This mooting was held on Tuesday eve ing, as announced, in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, under the chairmanship of Mr. John Fryer, the President. The question selected for debate attracted 'a crowded audience, and its treatment at the hands of those who took part in the discussion came fully up to the general expectation. For the sake of clearness we append the official enunciation of the subject:—That in the opinion of this House all documents, whether professedly sacred subjected to identical tests before being accepted as authentic." Lenders: Rev, W. Muirhead, Afirmative, R.A. Jamieson, x1.4., Negative.
The Rev. "IRHEAD, on Being called upon by the Chairman to open the debate, began by remarking that he had cheerfully undertaken the affirmative side by reason of the great importance he attached to one word in the enunciation, That word was "authenticity i speaker, according authorities he had consulted, imply and solely to do with authors jon as to genuineness or cre had no connection it whatever. This was the actual meaning of the word. Ifa book, whether secular or sacred, could be proved to have been written by the man to whom it was generally attributed, or on whose behalf it was professed to have been written, then it must be held to authentic, according to the actual mean-of the word. Ina number of works, authorship was a secondary consideration. Their value in that case very much depended upon their contents. But in sacred or professedly sacred documents, the verity of their contents depended upon their authorship, and therefore every possible test should be applied to them to prove whether were written by the persons whose names are appended to them. The importance of this lay in the fact that the reputed authors of the sacred book. said to have lived very near the time at which the events which they narrated are generally believed to have occurred; and this, he thought, if proved, was an additional. proof of their authenticity and formed an additional claim upon our obedience and our belief. But of course this preterition had to be tested before acceptance, and the tests to be applied were precisely those which were applicable to any other works, whether sacred or secular. These were of various kinds. There was the, scientific test—the metaphysical the mathematical—but, above all, the teat of probability. That tras the most important. ake historical evidence, and apply it to either of the classes of books under discussion, By this, it was possible to prove the existence of the works almost up to the actual date of the reputed author's life, Than there was the test of literary style and execution, by which we were enabled to judge whether such-and-such a book was distinguished by those characteristics known to distinguish other works attributed to the man alleged to have written it. Thirdly, there was a test to be derived from what we knew of the author's position in life,—whether there was avy correspondence between this and the matters treated of in his book, Fourthly, the was the evidence furnished by contemporary or collateral writers, and then again we should take into account the general aspect and bearing of the book with regard to the personal characteristics of the alleged author, and seo whether there was any similarity between the reputation of the author as a man and the contents of his alleged production, These and other tests, said the speaker, were all easy of discovery, and in 1is opinion thoroughly applicable to all classes of books and documents, whether professedly sacred or the reverse, Dr, Jasiteson, on the invitation of the Chairman, then' rose to reply. The distribution of the cast, he said, had no doubt taken many by surprise, Most probably the majority of persons considered that the late President of the Institute (Rev. W. Muirhead) would have repudiated the right of modern critics to sit in judgment on writings professing a sacred character. At the Committee-meeting, the opinion was unanimous that that gentleman would not hesitate to take the negative side, an was with some dismay that the members found themselves compelled to look elsewhere for a champion of orthodoxy. Now the opener of the debate, continued the speaker, had placed the controversy on rather unexpected lines, and this would compel him, the speaker, to somewhat modify his own conrad of argument, The opener had altogether failed to apply his principles to concrete examples, but with much dialectical skill he had his audience believe, by implication, certain sacred writings had been subjected to the tests he suggested and had come triumphantly out of the ordeal. He (the speaker) referred more particularly to the sacred writings of Christianity, and for two reasons; first, because there was really no time to include the canons of other religions—Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and the—and secondly because Christianity was the religion with which we as members of a professedly Christian community were most familiar and had most todo, here had been apparently much confusion in the mind of the opener of the debate with regard to the ide veyed by the terms authenticity, genuine ness and value, It was, therefore, necessary for the speaker tu set forth clearly his view of the distinction between these terms, which he would do rather by means of concrete examples than by abstract argument, Take the case of the Iliad, hero were two schools of critics, who differed widely upon the question of its genuineness. One believed that it was actually written by a definite person whose name was Homer, Others held that it simply a collection of ancient ballads, compiled and put into shape by one or more wandering rhapsodists. That is to say, one school accepted, the other doubted, the genuineness of the Iliad as the work of Homer. But neither believed in its authenticity. Neither believed that the miraculous interventions, the celestial portents, and the many other marvels ray
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.