He professed to have a reverence for his beard as a gift of Nature, and to think it a sort of profanity to throw it aside. By the way, I dare say, if the beard controversy goes on much longer, we shall have an orthodox and heterodox beard-party, as much attached, and with as much reason, to their respective doctrines, as the Big-endians and Little-endians of Lilliput. But to return to my youngster. He innocently asked, why we should shave away what "Nature had given us." "Why," said I, "suppose Nature has made a mistake in giving us such a thing? Is it not wise to rectify it?" "Made a mistake!" said he. "Yes," said I; "nothing more easy according to your hypothesis, for you confess to Atheism; why may not the beard be an error of Nature? If unintelligent laws of development,' or unconscious necessity, or blind chance has made the world and beards, I see no reason why you should suppose everything for the best and as you have intelligence, at least think so," I continued, smiling, "and the universe has none, you and all of us ought to be allowed to reform, alter, and amend at pleasure." It was not easy to see how to defend the orthodoxy of wearing beards as a gift of Nature on such a theory.

:

On another occasion, a youth contended that as God had given us beards, He must have intended they should be worn; and that it was a sort of impiety to get rid of them. But this proved too much; for I asked whether he let his nails and beard grow like Nebuchadnezzar, or as far as Nature chose to let them? "No," he said, "clip the beard you may,—but that is different from shaving!" "A subtle distinction," said I; "it is a question of limits, I fear, which none can determine. Are we at liberty to clip within two inches ?- -one inch? - the tenth of an inch? -the millionth of an inch? For if so, is not shaving close clipping, as clipping indeed is nothing but a sort of slovenly shaving? Or is there some orthodox limit to which the beard may grow, sacred at once from both scissors or razor?"

What can be the final cause of the beard? Some physiologists say that it is to help carry off any spare particles of the systemany "superfluities of naughtiness"-and so serves, with other

excretions, to keep up the equilibrium between nutrition and consumption. But, according to this, a glutton's beard ought to grow faster than that of other folks. Be pleased to ask the aldermen of London whether they shave twice a day: also whether this is the reason why artisans need not shave more than once a week. But, above all, inquire diligently of those who wear a beard, what special gratification they have in so doing, that we may have a proper induction as to the final cause of this singular appendage, which has ever been to me as great a mystery as a monkey's tail.

Yours ever faithfully,

R. E. H. G.

P. S. I fell in the other day with one of those patient Job-like anglers (up to his knees, by the way, in the stream), who had been at his sport for some hours and caught nothing. I told him I thought it must be miserably dull work. He contended (I suppose he was bound to make the best of present circumstances), that the fewer the fish the greater the sport, as more skill was required, and so on. I almost angered him by asking whether, as it was thus a problem of limits, it would not be the greatest sport of all to angle for a single gudgeon turned loose in the Atlantic?

LETTER CII.

To a gentleman who would be a Christian-yet rejected all the peculiar facts and doctrines of "historical" Christianity.

My dear Sir,

You talk of the cumbrous character of the "Christian evidences," and especially of the "pithless" philological, critical, and chronological discussions of "historic" difficulties.

To this, I think, I might retort by saying that I find few people so prone as some who have adopted a latitudinarian theology except those indeed, who have rejected Christianity even in name to dwell on these same difficulties; not for the purpose of attaining satisfaction about them, but to puzzle and perplex those who are convinced of the substantive truth of Christianity, and are content to leave all such minor problems unsolved till they can obtain further evidence. I am seldom long in company with certain men without finding them busy with the "discrepancies" in our Saviour's "genealogy," or the geological difficulties in the first chapter of Genesis; or anxious to know whether it was going out of Jericho or into it that our Lord healed the blind man, or whether two were healed or only one. In short, I find no person so ready to reduce the evidences of Christianity to " pithless" discussions, as those who receive a minimum of Christianity; nor any who so often ask satisfaction of their difficulties as those who hope it may never be found!

