Thoughts on the holy Gospels: how they came to be in manner and form as they are

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

Shelf._^? ^"^
. UN-

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

THOUGHTS

ON

¥HE fioLY GOSPELS :

HOW THEY CAME TO BE IN MANNER AND
FORM AS THEY ARE.

FRANCIS WrUPHAM, LL.D.,
*\

Author of " The Church and Science," " The Wise Men, Who They
Were," and " The Star of our Lord."

NEW YORK:
PHILLIPS & HUNT

CINCINNATI:
WALDEN & STOWE.

I88I.

^

3s *

S&S

Copyright, 1881, by

PHILLIPS & HUNT,

New York.

CONTENTS.

13-20

Introduction

PAET FIEST.

CHAPTER I.

OPENING THE WAY.

Christ Jesus calls to Himself His Witnesses before
any sermon, before any miracle— The first official act of
His chosen Disciples similar in character— On that oc-
casion St. Peter declares the Resurrection to be the
Great Sign that Jesus was the Son of God— The Signifi-
cance of the Resurrection— The Disciples find the main
evidence of it in the Life of their Lord before His
Crucifixion— Some of the bearings of this upon the
Construction of the Gospels ; upon the brevity of the
direct evidence of the Resurrection given by St. Mat-
thew ; also upon his silence concerning the Ascension-
Consideration of the fact that the faith of the Disciples
in their Lord was, for the moment, paralyzed by His
Death 21-38

CHAPTER II.

intent to have a written gospel.
Absurdity of the assertion that the chosen Witnesses
never thought of writing out the Gospel— Review of
what has been said to give a color of pretense to this

4 CONTENTS.

notion — The Traditions of the Elders — Verbal Coinci-
dences in the Three Earlier Gospels — Error that there
was no literary instinct then at work among the Jews —
Philo of Alexandria, Justus of Tiberias, and Josephus
— His character, and the Intent of his History of the
Jews — St. Matthew wrote to complete the ancient
Scripture 39-51

CHAPTER III.

THE RECEIVED DATE OF THE GOSPELS.

The infidel assumption that the Witnesses never
thought of writing out the Gospel made to prepare the
way for the further ssumption that the Gospels are
later than their Received Date — Review of the evidence
of their Date — The Silence after St. Luke wrote — Wit-
ness to the Gospels in the Second Century — Reverence
for the Writings of the Apostles — Ready means of inter-
communication among the Christian Congregations
throughout the Roman world — The usage of the ever-
existing Church the proper and sufficient evidence
of the Genuineness and Authenticity of Her own
Records 52-74

CHAPTER IV.

THE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPELS.

Bearing of the received Date and Authorship of the
Gospels upon questions raised by literary Criticism —
The purpose for which the Gospels were written — A
consequence of this that infidels are unfitted to criticise
them — Nothing trustworthy in their writings — Bearing
of the purpose of the Evangelists upon their method —
Illustration of their method — Bearing of the purpose of

CONTENTS. 5

the Evangelists upon the mythical, legendary, and rag-
ged theories, as to the Origin and Construction of the
Gospels 75-87

CHAPTER V.

THE ORAL AND THE WRITTEN GOSPEL.

Of the Oral Gospel — Difficulties in the way of fram-
ing it — The Apostles decide to transfer the Gospel from
the Aramean tongue into the Greek ; and that its cita-
tions of Scripture shall be made from the Septuagint —
Several forms of the Oral Gospel, and one more common
Form — Use made of the Oral Gospel by the Three
Earlier Evangelists — Answer to the question, Where is
the witness of all the Apostles ? 88-106

CHAPTER VI.

THE WRITING OUT OF THE GOSPEL.

Reasons why each of the Apostles did not write out
the Gospel — They Select Matthew and John for their
Evangelists — Proof of this in the fact that those Two,
and only those Two, of the Twelve Chosen Witnesses
wrote out the Gospel — Reasons for their Choice of St.
John ; for their Choice of St. Matthew 107-112

CHAPTER VII.

LIMITATIONS OF THE GOSPELS.

Concert between the elect Evangelists — Of the time
that St. John took to meditate upon his Gospel — The
Division of the field of the Ministry between St. Mat-
thew and St John — Its Geographical and other reasons.

6 CONTENTS.

— Peculiar Feeling of the Jews, in the time of the Dis-
ciples, that Judea only was the Holy Land — Evidence
of this in the story of Petronius — Why the Oral Gospel
and the second and third of the Written Gospels were,
like St. Matthew's, so much restricted to the land of
Galilee — The inspired Evangelists reveal Christ Jesus
as the Saviour — Bearing of this upon the Construction
of their Gospels 113-133

CHAPTER VIII.

INSPIRATION OF THE GOSPELS.

Fullness of the Promises of Divine Aid to the Disci-
ples in their office of Witnessing to the Lord — They
reach to Words as well as to Thoughts — Concerning the
Nature and the Limits of Human Testimony — Did the
Holy Spirit secure the absolute accuracy of the Chosen
Witnesses in every detail of every thing their Witness
touched upon ? — St. Jerome's and St. Augustine's opin-
ion that He did — The accuracy of each Statement in
the Gospels can be verified — Bearing of this fact upon
the Inspiration of the whole Bible 134-146

PAET SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

STYLE OF THE EVANGELISTS.

Underestimate of the literary and historic merits of
the Evangelists — Of their Style — Its fitness to their
subject — Inquiry into the charge that they were heed-
less in marking Times and Seasons — Their Silence as

CONTENTS. 7

to the Day of our Lord's Birth — The Full Beginning
of His Ministry in Galilee, and other Dates in the
Gospels 147-158

CHAPTER II.

TIME OF ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL.

Introduction to an Essay concerning some remarkable
peculiarities of the Earliest of the Gospels 159-163

The believers in Christ Jesus as the Messiah looked
upon, for a time, as a Jewish sect from which nothing
was to be feared — The state of Feeling in Jerusalem
after the Crucifixion — Change seen in the arrest of St.
Stephen — Character and intent of the Persecution that
followed — Its effect upon one then writing of the origin
of the imperiled Sect — General and special Evidence
in St. Matthew's Gospel that it was written as early as
the Seventh year after the Crucifixion — Of the Trans-
ferring of his Gospel by the Apostle himself, at a later
Date, from the Aramean tongue into the Greek. 164-195

CHAPTER III.

THE GENEALOGY IN ST. MATTHEW.

Bearings of the Discovery, verified in the preceding
chapter, upon St. Matthew's giving the Genealogy of
St. Joseph to prove the Messianic lineage of Jesus —
Loss of much knowledge of ancient Jewish usages, and
the gradual recovery of some of that knowledge — Feat-
ures of the Genealogy in the Earliest Gospel — How it
proves the ancestry of Jesus — The reason why St. Mat-
thew did not give the Genealogy of the Mother of our
Lord — Evidence of this in some verses in the Gospel of
St. Luke 196-208

8 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GOSPEL OF THE INFANCY.

Alleged variances between the Gospels of St. Matthew
and St. Luke as to the Infancy — They grow out of St.
Matthew's concern for the safety of the Blessed Virgin
— Importance of the Time-Order of the Gospels — St.
Luke's Silence concerning the Coming of the Magi and
the Flight into Egypt — St. Matthew's caution reaches
to the kindred of the Holy Virgin — Evidence of this in
his silence concerning the two miracles wrought in Cana
of Galilee — Similar caution in the Second and Third
Gospels 209-226

PAET THIED.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORAL AND THE WRITTEN GOSPEL.

Of the Thirty-three recorded Miracles, all the Evan-
gelists record the Sacramental Miracle — Twelve mira-
cles belong to the Oral Gospel, and probably Five
others — Five are given only in the Gospel of St. John —
The recital by the Three earlier Evangelists of the
other Ten recorded miracles, shown to be related to
their Characters, or to the Plans of their Gospels, or to
something peculiar to those miracles — The Healing of
Malchus, the Paying of the Temple-Tax, and other
Miracles — The relation of the Discourses and Parables
in the Earlier Gospels to the Oral Gospel — Absence of
Parables from the Last Gospel 227-239

CONTENTS. 9

CHAPTER II.

ST. JOHN AND THE EARLIER GOSPELS.

Reasons for Treating of the Earlier Chapters of the
] ast Gospel — The Different Portraits of John the Bap-
t st — consistency of his Character and History — Why
Lis personal Testimony to the Messiah is given only in
the Final Gospel — Of the bringing in of his Witness into
the Prelude to the Gospel of St. John 240-253

CHAPTER III.

THE EARLIER CHAPTERS OF ST. JOHN.

Of the Continuing of the Proclamation of the Baptist
— Of the Earlier Ministry of the Lord in Judea as a test
of its Fitness to be the Field of the Gospel, and as Pre-
paratory to the Full Beginning of His Ministry — The
Miracle at the Wedding-Feast at Cana in Galilee — The
Cleansing of the Temple — The Coming of Nicodemus
by Night — The Silence of John concerning the Miracles
then wrought in Jerusalem — His reference to the Im-
prisonment of the Baptist — The Warning sent to Jesus,
and His Flight from Judea — The Revelation of the
Messiahship to the Woman of Samaria 254-274

CHAPTER IV.

ST. JOHN AND THE EARLIER GOSPELS.

Nathanael's Confession, and the Earlier Call of cer-
tain of the Disciples — The Confession of the Disciples
recorded by St. John not to be confounded with the
later Confession at Caesarea-Philippi — Of the Prudence

10 CONTENTS.

of our Lord as made known in the Earlier Chapters of
the Final Gospel — Why only one Going up to Jerusalem
is spoken of in the Earlier Gospels 275-286

CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST AND THE SECOND GOSPELS.

Of the Theory that the Earliest Gospel was for the
Jews, the Second for the Romans, and the Third for the
Greeks — Of St. Matthew's historic Gifts — Differences
between his Gospel and St. Mark's and St. Luke's —
The Descriptions of the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,
in the first and second Gospels, compared — Of St. Mat-
thew and St. Peter as narrators — The originating motive
of the Second Gospel — Other motives — Its evidence
of the Incarnation — Testimony of the Fathers to St.
Mark's having written out the Gospel of St. Peter —
Of the Divine Foreshaping of the Facts that were to
become a part of the Holy Gospel 287-319

CHAPTER VI.

THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE.

Of St. Luke's Repetition of some Facts for the third
time — New material in his Gospel — The testimony of
the Fathers to St. Luke's having written out the Gospel
of St. Paul — The Common Interpretation of St. Luke's
Preface untenable — Interpreted in harmony with its his-
toric relations — Of what St. Paul wrote to the Galatians
concerning his Gospel — The Epistle to the Hebrews —
The Acts of the Apostles — St. Luke writes under the
eye and in the Defense of the Apostle to the Gentiles —

CONTENTS. I I

yet St. Luke is more than the Champion of St. Paul and
more than the Historian of the Church — The Relation
of the Third Gospel to the Lord Jesus 320-344

CHAPTER VII.

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS.

Characteristics and Harmonies of the Gospels — The
unfolding of the Revelation of Christ Jesus as the Son
of God, and then as the Son of Man — Relations, in this
point of view, of the Earlier Gospels to the Last — The
Gospel of St. John — It looks more to the Future than
the other Gospels, and completes the Evangeliad — The
Argument in all the Gospels made by the Saviour him-
self— The unfolding Revelation of Christ Jesus in the
Gospels follows the same Course as the unfolding of the
Revelation of Christ Jesus in the Course of events —
Evidence of the Inspiration of the Gospel in that it is
the True image and likeness of the Lord 345 -358

CHAPTER VIII.

UNITY OF THE EVANGELIAD.

Special Affinities and Correspondences between the
Four Gospels, and between parts of the Same Gospel —
Allusions to the Ascension in the Final Gospel — De-
scription of the reception of each of the Four Gospels
in its turn by the Christian Congregation in the city of
Alexandria 359—367

INTRODUCTION.

CONTROVERSY concerning Christ Jesus is
going on in all the fields of thought, in all
the walks of life — and he that is not with Him
is against Him. Every-where there is confession or
denial of the Eternal Word, who was born of the
Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate. One
of the many forms of this controversy is the world-
wide debate concerning his written word. It began
with other generations, and it may outlast genera-
tions yet unborn. Of this strife as to the Bible, the
Gospels are the center ; and there the Living Word,
in the appointed time, will gain for his written word
the battle that he cannot lose.

Christ's ever-existing Congregation, of its own
knowledge and memory, affirms that St. Matthew,
St. Mark, St. Luke and St. John wrote the Gospels ;
and of its own spiritual consciousness it affirms that
they were moved to write by the Holy Ghost.
These affirmations should determine the judgment,
and they do bind the conscience. It, then, may
seem irreverent to inquire further into the construe-

14 INTRODUCTION.

tion of the holy Gospels ; yet Christians are to "give
a reason for the faith." That reason must be some-
what adapted to the unbelief that makes it needful
to give that reason ; and it is the duty of Christians
to answer all proper questions concerning the time,
the writers, and the inspiration of the Gospels.
Yet such is the insolence of the challenge of infi-
dels that it is hard to keep from treating it with
the silence of contempt ; for, making larger demands
on credulity than pagan priestcraft ever made, they
would have us believe the double wonder, that the
ever-existing Congregation of the Lord knows noth-
ing of her own records, and that of those records
they know every thing.

One needs be quick to seize upon what seems to
them their argument, for capriciously, suddenly, and
frequently it shifts its ground, moves its dates back-
ward and forward, and changes its form. Just now
what they have to say runs thus : The Gospels are
later than the time of the disciples ; their contra-
dictions are many ; their character, legendary and
superstitious. The Epistles are the earliest Chris-
tian writings. Only four of the thirteen that pass
for St. Paul's (those to the Galatians, Corinthians,
and Romans) are indisputably his. The disciples
never thought of any written memorial of their
Lord, because they were looking for the end of the
world. But time went on : pious imaginings of

INTRODUCTION. 1 5

what Jesus might have said and might have done
(sometimes enkindled by what the prophets were
thought to have foretold) intermingled with what
Jesus said and did ; and, at length, fragments of
those traditions were gathered up and written out.
These private memoranda were of no official or
sacred character, and they were less valued than
the common, unwritten tradition. Time went on,
and more scrap-books were made ; they were more
prized, and they grew in size. Then unknown
hands, at unknown times, pasted together these
fragments of things remembered and of things
imagined, and — behold! an infidel miracle more as-
tounding than any Christian miracle — they made
two of the holy Gospels ! Even so the universe
was framed by the chance-concurring of unintelli-
gent atoms — the harmonious universe, written all
over with forethought and design !

They say this hap-hazard gathering together of
sayings of Jesus and of sayings put into his lips
was the earliest form of St. Matthew's Gospel.
Thus, unwittingly, they give the early Christians
the praise of thinking more of the words than of
the works of the Lord, save his death on the cross.
But, dimly seeing that such a divorce of his words
from his works is incredible, they go on to conject-
ure that a second form of St. Matthew's Gospel
was soon made by constructing around his sayings

1 6 INTRODUCTION.

a framework of accordant events — truly, another
astounding miracle ! And some think the first
Gospel developed itself out of the second.

In words betraying a dead conscience they say
that one " honest fraud " was baptized in St. Mat-
thew's name, and another in the name of St. Mark.
Out of similar material St. Luke's Gospel was fash-
ioned, and, with the Acts, was shaped to suit the
aims of one of the parties among the early Chris-
tians— that is, the third Gospel and the Acts were
two political pamphlets. The last Gospel is a re-
ligious novel composed for " pious purposes " after
the death of the last apostle ; but, with a com-
mendable modesty in those who know every thing
else, they cannot tell who wrote the Gospel of St.
John,

To borrow terms from their self-complacent jar-
gon, " the more advanced " do not " accept " the
superhuman. Still, their reluctance to own that
there can be aught that is greater than themselves
is offset by their readiness to " accept " the degra-
dation of themselves ; for, with their denial of God,
there goes a denial of the spiritual, the immortal
in man, and of all that constitutes the difference
between men and the brutes, out of whom these
dehumanized creatures feel that they evolved.

This is a fair summing up of all that there is in

the ponderous, multitudinous volumes of the unbe-
lt

INTRODUCTION. 1 7

lief of our time concerning the holy Gospels. With
this lunacy it is humiliating to contend ! — yet schol-
ars, in different countries, working long in concert,
have, contrived to throw around this nonsense an
air of learning and almost an air of sense. They
have almost persuaded themselves that the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus is the fable they wish it were.
This is their hope, not their conviction ; yet they
destroy many. Their madness wears " a reasoning
show;" and some who argue against it countenance
it by the concessions of wavering faith, of secret
unbelief, of thirst for celebrity, and of the lack of
common sense.

In this volume the results of my thinking are
often so shaped as to answer some of the charges
against the Gospels without otherwise alluding to
them ; but its purpose is a more difficult one. It
inquires into the construction, the method, of the
holy Gospels, and into their affinities with each
other. It treats of the relations between the two
apostolic Evangelists, St. Matthew and St. John.
It determines the date of one of the Gospels by an
original course of investigation. In a word, the
motive of this volume is to do something toward
clearing up the question, How did the four Gospels
come to be, in manner and form, as they are ? What
is here written could not have been thought out

without the help of others in all past time, and I
2

18 INTRODUCTION.

hope that in future times others may eliminate
what there may here be of error, supply what there
may be of deficiency, and that the truth, so made
perfect, may abide when I am forgotten.

Inquiry into the construction of the Gospels meets
with difficult questions : thus, in the Gospels, there
is apparently the witness of only two of the Twelve ;
where is that of the Ten? And why is our Lord's
ministry in Judea, until the week of his passion,
passed over by three of the Evangelists ? The an-
swers here given to these and other questions may
be of use in the present debate as to the Scriptures;
and, apart from any transitory worth as defensive
against assaults upon the Bible that will in time of
themselves come to nothing, a true insight into the
construction of the Gospels is of lasting value, be-
cause of its emphatic, and, at times, surprising con-
firmation of some of the higher truths of our holy
religion.

I hold to the religious worth of this volume with
the more confidence, because the greater part of its
material is drawn from the Gospels. If it elucidates
its subject, it could be drawn from no other source.
Some few important facts concerning their con-
struction rest, in the main, on historical evidence,
though having confirmation from Scripture ; yet I
think that in the end my friendly and tireless
reader will be convinced that for a general state-

INTRODUCTION. 19

ment this is true : Almost all that can be known of
the construction of the Gospels comes from the
Gospels themselves ; tradition adds little to what,
in one way or another, can be made out from what
* they hint at or from what they say.

The Gospels are the monuments of their own
history. There is no record of their generation ;
but there they are, eternal as the hills, of whose
generation there is also no record. The memory
of man runneth not to the time when the mount-
ains were brought forth ; yet geologic theory, by
means of facts inwrought into their fabric, so well
explains their formation as to be received as their
true history. In like manner, the true theory of
the construction of the Gospels may be discovered
through facts inwrought into themselves.

Once it was thought that the mountains were
made by direct volition, no time elapsing, no agen-
cies employed. We now think differently; and,
though created mind knows nothing of what crea-
tion may be in itself, yet hints in nature and in
revelation encourage man to trace the ongoings of
the force called into creative action by the Eternal
Word in those great days described by the Prophet
Micah as " days of eternity." In those six days
He made all things through forces by him called
into being, and put under world-times and laws.
Science cannot go behind that " beginning" and

20 INTRODUCTION.

stand with God in the secret chamber of creative
energy ; still it can discern the power of the Word
of God, as manifest through the work of his agen-
cies, in the forming worlds. This difficult knowl-
edge of the discoverable ways of the forces through
which he made the worlds, lessens not our sense of
the glory of the creating Word who called into
being the earth and the heavens. In like manner
our sense of the divine glory, abiding in, and out-
shining from, the holy Gospels, is heightened by
wisely tracing there the free-will of man, made sub-
ject to, and working in harmony with, the will of
God. '

THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

PAET FIEST.

CHAPTER I.

OPENING THE WAY.

tHE significance of a first official act is fore-
shadowing. Christ Jesus was Son of God and
Son of man, and his ministry began with two
official acts pointing onward and opening out in the
future. On the first of these light falls from the be-
ginning of the written word. Through the tempta-
tion of a being of another order, the first pair of the
true human race, enlightened by the true light, fell
from innocence ; in that hour of ruin to them and to
all who should descend from them by ordinary gener-
ation, there was a mysterious promise of a Redeemer
of woman born ; and, " in the fullness of time," the
One foretold as the Son of the Virgin was led into
the wilderness of Sinai by the Spirit of God to be
tempted of the devil. His victory over Satan was
the first official act of the Son of God and Son of
man, who was made manifest that he might destroy
the devil and his works.

When he came up out of the desert the first offi-
cial act of the Son of God and Son of man was to

22 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

call witnesses to himself. This he did before he
preached any sermon, before he wrought any mir-
acle. Even in the days of the Baptist (though
some deny this) He had marked out his lines of ac-
tion. Even in that early time he had in mind fit-
ting memorials of himself — the living congregation
and the written word.

The first official act of his witnesses was of similar
significance. Their Lord had said, "Ye shall bear
witness of me, because ye have been with me from
the beginning;" and, because of their like qualifica-
tion for the office, the eleven selected Justus and
Matthias, that one of them might be a chosen wit-
ness, instead of the traitor, who had gone to his
own place. The first official act of the Apostles,
then, proves that it was tneir office to bear witness,
that Jesus is the Christ ; and (as will be seen here-
after) the Holy Spirit led them, in fulfilling their
witness, to record so much of the life of the Lord
on earth as is written in the four Gospels, and no
more.

It is reasonable to hope that on the occasion of
the choice of Matthias, some of the disciples' ideas
concerning the fulfilling of their office may (not
formally perhaps, yet naturally) appear, in what
was then said, as well as in what was done. And
St. Peter's saying, that one must be chosen, who,
with his brethren and himself, should witness to the
Resurrection, shows that with St. Peter the Resur-
rection was the pre-eminent sign that Jesus was
the Christ — as, indeed, Jesus himself had taught
his disciples.

MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION. 23

Here it may be well to inquire into the meaning
and significance of the Resurrection to the Disciples.
Of the state of the departed they had the notions
common to the people of their country and time.
While their Master's body lay dead in the garden-
sepulcher they knew he still lived in the spirit, as
surely as Moses and Elias lived, whom three of them
had seen. They were familiar with the idea of a
ghost; and the appearing of their dead Master's
spirit would have revealed to them only what they
believed before. They distinguished between such
an apparition as Samuel's ghost, and a man living
again. St. Thomas was slow to believe, because he
knew how great was the wonder of the unhoped-
for, unlooked-for coming back of Jesus in the flesh.
Some of its phenomena were ghost-like ; yet at last
all his Disciples were sure that their Master lived
again in the body that was crucified ; and, therefore,
they were sure that he had prevailed over death as
never man prevailed. His still living in the spirit,
if it were any victory over death, would have been
a victory common to all who died. It would have
been no triumph over the grave befitting the only
begotten Son of God ; but his coming back as a man
was such a triumph.

This witness of the Disciples fully meets the un-
belief in the Resurrection which takes it to have
been unreal though it seemed a reality to them.
That unbelief conjectures that a phantom seemed
to appear to the over-excited minds of some of
the friends of the murdered prophet, as to Brutus
Caesar's ghost appeared, or to Macbeth the air-drawn

24 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

dagger. Because the hysterical Magdalene thought
she saw something others thought they saw some-
thing ; and those stories lost nothing in the telling,
lost nothing in the lapse of time. Around this in-
genuity there can be thrown a taking air of superi-
ority to common superstitions, but it does not meet
the facts in Scripture or in history. Such an in-
effectual ghost would only have caused a passing
spasm of wonder and fright ; and what is most real
in the world's life came not from unreality.

The Resurrection meant more to the Disciples
than that Jesus was alive again. The son of the
widow of Nain lived again in body and spirit ; so
did Lazarus; yet they lived subject, as before, to
the laws of space and time, and to die again and to
be buried, as other men are buried. The Lord
lived again in body and spirit, a man ; yet a man
not subject to the common wants and the common
lot of humanity.

