The following is from the Rev. H. W. Beecher.
'Matthew says, that Jesus dwelt in Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. No such
line has ever been found in the prophets.
'Infinite ingenuity of learning has been brought to bear upon this
difficulty, without in the slightest degree solving it.
'What would happen if it should be said that Matthew recorded the
current impression of his time in attributing this declaration to the
Old Testament Prophets? Would a mere error of reference invalidate the
trustworthiness of the evangelist? We lean our whole weight [in other
matters] upon men who are fallible. Must a record be totally infallible
before it can be trusted at all? Navigators trust ship, cargo, and the
lives of all on board, to calculations based on tables of logarithms,
knowing that there never was a set [of logarithms] computed, without
machinery, that had not some error in it. The supposition, that to admit
that there are immaterial and incidental mistakes in Sacred Writ would
break the confidence of men in it, is contradicted by the uniform
experience of life, and by the whole procedure of society.
'On the contrary, the shifts and ingenuities to which critics are
obliged to resort, either blunt the sense of truth, or disgust men with
the special pleading of critics, and tend powerfully to general
unbelief.
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