Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/59

Rh on "The Acquisition of Oregon and the Long-Suppressed Evidence About Marcus Whitman," in which I shall try to publish some 150 to 200 pages of this evidence which has been so carefully concealed hitherto, except as my MSS. and later Professor Bourne's "Legend of Marcus Whitman" have made a little of it known.

REV. DR. EELLS' HAZY NOTIONS OF "SCIENTIFIC" AND "TRUTHFUL"" HISTORY.

Pages 35 to 44 of Mr. Eells' "Reply" contain a very foggy discussion of "scientific history" vs. "true history," exhibiting his total lack alike of the scientific spirit and of logic and of the laws of evidence and of any sense of humor. On page 37 he triumphantly asks, "In fact, can Professor Bourne tell what contemporary writer recorded the history of Christ, all the gospels having been written many years after Christ's death?" Now, in spite of the persistent efforts for more than twenty years past of the authors and advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon story—and especially Rev. M. Eells—to exalt it into an additional article of religious and patriotic faith by seeking to show that the evidence in support of it is as strong as, and no more contradictory than, that offered in support of the trustworthiness of the New Testament, even he must know that there is not the remotest parallelism between the two cases. Suppose now that Matthew and Mark and Luke and John had been employed by some great society during the public life of Christ, and for some years after his death, and that they had not only written several hundred letters to that society, but also several score of letters to relations and friends, the whole, with fragments of their diaries aggregating more than a million words, and that these letters to the society were now found to be in existence, all securely bound up and indexed, and also the official action of the society on these letters and the replies to them of its Corresponding Secretary, were found to be in existence, and that many of the letters to their friends, together with fragments of their diaries were also found to be in ex* istence, and that there were also found to be in existence many contemporaneous documents of the Roman Government of undoubted authenticity, and that in all this vast mass of contemporaneous documents of the authors of the gospels not only was there not a single sentence found expressing the slightest interest in or concern about the life or crucifixion of Jesus, but also in the government documents there was conclusive evidence that Jesus was not crucified at all, how much credence does Mr. Eells suppose would be given to the gospels "written many years after the event?" And what confidence would anyone have in the ability as a historian of any clergyman (even if, as