The Resurrection meant even more than this to
his disciples. Christ Jesus took again the life he
had laid down, and therefore they knew that over
him the power of death had only been through his
own will. By his Resurrection he was declared to be
the Son of God. His resurrection revealed that he
could deliver from sin, and from death the conse-
quence of sin. With his resurrection the wonder-
ing eyes of his disciples began to open to that tri-
umph of Jesus over both sin and death, which led
St. Paul to cry out, in words that millions will make
their own, until the sounds are lost in the good-
cheer of the last trumpet : " O death ! where is thy

MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION. 2$

sting! The sting of death is sin, but thanks be to
God who giveth us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ ! "

The whole of Christianity is bound up with the
resurrection of Christ Jesus as a man. His resur-
rection, when taken with the reason for his life on
earth, and with the dominion given to the risen
Christ over things created because he was obedient
unto death, is prophetic of the dominion to be
given to the new race of men, who, attaining to the
resurrection in the likeness of their Redeemer, are
to be " joint-heirs with Christ." All these things,
known or foreknown, helped to form the Disciples'
idea of that Resurrection which was their great evi-
dence that Jesus was the Son of God ; and it is to
this Resurrection, (so unknown to their thoughts be-
fore,)— to this Resurrection of Christ Jesus as a man,
yet as a man clothed with power over all things in
heaven and in earth — to this glorious Resurrection
of Christ, with all its far-reaching consequences to
all who are born again in his likeness, and to all the
intelligences of the one indivisible universe — that
his Disciples testify. Such is the Resurrection that
was made known to them " by infallible proofs," and
that may now be known to all by their witness, and
by the indwelling of Christ in the heart, and by his
control of all human events.

The death of Christ Jesus on the cross was wit-
nessed by men and women who had followed him
from Galilee, by the citizens of Jerusalem, by the
Jews who came to the Passover, and by soldiers of
Rome. His Resurrection was not so open ; but

26 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

every eye shall see the risen Lord when he comes
to judge the quick and the dead. Of that hour no
man knoweth, and until that hour his Resurrection
will remain a fact that men may receive or may re-
ject. Of that fact the Disciples are the witnesses
chosen by Christ himself; and I hold this to be one
of the first and greatest of questions touching the
origin and construction of the Gospels, How did the
Disciples try to prove that fact ? In what did they
find the evidence of the Resurrection to consist ?
The true answer, which sets the Gospels in a some-
what new light, comes from the Apostles them-
selves, and can be determined only by their words
and acts.

Now, what St. Peter said on the occasion of the
choice of Matthias, proves that the Disciples thought
that their witness to the Resurrection, in the main,
consisted of their witness to the life of Christ Jesus
before his crucifixion. For the chief of the Disciples
did not say that the new witness must be that one
of the outer circle who had been most favored with
the presence of the Crucified ; he did not say he
must be Cleophas or his companion, with whom the
risen Christ had talked on the way to Emmaus, and
to whom He made himself known in the breaking
of the bread ; he did not say he must be one of
the five hundred by whom He was seen at once.
He did not put forward any such qualification. He
had something different in mind ; for he said that he
must be chosen from those who had " companied
with the Disciples all the time that the Lord Jesus
went in and out among them, even from the bap-

EVIDENCE OF THE RESURRECTION. 2J

tism of John." Why from among those f The se-
quence of his thoughts, and their sweeping clear
back to the days of John, make it certain that his
answer to this question would have been, Because
the life of Jesus before his crucifixion is convincing
evidence that he could not be holde?i of death.

Since this is so, skeptics do not understand the
case made out by the Disciples. The main evidence
they bring forward to prove their Master risen from
the dead is not what skeptics take it to be, when
they say that the testimony to the Resurrection is
too slight to prove so wonderful a fact. Underly-
ing this is the reasonable idea that no common testi-
mony of the senses can establish a fact so out of the
common course of things. Judging by their tone
in speaking, for example, of the raising of Lazarus,
they think that such a phenomenon could only be
proved, so as to command belief, by a scientific
commission that should ascertain, by every known
test, that a man was dead, and then, in the same
way, that he was alive again. And there is sense
in this ; for though, concerning such broad and
easily-ascertainable facts as life and death, common
observation may be nearly or quite as conclusive as
scientific experiment, still it may well be doubted
whether common observation, or scientific experi-
ment, or both united, could establish to the general
satisfaction a special fact so out of the general
course of things as the resurrection of a man. The
skeptic is right as to the almost insuperable diffi-
culty of proving the Resurrection of Jesus by the
testimony of the fallible human senses. He is

28 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

wrong in thinking this was not as well known to the
Disciples as to himself; and he is wrong in thinking
that their main reliance was on such evidence.

The Chief of the Twelve knew the insufficiency of
such evidence alone, for he knew the fallibility of the
human senses as well as any man knows it. As to
that fallibility St. Peter uttered the coolest opinion
a man ever uttered. He had seen his Lord trans-
figured ; he had seen Moses and Elias as they
talked with Him ; and he no more doubted those
things than he doubted his own existence. He
would have denied his own existence as soon as he
would have denied what he had seen ; and yet, while
declaring that his testimony to the wonders in the
Holy Mount was no " cunningly devised fable," he
said, " Yet we have a more sure word of prophecy."
That is, the Chief of the Apostles would not trust,
nor would he have us trust, to the testimony of
one man of fallible senses, though that man was
himself, as he trusted, and as he would have us
trust, in the concurring voices of the whole volume
of prophecy.

It is hardly less instructive that St. Matthew, in
the brief record of all the testimony of the senses
to the Resurrection that he thought it needful to
give, mentions that of those who saw and heard the
risen Christ " some doubted." He must, then, have
been intelligent of the insufficiency of such testi-
mony ; and the construction of the last chapter of
his Gospel proves he knew as well as St. Peter that
the Resurrection did not rest on such evidence
alone, and that the evidence of that wonder and

EVIDENCE OF THE RESURRECTION. 29

sign only became entirely sufficient when other tes-
timony of a broader and higher kind was combined
with that of the senses.

The disciples were not the " visionaries " that
some would like to make them out. Of the strong
and the wise not many are called ; but such are
called when there is work to be done that only
the strong and the wise can do. And the natural
gifts of the Disciples were such that, through the
enlarging influence of great events, and through
all the holy influences that wrought within them,
they could and did become great men, and of a
greatness the like of which was never known before
or since.

And here, while breaking the ground and marking
the way, let me further illustrate the bearing of this
study of the Gospels on the questionings of doubt
and unbelief, by what I find to have been the fact,
that in the minds of the Evangelists the need of the
testimony of the senses to the Resurrection was re-
duced to a minimum by the life of their Lord before
his crucifixion. " In their light seeing light," that
life is seen to be testimony to His Resurrection of so
high an order, that although it does not supersede
that of the senses, it reduces to the very least the
need of any such testimony. For a man reading
the Gospel for the first time, and by grace believing,
would be almost sure, before he came to the end,
that if the Lord laid down his life he would take it
again. The wonder of his Resurrection as a man
fits exactly the wonder of his life as a man. That
the Eternal Word, though in the form of man, con-

30 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

sented unto death, is the most incredible of all
things ; yet, as he did consent to the dishonor of
the grave, it is most credible that he rose from the
grave in the same body that died ; for only by his
Resurrection in the same body could his victory over
sin and death be a divinely complete victory.

In these facts is the reason for what now tries the
faith of so many, that even the earliest Evangelist
did not give more of the human evidence of the
Resurrection. To St. Matthew's mind it may have
seemed — to his mind, touched by the Spirit, it could
not but have seemed — that, after what he had writ-
ten of the life of the Son of God, there was very
little need of such evidence. And the more the soul
is in sympathy with St. Matthew, the more it learns
from him how it ought to feel, the better it under-
stands his treatment of the time after the crucifixion,
and the more that treatment commends itself to
the reason. The resurrection was such an inevi-
table consequence of the life of the Lord that the
wise evangelist knew it was needless to accumulate
other evidence — that to do this would weaken rath-
er than strengthen the evidence he gave. He knew
the force of his evident conviction, that, by those to
whom he had made known the life of the Lord, only
so little of all the evidence at his command was
needed. And this feeling on the part of St. Mat-
thew is an element in his testimony that is of almost
irresistible power. Every one feels its force, whether
they understand the nature of it or not. In human
testimony there can hardly be a greater power than
the word of such a witness.

EVIDENCE OF THE RESURRECTION. 3 1

The reason for the silence of St. Matthew and
also of St. John, as to the Ascension, is of the same
kind. They felt that all those who read their Gos-
pels, without being told would know that the Lord
from heaven had again ascended into heaven ; and
the effect of that conviction is the same.

To St. Matthew the dwelling of the Lord with
his people in the Spirit, the " Lo, I am with you
alway," so transcended His departure from them in
the body, as to make that departure of little mo-
ment in comparison. He knew that if he then de-
scribed the Ascension it would lessen the impress-
iveness of that promise. The reasons for describing
the Ascension grew stronger with time : the Gospel
of St. Mark speaks of it, and St. Luke describes it
twice ; but the earlier Christian generations were in
such fine accord with St. Matthew's feeling that,
for four hundred years, they did not keep the festi-
val of the Ascension.

In his last short chapter St. Matthew completes
his proof of the Resurrection ; and there his main
intent is to give the evidence of the Resurrection in
the time after the Crucifixion, as, in all his Gospel
before, he had given the evidence of it in the time
before the Crucifixion. In that short chapter he
proves the Resurrection by the testimony of the
senses, in his characteristic way combining brevity
and fullness. And in that chapter he also gives fur-
ther evidence of it. This evidence is, that Christ
is ever with his people ; and from its being the last
word of his Gospel, it may, perhaps, be right to
conclude that he felt it to be his strongest evidence.

32 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

In that chapter, though his intent be directly to
prove the Resurrection, he fears not to tell that
even of the witnesses to the risen Lord some
doubted ; for he knew there was proof of the Resur-
rection in the words, " I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world," that surpassed all
other — a proof that would be personal proof to
every one of his people, inwrought into their con-
sciousness, written on their hearts, attested by their
lives ; a kind of proof that, losing nothing by time,
would grow stronger to the end of the world.

St. Paul recites another kind of testimony to the
risen Lord: how He was seen by Peter, by James
the Lord's brother, by all the Disciples ; how He
was seen by five hundred of the brethren at once,
and by himself. He knew full well the value and
the need of such testimony of the senses; yet how
much more satisfying the witness within his own
soul, when he said, " It is not I that live, but Christ
who liveth in me !" St. Matthew knew of that kind
of testimony as well as St. Paul ; and, to make more
impressive its pre-eminent worth, he did not close
his Gospel, as otherwise he might well have done,
with the Ascension. He closed his Gospel with the
promise of the Lord to dwell forever with his peo-
ple— a promise to whose fulfillment the holy and
universal Church doth ever bear witness. He
closed his Gospel with revealing that for his peo-
ple Christ forever reigns : " All power is given
unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore,
and teach all nations, . . . and, lo, I am with you al-
way, even unto the end of the world."

DESPAIR OF THE DISCIPLES. 33

And yet the behavior of the Disciples, while their
Master's body lay in the sepulcher, so contradicts
the truth that the life of Christ Jesus before his
Crucifixion is evidence of his Resurrection, that it
needs to be well considered. They did not hope
to see him alive again ; even the favored Three, who
beheld his glory in the Holy Mount, had no such
hope. The Jews, remembering something that
sounded to them like a prediction that he would
rise again, set a watch over the sepulcher ; but,
though the Master had more than once told his
Disciples that he should die and rise again the
third day, his words were then as if he had not
said them.

With a show of reason, skeptics say, that, had
those words been spoken, there could not have
been that despair ; and that those oracles must
have been imagined or devised after the belief in
his Resurrection sprang up. But in the mental
states of the Disciples there are veins of psycho-
logical evidence for the truthfulness of the Gospels
not as yet worked out. Their relation to their
Master is not the simple problem it may seem to
be. It is strange that they could have been so ig-
norant of Messianic prophecy — but there is such
ignorance of Messianic prophecy even now. They
had learned from the prophets that the Messiah
would be a king ; but not that he would enter on
his reign through death. That the seed is not
quickened except it die, which has taught us so
little, had as yet taught them nothing. They un-
derstood, even less than we, that the path of life is
3

34 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

through the gate-ways of death. The reproof of two
of the outer circle of his Disciples by the risen Lord
fitted them all : " O fools, and slow of heart to be-
lieve all that the prophets have spoken ; ought not
the Christ to have suffered ? "

The Disciples thought their Master was to be so
holy, so wise and great a king, that all the earth in
him would be blessed, yet still a king like kings of
the earth. Before them visions passed. " We have
forsaken all," said Peter; "what shall we have?'*
Salome asked that when Jesus sat on his throne
one of her sons might sit on his right hand, the
other on his left hand ; and the Ten were in a rage
when they found out that, through their mother's
solicitation, James and John had secretly tried _ to
secure the two best places beforehand. All this
came suddenly to an end. Their selfish, earthly
hopes and desires were destroyed by their Master's
unlooked-for death, and their better thoughts, feel-
ings, and memories went down in the wreck.

The manifestation of their Lord was compressed
into a short space of time. They could not keep
up with its divine swiftness. The contrast between
what they looked for and what came was too much
for them. Their souls were prostrate before mar-
vels too quick, too near, too awful for comprehen-
sion. When Peter was told to put up his sword he
could not understand it. His Master seemed to
have forsaken Himself, and he forsook his Master.
When Peter swore he did not know the man, what
he meant as a lie very nearly expressed his own
feeling, and that of the others, at the time. The

DESPAIR OF THE DISCIPLES. 35

helplessness of those children when their Master
died was as natural as their desertion when he suf-
fered himself to be led away prisoner. Their de-
sertion was weakness, not treachery ; their helpless-
ness was stupefaction, not despair. Their desertion
does not prove they were destitute of love ; their
helplessness does not prove that they had no
faith.

They no more knew what their Master meant
when he told them he should die, than little chil-
dren know what their mother means when she talks
of her own death. They were afraid to ask the
meaning of the dark saying. " Lord, it shall not
be," they said, as some faint glimpse of his purpose
shone into their minds. Even this passed away.
They would not, and they could not, understand
him. Their Master knew this so well that he did
not try to make them. They would not, they could
not, think He would die. Surely not then ! surely
not as he told them ! Whatever his meaning, it
could not be that. He was in the prime of life,
not worn by sickness, not bent by time ! and what
were mortal enemies to Him, whom death obeyed !
Some men are so full of vitality that we almost feel
as if they could not die. The disciples had a simi-
lar, but stronger, feeling as to their Master. They
felt that death could have no power over such a
manner of man ; and there was a depth of wisdom
in the feeling ! The Lord laid down his life ; no
man took it from him. The light was so near his
Disciples as to dazzle their eyes. No men could
have been at home, at once, in the new world they

36 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

had entered ; and their bewilderment, though at
times contrasting strangely with the quickness of
others, was that of minds struggling to comprehend,
and is evidence of latent intelligence rather than of
stupidity.

These considerations may help us to understand
the Disciples ; but their bad behavior at the trial of
their Master, and their despair while his body lay in
the tomb, cannot be rightly judged, nor their his-
tory be made consistent, apart from the fact that
the fullness of the time of the Holy Ghost was not
till after the resurrection. When I said that the
life of Christ is convincing evidence of his resurrec-
tion, I meant that it is so when the Holy Spirit in-
terprets and makes it real. After the Pentecost
that life was shown by the Spirit to the Disciples as
they had not seen it before. They had seen it part
at a time ; then it was seen as a whole ; then it was
seen in its true relations to the past and to the fu-
ture ; and then they knew that Christ came into the
world to die for the world.

The change from helplessness to strength, from
hopelessness to courage, was marvelous ; but equally
marvelous the sudden enlargement of their knowl-
edge of what the law foreshadowed and the proph-
ets foretold of their Master, and the change in their
ideas of his kingdom. The Disciples were not the
men they had been. They breathed another at-
mosphere ; they lived in another world. These
great changes were brought about by the Resurrec-
tion and by the coming of the Holy Ghost. As it
has so often been clearly shown by others, they

CHANGE IN THE DISCIPLES. 37

explain, and nothing else can explain, the sudden
transformation of Disciples into Apostles.

From the Epistle to the Hebrews, which was
written while the Temple stood, the suddenness of
the intellectual change in the Disciples may be in-
ferred, and also the breadth of that change. That
Epistle brings out meaning in the old types and
prophecies of which the Disciples knew little before
the coming of the Holy Ghost ; and it teaches that
the Christian religion is the completion of the He-
brew religion. It is true that, for a time, many
Christians took themselves to be a Hebrew sect, and
did not understand that only those Hebrews who
received Jesus as the Messiah were true to the He-
brew religion, and that all the Hebrews who rejected
Christ Jesus (by faith in whom Abraham and the
prophets were saved) were apostates from the He-
brew religion. Bitter and long were the birth-pangs
before the higher spiritual life of Christianity was
fully severed from Judaism ; and a hankering after
the ritualism slain by the word spoken at the well
of Jacob has not withered out of some Christian
hearts ; yet the Epistle to the Hebrews sets forth
the faith of the Christian congregation even at the
time when it was written.

Now, long before that Epistle to the Hebrews,
St. Matthew inwrought into his Gospel the truth,
that in Christ Jesus the prophecy of a suffering
Messiah, and of the spiritual glory of his kingdom,
had passed into fact. And, though for three days
the Disciples were like little children whose souls
are paralyzed by the look of the dead, still the

38 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

earliest Gospel proves that, through the power of
the Holy Spirit, the life of Jesus soon became to
his Disciples such evidence of his Divinity that, in
their minds, his Resurrection passed from the roll
of strange, incredible things into the roll of things
of course.

INTENT TO HAVE A WRITTEN GOSPEL. 39

CHAPTER II.

INTENT TO HAVE A WRITTEN GOSPEL.

URELY it was not "the Archangel ruined"
who deluded men into saying that the Wit-
nesses never thought of putting their wit-
ness into writing ! They must have been fooled by
some imp, like Caliban. Can they prove that the
alphabet was no more known to Jerusalem than
before the days of Cadmus to the future Athens?
Have they found out that the disciples were not
men of their own race? Have they discovered
they were not men at all ? These things they
must discover and prove to give a color even of pos-
sibility to their words. Men ever try to keep alive
the memory of the great. The rude barrow as well
as the obelisk or pyramid testifies to the human
desire. The recording instinct is a part of the
human nature, and the savage shows himself to
be no brute by piling up stones to commemorate a
chief.

The ancient genealogies of the people of whom
the Witnesses were born, prove their record-keep-
ing habit. Their people treasured up writings that
were from before Abraham's day ; they treasured
up, in writing, the family histories of the patriarchs,
and even the oracles of the false prophet whom

40 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Moab called from the East to lay an interdict on
Israel that would kindle up the warlike zeal of its
enemies into mad fanaticism.

The unrolling of the Scriptures on every Sabbath
made the use of books known to the most illiterate
of that people. In the schools of the synagogues
they all had the means of learning how to read and
write. The Witnesses could secure the precision
and permanency of their witness only by putting it
in writing ; and yet we are told to believe that they
never thought of doing so ! The demand awakens
more of scorn even than of wonder; yet infidels,
whether misunderstanding or misrepresenting, are
curiously ingenious in arguing on the wrong side
of every question — and let them be heard.

They strangely fancy that they were the first to
mark that Jesus himself wrote nothing ; and some
of them intimate that he knew not how to write.
Their argument requires this ; and all they say of
the origin of Christianity shows an ignorance of
Hebrew civilization, dishonors the intelligence of
the Disciples, and of our Master and theirs.

They go on to argue that, in spite of the words
of the angel, " Why stand ye gazing up into heav-
en?" the Witnesses kept on gazing till not only
parchment but frail papyrus paper was too lasting
for a memorial of Him whom they hourly looked to
see coming as they had seen him go into heaven.
They should learn how men act now, before ordain-
ing, in the oracular tone of prophets, how men must
have acted ages ago. There are some Christians
now who fix the last Coming within a month or a

TRADITION OF THE ELDERS. 41

year, and yet they sign leases, build houses, and
marry off their children. Like them, some of the
early Christians fixed the time of the world's end
too definitely. To such in Corinth St. Paul wrote,
that a train of events must pass before the last
Great Day, whose time none could foreknow; and
his epistle was soon read in all the Christian con-
gregations. On every side there are persistent mis^
representations of their belief; but, certainly, it was
not such as to prevent their taking thought for the
morrow. St. Paul was busy with large plans, and
the march of the Gospel, more rapid than his jour-
neyings, shows the spirit of the Congregation.

They give in the tradition of the elders as an-
other piece of evidence. This is said to have been
handed down mentor iter from long before the days
of the disciples until the revolt of the Jews in the
reign of Hadrian, A. D. 117; then, after the Jews
were driven out of the Holy Land, this tradition,
for safe keeping, was entombed in the ten folios of
the Talmud. But that before this there were no
secret rolls, for the use of the scribes, is no more to
be believed on the word of Oriental wonder-loving
chroniclers, than their equally credible story that
the whole tradition came down by word of mouth
from the days of Moses.

Jewish ecclesiastics took no pay ; but in some in-
direct ways it was for their profit to dispense their
traditions to the people, and this was the reason why
they kept their dissemination in their own hands.
But in withholding any knowledge from the people
they went contrary to the spirit of the Hebrew re-

42 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS

ligion ; and the children of the Crucified were not in
a frame of mind to copy the example of the scribes.
They did not preach for the sake of gold, nor did
they wish to keep their Master's teachings to them-
selves. " The Bride," as well as " the Spirit," said,
" Come," and whosoever would might " come and
take of the water of life freely."

As stronger evidence that the Disciples never
thought of a written Gospel, use is made of some
curious coincidences that modern research has found
in the wording of the three earlier Gospels. Every
one has noticed that in the Gospels of St. Matthew,
St. Mark, and St. Luke there are parts of verses so
much alike as to give a common coloring to their
style. When such verses were laid side by side in
the Greek, it was seen, (to state the case in a very
general way) that four or five words were just the
same, then that some were not the same, and then,
again, that there were like coincidences and differ-
ences. In those mosaics pieces of older writings
seemed to be put together ; but a closer scrutiny
proved that those coincidences were best accounted
for by an oral Gospel, that is, a Gospel taught by
word of mouth. Such is the accepted opinion ;
still, there are those who think that some of those
coincidences indicate that the three earlier Evangel-
ists made some use of common memoranda.

Skeptics argue that this discovery goes to prove
that long after the time of the Disciples the Gospels
were constructed out of traditions : and thus when
they find, or think they find, a new fact, they always
set to work. It may be easy to harmonize it with

WRITING OF THE ORAL GOSPEL. 43

the truth, but this they never try to do, because
they never want to. The discovery of those coin-
cidences can thus be harmonized ; and if the earnest
thought that has been given to the construction of
the Gospels since it was made had been given ear-
lier, the substance of what it made known would
have been known before. For the Witnesses must
at once have taught the sacrificial death of the
Lord, and the evidence of his glorious resurrection
in his life before his crucifixion, by word of mouth,
to men and women, as they are now taught to chil-
dren. Such teaching was called for, at once, by the
need of the time. Oral teaching has ever been the
favorite mode of Oriental teaching ; and as children
like better to hear than to read about the child
Moses, or about Joseph and his brethren, so the
early Christians liked better to hear than to read
the wonderful story. This feeling lasted long ; some
fifty years after St. John died, the child-like Papias
confessed that he profited more by what he heard
than by what he read.

For a time the Gospel was committed to memory,
as chapters are now for the Sunday-school, though, of
course, the mode of learning was different ; and thus
the Gospel then was universally and thoroughly
written on the hearts of the old and of the young.
As manuscripts were costly, and as many of the
Jewish and more of the Gentile converts could not
read, such teaching and learning continued for a
long time ; still this oral Gospel of itself makes it
quite certain that there was a written apostolic
Gospel. It was, in fact, a step toward it. For be-

44 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

fore any one writes out what he has witnessed, he
questions his own memory, compares his recollec-
tions with those of others, and makes up his mind
what to put into his record and what to leave out.
This is precisely what the twelve witnesses did in
framing their oral Gospels ; and, in so doing, they
were, somewhat unconsciously perhaps, yet effectu-
ally, preparing in the quickest and best way for a
perfect written Gospel. And their oral Gospels
must soon have taken on a somewhat fixed, com-
plete and common form. For the twelve Witnesses
lived together in the same town with the purpose
of framing the Gospel, they were busy in recalling
and arranging its facts, which were fresh in their
memories, and they heard each other as they taught
them.

At that time there were more in Jerusalem who
could write than there are now ; and among the
three thousand converts there must have been many
who could have written out the oral teaching of the
Witnesses. There must have been some who tried
to do so; and to think that the writing out of the
oral Gospel could have been put off till the second
century is foolish, though some profess to believe
it. It is so natural that some should have written
out the Gospel, as they heard it from " the eye-wit-
nesses" of the Lord, that it would be certain, even
if St. Luke had not told us, that " many" took this
''in hand."

No doubt such transcripts of the apostolic Gospel
were unsatisfactory ; and the Witnesses must then
have seen, if they had not seen before — which is not

WRITING OF THE ORAL GOSPEL. 45

possible — that it was their duty to have the Gospel
properly written out by one or more of themselves.
The re-discovery then of the oral Gospel, which is
but little more than a clearing up of what the
Fathers say of ancient tradition, confirms the apos-
tolic writing of the Gospel.

