I presume that all of Mr. Talmage's forefathers were not Presbyterians. There must have been a time when one of his progenitors left the faith of his father, and joined the Presbyterian Church. Ac- cording to the reasoning of Mr. Talmage, that particular progenitor was an exceedingly bad man; but had it not been for the crime of that bad man, Mr. Talmage might not now have been on the road to heaven. 292 I hardly think that all the inventors, the thinkers, the philosophers, the discoverers, dishonored their parents. Fathers and mothers have been made immortal by such sons. And yet these sons demon- strated the errors of their parents. A good father wishes to be excelled by his children. SIXTH INTERVIEW. _It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second- hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication-- after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.--Thomas Paine._ _Question_. What do you think of the argu- ments presented by Mr. Talmage in favor of the inspiration of the Bible? _Answer_. Mr. Talmage takes the ground that there are more copies of the Bible than of any other book, and that consequently it must be in- spired. It seems to me that this kind of reasoning proves entirely too much. If the Bible is the inspired word of God, it was certainly just as true when there was only one copy, as it is to-day; and the facts con- tained in it were just as true before they were 296 written, as afterwards. We all know that it is a fact in human nature, that a man can tell a falsehood so often that he finally believes it himself; but I never suspected, until now, that a mistake could be printed enough times to make it true. There may have been a time, and probably there was, when there were more copies of the Koran than of the Bible. When most Christians were ut- terly ignorant, thousands of Moors were educated; and it is well known that the arts and sciences flourished in Mohammedan countries in a far greater degree than in Christian. Now, at that time, it may be that there were more copies of the Koran than of the Bible. If some enterprising Mohammedan had only seen the force of such a fact, he might have established the inspiration of the Koran beyond a doubt; or, if it had been found by actual count that the Koran was a little behind, a few years of in- dustry spent in the multiplication of copies, might have furnished the evidence of its inspiration.