with the Charlemagne who besieged Jerusalem, or Hruodlandus with Roland, or Arturus with Arthur. Or, to come to later days, we need only recall the wonderful tales of the French journals during the last Franco-German War, and we shall be astonished at the manner in which, quite unintentionally, the people adapt all tidings to their own views. Nineteen hundred years ago there were no newspapers. Why should it have been different then? What the children had heard and believed, they remembered when they had grown older, or themselves had become parents. It was convenient and natural to tell their children again what they had heard in their own childhood, and like a rolling stone, with each repetition the tradition constantly took up new miraculous elements. There is scarcely a miracle in the New Testament that did not account for itself spontaneously in this way, and that did not in its original form reveal to us a far higher truth than the mere miracle itself. And when the time came for a record, was it not quite natural that everything available should be gathered together, according to the tales told and believed from house to house, or village to village? In this process, moreover, the appeal to a voucher, if possible to a contemporary or eye-witness, was not at all surprising, especially if there was a still living tradition, that this or that had been heard from one of the apostles, and could be traced back to him from son to father. Why should we put aside, nay, indignantly reject, this simple, natural theory, suggested by all the circumstances, and capable of at once removing all difficulties, in order to prefer another, which has the advantage, it is true, of having been generally accepted for centuries, but nevertheless was originally nothing more than a human appeal to a superhuman attestation? It must not be forgotten that if a voice were really heard from heaven, it lies with man to understand it, or, on his own authority, to declare it the voice of God or an angel. With one-half of Christendom the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the four Gospels never became an article of faith. It was first made so among the Protestants to provide something incontestable in place of the councils and the Pope. But this only drove Protestants from Scylla into Charybdis, and landed them in inextricable difficulties, because they withdrew the Gospels from the historical soil out of which they sprang. But we do not escape Charybdis by steering again into Scylla, but by endeavouring to rise above Charybdis, ay, even above the Gospels. In our human shortsightedness we may believe that it would have been better for us had Jesus or the apostles themselves left us something in writing. But as this did not happen, why should we not be content with what we have? The ruins of the true Christianity still remain; why should we not endeavour with their help to restore the ancient temple?