Some of the Asiatics thought that a religion and
a book went together. The Arabian Jews were held
in more esteem in Arabia because they were " the
People of the Book." Mohammed availed himself
of this feeling as to a book-religion. The Koran
was for him in lieu of miracles. It made the Arabs
a people with a book, like the Persians and the He-
brews ; and after they had " the Book of Islam "
they treated the peoples who had no sacred book
as utter heathen. I can think of no way of account-
ing for such facts, save as the wide-spread and
abiding effect of immemorial veneration for sacred
writings; such as, in Chaldea, came down to Abra-
ham from an eye-witness of the judgment of the
great flood. Those who had failed to keep such
writings, honored those who had kept them. Those
who had them, kept them as heir-looms of their
nationality as well as for their religious worth. The
feeling as to a book-religion was as rooted with the
Hebrews as with any of the Asiatics : and its effect
upon the apostles may be worth thinking of. And
so, too, the fact that there was less culture in Arabia
in the days of the camel-driver of Medina than in
Palestine in the days of the Disciples.

The full exposure of the error that the Disciples
could not have thought of writing out the Gospels

46 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

would require a treatise on the civilization of the
Jews, bringing out the causes of the mental activity
among them that is seen in the New Testament.
The like of this activity there was not among any
other people. Their familiarity with their Script-
ures was wonderful, and it was common to all classes,
Thought among the rabbins was fettered, but the
thought of the people was more free.

To the pedants of the capital John was an "igno-
rant and unlearned man;" and so was Shakspeare
to the pedants of the court of King James. The
citizens of the capital jeered at the Galilean brogue
of Peter; so did the gentry of Edinburgh at the
broad Scotch of the plowman Burns. The Corsican
could not write French grammatically, but taught
French from the mouth of his cannon ; and, though
he was almost of our own time, scholars wonder
and blunder over the history he made. In all ages
and in all countries God ordains that men shall rise
up from the stones of the street, who, by force of
their natures, seize, with firm hands, on such appli-
ances of their time as suit their ends, and with them
they work out, consciously or unconsciously, the
purposes of the Lord.

It is said that in the day and generation of the
disciples " the literary instinct was not at work
among the Jews," and yet in the Gospels of Mat-
thew and John it did the best of work — though,
happily, this is lost sight of in the truth that their
Gospels are creations of God, rather than works of
man. In that generation the literary instinct among
the Jews did good work such as men may do.

JEWISH MEN OF LETTERS. 47

There were then Jewish men of letters : there was
Justus of Tiberias, whose historical books are lost,
and the loss is great ; Josephus, who, like Matthew,
wrote in Greek and Hebrew ; and Philo of Alexan-
dria, who, like all the apostles save St. Matthew,
wrote in Greek. How far the culture of Philo bears
upon the question as to the culture of the Jews of
Palestine somewhat depends upon the intercourse
of the Alexandrian Jews with their mother country,
and it also somewhat depends upon the extent to
which the Greek language was in use among the
Jews of Palestine in the days of the Disciples ; it
is therefore too complicate a matter to be here con-
sidered : — and it will suffice to say, that one such
man of letters as Josephus refutes the error that,
in his time, there was no literary instinct at work
among the Jews. As showing this, and to give the
few words concerning his relation to Christian facts
and records which properly come into this volume,
I reproduce what I wrote years ago, marking in
italics some lines that are very pertinent to the
subject before us.

The true idea of the character of Josephus is
not that of good old credulous Whiston, nor is it
that of the fiery crusader, De Quincey. Josephus
was no Christian, neither was he half renegade
and all traitor. He was a politician as adroit, as
lucky, as Talleyrand. He was a man of letters as
industrious as Gibbon. His character is not pleas-
ing, but it may be said, in his defense, that his
lot was cast in a time when no course could have
been consistent and right. His sympathies were

^6 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

with his own people ; but, like the rest of the Jew-
ish nobles, like even the citizens of Jerusalem, he
knew that the fanaticism blazing out among the
country people, if unchecked, would destroy the
State. And this young, wealthy, and popular noble-
man accepted the command of the army of Galilee
with a secret determination to pacify the province,
or, at least, to keep things as they were until wiser
counsels should prevail, or the overwhelming array
of the army of Titus should compel even fanaticism
to abandon its wild designs. No doubt the cool
policy which saved only himself is justly odious to
enthusiastic minds. He should have delivered one
great battle in the passes of Galilee, or, at least,
should have died when his brethren died in Jotapata.
The sympathies of honorable men are not with him,
but with those who fell in the slaughter at Tarichea
or at the siege of Gamala, when the Galileans re-
pulsed the Roman army, Vespasian fighting as in
his youth, and striving, sword in hand, to rally his
battalions, hurled down the steep slope of the city
by the fury of Israel. Such a death would have
been more heroic than to have come, less as a cap-
tive than a prince, high in favor with the Emperor,
before the walls of indignant Jerusalem. And no
doubt, had the writings of Justus of Tiberias been
preserved, they would have darkened the fame of
his rival and enemy, Josephus. But the fact was,
that this aspiring noble, like the rest of his order,
saw and felt the desperation of the conflict with
Rome, and countenanced the popular movement
only to control it, and to end the war by making it

CHARACTER OF JOSEPHUS. 49

as hopeless in seeming as it was in reality. Still,
his policy cannot be wholly approved. It is the
more repulsive to the feelings because for him it
was fortunate ; and but for one great fact, redeem-
ing all, his character would be devoid of dignity.
He did not despair of his country when he had no
country. As a soldier or a politician Josephus is
not admirable, but his course as a historian verges
on the sublime ; for just at the time when the eyes
of the shuddering world are averted with horror
from the destruction of Jerusalem, he makes a calm,
learned, majestic appeal to the mind of the world in
behalf of Israel. Though he had seen his race almost
perish before his eyes he does not despair of his race ;
but, with enduring faith in its fortunes, this scholar
sets himself to win with the pen the battle lost with
the szuord. He wrote in the universal tongue their
history, to vindicate for them an honorable place
among the nations.

The writings of Josephus were begun and finished
while he enjoyed the favor of Roman emperors.
To his history of the Jewish war there was affixed
the signature of Titus. Yet his writings went forth
at a time when Hebraic ideas and the Hebraic
character were detested in Rome ; and writing when
he did, where he did, and with his aims, there were
ideas and facts that could find no place in his
writings. He makes no mention of Christ, none
of the ancient Jewish belief in the Messiah, neither
of which could have been unknown to him, and the
last of which was but too well known to the Ro-
mans. A knowledge of the religious ideas of their

5<D THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

subject nations was part of the state-craft of Rome,
and the sagacious historian felt that, if he would
avert from his race aught of Roman jealousy, he
must, in such an hour, be cautious as to that great
Hope. And he was silent concerning it, seeing
into what calamities it had led his race, and, per-
haps, foreboding the calamities it was to bring upon
them in the time of Hadrian.

Neither the recondite philosophical ideas of the
Hebrews, nor their more spiritual ideas, nor even
the latent causes of the great war with Rome, are
to be found fully unfolded in this Romanized He-
braic history ; yet this does not entirely destroy the
dignity of its intent. Josephus built a monument
that will outlast the arch of Titus. Though de-
spised and hated by his countrymen, he was, at heart,
all Jew. If he received an estate in Judea from
Vespasian, if he kept the favor of Titus and Do-
mitian, it was because he meant to be of service to
his own people. He had the craft, the versatility,
the enduring courage, of his race. He belonged not
to the devout of his nation ; he had no more sym-
pathy with heroic elevation of soul, or with spiritual
emotions, than Macaulay ; no more conception of
the glories of the Hebrew religion than Gibbon had
of the glories of Christianity. He was as graphic
as the one, as voluminous as the other, and his his-
tory will outlive theirs. He was the first of those
Jews who, ever since the destruction of Jerusalem
wearing a mask, disguising their Hebraic feelings,
giving no full utterance to their Asiatic ideas, yet
true, in their hearts, to their own race, have been

OF ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 5 1

familiar with palaces, and have had more or less to
do with the course of events.

I trust that before my friendly and tireless reader
comes to the close of this volume he will find the
question whether the Witnesses meant to put their
witness in written form settled more conclusively
than it can be by those general considerations
showing its probability, to which some thought had
to be given in the present state of inquiry as to the
Gospels ; yet it may be well here to refer to one
piece of direct evidence of this intent of the Apos-
tles. With intelligence, born of faith in the gov-
erning of the Most High, the Hebrews placed their
historic in the same class with their prophetic writ-
ings. Through all the history as well as through
the oracles of their sacred book, there ran a fore-
tokening and a foretelling of Christ Jesus, as he
told the Jews, when he said, " Your Scriptures tes-
tify of Me." The burden of the message of their
sacred book, whether in type, or psalm, or proph-
ecy, or history, was the Prophet greater than Moses,
the Messiah to come in the power of God for the
salvation of his people. Such a book called aloud
for a book that should recite the fulfilling of itself
in Christ Jesus, and the construction of his Gospel
proves that Matthew heard and answered that call.

52 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

CHAPTER III.

THE RECEIVED DATE OF THE GOSPELS.

HE infidel assumption, so madly echoed by
some of the orthodox divines, that the Apos-
tles never thought of a written Gospel, is
made for the purposes of debate. Infidel writers
see it is needed to open the way for their assump-
tion that the Gospels are later than, the days of
those who wrote them. They also assume that
scholars only can tell whether they are later or not,
and that they are the only scholars.

Yet even in those Gospels themselves there is
some evidence of their date that is as much within
the reach of one man as of another. Thus, St.
Luke wrote the Acts after he wrote his Gospel ; in
his later treatise he brings down the missionary
life of St. Paul near the time of his martyrdom ;
but does not speak of that ; hence it is plain
that St. Luke stopped writing while St. Paul yet
lived.

The Gospels now are read in all Christian assem-
blies, and that such has ever been the usage in all
past Christian centuries, as far back as A. D. 175,
(within about seventy-five years after St. John
died,) is as certain as that the sun shone in those
centuries. But when we would trace this publi

THE HUNDRED SILENT YEARS. 53

reading of the Gospels back to its origin, we find
that after the burning of Jerusalem there were well
nigh a hundred busy and luminous years that to us
are dark and silent years. Within very near the
time when those warned by the word on Mount
Olivet fled from the city, the ongoings of Chris-
tianity, in much of the Roman world, are known
from the New Testament, and then they are lost to
sight. The feeling that con>es with the change has
well been likened to that of the traveler who, jour-
neying through the gates of a city in a wilderness,
passes out from the busy life inside the wall into
the sudden stillness of the desert.

The conversion of the empire was going on ; but,
save that the younger Pliny, Proconsul of Bithynia,
reports to the Emperor Trajan that in his province
the worship of Christ had taken the place of the
worship of the gods, the classic writers say nothing
of the great fact ; and until near the close of the
second century the relics of Christian literature are
scanty indeed. The few short letters and other
documents of the apostolic Fathers could all be
printed in two columns of a newspaper ; and of all
the Christian literature of the second century that
remains, how little is the use in searching into the
construction of the Gospels can be made plain by a
single fact : from it all nothing can be learned of
Theophilus, whether he was a man of rank, as the
words " most excellent " may imply, or whether, as
Origen and Ambrose thought, his name, " Lover
of God," is a symbol pointing to the readers that
St. Luke had in mind.

54 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Scholars grope in the darkness of those silent
years. But at the end of that time the facts do
away with any cause for regret for that silence and
darkness, so far as the genuineness and authenticity
of the Gospels are concerned. With the return of
clear light the Christians are seen with our four
Gospels in their hands. As soon as the silence is
broken the Christians are all heard saying that
those Gospels came down to them from the apos-
tles, and in all their assemblies throughout the
world the Gospels are read with those Hebrew
Scriptures that were accredited by the Lord.

Numberless the words and works of the Lord
unrecorded by his inspired Evangelists, yet no mira-
cle has come down, no parable, and scarcely a word
of his, that is not in the Gospels. Even the Epistles
are as wanting in these as the leaves of the apos-
tolic or the tomes of the later Fathers. It was the
will of God that the sayings and doings of his Son
should be told only by his own Evangelists. It was
the will of God that even by them much should be
left untold ; and, with the miracle of silence that
their Gospels are in the world of thought, there is
an accordant miracle in the world of history. It
was forbidden the Evangelists to tell all they knew
of Jesus, and the same ordaining Will struck out
forever the whole of that knowledge from the
memory of man. And the sweep of the decree
that the Gospels should never be confounded with
human devices swept away nearly all of the history
of the twelve Witnesses. Their work abides, their
witness is in the Gospels, yet the names of some of

DATE OF THE GOSPELS. 55

them are disputed, their journeyings are unchron-
icled, and their burial-places are now forgotten.

As we stand on this side and look back over the
chasm, the ground is firm under our feet. The fa-
thers and mothers of the Christians in the earlier
half of the second century grew up in the lifetime
of Apostles, and as late as A. D. 175 a man fifty
years old might have remembered what his father
heard from the beloved disciple, and his grand-
father might have heard the Sermon on the Mount.
Irenaeus, (A. D. 175,) who bears witness to the use
of our four Gospels throughout the world, was a
pupil of Polycarp, who "had known St. John. As
the public use of the Gospels in the last quarter of
the second century was universal, it must have be-
gun much further back. Justin Martyr, the first
Christian philosopher whose writings have come
down with any completeness, states in a memorial
to the Emperor, (A. D. 140,) that Gospels written
by Apostles and companions of Apostles were read
with the oracles of the prophets in all the Christian
assemblies, on every Sabbath day. This witness of
Justin carries the origin of that usage as far back as
the time of the death of St. John.

Let us now take our stand on the farther side of
the chasm, and mark how the tone of the Apostles
accords with the height and breadth of their com-
mission.

The short General Epistles of Peter speak to all
classes in a kindly, brotherly way, yet in his precepts
there is a breath of command like that in the word
on the Mount. A like breath is in the words of all

56 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the Apostles. Their writings were from the same
Spirit with the writings of Moses and the Prophets,
and they knew it. There is general evidence of
this in all they wrote ; and there is special evidence
of it, when the chief Apostle says there are things
in the Epistles of Paul which some wrest to their
own destruction as they do the other Scriptures.
Again: St. Paul, after reminding "his son" Tim-
othy of the faith of his grandmother Lois, and his
mother Eunice, and that, from a child, he had been
taught " the holy Scriptures, which are able to make
wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus, " passes on, as was natural, from his speaking
of faith in Christ, to his own writings and what had
been written by his brethren, or sanctioned by
them, and says, (when his words are rightly trans-
lated,) "All Scripture that is given by inspiration
of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness." St.
Paul never uttered superfluous or needless words,
and, to the child of Grandmother Lois and Mother
Eunice, it would have been needless and superfluous
thus to have spoken of the Hebrew Scripture.

The apostles never disparaged the gifts of the
Holy Ghost, given to them alone, by thinking "that
the Old Testament was a complete Bible, both doc-
trinally and historically." They wrote with all the
authority of the prophets. This could not appear
in those Gospels, that, with reverence for Him who
is the Truth, were inscribed, not tlie Gospel — for
that, in its fullness, is the secret of the Father — but
the Gospel according to St. Matthew or according

TONE OF THE APOSTLES. 57

to St. John ; that is, so much of the Gospel as God
was pleased to make known through men, and in
part by one and in part by another. In those Gos-
pels no word was suffered to call thought away, from
the work God wrought, to his workmen ; but, in
their other writings, the Apostles declare that they
write " by the commandment of God our Saviour
and the Lord Jesus Christ." St. Paul speaks of his
" Gospel " — which the Fathers say was written out
by St. Luke — " and the preaching of Christ Jesus,"
of both as " the revelation of the mystery kept secret
since the world began, but now made manifest ;"
then, that the Hebrew Scripture might not be un-
dervalued, he says "it was also manifest by the
prophets," and that these good tidings, alike new
and old, "are to be made known to all nations."
When spoken to in such a tone men will listen ; and
it is needless to prove, what every one knows from
their own Epistles, that all the Apostles wrote was
read by the Christians of that generation, with rev-
erence and godly fear.

Were there ready means for writings, thus revered,
to reach all the congregations then rapidly form-
ing throughout the Roman world ? At this point
we again take issue with Westcott. He says, " The
means of intercourse were slow and precarious," and
one section of the table of contents, in his " Treatise
on the Canon," runs thus : " Its formation was im-
peded by defective communication." Saying, as
we pass on, that the final decrees of the Church, as
to all the books of the New Testament, passed upon
questions that it took longer to decide than any

58 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

there could have been as to the Gospels, I appeal,
in proof of the facilities of intercourse in the apos-
tolic generation, to what is seen of the intercourse
of Christians in the Acts, in the General and other
Epistles, and in the messages to the seven Churches
of Asia. From Athens St. Paul wrote to the Thes-
salonians that their faith had sounded abroad, not
only in Achaia and in Macedonia, but in all the world.
A collection for the Christians in Jerusalem was
taken up, not only in those two provinces, but in
Galatia, and in Ephesus in Asia Minor, and in An-
tioch in Syria. Tidings from the brethren in Cor-
inth, brought by those of Chloe's household, tid-
ings from those in Galatia, come to Paul at Ephesus.
All classes are moving about. An Asiatic slave,
Onesimus, finds his way to Rome, and is sent back to
Colosse to his master Philemon. Twenty messages
are sent by Paul to men and women in Rome, whom
he must have met with in other parts of the world,
probably Jews driven out of that city by the edict
of Claudius, but who had gone back again. Women
travel as well as men. Phoebe, of Cenchrea, the
busy port of Corinth, bears Paul's letter to the Ro-
mans, and they are told to receive her as Christ's
people should receive their own, and to aid her
wherein she needed help.

There were congregations at the four centers —
Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, and Alexandria. A com-
mon government and free-trade made intercourse
throughout the empire such, that the Christians in
any country could readily send copies of each of
the Gospels, in its turn, to any other country. Ro-

INTERCOURSE IN THE ROMAN WORLD. 59

man energy had made all the provinces accessible
from all the large cities. In the summer-time oar-
driven galleys, little dependent on the folly of the
winds, swiftly crossed the great mid-land sea, and
recrossed from shore to shore. From the mile-
stone, still at the capitol, there were roads to the
borders of the Roman world. Those who have read
Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel " will remember
the night-ride of William of Deloraine, how man
and horse struggled on through bog and mire, and
along cattle-tracks, like the roads in Palestine, till
they struck the pavement the legions laid, and man
and horse took courage when

"Broad and straight before them lay,
For many a mile, the Roman way."

Roads still to be traced, like that to the Scottish
hills, ran throughout Asia Minor, southward along
the Syrian and African shores to the Arabian Des-
erts, to the land of the Nile, and eastward to the
fortresses that watched for the coming of the Par-
thian horsemen from beyond the Tigris.

It was a civic world, of clustering cities, towns,
and villages. Josephus speaks of hundreds of towns
in the Canton of Galilee, where there was no metro-
politan city, and whose towns were not closer to-
gether nor as large as in some other districts of the
empire. If the world be compared with the Roman
world, the dangers of travel then were no greater
than they are now. There were then wild mount-
ain regions, out-of-the-way places not easily visited
nor safe ; there were perils of robbers and perils of

60 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the wilderness ; but over all there was military rule,
and there was no spot to which, if need were, the
centurion did not find his way. Traveling is far
more rapid, but, save for the telegraph, intercom-
munion now throughout the wider world of Colum-
bus and Vasco de Gama, is not as quick nor is it
more constant than it was throughout the world of
the Caesars.

Beyond its eastern borders, the multitude of Jews
in the Chaldean plain and in the Persian highlands
were known by pilgrimages and annual offerings to
their countrymen in Jerusalem, until the fall of the
city ; and long afterward there were constant means
of intercourse between the congregations in the East
and the Far-East and those in the Roman world,
through the channels of the trade of the Orient with
Egypt and the West. There had then come to pass
in the earth what the prophet beheld in vision, and
what now seems coming to pass again on a broader
scale in the earth. The way was prepared ; in the
desert was made straight the highway of our .God ;
every valley exalted, every mountain brought low,
that all flesh, together, might see the glory of the
Lord.

There was no reason why the early intercourse of
Christians should not have continued in the second
century, and the little that is known of that dark
time agrees with what was before and afterward : — as
seen in the letter from the Romans to the Corinth-
ians, in the Epistles of Ignatius, and in the recital, by
the congregation in Smyrna, for the common good,
of the martyrdom of Polycarp.

VENERATION FOR THE APOSTLES. 6l

The next question is, whether the veneration for
the writings of the Apostles was as great in the fol-
lowing generations as in their own — greater it could
not be. And here we are concerned neither with the
dissensions common to all movements that take hold
on the souls of men, nor with the tares growing
among the wheat, but only with the general feeling
toward the Apostles and for what was written and
sanctioned by them. Death usually strengthens
veneration, but it could have added nothing to the
veneration for the Apostles while living, and it took
from it nothing. The scanty relics of the literature
of the early Christian generations abound in evi-
dence that the apostles were felt to be so apart from
all others, that their writings came into a class by
themselves. The tone of the time is that of Igna-
tius, who says of the Witnesses, they were Apostles,
and himself, in comparison, as a man condemned.
The Epistle of Barnabas, written within the verge
of the first century, and generally ascribed to the
brother " who took Paul by the hand," was not re-
ceived into the canon of Scripture because the writer
was not one of the Apostles, and his Epistle had
not been sanctioned by them.

The veneration for the Witnesses was such as made
it well-nigh impossible that any writing could have
been generally received, as of equal authority with
Hebrew Scripture, that was not written or sanctioned
by them ; and that the second and third Gospels are
not directly from the chosen Disciples, is evidence
that they date back to the times of the Disciples.
St. Mark's Gospel breaks off at the eighth verse of

62 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

its last chapter, and was finished by another hand ;
yet this fragment, written by one who was not of
the chosen witnesses, was held by the Christian
congregation to be as authoritative as the Gospels
of St. Matthew and St. John ! The reverence in
which that Gospel has so long been held veils the
strangeness of this fact, but the more we look into
it the stranger it looks ! And as to the third Gos-
pel also, the facts are so strange, and so indispu-
table, that if we now heard of them for the first
time we should neither know how to believe them
or how to disbelieve them. A physician who was
of the heathen-born wrote to another of the hea-
then-born, and the Christian congregation held what
was written by this doctor to be equal with the Gos-
pels of St. Matthew and St. John ! Such honor to
the brethren points back to an early time ; and it
prophesies of that far-off time when the prayer of
Moses shall be answered, and all Israel shall be
kings and priests unto God !

Those two manuscripts of Mark and Luke never
could have been received by the Congregation, as
equal with the two apostolic Gospels, had not their
inspiration been attested by one or more of the
Apostles ; and yet, in a late volume, " On the Be-
ginnings of Christianity," it is said " that the second
and third Gospels were ever submitted to apostles
for their sanction is a proposition which no enlight-
ened scholar would venture to affirm. " Such en-
lightenment is darkness ! And, if to deny the
memory of the Church and the certain deductions
of common sense from undisputed facts of history,

DATE OF THE GOSPELS. 63

be among the insignia of the wise, let me be num-
bered among the foolish !

In any generation the common reception, by the
Christian congregation, of the four Gospels, as writ-
ten by those whose names they bear, so presup-
poses the witness of the apostolic generation to
those Gospels, that, against this evidence of their
genuineness and authenticity, nothing worth listen-
ing to can be said, if the Christians of the apostolic
generation had honesty enough to pass honestly
upon a matter where they had no reason or wish or
opportunity to be dishonest ; and if they had sense
enough to pass upon that which required only plain
common sense.

None sincerely question their honesty; yet there
is a man, who, speaking of the earlier Christian ages,
is depraved enough to say that " every thing was
possible in those obscure epochs." This comes
from the Parisian Jew who, writing in a city that
knows less of the Bible than of every thing else, was
pleased to show his contempt for Parisians by citing
St. Matthew and St. Luke to prove that Jesus was
born in Nazareth ! An audacity, that evenly de-
spises the witness of the holy evangelists and the
intelligence of his readers, is characteristic of the
libel he would put off on dull Nazarenes as a Life
of Jesus. Renan imitates the persuasive ingenuity
of Dumas, but his master keeps nearer to the possi-
bilities of things ! The exuberance of the roman-
cer's glowing African imagination is overmatched
by the Asiatic mendacity of the historian.

The Jew spits on the law for a purpose, and the

64 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

books of Moses become " the late frauds of pietistic
kings." Now mark his transparent sneer! Jesus,
whom Renan — forgetting the new city, seen from
Capernaum, and named Tiberias in honor of the
Emperor under whom our Lord was crucified — says
was too stupid to know the name of the Csesar to
whom tribute was paid — this simple Jesus " thought
he could do better."

