"Quite so." "Come now," said my curate, like a fellow that was sure of himself, "that's going too far." "Not at all," said Father Duff; "I maintain that the evidence of history on the one hand, and the external evidence of monuments on the other, combined with the internal evidence of Scriptural idiomatisms of time and place, are equivalent to a mathematical demonstration." "You'll admit, I suppose," said Father Letheby, "that languages change their structures and meanings very often?" "Certainly." "The English of Shakespeare is not ours." "Quite so." "Even words have come to have exactly antithetical meanings, even in a lapse of three hundred years." "Very good." "And it is said that, owing to accretions, the language we speak will be unintelligible in a hundred years' time." "Possibly." "Now, would you not say that a contemporary of Shakespeare's would be a better judge of his poetry and its allusive and natural meaning than ever so learned a linguist, after an interval of change?" "Well, I should say so. I don't know where you are drifting." "What is the reason that we never heard of these 'internal evidences,' these 'historical coincidences,' these 'exclusive idioms,' from Origen or Dionysius, or from Jerome or Augustine, from any one of the Fathers, who held what we hold, and what the Church has always taught, about the authorship of the Sacred Books, and to whom Hebrew and Greek were vernacular?" "But, my dear sir, there are evident interpolations even in the Gospels. Do you really mean to tell me that that canticle of the _Magnificat_ was uttered by a young Hebrew girl on Hebron, and was not rather the deliberate poetical conception of the author of St. Luke's Gospel?" I jumped from my seat; but I needn't have done so. I saw by the whitening under my curate's eyes, and the compression of his lips, and his eyes glowing like coal, that our dear little Queen's honor was safe in his hands. Father Duff couldn't have stumbled on a more unhappy example for himself. Father Letheby placed his elbows on the table and, leaning forward, he said in a low, tremulous voice: "You may be very learned, Father, and I believe you are; but for all the learning stored up in those German universities, which you so much admire, I would not think as you appear to think on this sacred subject. If anything could show the tendency of modern interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, it would be the painful and almost blasphemous opinion to which you have just given expression. It is the complete elimination of the supernatural, the absolute denial of Inspiration. If the _Magnificat_ is not an inspired utterance, I should like to know what is." There was a painful silence for a few seconds, during which I could hear the ticking of my watch. Then the Master of Conference arose, and, kneeling, said the _Actiones nostras_. We were all gathering up our books and papers to disperse, when the Bishop said:--