CONTRADICTIONS IN SCRIPTURE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TER " SPECTATOR."]
was much surprised to find myself in print. I had' not the remotest idea that you would publish my letter (Spec- tator, April 21st), which was dashed off on the spur of the- moment in the midst of pressing work. But as you have- published it, and have appended what some may regard as a fatal criticism, I must pray you to give me a bit of your pre- 6ons space for an attempt at a reply.
In the first place, I would just explain that I was not thinking so much of the particular discrepancy and its ex- planation on which you animadvert, as of the hard measure dealt out habitually by the "higher criticism" to apparent- contradictions in Holy Scripture. It occurred to me that the- explanation of the apparent contradictions in the case of the- two narratives I supposed of the fall of Napoleon would be at: once contemptuously dismissed as eminently forced and un- natural if these narratives were Biblical.
But now for your brief but biting criticism. With all due- deference to you, Sir, I venture to think I have not " given- my case away." Surely there is nothing improbable in the- supposition that Ahazia,h remained for some time concealed' by a friend of the house of Ahab at Megiddo, a town in the- Kingdom of Samaria, where he was ultimately discovered, put to death, and buried by Jehu because of his relationship to Jehoshaphat, which same reason would induce Jehu to deliver his body to the Jews for interment at Jerusalem. And this suggests the great probability of another glaring discrepancy occurring in my supposititious narratives of the close of Napoleon's career. One might state that he died and was- buried at St. Helena; the other that he was laid with the grandest funeral rites in a magnificent mausoleum at Paris in the midst of his sorrowing people. How indignant would the "higher criticism" wax at the obvious absurdity of the latter statement if found in Scripture, and how "forced" would be the real explanation if attempted by an old-fashioned believer in the veracity of the sacred record ? I will not trespass further on your space, but if I might venture to do so I could readily adduce other equally striking illustrations.—I am, W. DYER WARE.
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