Once more I commit to my readers facts which speak, I think, to the truth of Scripture, as things having authority; facts, which afford proof infallible that there is a mine of evidence, "deep things of God," in this sense, in the sacred writings, which they who look upon them with a hasty and impatient glance- and such very generally is the manner of skeptics, and almost always the manner of youthful skeptics, -leave under their feet un-worked; a treasure hid in a field which they only who will be at the pains to dig for it will find.
But if an investigation, such as this that we are conducting, leads to such a conclusion- to a conclusion, I mean, that there is a substratum of truth running through the Bible, which none can discover but he who will patiently and perseveringly sink the well at the bottom of which it lies- and such is the conclusion at which we must arrive- is it not a lamentable thing to hear, as we are sometimes condemned to hear it, the superficial objection, or supercilious scoff, proceeding from the mouth of one whose very speech betrays that he has walked over the surface of his subject merely, if even that, and who nevertheless pretends and proclaims that truth he finds not?
But if an investigation, such as this that we are conducting, leads to such a conclusion- to a conclusion, I mean, that there is a substratum of truth running through the Bible, which none can discover but he who will patiently and perseveringly sink the well at the bottom of which it lies- and such is the conclusion at which we must arrive- is it not a lamentable thing to hear, as we are sometimes condemned to hear it, the superficial objection, or supercilious scoff, proceeding from the mouth of one whose very speech betrays that he has walked over the surface of his subject merely, if even that, and who nevertheless pretends and proclaims that truth he finds not?
- from pages 195- 196, Scriptural Coincidences