It may have been anticipated by the readers of these pages that the Divine Author of Scripture has planted here and there up and down the sacred page—often in most improbable places and certainly in forms which we should have least of all imagined—tests of accuracy, by attending to which we may form an unerring judgement concerning the faithfulness of a copy of the sacred Text. This is a discovery which at first astonished me: but on mature reflection, I saw that it was to have been confidently anticipated. Is it indeed credible that Almighty Wisdom—which is observed to have made such abundant provision for the safety of the humblest forms of animal life, for the preservation of common seeds, often seeds of noxious plants,—should yet have omitted to make provision for the life-giving seed of His own Everlasting Word?

For example, strange to relate, it is a plain fact (of which every one may convince himself by opening a copy of the Gospels furnished with a sufficient critical apparatus), that although in relating the healing of the centurion's servant (St. Matt. viii. 5-13) the Evangelist writes e?at??ta???S in verses 5 and 8, he writes e?at??ta??? instead of -?O in ver. 13. This minute variety has been faithfully retained by uncials and cursives alike. Only one uncial (viz. ?) has ventured to assimilate the two places, writing e?at??ta???? throughout. With the blindness proverbially ascribed to parental love, Tischendorf follows ?, though the carelessness that reigns over that MS. is visible to all who examine it.

The matter is a trifle confessedly. But so was the scrap of a ballad which identified the murderer, another scrap of it being found with the bullet in the body of the murdered man.