And throughout the country there are thousands now living[A] who well knew men who were in active life during the War of the Revolution. In the _Granite Monthly_ for December, 1880, was published the Diary of Rev. Timothy Walker of Concord, for the year 1780, and there were earlier Diaries kept by him which have been preserved by his descendants. The Diary of Matthew Patten of Bedford, from 1750 to 1790, is in the custody of Charles H. Woodbury, Esq., of New York. The Congregational church at Concord, of which Timothy Walker was the first pastor, November, 1880, celebrated its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. There are several towns in New Hampshire, as Londonderry, Dover, Exeter and Portsmouth, that were settled earlier than Concord; and some of them as early as 1623. The landing of the Pilgrims was _two hundred and sixty years ago_. It seems but as yesterday. A century from the Crucifixion was no longer than a century now; and as an event, to be remembered, the Crucifixion was as much greater than the Landing of the Pilgrims as the glory of the noonday sun is above that of the feeblest star in the most distant heavens. The time that has elapsed since Timothy Walker wrote Diaries which are now in existence is as long as from the Crucifixion to Justin’s Apology; more than thirty years longer than from the martyrdom of Peter and Paul to Justin’s Apology; and sixty years longer than from John’s death to Justin’s Apology. The churches in Justin’s time were not dealing with writings from a dim and misty past, or of limited or infrequent use. None were as ancient as Walker’s Diary; the last had not seen half its years; they were in all the churches, and read every Sabbath day. The argument which proves that there was no substitution between 140 and 180 is as much more forcible to prove that there was no substitution between the years 100 and 140, or between the years 60 and 100, as those times were nearer the great events which the Gospels recorded. If, for example, there were accepted Memoirs of our Lord in the churches in the year 100, from the presumed _continuance_ of a state of things the existence of which has been proved,[3] it should be _presumed_ that they remained in the churches till Justin’s time, there being no evidence to the contrary. And so there would be the same (or greater) difficulties in the way of displacement and substitution, between the year 100 and the year 140, as between the year 140 and the year 180. Justin and his contemporaries had from their own recollection,[4] or from others, whether parents, teachers, presbyters or bishops, as great facilities for knowing what Memoirs were accepted in the churches forty years before, as had Irenæus and his contemporaries in respect to the period of forty years before one hundred and eighty. And there was a succession and continued life in the churches from 100 to 140, the same as from 140 to 180. This reasoning is applicable to Clement and his contemporaries, and