Renan says, "the disciples invented the miracles
of Jesus ;" and that he was a party to this by "his
innocent frauds;" as when he told the guileless
Nathaniel that he knew his thought when he was
under the fig-tree. Bad as he was, Renan says, he
grew worse. His brain gave way; and his eulogist
screens him from the sin of blasphemy by the plea
of insanity. Yet he lets him keep enough of craft
to connive at a deception planned by those sainted
sisters, Mary and Martha. They made the Jews
believe their young brother Lazarus was dead ; and
his coming from the tomb alive was a trick by
means of which Jesus tried to gain the glory of a
miracle ! Yet this Renan, with boundless confi-
dence in the stupidity of the Nazarenes, hails Jesus
as Master and kisses him : " Jesus is a sublime per-
son who each day presides over the destinies of
humanity." These words mock at Jesus and at hu-
manity ! They do such honor to Jesus as did the
scepter and the purple robe ! This is the Renan
whose before-quoted words hint at more than even
he dared to say, for they mean that " in those ob-
scure ages" any deception that a Jew can now think
of was common in the family of Christ !

AUTHENTICATION OF THE GOSPELS. 65

In the reception of some of the twenty-seven
books of the New Testament throughout the Chris-
tian world, (that soon had the wide area of the Roman
world,) there were local uncertainties that show how
well such things were looked into ; but that which
accredited the four Gospels was of such supreme im-
portance, that it must have been at once universally
made known, and in such a way that it could have
been reasonably doubted of none. The Apostles
must have properly made known that, of the four
Gospels, two were written, and two were sanctioned,
by them. St. Paul calls attention to his signature,
directs that his epistles be publicly read, and such
care leaves no doubt of the proper care of the
Apostles for documents of even greater importance.
To think that the Apostles did not take care that
the Gospels, emanating from them or authorized by
them, were suitably authenticated and made known
as such, (with however little of formality and parade,)
is to charge them with unreasonable, unnatural, and
gross neglect of their official duty. There could
have been no uncertainty about the authority of
the Gospels in the life-time of the Apostles, and as
their authority was of such common concern and
was so well attested by the reading of them with
the Hebrew Scriptures, there could have been none
after their life-time.

Their authentication, in each of the congrega-
tions, only presupposes such thought as is common-
ly given to matters of public importance ; and it is
slander to say that the early Christians were not
intelligent enough to give to it all proper care. For

66 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the most part, the congregations formed in the days
of the Apostles were made up, in their beginnings,
of the finest men of the finest of the ancient races.
Their choice of an unpopular spiritual religion, in
spite of prejudices and disadvantages, shows their
thoughtful character. Many of the Jewish converts
had sought their fortunes in foreign lands ; they
had the education common to the wealthier class
of their countrymen ; travel had sharpened their
wits, and their minds were enlarged with experience
of affairs.

The classic jeering at the Jews proves no more
than the continental jeering at the British, and they
cared as little for it. The Jews then looked with
pride to a capital, that even the Romans said was
" longe clarissime" far the most illustrious of the
cities of Asia. They recalled the near glories of their
war with the Greeks, as glorious as that of the Greeks
with the Persians. They detested Herod, yet knew
that he was far the greatest of the subject-kings of
Rome; and that to his grandson, King Agrippa,
the Emperor Claudius owed his life and throne.
They felt something of their power as a people, but
they were far from knowing it all. For when, a half
a century after the fall of Jerusalem, the empire put
forth its strength to crush out the Jews in Judea,
(only a part of the Jewish race,) so fearful was the
slaughter of his legions, that the Emperor Hadrian
could not close his report to the Senate with, "The
army is well" — the proud word of good cheer that
in the end of other wars was the formula of Roman
triumph. In this there was a foreboding of what

MILITARY POWER OF THE JEWS. 67

came to pass. For when the sword of divine justice
cleft Judea, the heart of the Roman world, the body-
died; and the time came when the Seven Hills were
without an inhabitant — -like the rock of Zion.

The last conquest of the Jews tasked all the
military strength of Rome, yet she then met only a
fraction of the military power that the Jews could
have put in the field. Had Jesus suffered himself
to be a warrior-king, to his banner would have
gathered the millions of the Jews of the East and
the Far-East, the millions in Egypt, in Africa ; with
them would have come their kinsmen of the Desert;
and, without superhuman aid, they could have pre-
vailed as swiftly over the whole Roman world as a
few centuries afterward the children of Ishmael
alone did prevail over three quarters of that world.
The dominion Satan offered to Jesus over all king-
doms, and the glory of them all, was quite within
the natural possibilities of things.

Centuries of woe have told upon the strongest,
the most enduring, of races ; and those who paint
the Ghettos in cities, where in misery and filth dwell
those children of Abraham who for ages have suf-
fered the worst legal and social degradation — who
overcolor even their wretchedness, not out of spite
to the Jews, but out of spite to the early converts
from Judaism — and call it a picture of the Jewish
quarter in Rome in the days of the Caesars — they
know history as they know religion.

In the Christian Scriptures there is no respect of
persons, yet what may be learned from them and
from other sources shows that in early Christianity, as

68 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

in all popular movements that have become lasting,
there were some aristocrats who brought into it the
characteristic forethought of their order. In Jeru-
salem a great company of the priests, in wealthy-
Corinth the ruler of the synagogue, and in royal
Antioch the foster brother of the Tetrarch of Gali-
lee, who, with the prince, was educated at Rome,
" were obedient unto the faith." In the household
of Caesar, that city on the Palatine within the great
city, there were Christians before Paul went to
Rome. These were Jews in the domestic imperial
service ; but they were not all Jews. There were
Christians in the princely household of the Roman
Narcissus as well as in that of Aristobulus, the
grandson of Herod. In that generation the wife
of the Consul Plautus was a believer. Flavins, a
Roman consul, and cousin to the Emperor Domitian,
died in the faith, and a burying-ground in the cata-
combs bears the name of his wife, Flavia Domitilla.
Prudens, son of a Roman senator, and whose wife
was a British princess, stayed with St. Paul to the
last.

Other such cases might be named, but they were
isolated and exceptional. It was not the great of
the earth who heard the missionaries of Jesus
gladly ; but the slave may be more truly wise than
his master; the fitness of the promises of God to
human need and his prophecies of good are more
readily known and believed by the humble than by
the proud ; and the highest and truest wisdom there
was then in the earth, was in the assemblies of the
Christians, as any one may know by reading the

NO QUESTION AS TO THE GOSPELS. 69

General Epistles of St. Peter or those of St. Paul
Berlin, London, or New York might well be proud
of one congregation, to whom a letter, like that to
the Romans or to the Hebrews, might to-day be
fitly addressed.

But though, again and again, it is said that the
early Christian generations were so uncritical and
unlearned that scholars may set aside their decis-
ions, yet whether the apostolic generation of Chris-
tians was a critical or a learned one, has little or
nothing to do with the validity of their witness to
the four Gospels. It took no learning to know
what St. Matthew meant when he said he had
written a Gospel ; and if the credibility of those
who said they heard him say so had been in ques-
tion, a merchant could have settled that as well as
a scribe.

But there could have been no question then
about so public a fact. So, too, there could have
been no question about such a public fact as that
St. John wrote a Gospel. Of course that was
known to the Congregation in Ephesus, and copies
of it were sent at once to other cities, in whose
churches it was publicly read. Whether St. Mark
and St. Luke wrote Gospels that were sanctioned
by St. Peter, St. Paul, or other apostles, as inspired,
were not questions then for scholars to decide any
more than they are now. What the Apostles said,
that was the evidence of those things. As there
could have been no better evidence, so there
could have been no other ; and that such was the
evidence is proved by the existing use of those

JO THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Gospels that has come down from the beginning in
the unbroken succession of Christians.

Some of those who argue against the true date
and authorship of the Gospels imagine that these
are held to be proved by the Fathers, and say the
Fathers may be good witnesses to things within
their own knowledge, but their witness to the
origin of the Gospels is hearsay. Such it is, and,
being such, of course it differs as to some few de-
tails of little or no consequence. Still hearsay is
legal evidence in some cases, and would be legal
evidence in this case. But while the weight of this
testimony has sometimes been overestimated, its
value has been misunderstood by skeptics. Thus,
to go no further back, the witness of Irenaeus is
that of a learned man, about facts concerning which
it was his official duty to be well informed, in which
he felt great interest, and who was so near to the
Apostles as to give to his words something of the
same weight as if he had seen them face to face.
He was about as far from them in time as we are
from Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and other
framers of the Constitution. Our witness to the
things done by them is hearsay, like his to what
the Apostles did ; but our witness to the celebration
of the birthday of Washington, of the Fourth of
July, and to the Constitution as law in the land, is
personal testimony, like that of Irenaeus to the
usages that prove the knowledge and memory of
the Christian congregation in his day and time.

Apart from all such evidence, the proof of the
date and authorship of the four Gospels is such

OF THE DATE OF THE GOSPELS. 7 1

that the testimony of Irenaeus, with the similar but
earlier testimony of Justin, and with Marcion's mis-
use of St. Luke's Gospel in the earlier half of the
second century, and all other facts recorded in
books of the following century that go to confirm
that proof, might all be laid out of the case, and it
would be strong enough without them. The value
of some facts, concerning the construction of the
Gospels, handed down from the Fathers as they
were handed down to them, is inestimable ; but had
there been a complete, instead of a partial, loss of
what the Fathers wrote, had not a line of the Chris-
tian literature of the first five hundred Christian
years escaped the ravages of the barbarians, still
there would be not only sufficient but the proper
evidence for the Gospels in the Gospels themselves,
in the titles they bear, and in their use to-day in
the Christian congregation. For it is no more pos-
sible that any generation, later than the apostolic
generation, could have received them if they had
not come to them from the apostolic generation,
than it would be possible for the Christian congre-
gation now to receive four Gospels in addition to
those four that have come down to them in the
unbroken succession of Christians from the begin-
ning. As that knowledge and memory of the ori-
gin and authorship of the Gospels, to which the
Fathers bear witness, came down to them, so in
like manner it has come down to this century,
and in like manner it will go down to the nineteen
thousandth Christian century, if the world stand so
long. In every future age, even as now, the Chris-

72 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

tian usage will make manifest the Christian knowl-
edge and memory, as it ever has been, and still is,
written on the living tablet of the heart of the ever-
existing family of Christ.

The open and sufficient evidence comes with the
Christian usage. It cannot be divorced from it. It
inheres in it. For that usage never could have be-
gun without good reason. This is so reasonable, so
plain, so certain, that those who incline to question
the Gospels should look to their mental and moral
soundness ; and, if they look deep into their hearts
they will find that their unbelief springs out of the
hope that the Gospels are not the authoritative
word of the Judge of the quick and the dead.

Unbelievers hide from themselves this prevail-
ing reason for their unbelief in many ways, only one
of which can here be noticed. From the way that
many of them argue, it looks as if, in considering
the evidence for the Gospel, they chose to forget
that evidence cannot prove any thing beyond all
doubt. To self-evident truths and facts evidence
does not attach; they can neither be proved nor
doubted. Historic facts, and others that are proved
by evidence, can be proved only beyond all reasona-
ble doubt. Beyond that the force of evidence can-
not go. Yet man is so made that either of these
two kinds of truths and facts are a sufficient ground
of action. No man knows that the sun will rise to-
morrow, or, if it does rise, that he will be here to
see it, and still the world goes on. Man is so made
that he is morally bound to treat that which is be-
yond all reasonable doubt as if it were certain. Such

EVIDENCE OF THE TRUTH. 73

is the judgment of the common law ; for, even when
life hangs on its verdict, the judge charges the jury-
that they are to hold for certain whatever is proved
beyond all reasonable doubt, and to act upon it ;
for, in such cases, what is known to the law as cer-
tainty has been reached — the highest certainty to
which evidence can attain.

Yet in presuming to judge the Scriptures, which
*' come not to be judged, but to sit in judgment on
us, " unbelievers are often unwilling to distinguish
between those two kinds of truths and facts. They
assume that what God reveals will be so revealed
that it cannot be doubted ; and they demand that
the facts of Scripture shall be proved beyond all
doubt, before they will act upon them. They will
not inquire whether such be the way of the Lord in
nature or in life; whether it would consist with his
training of the soul, or with the freedom of the hu-
man will ; or whether it be, in all cases, at once
possible in the nature of things.

The Lord does give to those who seek for it, in
the ways of his appointing, the kind of knowledge
of his truth that the unbeliever thus asks for. The
Christian attains to it when, of his own conscious-
ness, he can say, " I know that my Redeemer liv-
eth ;" but none can have that knowledge who do
not believe in the Word of God. i Not having it in
his heart to seek this knowledge, the unbeliever
tries to quiet his conscience with thinking that if
any of the facts or truths of Scripture could possi-
bly have been other than they are, then they can-
not have been revealed ; and, stranger still) to some

74 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

of those who think they can thus withdraw certainty
from the truths and facts of Scripture, certainty
seems to attach to any thing they think of to put
in their places !

Many of the skeptical writers of our day and gen-
eration are constitutionally given to doubt ; their
self-conceit mistakes their mental disease for an
aptness for finding out truth ; and their hallucina-
tions bewilder those who take books for oracles.
But in the question as to the date and authorship
of the Gospels there is no room for the conceits and
subtleties of learning, falsely so called. It may be
well to clear up its perversions of the character of
the times in which the Gospels were written, and
of those by whom, and for whom, they were written ;
it may be well to free the question of the genuine-
ness and authenticity of the Gospels from side issues
that have nothing to do with it, from inquiries that
lead nowhere, from facts that are fancies, and from
facts of no account ; but, really, it ought not to be
made a question at all. If it be made such, it is not
a question for scholars to settle now, any more than
it was such in the beginning. It is not a question
where learning is required, but only the common
sense that God gives, leaving all free to use it to
their own good, or to abuse it to their own peril and
harm. And common sense, if it do no violence to
itself, cannot but dispose of the question at once, by
treating as sheer impertinence the silly assertion that
the memory of the ever-existing family of Christ is
not the sufficient, the proper, evidence of her own
records.

THE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPELS. 75

CHAPTER IV.

THE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPELS.
HAVE thus gone rapidly over the evidence for

1

the Gospels to prepare for this proposition:
That the Gospels have come down from the days
of the Disciples, and were written by those whose
names they bear, is historically certain ; and, there-
fore, literary criticism can raise no doubts as to those
facts, that are of any real force. Literary criticism,
though a species of historical evidence, is an uncer-
tain one ; like scholastic criticism, it is often mere
personal opinion ; and neither can stand against his-
torical proof. With the genuineness and authenticity
of the holy Gospels known to be certain, it is safe to
study them from a literary stand-point. The be-
ginnings of such study date far back. One of the
Fathers said: "We do not invite to irrational faith
in the history of Jesus in the Gospels ; those who
are to study it need to enter into the design of their
writers, so that the purpose of each fact may be
discovered." The Fathers anticipated some of the
literary inquiries of which modern unbelief would
take the credit ; but, in times past, reverence re-
strained from following out such lines of thought.
Now, the inroads of unbelief make it a Christian
duty to prove all things, with a freedom not before

y6 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

called into such fearless exercise ; and only thus
can some of the charges against the Gospels be an-
swered ; and thus clearer ideas of some truths that
the Gospels teach may be gained.

Christ used the word Evangel. It means the good
tidings, the glad news — a meaning that, unhappily,
does not now appear so clearly as it did once in the
English word Gospel. A wise instinct gave this name
of Evangels, Good Tidings, Gospels, to the oral
teachings of the Witnesses when written out by the
evangelists. Their Gospels were a new thing under
the sun! Even in the holy Scriptures there was
nothing like them. What are they ? What is their
purpose ? Why were they written ? It is needless
to number up the other answers to these questions,
for its true answer comes, at once, with unanimity
of thought and feeling, from out of the heart of the
whole Christian congregation : The Gospels were
written that we might be saved.

The Evangelists bear witness to the truth of this
answer. St. John said of his own Gospel, it was
written* that " ye may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and, believing, have life
through His name." The thoughts and feelings,
common to Matthew and John as Apostles, make it
sure that St. Matthew's purpose was the same as
that of his brother Evangelist. Apostles sanctioned
the second and the third Gospels as inspired. After

* " These signs are written." See John xx, 30, 31". The words,
as well as the works of Christ, are signs. And these two verses read
as if meant for the last words of his Gospel, though St. John added
a chapter afterward.

THE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPELS. JJ

each paragraph of the one, St. Peter's confession
seems to come in like a refrain, " Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God;" and the spirit
of the other is that of St. Paul, " Christ and Him
crucified."

The purpose of the holy Gospels is not a literary,
a scientific, historic, or philosophic purpose. In one
point of view the Gospels are arguments. The
Evangelists present only historic facts. They trust
those facts to speak for themselves. What ought
to be learned from them is left to every one's con-
science. No persuasive eloquence goes with the
facts, no reasoning defends them, no word explains.
Yet their Gospels are arguments to prove that Christ
Jesus is the Son of God who taketh away the sin of
the world ; and the Evangelists establish this fact,
that believing in Christ Jesus we may have life
through his name.

One of the lesser consequences of their purpose
is, that all the infidel critics of such writings must
be put out of court. However skillful in the use of
their art in the literatures of the kingdom of this
world, they are baffled in trying to use their skill
upon writings that pertain to the kingdom not of
this world. What appreciation can there be of
what men are doing, unless there be some little
sympathy with their purpose ? There can be none.
And these critics have no sympathy with the pur-
pose of the inspired Evangelists. They have no
adequate idea of it, and they can have none. Sal-
vation is to them vague, unreal ; a pleasant illusion
for those who have nothing in this world ; a super-

78 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

stition that serves to check the passions of the pop-
ulace and can adroitly be turned to aristocratic
ends, yet to be despised as vulgar or dreaded as
fanatical ; the belief of no scholar and no gentleman,
though some argue for it professionally. To such
critics the idea of salvation is no more known, than
the idea of culture to a savage.

Herein is the philosophy of the fact that their
criticism of the Scriptures, that make wise unto sal-
vation, is so worthless. No gold, no jewels, can be
dug out of that Babylonian mound. They take
their fancies for facts, they twist facts, they misun-
derstand, they misapply facts ; and ever to trust
them is to be deceived. Yet unwittingly, and against
their will, they are of some little use. For, where
the skeptic's finger points in scorn, there treasure is
concealed. As these sorcerers go up and down,
peering about, muttering their curses and weaving
their spells in the holy land, the divining rods, in
their unhallowed hands, bend downward, where, be-
neath the surface, are hidden veins of water and
seeds of gold.

As facts in the life of the Lord are the evidence
his Evangelists give of the truth their Gospels es-
tablish, it might be supposed that they would give
facts on .facts, till no more could be given ; yet,
save in the week of the Passion, there are wide
spaces of silence in all the Gospels. They all pass
over months without a line. In the three earlier
Gospels there are such general statements as this,
" Jesus went about teach'' ng and healing." At the

THE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPELS. 79

close of his Gospel St. John states that so many-
were the things done by the Lord that all could not
be written ; and what the last evangelist said could
not be done, none of the earlier evangelists ever
thought of doing.

Manuscripts were costly, their copying was slow.
The unrolling of the long scrolls was unhandy, and,
written without punctuation, the reading of them
was difficult. They were to be committed to mem-
ory (as was much the custom) rather than to be
read as books are now read ; hence the Gospels
were written (as, indeed, all ancient books) with
conciseness. Those things were a check in select-
ing facts for the oral Gospel also, which, even more
than the written Gospel, the congregation was ex-
pected to learn by heart. And yet beyond these
reasons lie the true reasons for the brevity and
reserve of the Gospels.

There is nothing like the purpose of the inspired
Evangelists in the world of thought ; and in the
world of letters there is nothing just like their meth-
od. Their aim is so sacred that the following illus-
tration is hardly permissible ; yet to clear up the
subject is so desirable, that, if it help even a little, it
may be pardoned if we suppose that four men un-
dertook to write out the evidence that a certain
man, known to two of them, and known to the
others through trustworthy witnesses, was a fit per-
son to be President of the United States ; and that,
as evidence of this fitness, each sets forth facts from
his history, without note or comment. Each tries
to give the means of forming a true idea of the

80 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

man. Their method, then, is fair — the most fair
that can be thought of. It shows their spirit is
fearless as well as fair : for it leaves the man to be
judged, not by what they think about him, but by
what he, himself, has said and done. Their four
portraits are, unmistakably, portraits of the same
person, but they are drawn with such freedom that
they are not just alike ; and the likeness comes out
better from them all than from one alone. Each
makes a selection of facts somewhat different from
the others. Where the same facts are given each
sets them in a somewhat different light, and each
thinks he gives facts enough. They naturally fol-
low, more or less, the order of time, thus giving
some clew to that order ; but this is not done in all
cases, nor would all their narratives, if combined,
make a biography. There would be breaks in the
chronology ; facts of a common kind would be
brought together, whether they happened together
or not ; and it might be as impossible to make out,
from such records, the exact time and place of each
and every anecdote and event as it would be need-
less for the end their writers had in view.

This illustration of the method of the holy Evan-
gelists, though inadequate, yet shows the worthless-
ness of the adverse criticism of the Gospel, that pro-
ceeds upon the error (as much of it does) that the
Gospels were biographies. A Gospel and a biogra-
phy have some things in common, so have a Gos-
pel and a history ; and at times it may be conve-
nient to call them such, but it misleads, it confuses
and confounds. A Gospel, in its purpose and in its

THE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPELS. 8l

method, is as different from a biography as the life
of the Lord is unlike the lives of men. The writer
of a biography thinks he knows a man well — better,
perhaps, than he knew himself — and, to make that
man as well known to others, he tries to tell all that
he knows. Such is the feeling, the purpose, with
which he goes about his work ; but such was not
the feeling or the purpose of the holy Evangelists.
Matthew and John testified to what they had seen
and heard. They would have given up their lives
to make the Lord known to others as he was known
to them, but they knew there was much they did
not and could not know of him. He, himself, had
said, " No man knoweth the Son but the Father."
They are silent about very much that they did know
of the life of the Lord, and the mercy of God is in
their silence. . He suffered not the Witnesses to his
Son to be over-anxious to accumulate evidence that
his is the only name given under heaven, among
men, whereby they can be saved, for more evidence
would not avail for the salvation of those who reject
the evidence they give. By his will the evangelists
stopped short of telling all they might have told —
they were content to make the truth certain.

As long as the limitation of the purpose of the
Evangelists is not well understood, the construction
of the Gospels seems to give some countenance to
the theory that they are made up of fragmentary
facts, interspersed with myths and legends. Such a
theory accounts for any breaks, any chronological
disorder, any difference there may seem to be in the

82 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Gospels, with a plausibility that will be delusive
and dangerous until a satisfactory explanation is
given of how the Gospels came to be as they are.

Before attempting to give such an explanation, it
may be well to glance at the theory just spoken of.
Between the mythical and the legendary the differ-
ence is a shadowy one ; but as the period of the
myth is prehistoric, there is nothing that can strict-
ly be called mythical in the Gospels. Every thing
in them to which that term has been given might be
covered by the word legendary; but the word myth-
ical, by a special adaptation, was applied to the
gospel narratives, because a mythical element was
said to have entered into them in consequence of
the Hebrew belief that the Prophets foretold a
Coming Man ; and this is said to have kindled the
imagination, to see its fulfillment in Jesus. But a
predictive element was thus conceded to Hebrew
Scripture, which after a time it became so conven-
ient to deny, that the mythical theory went out of
favor with those who brought it in. For this, and
for better reasons, it has become a thing of the past.

In the nature of the legend there is something of
the unreal, the fantastic, the childish : there is noth-
ing of this kind in the Gospels. Myth and legend
would have told marvelous tales of the childhood of
Jesus, such as are told in the apocryphal Gospels.
Neither myth nor legend would have shunned the
thirty shaded years of the life of Jesus and chosen
the broad daylight of his ministry; and neither myth
nor legend would have kept away, as did the three
earlier Gospels, from the Holy City, the Temple-

NEANDER AND STRAUSS. 83

courts, and the hill that was religious even before
Abraham went there to offer up his son.

