and that which is altogether unsought and spontaneous; and it is the exceeding multitude of these last which makes the history of Paul, as educed from the Acts of the Apostles and from his own epistles, so pregnant with an evidence of the highest order. For these documents admit of being confronted and cross-examined in the same way that living witnesses are, who, if found to agree in every point even the most incidental and the most exempt from every appearance of design-then no other conviction can possibly result from their common testimony, than that it is the evidence of a common truth to which all the parties had access, and on which the statements of them all are founded. The closeness and exactness of these now evolved harmonies are all the more impressive that they were before unnoticed, and which go therefore irresistibly to prove that they were also undevised --for they would not have answered the purposes of forgery. The evidence afforded by these unexpected junctions of so many little fragments which lie far apart from each other, has been aptly compared by Dr. Paley himself to the evidence given by the parts of a cloven tally, as being indeed the real parts of a real and authentic whole. No such contexture could have come forth of the hands of fiction or imposture which never would have busied itself in framing a tissue, not of palpable but of unseen consistencies, that never could have been known, had it not been for the labours of a dexterous analyst who succeeded, but with great pains, to open up and unravel them. The thread, to use Dr. Paley's own image, which touches upon

so many points, would have been set forth more fully and plainly, by the original fabricator, if the whole be indeed a fabrication, and not left to be disentangled from the mass in which it lies envelopedproving incontrovertibly, that it is a substratum or a ground-work of truth from which it has been taken. The reciprocal illustration cast by texts or clauses of texts far asunder from each other, as being obviously not the result of studied adaptation, can only be the result of that living reality which pervades and animates the whole. The immense number of such correspondences, as if by an author altogether unconscious or certainly without the least endeavour to display them, yields an evidence of the strongest sort—an evidence too independent of history, and not drawn from any external source, from any outward credentials; but from the very contents and substance of the record itself.

10. And it is an evidence not confined to that special department of scripture, whence it has been gathered in such teeming and marvellous profusion by the hand of Dr. Paley. We believe that it is an evidence more or less to be found in every true narrative of any considerable length, which has descended to us from ancient times. We must

therefore expect to meet with it in other parts of scripture; and accordingly, this successful attempt of Paley, has been followed up by successful imitations on the part of other labourers. The direct narrative of the transactions in the Pentateuch, and the proper record of which is to be found in the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, is again presented to us in au altered and abridged

form in the book of Deuteronomy. The comparison of the history with its recapitulation has been ably prosecuted by Dr. Groves; and much pleasing evidence of this kind has been deduced by him." The same has been well accomplished by Mr. Blunt in another portion of scripture the four Gospels which he confronts both with each other and with the Acts of the Apostles. We offer from the latter performance a few brief specimens of that coincidence without design on which the whole of this particular argument is founded.— Compare Matt. viii. 14. with 1 Cor. ix. 5, where from each passage, and obviously not copied the one from the other, we gather that Peter was a married man. Read the four following passages, Mark vi. 3, Luke viii. 19, John ii. 12, and Matt. xii. 46; and it will be found that the death of Joseph is indirectly shewn by all the four evangelists, to have happened when Christ was alive; and we add, that from Luke ii. 42, 43, it appears to have happened after he was twelve years of age. In keeping with this, no mention is made of Joseph at the feast of Cana, or at the resurrection.-There are certain minute and delicate traits, and certainly not the less effective on that account, of the authorship of the gospels by Matthew and John, and which harmonize with the received understanding, that themselves were the writers of them. The following are two examples taken from the former of these evangelists.

• See Groves' Lectures on the four last books of the Pentateuch, designed to show the divine origin of the Jewish religion, chiefly from Internal Evidence.

† See Blunt's veracity of the Gospel and Acts, from their coincidences with each other and with Josephus.

In

In Matt. ix. 10, Jesus is represented as sitting down to meat with publicans and sinners in the house. When the same transaction is recorded in Mark ii. 15, it is called his house, the house of Matthew. In Luke v. 29, it is called his own house. It was natural in the proprietor to call it the, rather than his or his own house. It forms another internal mark of truth that so many publicans should have been of the party. Again in Matt. x. 2, &c., the Apostles are enumerated in pairs, probably from their being sent in their respective missions by two and two. Matthew is associated with Thomas; and when the enumeration is made by Matthew, Thomas is named first. Mark iii. 18, and Luke vi. 15, Matthew is named the first. The discreditable circumstance of his having been a publican is kept out of sight by the two latter evangelists, but noticed with characteristic modesty by Matthew himself.-In Matt. xiv. 1, 2, we find Herod speaking to his servants, of Jesus, which was very likely to happen, if he knew them to have been interested in Jesus and aware of him. This is corroborated both in Luke viii. 3, where mention is made of Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, and Acts xiii. 1, where we read of Manaen brought up with Herod.-In Matt. xxvi. 67, 68, they who struck Jesus with the palms of their hands are made to say, "Prophesy (or divine) unto us, thou Christ, who is he that smote thee ?"—a challenge to the supernatural pretensions of him who profest to be the Messiah, that is not very intelligible from the omission of a circumstance supplied by another evangelist. In Luke xxii. 64,

we are told that he was blindfolded.-In Matt. xxvi. 65, the charge on which the Jews condemned Christ was blasphemy-a crime of all others the best fitted to make him the object of popular indignation. Whereas in Luke xxiii. 2, when instead of being accused before the Jews, he was taken to the Roman governor before whom this charge would not have been so effective, he was represented as "perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, saying that he himself is Christ a king." All this is in harmony, but surely an unstudied harmony, with John x. 33, John v. 18, and Acts xxiii. 29.-Lastly, in John vi. 5, we find Jesus singling out Philip in the question he put, as to the means that could be provided at the place where they then were, for the entertainment of a multitude overtaken with hunger. In Luke ix. 10, we read that it was a desert place, belonging to a city called Bethsaida. And lastly, in John i. 44, we are told that Philip was of Bethsaida-the likeliest person then to whom this question should have been addressed. These are but a few examples out of the many. In Mr. Blunt's work, which is a superior performance, the reader will meet with a goodly number of others to the full as striking and satisfactory, as those which we have now given.

11. Scripture throughout is replete with this internal evidence; but, without instancing any other or separate portions of it, let us advert for one moment to that great and general coincidence -that unity of purpose and counsel, by which from first to last the whole of it is pervaded. In the whole history of the world, there is nothing that