write it. How, may I ask, do you ascertain that fact? No specimens of the documentary evidence of the land of Seir in the days of Moses, are known now to exist on the earth's surface. You therefore know absolutely nothing whatever about the matter of which you speak so confidently. But, that we may grapple with the question fairly, let us come down from an age concerning which neither of us knows anything beyond what the Bible teaches, to a period with which all are familiar, and to documents of which we know at least a little. It will suit your purpose far better that you should instance the two Genealogies of our LORD,--of which you also say that it is impossible to maintain that they exhibit the work of Inspiration in the same sense as when some lofty statement of Christian doctrine comes before us. Indeed, you deny that they are inspired at all. I, on my side, am willing to admit that it is quite possible,--even probable,--that the first and the third Evangelist had access to extant documents of which they respectively availed themselves, when they recorded our LORD'S descent. But, do you not perceive that the great underlying fallacy in all you have been saying, is your own wholly gratuitous assumption that you are a competent judge of what _did_,--what did _not_,--require supernatural aid to deliver? that whatever _seems_ as if it might have been written without Inspiration, _was_ therefore written without it?--I see so many practical inconveniences, or rather I see such glaring absurdity, resulting from the supposition that Inspiration goes and comes before an authentic document, that I am constrained to think that you are altogether mistaken in the office which you assign to Inspiration,--in the kind of notion which you seem to entertain concerning its nature.