The fragmentary theory has taken the places of
the mythical and the legendary theories. For the
" seamless coat woven of one piece" this theory
offers garments tattered and torn ; and it should be
known as the ragged theory. One example will
suffice to show something of its character. When
(A. D. 1835) the government of Prussia consulted
with Neander concerning the prohibition of Strauss'
" Life of Jesus," his effectual counsel against it was
in accord with Jefferson's saying, " that error may
be safely left free, if truth be free to combat with
it." Neander, called upon by the evangelical in
Germany, made a reply to Strauss, the first of many,
and second to none in power. Some of the sen-
tences in his " Life of Christ" are seed-grains, out
of which books have grown that have rightly made
their authors famous. Neander was devout, yet he
took up with the notion that the Gospels are " frag-
ments ;" and he showed, at once, to what errors this
pitiful conception of their character leads. He pro-
nounced St. Matthew's statement that Pharisees
and Sadducees came to hear John the Baptist
" unhistorical" on the ground that "it is improb-
able that men of the peculiar religious opinions of
the Sadducees should have been attracted by the
preacher of repentance." This must seem strange
to the English-speaking race, who know how men of
every creed and calling — Freethinkers, Quakers, and
Churchmen, ladies of quality, sinners and saints,
swarthy coal-blackened miners, and men of fashion,

84 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Franklin the philosopher, and Foote the actor —
went out to hear the field-preaching of the eloquent
Whitefield. In this fair specimen of the criticism
that questions the accuracy of the Evangelists, Ne-
ander treats their witness as Strauss constantly did.
Neander gave it much the most credence; but, if
facts in the Gospels may thus be set aside, who shall
draw the line, and where can the line be drawn ?

Neander was a man of multifarious reading; his
"Church History" shows a marvelous power of
tracing the evolvement of thought from thought ;
but in practical knowledge he had but the quick-
ness and simplicity of a child. The well-built, rect-
angular city of Berlin seemed to him, like the Gos-
pels, "a collection of fragments;" and for twenty
years he could never find his way, without guid-
ance, from his house to his lecture-room in the
University. His book is far better than could have
been hoped for with the error that vitiates it ; but
in the half-century since Neander took a course
which for the moment seemed an effectual one,
there has been a growing disposition, among the
orthodox, to treat the Gospels as he did — as seen
in Tholuck in Germany, in Alford in England, in
Pressense in France ; and there has been a grow-
ing disposition in the world to give up the historic
credibility of the Holy Gospels.

The fragmentary theory throws a tempting bridge
over the deep chasm that separates the high and
firm ground of the Gospels from the quagmire and
marsh of tradition ; and thus it may be that even
so judicious a man as Ellicott was led on to say

MYTHICAL AND LEGENDARY THEORY. 85

that, " perhaps, at the baptism was seen the kindled
fire over the Jordan of which an old writer has made
mention !" The fragmentary theory opens the way
again for the mythical and legendary theories. It
disguises them in itself; for fragments of sacred
traditions are, naturally, more or less mythical and
legendary ; and so those theories return, with a plau-
sibility they had not when presented, as if they, of
themselves, cleared up the structure of the Gospels.
Those who fully receive the fragmentary theory and
still think to keep the faith as it is in Jesus, do not
see how they are giving away the battle, as to the
mythical and legendary, after it has been won ; and
I think that, without seeming to know it, those
semi-orthodox have marched over into the enemy's
camp, to find themselves prisoners, with all their
baggage and material of war.

Yet the ragged theory, when steadily looked at,
goes out of sight. One fact is enough to drive it off.
If the three earlier Gospels were gathered-up frag-
ments, there would have been some gathered-up frag-
ments from the ministry in Judea. Our Lord alluded
to that ministry, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how
often!" — this outburst of feeling, twice repeated,
has a place in the first and in the third Gospels, yet
neither in them, nor in the second Gospel, is there
any word or miracle from that ministry. This kills
the ragged theory. For, were the first of those
Gospels made up of fragments, picked up after the
days of the Witnesses, it would be very strange that
some of them should not have been picked up in
Judea as well as in Galilee. It is incredible that

86 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

what is so unlikely should have happened, by chance,
for the second time, and it is impossible that it
could have so happened for the third time. There
must have been a purpose in the beginning and
continuing of this silence of St. Matthew, St. Mark,
and St. Luke. It was the silence of design, and I
think we shall be able to find its reason ; but
whether we can or not, on the fragmentary theory
there is no reason for it at all. Whatever be the
truth as to the construction of the Gospels, the
ragged theory, like the mythical and the legendary,
cannot be true.

Yet without hesitation, and without timidity, it
is to be frankly said that, at some few points, the
Gospels have rather a fragmentary look. Almost
all of this disappears as soon as a clear view is
gained of the limitations of their purpose ; yet there
is something to be done before all the special and
general facts that, here and there, give them a little
of this aspect, can be cleared up. Of such special
facts we give these two examples. St. Matthew is
silent concerning his noble townsman, whose son
was healed, and who, with all his house, believed ;
so is St. Mark, though St. Peter also lived in Ca-
pernaum ; and so is St. Luke. The field of their
Gospels was Galilee, yet this Galilean miracle comes
out only in the last Gospel, whose field was Ju'dea.
Again, St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke all tell
of Jairus' daughter, while only St. Luke tells of the
son of the widow of Nain.

Besides such minor perplexities there are those
of greater breadth ; and though the unity of each

UNITY OF THE GOSPELS. 87

Gospel and the unity of the Gospels as a whole
readily disprove the sweeping charge that the Gos-
pels are fragments, yet no single principle will
guide through all the intricacies of their construc-
tion. Even to approximate to the solution of that
problem several lines of thought must be combined,
and different kinds of facts and truths must be con-
sidered.

88 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

CHAPTER V.

THE ORAL AND WRITTEN GOSPELS.

tHE origin and construction of the Gospels is a
problem that has so many sides that we can-
not give to this volume all the unity that
could be desired, nor can each of the arguments,
that go to make up its whole argument, T^e, at once,
complete by itself. Thus this chapter is given to a
discussion in which the Oral Gospel, before touched
upon, is further considered.

The writers of two of the four Gospels were not
of the chosen Witnesses, yet the Christian congre-
gation holds that in those four Gospels there is the
witness of all the Apostles ; but how can it be?
The witness of two is there, but where is that of
the others ? The witness of St. Matthew and St.
John is there, but where is the witness of St. An-
drew, of St. Thomas ? And where is that of the
Apostle Paul ? In this case, faith seems to supply,
in the Christian congregation, the lack of knowl-
edge; and if it did, it would supply it well; but
what may here seem to be faith is really a knowl-
edge of the facts that, from the days of the disciples
until now, has lived on in the memory of the ever-
existing Church, while the explanation or reason
of what now seems strange has been forgotten.

THE ORAL GOSPEL. 89

And the like of this has sometimes happened as to
time-honored institutions and ancient laws.

The lost explanation will close up a gap in the
moldered wall of the city of Zion, through which
deluding phantoms glide. Infidels can say, with
some show of reason, that the inability to prove
that the witness of all the Apostles is in the four
Gospels is equivalent to a confession that it is not
there ; and it is trying to Christians not to be able
to give an intelligent answer to the cry of their
own hearts, Where is the witness of the other ten
Apostles ? Where is that of the apostle Paul ? Are
they lost forever ?

To these inquiries the answer will, in part, be
found in what may be learned of the affinities of
the oral Gospels with the written Gospel. Let
us then recall what has already been said of the
oral Gospels or Gospel, and try to gain a full, clear,
and true idea of how they came to be, and of what
it was composed. Each apostle preached and
taught in his own way, which, of course, differed
from that of the others, and it differed in different
circumstances ; yet their oral Gospels all had the
same purpose, and, from time to time, they heard
each other as they preached and taught. The great
truths in their oral Gospels were the same : the
divine nature of Christ, his sacrificial death, and
his taking again the life he laid down ; and it can
be proved that, in their oral Gospels, the facts se-
lected from the life of Christ were much the same
facts.

Almost all our direct knowledge of what the

90 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Apostles did while in Jerusalem comes from the
Acts ; and in that book the signs of their oral
teaching are not as marked as might be looked for.
But it is not known that St. Luke was ever in that
city in the earlier part of that time ; of some of the
things then and there done, his informant may have
been Saul — thus, the report of Gamaliel's speech
probably came from him, for Saul was a member of
the Sanhedrim ; yet of much that the Apostles were
doing the unconverted Saul may have known noth-
ing. But it is more pertinent to the matter that
every-where among the Christians the oral teaching
of the Gospel had become a well-known usage, for
common things are apt to be overlooked.

And on carefully studying St. Luke's words allu-
sions to oral teaching are seen which are more de-
cisive in the Greek than in our English translation.
The converts at the great Pentecost " continued
steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine" — ry dtdaxrj
rav amooTo'kuv : continued steadfastly attentive to
the teaching of the Apostles, is closer to the mean-
ing. Again, " With great power gave the Apostles
witness of the resurrection," that is, the great power
of the Spirit went with their witness. As before
shown, their witness to the resurrection was mainly
their testimony to the life of their Lord, and the
meaning of the word (to fiaprvpiov*) witness is more
specific than it is in the translation, for the Greek
word points to a fixed, definite form of testimony.

* Here the word is neuter. When its sense is general it is
commonly, in the Greek, feminine, and such the New Testament
usage.

THE ORAL GOSPEL. 9 1

And, in passing, it may be worth while to note that
the Greek word translated preaching meant herald-
ing ; now a herald's message is fixed for him, both
in form and words, and from it he is not to vary in
the least.

In Jerusalem the teaching emanating from the
twelve disciples must have taken on a somewhat
fixed and common form. Not rigidly such ; it was
not word for word, just the same every-where, or
every time ; yet it was such that, on the whole, it
may be properly spoken of as one and the same ;
and this is what I mean by the Oral Gospel, or,
more exactly, the Oral Teaching of the Apostles.

Their oral teaching was a recital of the life of
Christ Jesus, of his crucifixion, and his resurrection ;
and that this was most faithfully taught and dili-
gently learned by the congregations every-where is
proved by the Epistles. To our knowledge of the
words of our Lord, the Epistles add only the line,
" It is more blessed to give than to receive ; " and
to our knowledge of his miracles, they add not one.
Though written to so many congregations, so wide
apart, and though one of them was from James, the
Lord's brother, there is not in them all one single
reference to any of the numberless events in the
ministry of Christ, such as the raising of the widow's
son, the stilling of the storm, or the cure of the de-
moniacs. Hence it is certain that the memoriter
oral teaching had done its perfect work in those
congregations to which the Epistles were written,
some of which were addressed to all the Churches :
for the only reason there can be for this surprising

92 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

silence is that in the congregation there was a per-
fect knowledge of the life of the Lord, as now in
sermons there often is a like silence, because the
preacher is sure that his hearers know what their
Lord said and did. This luminous fact in the Epis-
tles lights up the apostolic world ; it shows that in
knowledge of the facts of the life of the Lord the
converts were perfect, wanting nothing. Never,
since those days, has the life of the Lord been so
fully written on the hearts of his people, and when
it shall again be so written the Gospel will again
conquer the world.

The oral teaching could not have been given to
the converts all at once. It was taught in sections,
and probably those containing the Crucifixion and
the Resurrection were given out first. This was so
in the oral teaching of St. Paul. To the Corinth-
ians— a congregation with whom he lived two years
or more — he writes, " I delivered unto you, first
of all, how that Christ died for our sins, and that
he was buried and rose again the third day : " — but
his going on to recite to them some of the facts in
the first section of his oral Gospel does not at all
contradict the uniform assumption in the Epistles
of the perfect knowledge in the congregation of the
life of the Lord, for the Apostle simply gives weight
to his argument by recalling to them facts they
knew, such as that the Lord was seen by Peter, by
James, and by himself.

Of such sections the converts learned by heart
what they could — some less, some more. Some
tried to write down this oral teaching, and to put

THE ORAL GOSPEL. 93

its sections fitly together. This is what St. Luke
means when he says that many undertook to set
forth in order (that is, in its time-order) what was
delivered by the eye-witnesses of the Word.

It was given to Gieseler earlier than to any one else
with equal clearness, to see what the coincidences
in the first three Gospels indicate of the true rela-
tions of the oral to the written Gospel. That was
sixty years ago, (A. D. 1 8 1 8 ;) and so much of the
controversy as to the Gospels has since turned upon
the oral Gospel, that it is strange there has been so
little appreciation of the difficulties there were in
framing the oral Gospel ; but, then, little thought
has ever been given to the difficulties in framing
the written Gospel. To Christians the Gospels
seem to have come up like flowers or trees from
some life-principle within, so perfect in its working
that they have been content to call it God's work.
To this truth the soul, after all its searching into
the human element in the Gospels, returns in thank-
fulness, and there rests in peace. But that it may
rest there with a peace never more to be troubled,
it needs to know all that can be known of the hu-
man element in the Gospels. True insight into
the human nature of Christ, the Living Word, con-
duces much to faith in His divine nature, and the
like is true of his Written Word.

On thinking of the framing of the Oral and also
of the Written Gospel, it may seem to have been an
easier thing than it was. My first thought was that
oral teaching of the three thousand was some such
recital of the sayings and doings of the Lord as a

94 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

missionary makes to the heathen ; but the resem-
blance is a superficial and misleading resemblance.
The missionary merely translates what the disciples
made ready for him ; but their work in Jerusalem
was the finest and most difficult piece of work that
men ever did. Pressense ridicules the idea of " an
official editing " of the oral Gospel by an apostolic
college, holding sessions in the Holy City ; and,
truly, we may as well think the disciples had a staff
of short-hand writers and proof-readers, as to sup-
pose that they went about framing the oral Gospel
with all the ceremonial pomp of a General Council
in later imperial ages. But, still, it may as well be
denied that there was any Jerusalem, any Witnesses,
any Gospel, oral or written, as that the oral Gospel,
the condition precedent of the written Gospel, was
the difficult achievement of all the disciples.

It may be thought a simple and easy thing for
them to tell what they knew ; but was it so easy to
tell it as they told it ? Is it so simple a thing to
form a true idea of any man ? Is not the power of
drawing a speaking likeness of man or woman, the
rarest gift of literary genius ? Was it so simple and
easy to form, and to convey to others, a true idea of
such a manner of man as the Lord from heaven ?
a true idea of Him who was not only of a new race,
but the life of that new creation ? a true idea of
the Son of man and Son of God, in whom two na-
tures were united that were wider apart than the
ends of the universe ?

In framing the oral Gospel the disciples had
nothing in their own literature to guide them ; but,

SILENCE OF THE EVANGELISTS. 95

had they known all the literatures before or since,
it would not have helped them. They wrought out
what would have been the greatest of all wonders in
the world of letters, had it not been wrought in a
different world and by the help of another Energy :
but in saying this, thought runs forward and em-
braces in one idea the written with the oral Gospel.
For, through their oral Gospel, all the disciples con-
tributed to the perfection of that written Gospel in
whose likeness of Him whom men could not fully
comprehend nor rightly describe, the promise of the
Lord was fulfilled — " In you the Holy Ghost shall
glorify me."

Portrait-painters fail of a likeness when they try
to put too much on their canvas ; and the truth
and effectiveness of the disciples' portraiture of their
Lord as really depended on their silence as on their
speech. The difficulty of leaving out was never so
difficult, for never was every thing so worthy of
being put in ; but here the oral Gospel set the pat-
tern that the evangelists copied. The Apostles felt
there was no need to strengthen the evidence they
gave — no need to bring all the truth into the field.
This is plain from their choosing so few out of a
great multitude of facts. The same feeling is man-
ifest in the writings of the Evangelists, and they
obeyed the law the Apostles laid down. That feel-
ing is one of the secrets of the influence of their
Gospels, though it gives the fragmentary appearance
they have in the eyes of critics who cannot see that
the drawing of a portrait is not the compiling of a
biography or the writing of a history.

g6 thoughts on the holy gospels.

That the Lord's ordaining will was in the course
that was taken by the Apostles in the framing of the
oral Gospel and which was copied by the Evangel-
ists in the written Gospel, is seen in his promise —
"The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, shall teach you all
things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you." This promise
was more specific than it is in our version. The word
rendered bring to remembrance (ynofivrjoei) means
to suggest ; and hence the meaning of the promise
is, that the Holy Spirit would suggest to them so
much of what he had said as would give them a
true idea of the whole of it — somewhat as when a
master-builder, having talked at length with his
head-workmen about his plans and wishes, then
clears up the whole by a few emphatic words that
tell them just what to do, and fix in their minds
the sum and substance of it all.

In their silence, as in their speech, the Disciples
and the Evangelists were guided by divine wisdom ;
but they had to decide some things that were, per-
haps, more within the scope of their own judgment.
Such may have been the question in what language
the Gospel should be written. This question was
suggested, and was finally determined, by the fact
that the Greek language was then used in Palestine.

There was also in use what may be readily de-
scribed as the later Hebrew, (though pedantry, dark-
ening what it seems to explain, calls what in Script-
ure and by the Fathers was known as the Hebrew
tongue, the Aramaean, or the Syro-Chaldaic.) In
that Hebrew tongue our Lord cried from the cross,

USE OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE. 97

" Eloi ! Eloi ! lama sabachthani ? " That was the
mother tongue of the Jews of Palestine.

But, in consequence of a series of events that be-
gan with Alexander's conquest of Asia, a dialect of
the Greek was also known to the Jews of Palestine.
How well it was known two facts may here suffi-
ciently indicate. Acra, the name of one of the hills
of Jerusalem, was Greek, and so was the Sanhedrim,
the name of the parliament of the Jews. Outside of
the small country of Palestine, the Hebrew tongue
was not in common use among the Jews. Even
Philo knew nothing of it. Still it was a strong
measure to set aside our Lord's native tongue for a
heathen language ; and yet on the final determina-
tion of the disciples to do this largely depended the
rapidity with which the life of the Lord was made
known throughout the world ; for the Greek lan-
guage was well-nigh universal throughout the Ro-
man empire, and was known even beyond its eastern
boundary. Near the Tigris, Seleucia, in those days,
was a free Greek city, with a Senate of three hun-
dred members, and with six hundred thousand
inhabitants.

Some hundred and fifty years before the Christian
era, at Alexandria in Egypt, the translation was
made of the Scriptures into Greek which is known
as that of the LXX, or as the Septuagint. This
was in use among the Jews of Palestine, as well as
with those in Egypt, in Africa, in Syria, and else-
where. The LXX did something toward fitting the
Greek to utter those spiritual ideas that were the

heritage of the true human race, and were in the

1

98 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

family of Noah, but which the Greeks, like other
heathens, had forgotten ; and, also, to express spirit-
ual ideas that had not been revealed to the Greeks,
because of their apostasy. Even the facile and
copious Greek language could not have embodied
the truths the Witnesses declared, without*the help
of the Septuagint. Its help was great, and yet there
were some of their Master's words for which they
had to frame Greek equivalents, such, perhaps, as
the word in our Lord's prayer translated " daily
bread."

It was nice and difficult work to transfer the
whole volume of the Lord's discourses, parables, and
sayings, where with divine felicity the word fitted
the thought, from the Hebrew tongue into the
Greek, with their excellence unimpaired ; yet the
disciples did this so well that no one dreams it could
have been better done. We cannot help feeling so
without being able to verify it ; and, as every good
thing loses in translation, here might seem to have
been a literary miracle, were it not that from their
infancy the disciples had been so familiar with the
Hebrew tongue, and with the Greek, that they
spoke in both and thought in both ; and that what
they did was rather a transferring from one language
to the other than a translating.

Language-learning is an important element in a
liberal education ; and the readiness with which the
Disciples thought in two languages — and languages
as unlike as the oak and the palm — shows they had
more of real intellectual training from their infancy
than the pedants of their time conceded to them.

USE OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE. 99

And, in my judgment, there were never any persons
but Palestinian Jews who could have so transferred
the Gospel from the Hebrew tongue into the Greek.
But if it be said that St. Luke was a Greek of An-
tioch in Syria, it is to be remembered that docu-
ments of Hebraic origin are incorporated into his
Gospel as they came to him in Greek ; and that the
basis of his Gospel was laid by St. Paul, and he
spoke and thought both in Hebrew and in Greek ;
for in the " uproar" in Jerusalem " when the Jews
heard him speak in the Hebrew tongue they kept
the more silence." Few of the foreign-born Jews
could have done that; but, providentially, Saul had
learned so to talk in his infancy, in his father's fam-
ily in Tarsus ; for, doubtless, our Lord spoke from
heaven "in the Hebrew tongue" to Saul, on his way
to Damascus, because with Saul, as with Himself, it
was his mother's tongue.

As St. Matthew composed his Gospel in Hebrew,
the decision of the disciples, as to which language
they should use, was not made at once. But the
need of the Hellenists in the city, and the com-
mon use of Greek, must shortly have led to oral
teaching in Greek and to a transferring backward
and forward of the Gospel from one language to the
other ; and as thus the Witnesses sometimes used
one language and sometimes the other, the Greek
expression of the Hebrew grew constantly more
and more perfect ; and at last the reason for the
sole use of the Greek language became so manifest,
as the thoughts of the Apostles went forth more
and more into the field of the world, that St. Mat-

100 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

thew transferred his Gospel, which he had writteu
in the Hebrew tongue, into Greek.

The disciples had also to decide whether to quote
the old Hebrew Scripture or the better known trans-
lation : — and here I offer my first direct evidence
of such an affinity between the oral Gospel and the
written Gospel, that from the written Gospels we
may be sure of some facts in the construction of the
oral Gospel ; and also that, substantially, the oral
Gospel of the Twelve is contained in the three
earlier Gospels. The quotations from the Old
Testament, that are common to St. Matthew, St.
Mark, and St. Luke, are usually taken from the
Sept-uagint, though some few of them agree in a
peculiar rendering of the Hebrew. Where St. Mat-
thew himself quotes the Old Testament — that is,
where he cites texts that are cited by no other
evangelist — he consults the Hebrew; hence, my
conclusion is, that the disciples fixed upon and even
determined the exact form of those proof-texts that
are common to those three Gospels.

The second Gospel is St. Peter's oral Gospel,
written out by St. Mark, (as proved hereafter ;) and
here I would only note that the discourses, and ref-
erences to prophecy, that must have been a part of
St. Peter's Gospel, were omitted by St. Mark be-
cause they were in St. Matthew's Gospel ; and I call
attention to this difference that my readers may
contrast it with the agreement of those Gospels as
to miracles. In the second, all the miracles, save
two, are the same as in the first ; and the entire
cycle of miracles common to the two earlier Gos-

AGREEMENT AS TO MIRACLES. IOI

pels also reappears in that of St. Luke, who, besides
those, records only six others out of the multitudes
left unrecorded. From these facts we must con-
clude that the miracles common to those Gospels
were fixed upon by the disciples for the oral Gos-
pel. This is a satisfactory reason for their three-
fold repetition ; and I would ask my readers whether
they can think of any other satisfactory reason, or,
rather, if they can think of any other reason for it
at all?

Our third evidence of the affinity of those Gos-
pels with the oral Gospel is that the field of each is
Galilee. St. Matthew thus limited his Gospel for a
special reason hereafter given ; but when St. Mark's
Gospel, and St. Luke's also, are limited to the min-
istry in Galilee, then it becomes certain that the
field of the oral Gospel was limited in the same way.
My last special evidence is the fact that the order
of events is the same in each of those Gospels : the
Baptism, the Temptation, the Galilean ministry, dat-
ing from the imprisonment of John, and the Week
of the Passion. And here I would have my readers
connect with this common order their common
silence as to the ministry in Judea ; for it seems to
me that, in view of these facts, there can be no
doubt as to the order of events and the field of the
oral Gospel.

As we marshal all these facts, we find that the
relation of these three Gospels to the oral Gospel
is incontrovertible. Holding in reserve my ideas
as to how each of the three earlier evangelists set
about his work, and as to the aim of each as distinct

102 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

from the purpose common to them all, I would
here say, that they knew the oral Gospel by heart ;
it was their storehouse of material, their authority,
their guide. They took it for their pattern, they
accepted its limitation, they borrowed from it words
and phrases, they wrote it out in substance ; and so
far from the oral Gospels of the twelve Witnesses
being lost, it is reproduced in the Gospels of St.
Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, in a more com-
plete form than in any one of those twelve forms in
which it was taught.

The attempt to reconstruct the oral Gospel meets
with difficulties, in the flexibility of that Gospel, and
in the freedom with which those three Gospels were
written, that cannot be overcome. All the many
such attempts have so utterly failed that its recon-
struction may be held to be impossible. Still, the
field of the oral Gospel, its leading features, its
speech, and its silence, its miracles, its citations of
prophecy, and its discourses, can be known from
those Gospels. There much of its narrative is given
in much the same way and sometimes in much the
same words. The like is still more true of the dis-
courses and sayings of the Lord, where their verbal
coincidences are more frequent than in their nar-
rative ; and they often all retain some expressive
phrase, such as, " shall not taste of death."