But with you, I shall not think it worth while thus to retort. I shall carry the war into your own quarters. I shall, without hesitation, affirm that it is theologians of your stamp, who, of all men, are most open to the charge of binding "critical" mill-stones about people's necks, and that it is equally applicable to your theology as a product, and to the desperate processes by which your alchymists of criticism distil it from the Scriptures. You tell me that you receive, in some sense, Christianity as a divinely originated system; and yet you reject all that is miraculous and supernatural in its professed facts, as also all that has seemed, to the generality of the readers of the New Testament for eighteen centuries, to be undeniably characteristic of its doctrines. All this you regard either as the product of the prejudice and "standpoint" (a convenient thing is that "stand-point") of those who historically transmitted Christianity to us; or else, as seemingly on the page of Scripture, indeed, but, in truth, not there. By the resources of a clever exegesis, and a free use of the critical sponge, it may be expelled altogether. In short, it is all the error of interpretation !

Whichever of these two theories be adopted, I assure you, I find your argument against a "critical theology "irresistible, and the New Testament transformed into the most burdensome book in the world. And if I could be got to the "point of view" necessary to adopt either, I should infallibly go further, out of sheer inability to deal with so intractable a phenomenon as your Christianity! If I adopt the first theory, and suppose that the "facts and doctrines" which seem so plainly written in the New Testament, and which are generally admitted to be there, are yet all mistake, gross ignorance, prejudice, delusion, on the part of the writers, I know no one reason in the world why I should regard, with any remaining veneration, men who, at every turn, were so full of egregious blunders on the most vital points. If, for example, they meant to maintain the literal reality of their miraculous narratives and supernaturally derived doctrines; if they meant to assert the Pre-existence, much more the Divinity of Christ, the dogma of atonement by his death,—the divine inspiration and authority of their communications, and other kindred doctrines, and yet these were fanatical delusions, and are to be wholly rejected, I see no sufficient reason why I should regard with even common respect such comprehensive blunderers; or what is the residuum, after all, which such large excisions have left for my reception; or why that residuum, which itself differs indefinitely with different interpreters among you, should be regarded with any more reverence than the rest. If you say, "because it can be otherwise proved true,"—by all means hold it for true then; but it surely cannot be regarded as any the more true for being inculcated by those who do not give it its authority, and who in other things have so egregiously blundered and gone astray! You ought to hold it for true, not at all because Apostles have written, but in spite of their having written! that is, in spite of the presumptions which their countless and absurd errors would naturally create against,it; and on account of other evidence so strong, that even their extravagances cannot prejudice it! On this theory, I say, your theology is simply a "critical burden," which "neither we nor our fathers have been able to

bear ;" and I will add, nor will our children; and the only consequence of its fair application on my own part, would be that I should summarily rid myself of such troublesome incumbrances as the Apostles altogether!

If, on the other hand, it be said that the doctrines which to ninety-nine out of every hundred readers of the New Testament seem to be there, are not there, and that a skilful and bold criticism can expel them from the page, then I can only say that I find your "critical burdens" at least equally intolerable. I have sometimes tried to interpret the New Testament in your fashion ; —but I find in every chapter, in almost every verse, the natural sense so rebelling against the critical rack and thumbscrew, such a constant outcry from the tortured language against the violence done to it, that, on my honour, compassion itself cannot stand it. Not only is a non-natural sense, not only is forced construction perpetually necessary, but I am obliged to use the sponge itself so often and so ruthlessly, -nay, to shovel away so many entire chapters bodily,-that I feel that if the writers meant only what your system involves, by all that language I have twisted, and tortured, and pared, and cut away, and thrown aside, they were so astoundingly ignorant of the ordinary use of human language, that whatever else they might be, "Revealers" they were not; that so far from having the gift of tongues, they could not speak with one; and that they must certainly have believed one dogma of the Romish Church,―that the mysteries of religion are most worthily expressed in a language which the worshippers cannot understand! If your system be indeed Christianity, the very construction of the books which contain it is an ignominious failure.

To arrive at such a Christianity, by thus dealing with the only documents which do or can tell us a syllable about it, implies, as I say, an immeasurably heavier burden of criticism than any of those dry controversies on the "Evidences" with which you twit

me.

To me it seems clear as the day, that if such a system as yours be that of the New Testament,-its writers never can, in any