In dealing with the difficulties of the Scriptures, therefore, we have not the least idea that they will all be removed: difficulties will remain. The Lord of hosts himself is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence upon which many stumble and fall and are broken. Isa. viii. 14, 15. If a man is determined to commit suicide, he can do it by the very means that God has created to preserve life--by fire or by water. Spiritual self-destruction is quite possible through the word of life itself. At the same time, no man has a right to put needless difficulties in the Bible or to make difficulties where none exist. More than this, every man is bound to deal as fairly at least with the Bible as he deals with his fellow-men in the ordinary relations of life. That which would give him no trouble as a judge upon the bench or a juror in the box ought not to be urged as a fatal objection to the Scriptures. In testing at this time some of the difficulties of the Bible by the accepted rules of evidence, hardly more can be done than to present a few of these rules as applicable to these difficulties. But the rules are of the widest application; the solution of one difficulty by them is the solution of a hundred. Looking upon the Bible as a whole, we may refer for a moment to the familiar precept that every man is to be presumed innocent until he is proved guilty. This is emphatically true of a man of good general reputation. The rule would seem as applicable to a book as to a man. Now, the Bible is not a new book; it has been before the world for ages. It has a character. That it is on the whole a good book the bitterest opposers of its plenary inspiration not only admit, but assert. It is conceded that it is entitled to its name--the _Bible_, _the_ Book. It claims to be a truthful book; by every fair principle this claim must be allowed until it is shown to be false. Bancroft's _History of the United States_ claims to be a reliable work; the claim is generally admitted. If a man now comes forward and asserts that it is false in whole or in details, by universal judgment he must prove his assertion, and obviously his proofs must be stronger than the evidences of the truth of the history. If this is so in reference to a book that has not stood the test of half a century, emphatically is it true of a book whose character has been established through the searching scrutiny of friends and foes for fifteen centuries--ay, for twice fifteen centuries. If a man now affirms the Bible to be false, wholly or in part, it rests upon him in all fairness to prove his position, and his evidence must be stronger than that which supports the book. For three thousand years a growing mass of testimony to the truth of the Bible has been rolling up in the face of every objection that ingenuity, learning and the bitterest hostility could present. Account for it as we may, that is the fact. There is, therefore, a reasonable presumption in