The oral Gospel was the joint construction of the
chosen Witnesses ; still it was not a stereotyped Gos-
pel. There were thirteen forms of it, as there are
three forms of the record of Matthew's call, three
of the healing of the man sick with palsy, three of

FREEDOM OF THE EVANGELISTS. 103

the word on Mount Olivet. Amid those forms, and
amid the changes each apostle made in suiting his
teaching to the time and place, sometimes giving it
more fully, sometimes more briefly, the minds of
those Evangelists moved with freedom ; and, while
they kept to the same field, the same order, and
to much the same facts, they gave to each of their
Gospels a character of its own. Authoritative as
the oral Gospel was to them, obedient as they were
to its example, yet each Evangelist wrote in his own
way, as it seemed to him good.

In the same spirit out of which grew the old
legend of the translation of the Bible by the Sev-
enty, one might imagine that had the disciples been
shut up separately in a cell, they would all have writ-
ten line for line and word for word, alike. But the
Lord's promise to them was not fulfilled mechanic-
ally, nor was it meant to be ; for his words point
to human, as well as to divine testimony: aThe
Spirit which proceedeth from the Father, He shall
testify of Me, and ye also shall bear witness because
ye have been with Me from the beginning." Their
witness to the life of the Lord is after the manner
of human testimony; one remembers this, another
that, and the same things are recalled more fully or
more vividly by one than by another. Under the
guidance of the Spirit, the Apostles selected from
among the words and deeds of their Lord what
were to go into their oral Gospel ; and so the three
earlier Evangelists, under the same guidance, select-
ed from the oral Gospels what should go into their
written Gospel. In one form of the oral Gospel

104 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

some things were more clear, some more pictorial,
some more complete than in another ; and the Evan-
gelists selected from and combined these, so as to
give to their own Gospels the utmost perfection.
They were under the common influence of the
oral Gospel; and, as was natural with unpracticed
writers, they caught up phrases that were of fre-
quent recurrence, they repeated sentences and parts
of sentences, but they did not draw upon it me-
chanically.* Of course, the Apostle Matthew did
not give the version of any of his brethren ; he
gave his own ; St. Mark gave St. Peter's, St. Luke
gave St. Paul's ; and yet what has been said of the
evangelists would apply to those three apostles.
The oral Gospel was incorporate in the souls of
them all, and it spoke through them, while it yet
left them free to speak.

What Justin Martyr says about the Gospels will
be found, when fairly and fully considered, exactly
to agree with what has here been written. Writing
for Jews and for heathen, he coined a name for the

* While this volume was going through the press, I have looked
over the long, elaborate treatise on the Gospels, in the edition of the
"Encyclopaedia Brittanica," now publishing. By a minute dissec-
tion of the narratives of the holy Evangelists it tries to prove that
the Gospels are confused traditions ; but its hundreds of Greek cita-
tions only show that the Evangelists wrote naturally. They are
merely a pedantic and puerile enumeration of variations that were
things of course. The chief significance of this last word of unbe-
lief is in its showing that infidelity is now introduced into scientific
books, as it was by the Encyclopaedists before the French Revolu-
tion. Painstaking, as is usual with this sort of writing, this critique,
as well as the many before that are like it, confirms my opinion,
that ever to trust to this class of writers is to be deceived.

USAGE OF JUSTIN MARTYR. 1 05

Gospels that would describe them to those who
knew something of Greek literature. He borrowed
Xenophon's well-known title of his reminiscences
of the life and sayings of his master, Socrates, and
called them the Memorabilia (the Memoirs) of the
Apostles. He uses this name a dozen times ; but
he marks what their name is among Christians —
they are " called Gospels." " They were written,"
he says, " by apostles and by those who accom-
panied or followed with apostles;" that is, some
by Apostles and some by companions of Apostles.
He states that on every Sunday they were read.
with the writings of the prophets. To Justin, then,
our four Gospels were the witness of the Apostles ;
and his opinion loses nothing because not given in
any formal statement, but (though coming in re-
peatedly) always in a casual, off-hand way. Hence
we are sure that Christians then thought and spoke
of the four Gospels as the witness of all the Apostles.
And it were well to make this way of thinking and
speaking of the Gospels (which from Justin's time
to this has never been out of use in the Congrega-
tion) again as common as it was in his day and
generation.

To the question — As there are but four Gospels,
and as only two were written by Apostles, where is
the witness of the ten, and where is that of St. Paul ?
the answer, then, is this : St. Mark's Gospel is that
of St. Peter, written down from his own lips. St.
Luke's is that of the thirteenth apostle. And, from
the circumstances in which the three earlier Gospels
were written, from their selections, from their omis-

106 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

sions, from the order in which they relate the life
of the Lord, from their common choice of Galilee
as their field, and their common avoidance of
Judea, from some of their words and phrases, and,
in short, from all the evidences that have been
given of a connection between the unwritten Gos-
pel of the Twelve and those written Gospels, it is
certain that while the Gospels, of St. Matthew espe-
cially, and, in some degree, those of St. Mark and
St. Luke, are their own, there is a definite and true
sense in which those Gospels are the joint-witness
of the holy Apostles. St. John wrote the last Gos-
pel in their name. And, God being pleased to make
the Gospel perfect, in it the Blessed Mother bore
her own witness to her Son and Lord.

THE WRITING OUT OF THE GOSPEL. 10/

CHAPTER VI.

THE WRITING OUT OF THE GOSPEL.

tT is hard to keep the two questions as to the
origin and construction of the Gospels entirely-
distinct ; the line here drawn between them is
a line of convenience rather than of strict division ;
and my first proposition as to their construction
belongs to both.

That St. Matthew and St. John, and that only
those two of the twelve Witnesses, wrote out the
Gospel, is sufficient evidence that they were selected
by their brethren for that office. There is no record
of such a choice ; but there are some considera-
tions that may partially explain the lack of such
evidence. The two earlier Evangelists close their
Gospels with the Resurrection. St. Luke continues
the sacred history ; he describes the day of Pente-
cost and some events that took place afterward in
Jerusalem ; but, as already noted, St. Paul was not
then numbered among the disciples. Then came
the long silence before described. And on the
mind and memory of the early Christian genera-
tions the selection of Matthew and John as Evan-
gelists may have made less impression, because
the questions about the construction of the Gos-
pels that unbelief would raise in future ages could

108 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

not be foreknown ; because, in virtue of their office,
the Apostles Matthew and John were empowered
to write out the Gospel ; because, like all Christians,
they thought more of the divine in the Gospels
than of the human ; and because they held the four
Gospels to be the joint testimony of all the chosen
Witnesses.

Whether these things do or do not account for it,
let it be frankly acknowledged that there is no record
of the Disciples having given such counsel to Mat-
thew and John ; and yet there is a line of thought
that makes this as certain to my mind as if it were
well known in history. There are many unrecorded
things concerning the Disciples that are as certain
as if they were facts of record, merely because the
Disciples were men. That they were born, or that
they slept at night and waked with the morning,
though not facts of record, are so certain that no
record could make them more so ; and their coun-
seling with one another about the writing out of
the Gospel is equally certain, though there be no
record of it. For the absence of any record of this
we may, or we may not, be able to account ; but it
should be the fixed rule of our. thinking never to
doubt what we do know because of what we do not
know. In all truth there is the unknown as well as
the known. In the Hebrew Scripture darkness is
one of the symbols of God. His holiest servants
knew in part and prophesied but in part. And as
the element light went forth in the beginning out
of the darkness, so the truth in nature, in history,
in Scripture, ever goes forth out of darkness.

NUMBER OF WRITTEN GOSPELS. IO9

I do not think that the Disciples took action upon
the writing out of the Gospel with any great for-
mality, great as were its consequences. I come to
this conclusion not merely because ecclesiastical
ceremonials came in afterward ; not merely because
the idea that the Apostles held what might be called
a Council, by way of needlessly clothing their action
with dignity, carries a later term back to those
primitive days; but simply because there could
have been no debate concerning the writing out of
the Gospel. The Disciples were earnest men, not
men of words or forms, and could not have dis-
cussed with formality and at length what was a
thing of course. That the Gospel should be writ-
ten out was no more the thought of one than of
another ; for one to name it was for them all to say
it must be done.

When the Disciples came to pass upon the num-
ber of the written Gospels, doubtless they at once
dismissed the extravagance of twelve. They may
have paused at the sacred number seven, and again
at the perfect number four ; but here conjecture is
needless, for we know they fixed upon two, for only
two of them wrote out the Gospel. This number
seems too small — perhaps because of our four Gos-
pels— but the disciples were not book-making men.
They could all teach, for that was telling out of
their own hearts about Him of whom they were
always thinking. It was telling of what he said
and what he did, how he laid down his life, how he
took it again ; but they had never tried to write a
book. And yet, while teaching, each was uncon-

I TO THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

sciously helping on the work that he felt he could
not do. For the molten form of the written Gos-
pel was the oral Gospel — the written Gospel is the
crystallization of the oral Gospels.

The Disciples had next to choose their two
writers, and it is natural to think that they all
(save the two most concerned) at once fixed upon
their Chief, and upon the Disciple whom Jesus loved,
and to whom he had intrusted the care of his
Mother. Besides this suggestive and persuasive rea-
son there was still another why they selected John.
There were two fields of our Lord's ministry — a
fact that may have had something to do with de-
termining the number of the Gospels. John had a
house in Jerusalem. He was more familiar with
the city than those other " men of Galilee." In all
the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem, save his last, there
are signs of caution ; and it is likely that on some
of them he took John only with him. On his first
visit there could have been with him only four of
the Disciples besides John. The whole of the Ju-
dean ministry was not, then, personally known to
all the Twelve ; possibly the whole of it was known
to John, and to him only ; indeed, this is a fair
conclusion, because the Judean ministry forms no
part of their oral Gospel, while it forms almost the
whole of the Gospel of St. John.

Quick, impetuous natures often distrust them-
selves ; and some such feeling may have hindered
St. Peter from yielding to the will of his brethren ;
and he may have discovered a great fitness in Mat-
thew for the work to be done ; for, doubtless, with

CHOICE OF ST. MATTHEW. Ill

the assent of all, the Chief Apostle named Matthew
as, next to John, the one best fitted to write out
the Gospel.

Matthew was not of the inner circle of three into
which, on the Mount of Olives, came Andrew, who,
with John, was the first to seek Jesus, and who
brought to Him his brother Simon. Matthew's
name comes into the second group of the disciples.
St. Luke puts it third in that class ; he himself puts
it fourth and last. After his discipleship Levi, the
son of Alpheus, was known by the name of Mat-
thew— " the gift of God." The name may have
been given by the Lord. I cannot think he took
it himself when I look at his list of the disciples,
for, in that roll of honor, he styles himself " Mat-
thew the publican." Levi was one of the tax-gath-
erers of Herod of Galilee. As he was sitting in
Oriental fashion at the receipt of customs — a
strange place for such a call — he heard Jesus say-
ing, " Follow me." Some traits of Levi's character,
that I seem to see in the portrait he unconsciously
drew of himself in his Gospel, then come out.
Levi, the Silent, answered in deeds, not in words.
With a merchant-like quickness of decision, he rose,
left all, and followed Jesus.

After he became a disciple he made a feast for
the Master. Nothing else that he did is mentioned
in the Gospels ; and there he says not a word. It
has been often repeated that his office in the cus-
toms fitted him for the office of an Evangelist, but I
fail to see the relation between collecting taxes and
writing a Gospel. By choosing him to write for

112 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

them his brethren show that, in spite of his silence,
they knew he was fitted for that work ; and his Gos-
pel vindicates their choice. The men who make
history are not usually the men who write it ; yet
some men of action have written better than rhetori-
cians; and, though not a man of letters and not a
man of words, yet, if ever any one was capable of
writing well, that one was Levi, the son of Alpheus,
known to us as Matthew — " the gift of God."

Let me clear up what has been said of the action
of the twelve Apostles in having the Gospel properly
written out in their name, by supposing that had
their last survivor but one been interrogated con-
cerning their course, the aged man might thus have
replied :

" I remember. I was not to do it. Writing
books was not my gift, nor was it Brother Peter's.
We were men of action. I could tell the story, for
I knew it by heart, and I shall tell it till I die ; but
I could not write it. We all felt timid about writ-
ing a book ; but it had to be done. There was no
doubt of that. We all thought of Peter and John :
some thought of Andrew, some of others. The
matter was not much talked about. Somehow it
came to be understood among us that Matthew
and John were to do it. Matthew did his work a
long while ago. The story got round among the
brethren that John would never die. They did not
get that quite right, like some other things ; but,
from something the Master did say, we knew that
John would tarry long. He has outlived all but
me. We live till our work is done."

LIMITATIONS OF THE GOSPELS. 113

CHAPTER VII.

LIMITATIONS OF THE GOSPELS.

N trying to look into the construction of the
Gospels, one of the first things to be done is
to compare those of the two Apostles. On
laying them side by side it is seen at once that St.
Matthew and St. John made a division of the field
of our Lord's ministry — St. Matthew choosing Gal-
ilee, and St. John, Judea. St. Matthew's course
proves this ; for though St. John might have taken
the Judean field because the Evangelists before him
had not entered it, yet why did not St. Matthew
occupy that field, or some part of it ? The course
of St. John also is evidence of this division ; for
much that the Lord did in Galilee was left unre-
corded, and yet thrice only does St. John garner
up any of the sheaves that his colleague had left in
that harvest field. St. Matthew and St. John fol-
low each his own path till Calvary comes in sight ;
then their paths come together, for the Gospel is
the story of the Cross. The last week in the life of
their Lord was common to them both ; and yet, as
will be seen hereafter, even then, as to the recital of
some things, there was an understanding between
them.

In St. Matthew's avoidance of the Ministry in
8

114 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Judea there is the soberness of history, not the
flightiness of legendary lore ; and, though the like
course of St. Mark and St. Luke complicates mat-
ters, yet even if that could not be explained, (as it
can be,) still St. Matthew could not have left such a
blank had he not been well assured that it would be
filled up. An agreement between him and some one
else is the only rationally conceivable human reason
for his course, still leaving for it a higher reason in
the determinate wisdom of God. And the strength
of this argument is re-enforced to demonstration
when there is seen in St. John's Gospel that con-
cert of action which is anticipated in St. Matthew's
Gospel.

I find this confirmed, rather than otherwise, by
the tradition which, in the third century, Eusebius
recites. He says that the elders of the congrega-
tion at Ephesus brought to the last Apostle, then
very old, the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and
St. Luke, and that he gave them his sanction. Eu-
sebius further states that St. John said there were
yet some things to be written, and the elders be-
sought him to write them. All this may be true ;
for, though the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke
must long before have received the sanction of some
of the apostles, it was natural that this should be
asked for again for the last time ; and, though the
Gospel of the Apostle needed no sanction, that this
should be brought with the others. But we find the
strong motive and deepest reason for this interview
in the request of the elders. They knew of St.
John's purpose to write, and feared he was putting it

ST. JOHN'S LONG TARRYING. 1 1 5

off too long. Their wish may have seemed to him
a providential intimation. Their hearts were glad-
dened by his promise, and — harmless self-congratu-
lation of blameless men- — it seemed to them at last
that St. John wrote his Gospel at their request !
He may, as the tradition states, have said that he
would add something to what the other evangelists
had said, and he may have written some things in
part because they had not ; just as he wrote noth-
ing about the Temptation or the Transfiguration be-
cause they had left him nothing to write ; but what
he had in mind was that Gospel which had been the
thought of his whole life long.

St. John's long tarrying seems strange ! It con-
tradicts the saying of the heathen, " Whom the
gods love die young." And that his Master would
have called his " beloved disciple " sooner than the
rest is so natural a thought, that it may have led the
old man, left alone, and, it might almost seem to
others, forgotten, to repeat so often, in the confiding
way of the aged, that he was the one whom Jesus
loved. And yet how could his Master have better
shown his love for the favorite disciple than by leav-
ing him to complete and perfect the work of his
brethren ?

With the oral Gospel, with the Gospel written
out by St. Matthew, by St. Mark, by St. Luke, and
read in all the Christian assemblies, the need for St.
John to make haste in his great work lay in the
uncertainty of human life; but St. John's life was
not uncertain. He knew that he should outlive all
his brethren. He rested in the assurance that he

Il6 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

might meditate so long. In the persecution of
Nero, in the exile in Patmos, what a comfort it was
to know that death could not take him away in the
midst of his years, with his work unfinished ! What
his Master said of his long tarrying almost seems
casual and causeless, until this sufficient reason
appears, that justifies St. John's taking the long
time for meditation which he felt he needed, be-
tween the writing of his colleague's Gospel and his
own. And in his last chapter St, John may have
recorded those words of the Lord as much to ex-
plain his seeming slowness as for any other cause.

St. John ever had it in his heart to write that
Gospel, and it was ever in his thoughts. His whole
life went into it, the glow of youthful feeling, the
strength of manhood, the wisdom of age. All that
he had seen and felt and known of the glory of the
only-begotten of the Father comes up before him
as he dictates to his scribe. He speaks the last
words that will ever come from that band of broth-
ers whom the Lord chose to be Witnesses to Him-
self! How strong the impulse to select his facts
from all the wonders of his memory! And how
well he kept his compact with his dead comrade !

For the first time, perhaps, in all the centuries
since it was made, let us now inquire for the reasons
of the agreement between St. Matthew and St.
John in Jerusalem, so faithfully kept long after Je-
rusalem was " trodden down," in a city so far away,
in a world so changed. And if we are able to make
out the reasons why St. Matthew and St. John de-
cided that the earliest written Gospel should be

DIVISION OF THE FIELD. 117

limited to the Galilean Ministry, it may be that, at
the same time, we shall learn the reasons for the
like limitation of the oral Gospel and of the Gospels
of St. Mark and St. Luke.

All the Gospels are arguments to prove that Jesus
is the Christ, through whom is salvation ; St. Mat-
thew and St. John had no idea that to make this
truth clear and certain all that was said and done
by the Lord must be written out ; yet, when they
conferred together, they may have thought it well,
jointly, to draw a complete outline of His Ministry.
It is also reasonable to suppose that they would
avoid selecting the same facts.

They reached both of these ends by dividing be-
tween them the field of the Ministry in a geograph-
ical way. During the Roman age in Palestine (as
every one knows) Judea was the southern county
of the Holy Land, Galilee the northern county, and
between them was the alien and hostile county of
Samaria. The Ministry in Galilee was thus geo-
graphically separated from the Ministry in Judea :
and this may very naturally have suggested the di-
vision that St. Matthew and St. John made of their
field of labor. Yet the area of Palestine was small,
the Romans kept the peace, Jerusalem was the re-
ligious capital of all its counties but Samaria, and
the Jewish communities were every-where alike ;
hence the topographical reason is not fully sufficient
to account for that division. But what force it had
was strengthened by the feeling of the Jews for Ju-
dea— a peculiar feeling that disclosed itself to me
while musing on the story of Petronius in the

Il8 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

graphic volumes of Josephus, those unexhausted
treasure-mines of the geography and history of the
Holy Land.

Judea is strictly a name for but one canton of
the land of Israel. Geographically it is isolated. It
is the water-shed of torrents that, to the east, rush
down steep and barren ravines into the dissevering
chasm of the Dead Sea, and, to the west, fertilize
the sandy Philistine plain along the Great Sea — a
plain that was never really Jewish. To the south
it reached to the Desert, and on its southern con-
fines lived those wild Idumean Jews despised and
feared by the citizens of Jerusalem. On the north
Judea joined the land of the Samaritans, with whom
" the Jews had no dealings."

In the Roman Age in Palestine there were other
than geographical reasons for the isolation of Judea.
The Jews were estranged from what had once been
the land of Israel. Jerusalem was still the center
of the Jewish race, but had ceased to be the center
of Palestine, and it was then the religious gathering
place of a minority of its inhabitants. Judea then
had little more to do with the Jews in Palestine,
" outside of its own bounds," than with the Jews in
Syria, in Egypt, in Asia Minor, in the East and in
the Far-East, who made the Pilgrimage once in their
lives, and sent their yearly offerings to the Temple.
The Judeans then felt that Judea was the Holy
Land, and this feeling was shared by all the Jews.

The Jews did not then speak of Palestine, outside
of Judea, as their country. They did not feel out-
raged by its heathen worship. Judaism, couched

FEELING OF THE JEWS FOR JUDEA. 119

among the Judean hills like a lion driven to its lair,
resigned the rest of the land to its enemies. The
Judeans and all the Jews looked upon idolatry
within what had been the other eleven cantons of
Israel much as they looked upon the idolatry of
Babylonia or of Egypt. This comes out in these
words of Josephus, written at Rome, concerning the
heathen temples erected by Herod : " They were
built, not in Judea indeed, for that would not have
been borne, but in the country out of our bounds."

A Roman general came to Ptolemais, marching
against Petra. His shortest road was through Ju-
dea ; but its chief men came and besought him not
to march through their country, because images
that were worshiped were carried on the standards
of the legions. The general went up to Jerusalem,
looked into the matter, and changed the route of
his army. Pilate brought the standards into the
Holy City " in the night, Avithout the knowledge
of the people." Then multitudes went to him at
Caesarea, and " interceded with him many days."
Wearied with their importunities, Pilate surrounded
them with soldiers, and threatened them with death
if they did not go home. Their reply was, that
they would willingly die rather than their law
should be transgressed ; and Pilate, at last, ordered
the ensigns to be withdrawn from the Holy City.

A decree went forth from the Emperor Caligula
that his own statue should be set up and worshiped
in the Temple. Pretonius, the proconsul of Syria,
saw the danger of carrying out this decree, and he
set about it with the blended patience and energy

120 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

of the Roman policy. Besides his own two legions,
he got together as many auxiliary troops as he
could. He came with a great army to Ptolemais,
and wintered there. He thus delayed, thinking that
the Jews, on learning how complete his preparations
were, and having time to become familiar with the
hateful idea, would be less likely to resist. Thou-
sands flocked to Ptolemais, praying Petronius to
give up his design, and calling on him to slay them
first, for they could not suffer him to set up the
image while they wTere alive. Seeing all this, Pe-
tronius rode across the country from Ptolemais to
Tiberias, the better to judge of the temper of the
people. Thousands beset him at Tiberias also, ami
with them came some of the princes of the He-
rodian house. The general was so moved by the
persuasion of the princes and the distress of the
people, that he took a course that was worthy of
the best days of Rome. At the risk of his own life
he suspended the execution of the decree till he
could hear from Caligula, " thinking it fit for virtu-
ous persons to die for the sake of such vast multi-
tudes of men/' At Rome the influence of Herod
Agrippa, interposed with great tact, recalled the
decree ; but the imperial madman was so enraged
with the proconsul that he dispatched an order
that he should be put to death. Then what the
Hebrews called " the finger of God " was seen.
Another galley, still more swiftly pressing on to
Syria with the news that the Emperor Caligula was
slain, passed, on the sea, the galley that carried the
death-warrant, and the life of Petronius was saved !

FEELING OF THE JEWS FOR JUDEA. 121

These facts prove that, in the Roman age, the
passionate love of the Jews for the land of Israel
found its only resting-place in Judea. The glory
of Jerusalem still crowned its hills. Judea was the
last stronghold of their religion. As some old family
that has parted, piece by piece, with its land, till
the few remaining acres are doubly sacred, is mad-
dened at the thought of strangers coming to take
the old homestead, so the Jews felt toward Judea.
The rest of the land was no longer sacred. The
gods of the heathen had their accursed temples in
Joppa, in Ptolemais, at the foot of Mount Carmel,
at the springs of the sacred Jordan, in Samaria, over
the river, and along the plain by the sea. When
the pilgrim-Jew, bound for Palestine, drew nigh to
the harbor of Csesarea, he turned away his angry
eyes from the heathen temple set up there by King
Herod, seen far over the sea. Every-where in the
land of Israel, " outside of the bounds" of Judea,
there had come in the "abominable" idolatry of the
nations. The Jews had learned how to tolerate
that ; but they would have died to save holy Judea
— all that was left them unprofaned of the Holy
Land — from such pollution.

The Gospels have to do almost wholly with Jews,
who were every-where one and the same people ;
and the breadth and sharpness of the difference be-
tween Judea and the rest of what had once been the
land of Israel could not fully appear in the Gospels,
because the Son of Abraham was sent to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. He passed by half-
heathen Tiberias ; and he may never have seen

122' THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Gadara,* only seven miles southward from the lake,
that fine Greek city, whose temples, theaters, and
rock-hewn tombs still witness to its greatness. In
the Gospels little is seen of the idol-carving, festive
Greeks, of the sea-faring Phoenicians, of the Syrians,
of the clans of the Lebanon, and of the restless
Arabs, who all made Galilee of the Gentiles (that is,
of the nations — the name of its northern district, to
which Capernaum belonged, yet a name that fitted
the whole of Galilee) so unlike Judea. A mirror
reflects what is before it ; the mirror of the Gospel
reflects the Jewish life in Galilee ; and the Jewish
life, with its families and feasts, its synagogues and
Sabbaths, like the Jewish features, was the same in
Galilee as in Judea.

Go where he might, the course of the Messiah
was ever tending toward Jerusalem, for there only
could be offered the sacrifice for the sin of the
world. The Cross was the goal of his desire. " I
have," He said, " a baptism to be baptized with,
and how am I straitened till it be accomplished."
The sameness of the ways and manners of the Jews
among whom he lived, and his singleness of aim,
gave such oneness to the whole field of his Ministry
that it requires a mental effort to apprehend how
different was the feeling of St. Matthew, St. John,

* This city, one of several Greek cities east of the river, was rebuilt
by Pompey the Great to please his freedman, Demetrius, who was born
there ; the same who, with one old soldier, paid the last honors to his
dead body. In " the country of the Gadarenes," that is, in the territory
of the city on the east of the lake, and near the village of Gergesa, from
which Matthew, to whom the lake-region was minutely known, calls
it " the country of the Gergesenes," our Lord healed the demoniacs.

THE DIVISION OF THE FIELD. 1 23

and the rest of the disciples toward Galilee, though
all save one were Galileans, from what it was toward
Judea, and how widely separated in their thoughts
was their Lord's life in Galilee from his life in Judea.

The division that St. Matthew and St. John made
of the field of the ministry is farther explained by
the reason already given why St. John was selected
by the disciples as one of their two Evangelists — his
knowledge of the things done in Judea and Jerusa-
lem. This being greater than that of his colleague,
Judea naturally fell to John, when geographical and
other reasons led them to divide the field.

There remains a stronger reason for this division.
In the only recorded hour of his youth in Jerusalem
how unlike Jesus was from what he had been in the
home in Nazareth ! And as his spirit then so stirred
within him and his words of wisdom were so beyond
the thirteenth of his human years, how must his
soul have been moved, what truth he must have re-
vealed when he was there in his manhood ! Surely
it was fitting and natural that in his Father's house
he should make known more of the mystery of the
Father and the Son, and in Jerusalem reveal his
deepest truths more than in Galilee.

Morally and mentally, the citizens of Jerusalem
and the men of Galilee were somewhat unlike. In
Galilee all the people but the hateful Nazarenes
heard Jesus patiently. In Jerusalem the Messiah
was confronted by adversaries whose trained reason-
ing powers had been sharpened by listening to, and
debating with, subtle disputants, who came from
the ends of the earth. Those hostile, haughty, in-

124 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

telligent watchers of every look and word sought
by sudden interruptions, by crafty interrogations,
to entangle him in his speech ; and the utterance
of thoughts so broken in upon was less consecutive
than in Galilee.

St. Matthew, the only Evangelist who calls Jeru-
salem the Holy City, must have been sensitive to all
the influences of Jerusalem. He could appreciate
the difference between our Lord's utterances to
Jews and to Galileans. He could discern in John
that receptive, assimilative, piercing quality of mind
and heart, then undeveloped, that is now so clearly
seen in his Gospel. St. Matthew was the very man
to mark in St. John the germ of that aptness to
apprehend the meaning of such words as our Lord
said in Jerusalem, which gave to St. John his su-
preme place among the holy Evangelists. I hold it
good evidence of this, that St. Matthew left to St.
John the recital of that discourse in the synagogue
in Capernaum, which is so like those in Jerusalem.
I think that his colleague, understanding the reason
of this omission, made that discourse a part of his
Gospel, though it was delivered in Galilee ; for the
concert of action between them was intelligent, not
mechanical.

The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John com-
plement each other. Not finding the Judean Min-
istry in St. Matthew's Gospel, we look for it in that
of St. John, and there we find it. Not finding the
Galilean ministry in St. John, we look for it in St.
Matthew, and there we find it. The two Gospels
are the halves of a whole.

LIMITATION OF THE ORAL GOSPEL. 1 25

The reasons, then, for that division of their field
by the two apostolic Evangelists (which on compar-
ing their Gospels is so plain) were John's peculiar
qualities, his knowledge of the ministry in Judea
and Jerusalem, the feeling that Judea was a world
by itself, and the geographical separation of Galilee
from Judea. But in the oral Gospel, and in the
second and third Gospels, there is the same limita-
tion that there is in St. Matthew's to the land of
Galilee ; and the compact, agreement, or under-
standing that has so far availed seems to avail no
more. Thrice we again face the same problem :
but if solved in the case of the oral Gospel, it is
solved for all. For, doubtless, the similar limita-
tion of the second and third Gospels was dependent
upon the limitation of the oral Gospel and of St.
Matthew's Apostolic Gospel; and, in fact, the second
Gospel was one of the oral Gospels. The real dif-
ficulty lies farther back. It is the limitation of the
oral Gospel that has to be cleared up.

The starting-point here is the fact that it was the
purpose of a Gospel to prove that Jesus was the
Christ ; for such being the end and aim of a Gos-
pel, it could be reached although the Judean min-
istry were passed over. In the main, this is the
explanation of the limitation of the oral Gospel to
the Galilean ministry ; and this, together with the
disciples' selection of Matthew and John to write
out the Gospels, and their knowing (as they must
have known) the understanding between them, ex-
plains why the disciples, in their oral Gospel, ignored
the Judean ministry. The two last facts are essen-

126 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

tial to the explanation. Without them the limita-
tion cannot fully be accounted for, and that, by their
help, it can be explained, is strong evidence of the
selection and of the agreement. For it is very
doubtful whether any thing short of an express rev-
elation would have fully justified their passing over
those events in Judea unless they could have said
among themselves : " John knows all about those
things. Of many of them some of us know nothing.
He knows the whole, and, in due time, will write
this out in our name. Let us give unity to our
witness by framing the oral Gospel from that one
circle of events whose facts are known to us all."

All else that has been said of the reasons for the
course of the two Evangelists applies to that of the
Disciples ; for, as well as their Evangelists, they felt
the difference between the two fields of the minis-
try. They also felt that their Master's teaching was,
at times, of a kind the recording of which suited
the genius of John better than of any other. In
their case, as in that of St. Matthew, I find evi-
dence of this in their not giving the discourse in
Capernaum ; and still stronger evidence in another
fact. Of the week of the Passion their recital was
so minute as to be a contrast to their broad de-
lineation of the months and years that preceded
it; yet the oral Gospel, like that of St. Matthew,
passed over the discourse on the night of the
Last Supper. I think I can understand the feeling
that led to that silence. Of those four disciples,
who with wonder listened as they sat on Mount
Olivet, " over against the Temple," three tried to

LIMITATION OF THE ORAL GOSPEL. 12?

repeat what they most deeply felt and could best
remember of that prophetic word ; but each one of
the disciples felt within himself, and may have said,
each to the other, " We must all leave the repeat-
ing of the farewell of our dying Lord to John, and
may the Lord help him to say those solemn and
tender words as he said them to us ! " — a prayer that
was granted.

With one other fact joined to these, the sought-
for explanation becomes complete. In the oral
Gospels (judging from that of St. Peter) there was
greater unity and directness than in the Gospels of
St. Matthew and St. Luke, whose structure was
more complicate. But in all those Gospels the
life of the Lord was ever tending to the city that
murdered the prophets, where it ended. It might
have broken in upon their unity, had those Gospels
included the early sojourn of the Lord in Jerusa-
lem and Judea ; for the character of his ministry up
to the time of the imprisonment of John the Bap-
tist * (though it cannot be called private) may be
said to have been of a tentative kind. It was then
the purpose of Jesus to test the fitness of the Jews
to receive his Gospel, as compared with the Gali-
leans among whom he had lived. The continuing
of the Herald's proclamation after the Baptism and
up to the time of his imprisonment, was probably
meant to give time for this ; and certainly it shows
the King had not yet come.

The Herald never went into Jerusalem, and the

* See the last Gospel to verse 24 of chap. iii. The fullness of the
ministry dates from verse 43 of chap. iv.

128 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

King went there with caution until his last visit,
whose open boldness was in contrast with his other
visits — for his time had come. The King's minis-
try began in the North. As had been foretold, the
light shone out " in the land of Zebulon and Naph-
tali, in Galilee of the Gentiles," and not in the
land of Judah. Therefore it would seem that the
oral teaching of the disciples should have begun
there ; for, in thinking of this, we are to keep in
mind that it was no more indispensable to a Gospel
to record what our Lord said and did in that earlier
period in Jerusalem than to record what He said and
did while tarrying among the Samaritans. It was
like those earnest men, in their oral teaching, to
pass over the period of preparation for the full-
ness of the Ministry : and our conclusion is, that,
like their Evangelist St. Matthew, they thought it
best to leave all that was to be said of the early
Judean ministry to St. John.

In this respect, the construction of the oral and
of the written Gospels can be explained through
the truth that it was the end and aim of a Gospel
to reveal the life of the Saviour, so as to give the
meaning of his sacrificial Death and to prove his glo-
rious Resurrection ; and, therefore, that a recital of
his life in Galilee, of his Passion and Resurrection,
might suffice for a Gospel. This being so, the ex-
planation and defense of the construction of the
oral and of the written Gospels, at this point, is a
valid one. And yet the end and aim of a Gospel
here needs to be presented more explicitly, because
it has become so common to hold that it was the

CHRIST JESUS THE SAVIOUR. 1 29

end and aim of a Gospel to make known Christ Je-
sus as our teacher and example. This puts one truth
into the place where another truth belongs. A
truth out of its own place and in the place of an-
other truth, has somewhat the effect of an untruth ;
and here this makes the construction of the Gospels
inexplicable. For, surely, if such had been the end
and aim of a Gospel, then the disciples and the
Evangelists should have labored to reproduce every
word that our Lord uttered, and to tell every thing
that he did.

But, as there is danger here of being misunder-
stood, let me say, it is written that Christ Jesus is
our teacher and our example. He is our example,
for he ever gave up his own will to the will of the
Father. He is our teacher through the truth that
ever fell from his lips. And I need tell none of the
few who read my books that I have ever dwelt upon
the truth, that the Eternal Word who was made
flesh and dwelt among us enlighteneth every man
that cometh into the world, that he hath ever taught
and ever teaches in the things that he made, in the
course of all events, in the ordering of each life, and
in his Holy Scriptures.

It was one of the many aims of the Holy Script-
ures to reveal Christ Jesus as teacher and example,
but so direct and single was the purpose of his in-
spired Evangelists to reveal Christ as the Redeemer,
that this was held by them in strict subordination
to that higher purpose, even that manifestation of
his Atonement through which, in the highest possi-
ble degree, Christ became teacher and example. In

130 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

this the Gospels are in harmony with the time and
with the facts in the Saviour's Ministry ; for its
time was too short for teaching to have been a pre-
eminent purpose, and its success was too small.
He wrought as a teacher in showing to the children
of Israel, by word and deed, that he was the Mes-
siah ; but he convinced of this only his disciples
and a few others. For a time the people heard him
gladly, yet the immediate effect of the Sermon on the
Mount was not as great as that of the sermon St. Pe-
ter preached after the life and death of Christ were
interpreted by the Holy Ghost.

Those who say that all that there is in the golden
rule and in the Lord's prayer had been uttered be-
fore by sages and saints go rather beyond the truth,
making the partial equal to the complete ; yet our
Lord did say that his own definition of duty, " love
to God and love to man," was the sum of the Law
and the Prophets. And when the Lord promised
that the Holy Ghost should guide to all truth, he dis-
claimed the office of teacher — that is, of the Great
Teacher — so often erroneously thought to have been
pre-eminently his office during his life on earth.

The eternal Word did not take upon himself the
form of man, to school-master the human race. In
the Scriptures none of the other ends of his coming
are exalted to an equality with the Atonement. The
Epistle to the Hebrews proves from the Law and
the Prophets what the Gospels prove from his life
on earth, that He, who was in the beginning with
God, and who was God, came to manifest the divine
mercy through his death. He himself said that the

CHRIST THE REDEEMER. 131

other signs that he was the Christ were as nothing
in comparison with the sign of the Prophet Jonah ;
that is, the sign of his own death and resurrec-
tion.

The inexorable duties of to-day leave no surplus
virtue with which to make up for the sins of yester-
day ; and a man who cannot atone for his own sins
cannot for the sins of others. The sinless Son of
Man and Son of God could do this, and he did this.
In his Atonement is the reason for his Incarnation ;
and, through the logic inhering in the evolvement
of thought from thought, they who deny the atone-
ment come at last to deny the incarnation. Thus
they degrade the Christ from the place he holds
among Christians to the place of human teachers
and examples. They claim a high place for some of
these, for Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates,
Mohammed — a place that may be allowed in spite of
their sins and errors; but they were men. The dif-
ference in gentleness, in wisdom, or in force of will
between them and other men was but a difference in
degree. They were great and they did much ; but it
was insignificant compared with what was done for
the human race by those forgotten benefactors who
kindled the first fire, forged the first bar of iron,
struck the first note of music, or framed the oldest
alphabet. What those teachers knew of truth, be-
yond others of their time, was of less moment than
the truth that all men have ever known in common :
for all have ever known that it is appointed unto all
men once to die, and after death the judgment ;
and what did Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Bud-

132 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

dha, Mohammed, teach that equaled these common
truths ? The Word, who enlighteneth every man,
taught them all the truth they knew. Whatever
they wrought of righteousness they wrought through
the Spirit of Christ ; and, if their sins and errors
have been forgiven, and they have attained unto
everlasting life, it is because Christ the Saviour died
for sinners.

The Seed of the woman bruised the head of the
serpent. On the divine Son of Mary the iniquity
of us all was laid. The angel said to St. Joseph
that the child of the holy Virgin would save his
people from their sins. That was his work ! Noth-
ing else that he did is to be named with it — not
even when he called for the heavens and the earth
and they came. On the cross he " finished " the
revelation of God, not only for those of woman
born, but for all the intelligent creatures that now
are, or shall hereafter be, in all the worlds of the one
indivisible universe he made. Then was " finished"
that revelation of God through which He became
forever " the brightness of the Father's glory, and
the express image of His person," to angels as to
men. That nothing is said in the creed of Christ's
teachings, nothing of his miracles, nothing of his
example, was a thing ordained. There the Incarna-
tion and the Atonement are strikingly definite in
their human relations, yet there nothing is suffered
to share our thoughts with the incarnation and the
atonement : " He was born of the Virgin Mary,
crucified under Pontius Pilate."

CHRIST THE REDEEMER. 1 33

Thus I have proved what I said in the Introduc-
tion, that some of the higher truths of our holy
religion are confirmed by the study of the Construc-
tion of the Gospels. For, by means of the truth
that Christ died to atone for the sin of the world,
which is revealed by the prophets, and is the burden
of the Epistles, the construction of the Gospels can
be explained and defended. In the light of the
great central truth — the sacrificial death of Christ,
which his true Church teaches and the nations be-
lieve— all other Christian truths and facts justify
themselves to the conscience and to the reason.
But if the teaching of truth, and the setting an ex-
ample, be held to be the pre-eminent aim and glory
of Christ Jesus, then it is not possible to vindicate
the inspiration of His Disciples and of His holy
Evangelists ; it is not possible even to vindicate
their common sense.

134 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

CHAPTER VIII.

INSPIRATION OF THE GOSPELS.

WO of the Witnesses were set by the rest to
write out the joint-witness of them all. Prov-
identially two of the brethren were associated
with them in that work — one the amanuensis of the
Chief Apostle, the other the companion of the
Apostle to the Gentiles ; and to their Gospels apos-
tolic sanction gave equal authority with those of St.
Matthew and St. John. The promise of the Lord
that the Holy Spirit should aid his disciples in their
witness to himself attaches to the whole of this tes-
timony of the four Evangelists ; for it is the testi-
mony of those to whom the promise was given.
Where it did not come directly from his chosen Wit-
nesses, they made it their own by their own acts.
And St. John, who more than any other Evangelist
brought from out the treasure-house of his own
memory, in the name of all his brethren wrote,
"We beheld his glory."

When the Twelve were sent forth on their first
mission our Lord told them (in words fully coming to
pass after his own ministry on earth had ended) that
they would be brought before governors and kings ;
and he said, " Take no thought how or what ye
shall speak. It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit

PROMISE OF INSPIRATION. 1 35

of your Father that speaketh in you." Re-uttering
this on the Mount of Olives, he told his disciples
that both thoughts and words should be given them :
" Settle it in your hearts not to meditate before-
hand what ye shall answer ; for I will give you a
mouth and wisdom that your adversaries shall not
be able to gainsay nor resist." His promise of di-
vine aid then reached to their words, and surely it
may have reached that far in the inspiration of
their joint-witness to himself, given once for all
and for all time in the holy Gospels. Why not ?
A question that is here in lieu of a volume of argu-
ment.

Though familiar with the thought of the divine
aid of the Witnesses, we can hardly call to mind the
promises of such aid without being surprised at
their fullness, and at their correspondence with the
state of the disciples then ; and with that future, to
which, before his crucifixion, Christ Jesus looked
forward. " Now I go away, and none of you ask-
eth me, Whither goest thou ? Sorrow hath filled
your hearts. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth,
is come, he shall glorify me, for he shall receive of
mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that
the Father hath are mine. When the Spirit of
Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth, and
he will show you things to come." How perfectly
all this agrees with the feelings of the disciples,
and with what they themselves afterward became !
Then they could neither understand nor bear, what,
before the sun rose and set again, they knew only
too well. And how wonderful the change when

136 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Ghost
transformed them into Apostles! How they were
guided into all the truth * in Christ, as in the Epis-
tles to the Colossians and Ephesians ! And how
they were shown the things that were to come, as
in the Apocalypse !

" The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Fa-
ther will send in my name, he shall teach ycu all
things." In accordance with common usage, these
unlimited words are limited by the subject itself;
they mean all things needed by the disciples in
the work they had to do, and in that sense they
were to be received by those who heard them.
But may there not have been in them a larger
sense, an infinite meaning, to be unfolded through
endless ages ? It may be easy to say what his
words must have meant to those who heard them,
yet who shall say what their full meaning was to
the Lord himself? In those words there may have
been to him a prophecy and a promise of the in-
crease of his people in knowledge that now is com-
ing to pass in the earth, and their fulfillment in this
and in other worlds may be far beyond the com-
pass of the imagination.

Even in the further promise in the next words,
" And he shall bring to your remembrance whatso-
ever I have said unto you," our Lord may have
had in mind all his people forever.

With much, and it may be with all, that our
Lord said to his disciples, there blended some
thought of others — in his last prayer he prayed for
* The word has the article in the Greek — the Truth.

PROMISE OF INSPIRATION. 1 37

all those who, through them, should believe on his
name: — yet this promise is to be construed as re-
lating primarily, and it may be solely to his Wit-
nesses. It is a promise of all the divine aid they
needed in the fulfilling of their witness, and hence
it implies more than a quickening of their mem-
ories. There was need of more than such aid ; for
it was not in the power of the children of men
rightly to apprehend and truly to describe the Son
of God. In the holy Gospels the promise was ful-
filled in the selection his Evangelists made from all
the Lord said and did ; and I would rest their inspi-
ration mainly on the ground that, in their selection,
they were so guided by the Spirit of Truth, that
their portraiture of the Son of Man and Son of God
has in each of their Gospels, and in the four Gos-
pels taken together, a harmony and completeness
that is beyond the possibilities of human genius.

" When the Comforter is come whom I will send
unto you, from the Father, he shall testify of me,
and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been
with me from the beginning." Here the disciples
are spoken of as human witnesses ; they bear wit-
ness because they have been with Christ from the
beginning. And St. Peter gave the same reason in
the same words why Justus and Matthias were se-
lected, that one of them might be chosen to fill the
vacancy in the number of the Witnesses.

The question whether the divine element that
entered into the witness of the Evangelists for
higher ends, also secured an accuracy in every de-
tail of every thing they touched upon beyond what

138 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

human testimony is capable of in itself and by its
own laws, is often discussed, as if those, who hold
to the inspiration of those Witnesses, must answer
that question in the affirmative. This assumption
is usually associated with a narrow idea of the
range of inspiration ; and it puts what may have
been one of the minor results of inspiration on an
equality with others of greater moment, as will ap-
pear if we reflect on the nature of human testimony.

Observation has convinced lawyers that the im-
perfection of the human faculties is such that im-
perfection in human testimony, like friction in ma-
chinery, may be so reduced as to be almost inap-
preciable, but cannot be gotten rid of. And I think
it would be the authoritative judgment of the legal
profession that in the testimony of well-informed,
careful, and honest witnesses as to unimportant de-
tails of complicated events and trains of events,
differences and even contradictions would be found
when the testimony of each was closely compared
with itself and with that of the other witnesses ;
and that in such cases, if the witnesses agreed as to
all the important facts, their differences, and even
their contradictions, as to incidents to which their
attention was not specially called, and which the
court and the jury take to be of no consequence,
would confirm rather than weaken their evidence
by showing their testimony was free from influence
or collusion.

In its very nature, human testimony is imperfect ;
and yet, within variable limits, on the whole well
understood and agreed upon, it is one of the guides

NATURE OF TESTIMONY. 1 39

of human life. Generally it is honest ; truth, not
falsehood, is the common utterance ; and witnesses
are apt to be careful as to what their words are to
prove. Their opinion is generally right as to what
details are unimportant ; they are inaccurate usually
at points where they woul'd have guarded their
words had it been of consequence, or as to things
hardly noticed by the limited human faculties when
not specially called to mark them. Such inaccura-
cies come under the legal maxim, De mimimis non
curat Lex — The law takes no account of trifles.

The words perfect and imperfect have only a rel-
ative meaning. As applied to aught save the divine,
perfect can only mean that a thing is as good as it
is in its nature to be. A thing is not imperfect,
then, in the sense of bad, because it is not better
than it can be ; and human testimony is perfect
when, to establish a fact, it goes as far as human
testimony can go. The divine element in the wit-
ness of the Evangelists would be no less divine
because of so-called imperfections that inhere in
the nature of human testimony — so-called imper-
fections, I say, meaning to question whether they
be such in any proper sense.

But this has nothing to do with such an alleged
contradiction as that Matthew makes Bethlehem the
home of the Holy Family, and St. Luke makes it
Nazareth ; nor with such a mistake as St. Luke is
said to have made in connecting with the birth of
Jesus in Bethlehem a taxation said to have taken
place some years afterward. If there were such er-
rors and contradictions in the Gospels they would

140 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

destroy the credibility of the Evangelists by show-
ing gross ignorance or carelessness ; but the alleged
minor differences that make up the larger part of
the current argument against the Gospels come un-
der the old legal maxim.

I do not know that superhuman accuracy, in each
and all of the minor details, was necessary to give
confidence to the testimony of the holy Evangelists.
If it were, then it would seem that the superhuman
Power who brought about this superhuman result
would have protected every minutiae of the tran-
scripts of that testimony. But in the manuscripts
of the Gospels differences are found ; thus, our ver-
sion follows manuscripts that give the distance of
Emmaus from Jerusalem at sixty furlongs, and the
manuscript found by Tischendorf, in the convent on
Mount Sinai, gives it at one hundred and sixty fur-
longs. Still the text of the whole of the New Tes-
tament is in a much more perfect state than that of
other ancient writings ; the variations in its hundreds
of manuscripts are checks upon each other, and by
far the greater number of them are such as do not
perceptibly affect the sense. They may have been
permitted as safeguards against the idolatry of the
letter, and they invalidate no article of the faith.

Even on the theory of verbal inspiration, I see
no ground for maintaining that there is no such im-
perfection in the testimony of the Evangelists as
merely stamps it as human testimony. It has be-
come too common to take the phrase verbal inspi-
ration, and to argue as if it were the exposition of
a complicate and difficult doctrine with its explana-

ACCURACY OF THE GOSPELS. 141

tions, limitations, and reasons, and not merely its
convenient symbol ; and thus a good name has be-
come an unfortunate one. But word and thought
are inseparable ; and those who reject verbal inspi-
ration, rightly understood, must logically deny all
inspiration.

Yet I would not be understood to hold that there
are inaccuracies of any sort in the holy Gospels.
St. Augustine wrote to St. Jerome, who concurred
with him : " I firmly believe that no one of the
writers of Scripture has ever fallen into any error in
writing." This was the faith of Christians in the
fifth century, and in this century its truth as to the
Gospels has been established as a matter of evi-
dence. For never was testimony more severely
tested than that of the Evangelists, and their accu-
racy has been proved beyond all reasonable doubt.

There are critics who think there are many errors
in the old Hebrew Scriptures, but those who are
anxious to find mistakes are apt to find them.
Concerning the notions of those critics, opinions are
contradictory among themselves. Such criticism
has much to learn and much to unlearn. Thus :
the Mosaic cosmology has been decried as unscien-
tific and childish ; yet those who treat it thus know
too little of ancient ideas concerning Time and the
World, to understand the terms in which they are
expressed. When the scientific revelations of the
first chapter of Genesis are interpreted as an ancient
Oriental sage would have interpreted them, they an-
ticipate cosmological truths which modern science
has of late begun to see. Again : even some or-

142 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

thodox authorities say that the dates in several of
the historical books of the Old Testament are in
hopeless confusion, yet scholars of finer insight see
that those dates (with the exception of a few cler-
ical errors) must be correct.

If there be in those ancient records, that recite
the history of the central nation for thousands of
years, seeming errors that the mistakes of tran-
scribers of manuscripts for so many ages do not
account for, and that, with our present knowledge,
are inexplicable, and though their moral and spirit-
ual revelations be incomplete, these things need not
trouble our faith in Hebrew Scripture. There the
time-plan of the world is so unrolled before the pa-
triarch Noah that he foretells that God will enlarge
Japheth, and he shall worship in the tabernacle of
Shem, thus foreshadowing the historic relations of
continents then unpeopled — Europe, from the days
of Alexander until now, ever passing over into Asia
to dwell, and Asia ever giving to Europe religion.
There the time-plan of the world is further unfold-
ed to the Prophet Daniel, so that he foretells the
fourth and last universal empire, and beyond that,
the dominion of the Son of Man. There it is prom-
ised to Father Abraham that in his Son — for St.
Paul interprets the prophecy not of many but of
one — shall all the nations be blessed ; and thus the
line of the fulfillment of the word of Hope in Eden
is fixed in one people, and then, by other sure
words of prophecy, in one family ; and the time-
limit of the promise and the town in which it is to
come to pass are made known. All the Hebrew

ACCURACY OF THE GOSPELS. 143

Scripture is a prophecy of One for whose coming
the world would be made ready, so that all flesh
might see his glory, and the plan of all human his-
tory unrolls according to the pattern shown to the
Hebrews of old. In that Scripture the delineations
of the power, the wisdom, and the mercy of the
Lord — as in Psalm ciii — have no parallel in the
writings of men. Those sacred Scriptures lead on-
ward and upward to Gospels wherein our Lord
himself vouches for their inspiration. And we
may well rest content in what St. Augustine and
St. Jerome believed to be true of all Scripture, if it
can be proved to be true of the Gospels, even
though the difficulties of conclusively proving this at
each and every point in those very ancient Hebrew
Scriptures should as yet be insurmountable.

Of the Gospels it can be, and it has been,
proved. For accuracy the freely-given testimony
of the Evangelists comes into a class by itself. In
the Gospels there are no contradictions. There are
satisfactory explanations of almost all their seeming
differences, and of the four or five that alone re-
main, explanations have been given that are, at
least, quite possible. To ask more than this, as to
such ancient and minute documents, of those who
hold to the plenary inspiration of the Gospels, is
the mere fanaticism of unbelief.

It has been established, over and over again, that
the accuracy of agreement in minute details in the
Gospels, is such as was never reached in the testi-
mony of any four witnesses to complicated events ;
and in their testimony there is a multitude of unde-

144 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

signed coincidences of so recondite and subtile a
kind that they prove to demonstration that the ac-
curacy of the Evangelists is beyond the nature of
human testimony. Every one dismisses the thought
of any collusion between them — it is but just to say
that skeptics reject it as unworthy to be entertained
— because the Evangelists so evidently intended to
tell the truth ; and it should be dismissed for this
decisive reason also : — no collusion, no comparing
of what they wrote, no rewriting of what they had
written, no art or device, could ever have wrought
the harmony of their witness. Any good lawyer,
familiar in courts with the variances and contradic-
tions not only of false witnesses colluding to deceive,
but of honest, intelligent witnesses, earnestly desir-
ing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, on closely, fairly, and without preju-
dice comparing the witness of the four Evangelists,
and testing, according to the severest legal rules of
evidence, their agreement as to facts in all its forms
and in all its depths, would come to the conviction
that their harmony was not only beyond the reach
of artifice, but beyond the possibilities of merely
human testimony.

I cite the words of one, who, early in life, began
"his researches into the exact and delicate mean-
ings of the Greek tenses, moods, prepositions and
particles, and, in later years, brought to the study
of the New Testament a complete mastery over the
structure of the Greek language " — firmly persuaded
that a faithful study of the holy Gospels, whether
in the Greek or in the English only, creates in

TRUTH OF THE GOSPELS, 145

every candid soul the feeling which he utters with
such heartfelt conviction :

" A very minute investigation of the Greek of the
New Testament, studied grammatically with a care-
ful consideration of the real and true meaning of
every case, tense, and mood, of every particle, even
of the very order of the words, so far as my knowl-
edge of the niceties and exquisite discriminations
of the language has enabled me to master the sub-
ject, has only served to deepen the convictions that
the holy Scriptures are indeed in very truth the
word of God, inspired by his Holy Spirit ; that they
are in the original minutely, scrupulously, marvel-
ously exact in every word, syllable, and letter. I
cannot express too strongly the awe and admiration
with which I rise daily from this microscopic study
of the New Testament. The more minutely I look
into the force, the exactness, the deep meaning of
even single words, the profounder becomes my rev-
erence, the more awful my sense, of the importance
of every jot and every tittle of Holy Writ. Deeply
and awfully convinced I am that the Scriptures are
not merely the work of good, holy, inspired men, but
that they are really the voice of God, that we must
approach them, therefore, with the confidence, the
reverence, the unshaken belief in their correctness,
truthfulness, depth, importance, and infinite wis-
dom, due to words which issue from the mouth of
God himself." *

* Rev. William Sewell, D.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in
the University of Oxford, author of " Introduction to the Dialogues
of Plato," etc., etc. Died A.D. 1874.
10

146 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

It is the glory of the Gospels that through their
inspired witness to the Son of Man and Son of God,
all may attain to a knowledge of the life of the Re-
deemer and Lord, as true, as real, as that of his
own disciples — may come into their places and in
this wisdom "have fellowship with them." Yet it
is never to be forgotten that the Gospel is a book
sealed, till its seals are broken by the Spirit ; for it
is written, " No man ca?i say that Jesus is the Lord
but by the Holy Ghost!' There is always the need
of the Holy Spirit, by whom the Evangelists bore
true witness to the Lord ; and the Holy Spirit will
ever make their witness a living witness to all who
in sincerity pray for his help — even as it is written
by the brother of our Lord, " If any man lack wis-
dom, let him ask of God, and it shall be given him."

PAET SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

STYLE OF THE EVANGELISTS.

tF the chief end and aim of a Gospel be seen —
if it be clear that the construction of each
Gospel is so fitted to its purpose that of itself
it is a sufficient witness to the Saviour for men to
believe in him — if the correspondence of the apos-
tolic Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John and the
affinity of the written with the oral Gospel be well
understood — then the answers to many questions
that unbelief has raised and the unreasonableness
of much of the doubt concerning the Gospels are
plain. A knowledge of these things clears up so
much concerning the Gospels, that we might almost
be thankful to infidels for driving us to thorough-
ness in studying all that pertains to their construc-
tion. It were well if we were as earnest to learn
as they are to destroy.

There is much that has to be thought out before
all that has been said against the Gospels as frag-
ments and traditions can be cleared up ; but before
treating of those things that in the eyes of some
have given this character to writings whose unity
and whose truthfulness is divine, let a word be said

I48 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

of their style. Each Gospel resembles each other,
for each leads to the Cross. All the Evangelists
had the same purpose, yet each of the Gospels has
a character of its own. St. Matthew could not once
draw such a picture as St. Peter always draws ; St.
Mark could not have planned St. Matthew's Gospel ;
neither could have written St. Luke's Gospel ; nor
could St. Luke have written either of theirs. And
yet the first three Evangelists, from the order, the
facts, and the phrases common to them all, may
seem to have the same style. But there are few
who think of the style of the Evangelists at all ;
and this can have no higher praise, for a good
style does not draw attention from the thought to
itself. To speak only when there is something to
be said, to say just that and no more, is the perfec-
tion of utterance, and this perfection belongs to the
Evangelists.

In their writings the thought is plainly seen.
Such transparency is a quality of style that comes
from the character of a writer's mind, and cannot be
given by training in the schools. Some book-
learned men quietly assume that the style of Mat-
thew, Mark, and John is poverty-stricken, because
they were not book-learned men. But ornament
would have been out of place in a Gospel, and the
Evangelists were too earnest to think of it. Yet
nothing is more readable than the Gospels. Noth-
ing is more translatable. Their word-painting is so
clear in outline that when transferred into another
language the picture is there, the frame only is
changed. The thoughts of the writers of the Epis-

STYLE OF THE EVANGELISTS. 149

ties are more with those to whom they wrote ; those
of the Evangelists are with the Lord only. His
overshadowing glory makes them afraid. Their
sense of the divinity of the man Christ Jesus is in
their hush of awe, their stillness of adoration. The
Lord is in his holy temple, let the earth keep silence
before Him !

The time is nigh at hand when unbelievers will
change their tone, and say the Evangelists were the
great masters of history, and the power of the Gos-
pel is due to their literary excellence. In this there
will be just enough of truth to do the most harm ;
for the literary excellence of the holy Gospels is one
of the many elements of their power. Goethe —
the great critic in the kingdom of this world, whose
like has not arisen in the kingdom of grace — said of
Sir Walter Scott, " I see in his writings a new art,
with laws of its own ;" and that is true of the Holy
Evangelists. " The Ariosto of the North " taught
others to do some things better than he did them
himself; but the divine historic art of the Evangel-
ists remains, and that divine art will remain, unpar-
alleled and inimitable.

Could I parade the good sayings of men any
thing but good, a long roll of names, and with them
a long roll of religious names, might be called to
witness to the literary excellence of the Gospels.
But the whole of this critical estimate has two sides
to it. Even Westcott can speak of the style of the
Gospels as " confused," and most critics hold that
the Gospels come far short of what might be desired
in a historic point of view. I find it one of the

150 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

causes of this underestimate of the historic merit of
the Evangelists, that they do not mark times and
seasons, and set forth events in chronological se-
quence, with a painful and confusing exactness.
For deficiencies rashly asserted and unwisely con-
ceded even Ellicott can give as a reason, " That an-
cient chroniclers gave little heed to dates, and that
the detailed sequence of biographical narrative was
unknown among the Jews." The reply, like the
accusation, has only an illusive show of pertinency.
The writers of the Old Testament took pains to
give their dates as well as they could without the
help of that humble but useful thing, the almanac.
The Hebrew Evangelists were not deficient in mark-
ing dates. They had their reasons for omitting to
mark some epochs, and they mark some with dates
of their own. Psychologic, moral, and spiritual de-
pendencies were more to them than chronological
ones ; and their critics often mistake a grouping of
events by laws of higher power for a disregard of
the law of time. What seems to them disorder is
order too philosophic for their comprehension.

To the Evangelists actions were of value as they
witnessed to the soul from which the action came.
They give more than the outward form of things.
In tracing the spiritual sequence of events their
sight is quick, and fine, and far. In the Gospels the
future is in the present, and there nothing takes us
wholly by surprise.

The notion that the Evangelists were heedless of
times and seasons comes from their not giving the
day and the year of the birth of our Lord more than

THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 151

from any thing else. There is nothing in St. Mat-
thew's Gospel from which that day and year can be
determined. The blank is not filled by St. Mark ;
nor by St. Luke, usually so careful as to times ; and
St. John, the last Evangelist and last Apostle, is
silent concerning those dates, like the Evangelists
before him. This silence came from carelessness,
or from ignorance, or design. No one who marks
the thoughtfulness of the Evangelists will say that it
came from carelessness. No one who marks that
in St. Luke's Gospel the Blessed Mother herself tells
of the birth of her Son and Lord, or who remem-
bers that her home was in the house of St. John,
will say it was from ignorance. All who believe in
the inspiration of the holy Gospels will confess there
was some divine reason why His Evangelists say
nothing from which the time of the birth of the
Lord can be determined, even as they say nothing
of his form and features, and thus tempt no man to
the irreverence of trying to mold the image of the
Lord, or to picture his likeness.

By their silence the Holy Scriptures often teach
as plainly as by their words. The silence of the
Holy Scripture as to the day and year of the birth
of the Lord was ordained ; and God has so hidden
both of those dates that man will never find them
out. From this speaking silence of His Scriptures
there seems to be the sure inference, that the cele-
bration of a day as Christ's birthday will not forever
tend to the highest degree of faith in Him as the
Eternal Word. The divinely-ordained silence of the
Blessed Mother and of the holy Evangelists as to

152 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the day of the Lord's birth seems to teach that the In-
carnation, and, by irresistible inference, the Atone-
ment also, belong to all time, and not to any one
time ; and that the setting apart of days as peculiar-
ly theirs has no place in the worship of Him who is
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. And my
argument is, that here, where the charge of not set-
ting forth times and seasons bears hardest against
the holy Evangelists, just here is seen the finger
of God.

Near the beginning of the earliest Gospel there is
a verse that more, perhaps, than any thing else, save
the silence as to the time of the Lord's birth, has
led to an undervaluing of the historic qualities of
the Evangelists : "Now, when Jesus was born in
Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king,
there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews?
for we have seen his star in the east, and are come
to worship him." Here the Nativity seems to be
mentioned rather for the sake of another event than
for its own sake ; and its date is no date at all, for it
has the breadth of a long reign.

This most unfortunate of verses has baffled the
transatlantic scholars ; whether orthodox or not,
they are well agreed that its geographic and his-
toric terms give no means of knowing whence the
pilgrims came, or who the pilgrims were. There is
nothing very strange in this, for the geography of
Western Asia dates from this century, and the his-
toric criticism of the Scriptures dates not much
further back than its beginning. In its better

SECOND CHAPTER OF ST. MATTHEW. 1 53

forms that criticism has met with good success,
though here it failed, where success was easier than
failure. And yet here scholars can hardly be said
to have failed, for they did not try to succeed. St.
Matthew's terms had no definite meaning to them,
and they assumed that there is very little meaning
in them. And if they really be as meaningless as
they are to their critics, then, taken together with
St. Matthew's strange way of alluding to the birth
of the Lord, and his omission to name the day and
the year thereof, they would countenance the error
that this Evangelist, at least, was deficient in his-
toric qualities. »

But elsewhere I have shown that by his term
Magi (wisely kept in the Vulgate, but in the En-
glish version vaguely mistranslated wise men) St.
Matthew told those to whom he wrote, who those
pilgrims were. The meaning of his term was plain
to them, and he knew it. In his father's time
Herod had fled before the Parthian horsemen in
Judea. In his time a great many Jews — as many as
there were in Palestine — lived in the provinces of
the Persian (then the Parthian) Empire. Of those
were the " dwellers in Mesopotamia, the Parthians,
Medes, Elamites," who were present at the Pente-
cost. The chief lines of the traffic of the East and
the Far-East with the Phoenician sea-coast and with
the land of Egypt, ran through Palestine. The
Jews of Palestine were as familiar with the Par-
thian Empire as the British are now with India;
and hence all the Jews of Palestine were as familiar
with the term Magi (the name of the priests of the

154 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Persian, and of its successor the Parthian, Empire)
as commercial London is to-day with the name
Brahmin.

St. Matthew's geographic terms, the East and the
Far-East, the only ones at his command, curious-
ly well fitted his purpose. They clearly pointed
out both the empire from whence the pilgrims
came, and in what province of that empire they
were when the star of our Lord shone into our
heavens. His terms — colloquial household terms
in Palestine — were not so clear outside of that coun-
try ; and, where his Gospel passed over from Asia
into Europe, their meaning became obscure, and it
was lost sight of in the Dark Ages.

At every point the first two chapters of St. Mat-
thew can be vindicated ; but here I can only fur-
ther say that, as St. Matthew intended to mark the
fulfilling of prophecy, his bare mention of Bethle-
hem in the first verse of his second chapter seems
to make against the carrying out of his manifold
design, but only for an instant, for almost imme-
diately he calls in the wisdom of all the scribes to
witness that Bethlehem was the foreordained birth-
place. And though St. Matthew, like the other
Evangelists, does not name the day or the year of
our Lord's birth, it should be noted that before the
chapter ends he narrows down its time to near that
of Herod's death ; and in this there is more than at
first appears, for the end of Herod's reign was an
epoch with the Jews.

The most important date after our Lord's birth
is that of the full beginning of his Ministry ; and

DATE OF THE MINISTRY. 1 55

here, again, the charge against the Evangelists of
deficiency in marking times and seasons is counte-
nanced by their not giving the day, the month, or
the year of that beginning. But God's dates are
not all in the almanac. His Scriptures mark times
and seasons in ways of their own. To his inspired
Evangelists that month and year seemed hardly of
more consequence than the hour or the minute of
the hour ; but they knew of a divine chronology in
which that date was of spiritual significance, and
there they recorded it : " Now when Jesus had heard
that John was cast into prison He departed into
Galilee. . . . From that hour He began to preach."
Thus St. Matthew ; and thus St. Mark, " Now after
that John was cast into prison Jesus came into
Galilee preaching the Gospel and saying, The time
is fulfilled."

An earlier Ministry, and in Judea, is described in
the first three chapters of the last Gospel. Toward
the end of that course of events St. John, by a
passing allusion to the near imprisonment of the
Baptist, recognizes the date which the Gospels of
St. Matthew and St. Mark had made well known
to the whole Congregation. Before that time the
acts of our Lord, like those of an heir to a vacant
throne before his coronation, were of kingly signifi-
cance ; yet two of the earlier Evangelists carefully
mark that the King did not put forth his full
regal power until after his herald was cast into
prison.

It is written, " The wrath of man shall praise
God, and the remainder of wrath He will restrain."

156 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

St. Matthew and St. Mark teach a lesson, beyond
even the lesson in that instructive Scripture, through
the relation they disclose between the imprisonment
of the Herald and the full beginning of the ministry
of the King. They teach that the hour of a seem-
ing victory of the darkness is the hour of a real
advance of the light. They reveal that when
iniquity reaches its bound, then the word of God
goes forth with full power. So it was when Christ
Jesus began His Ministry. So it was when He
suffered on the Cross. So it was when the first
martyr died. So it will ever be in the kingdom of
grace.

To this all history testifies ; but no one can bind
all the sheaves in the Holy Land. We must leave
this truth, and glance again at the opening of St.
Matthew's Gospel. After relating the visit of the
Magi, the flight, the return, and the dwelling in
Nazareth, St. Matthew goes right on to say, u In
those days came John the Baptist preaching in the
wilderness ;" and to him Jesus goes for baptism.
Here there is a time for which there seems to be
no measure of any kind ; yet, on looking more
closely, it is the interval from childhood to man-
hood. All the Evangelists thus pass over times of
which they have nothing to say ; as when St. Luke
passes from the presentation of the holy Child in
the temple to the dwelling again of the holy family
in Nazareth, or from the Temptation to the Ministry
in Galilee. The Evangelists avoid interrupting the
onflowing of their Gospels by any methodical inter-
position of dates ; yet sometimes they mark the

DATES IN THE GOSPELS. 1 5/

very hour; as when, though half a century had
passed, St. John so naturally remembers that it
was about the tenth hour of the day when Jesus
first spoke to him. St. Luke dates his narrative as
precisely as the old Greek chroniclers. The other
Evangelists make us feel that they could have done
so ; and one who reads their Gospels, in sympathy
with their spiritual aim, never feels any lack of
chronology.

That St. Luke was not an eye-witness of the
Lord may have had something to do with his care-
ful marking of dates, for its effect was somewhat as
if he had been much farther off, in time, from the
life of Christ than the other Evangelists ; yet, like
the others, he had heard the Gospel orally taught,
and the style of his Gospel, like theirs, is colloquial.
When those who have been actors in great events
talk about them, they give little heed to the date
of those events, because they are already dated in
the minds of those with whom they are conversing.
And for the date of the Gospels there is, it seems to
me, a delicately persuasive evidence in the fact that
their writers deal with dates just as men naturally
do when speaking of things that took place in their
own generation. Thus, St. Mark unconsciously
proves the date of his Gospel by not giving to it
any date at all, and by his, at once, bringing in John
the Baptist as one whom every body knew ; for
though writing in the city of Rome, and though
all the world has read what he wrote, yet while
writing he had much in mind the little colony of
Roman Jews, whose memory or knowledge of the

158 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Baptist was like his own. And in the Holy Gos-
pels the general and the special time-marks are
as many as can be reasonably looked for. They
are in the handwriting of eye-witnesses, and the
most masterly invention could not have given such
fine touches of verisimilitude to fabrications in a
later age.

TIME OF ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 1 59

?

CHAPTER II.

TIME OF ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL.

AM now to consider a peculiarity of St. Mat-
thew's Gospel through which, by chance, I dis-
covered the time and the circumstances in which
that Gospel was written :— by chance, I say, as did
the soldier who said so well, " Chance is but a name
for the unknown combinations of infinite power."
And, as a fitting preface to this discussion, I con-
fide to my friendly and tireless reader the slowly
wrought out purpose that led, at last, to that chance
discovery. In my boyhood the old Roman days
seemed to live again as I construed Cicero's oration
against Catiline, but I could not make the days of
the disciples so life-like. My imagination could
not cross the great gulf between the Occident and
the Orient. The world of the East seemed unreal,
it was so unlike the Western world : though, in
spiritual insight, in depth of conviction, in the tur-
moil of passion, the calm of repose, the Eastern
world is the more real world of the two. Little
then was known of the East, of its geography, its
history, its ways of life. The apparition of John
the Baptist then startled the historic senset as in his
own time it startled the Jewish conscience : for then
there were none to tell (what Farrar and Geikie

l6o THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

have not yet found out) that John was sent in his
childhood away into the desert, was brought up for
safety in the black tents, and that he came preach-
ing in the wilderness of Judea, in dress and manner
of life, an Arab, such as the traveler now meets with
in the plain of Esdraelon. There was nothing like
Judea and the Jews, in the whole Eastern world.
Robinson and Smith were then in the Holy Land,
busy with its geography, but the unequaled results
of their joint labors had not been given to the world.
There were some means of learning about the ways
of the populace of old Rome, what, with Calmet's
help, could not be learned of those of the people of
Jerusalem ; yet I longed to make myself as much
at home in the Holy City as, whether truly or not,
I seemed to be in Rome. "A boy's thoughts are
long thoughts." The seed then buried in some
corner of the heart was to spring up, but years
passed before the bearing of fruit.

In my college days I gained a bird's-eye view of
the fields of knowledge as then mapped out and ex-
plored, and I made up my mind to keep up with
the thought of my time. I saw its currents sweep-
ing more and more against the bulwarks of the
faith. Yet neither the daring that assailed the
holy Scriptures nor the questions as to their con-
struction, to which no answer came, troubled my
faith. My knowledge of the masterpieces of hu-
man genius sufficed for me to say, as I read some
of the plainer or grander words of Holy Writ, "These
are not the thoughts of man." Whether the prob-
lems of unbelief were solved in my life-time or not,

EARLY ASPIRATIONS. l6l

I knew that time would bring their solution, as it
had brought the solution of the problem of the Zo-
diac of Denderah. I listened to the doubts that
troubled the air, in the spirit that believes and yet
inquires, and would not suffer what I did know to
be contradicted by what I did not know. I well
remember the one hour when, wearily revolving
the monotonous, scientific, historic, and critical
questionings of the Bible, I said in my heart, noth-
ing doubting, " Open the book and read ; the Word
of God will prove itself worthy of the Creator, as
do the heavens, the mountains, and the sea." The
will can hold the mind in abeyance, so that, for the
moment, the known seems almost as if unknown,
and thus old truths may have something of the
freshness of new truth. Calling this power into
play, I opened the New Testament and read page
on page. The world of Scripture opened before
me, as I read, with a glory that I felt as though I
could make others see ; and the time came when
that feeling shaped my life.

I determined to carry out my youthful aspiration
to make myself at home in Jerusalem. But I did
not begin as far back as the days of the patriarchs.
I thought it better suited the shortness of life to
join the caravan of forty thousand pilgrims who, five
hundred years before the birth of Christ, went up
from their Babylonian exile to the desolation of
Jerusalem, and there laid anew the foundations of
the Hebrew State. I dwelt there, in thought, until
the power of the Persians passed away, and, follow-
ing in the footsteps of Alexander, colonies of Greeks
11

1 62 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

came building cities and teaching their language to
Syria ; and thence onward, through the glorious
restoration of Independence, through the hateful
coming in of the Romans and the evil tyranny of
the Idumaean Herod.

The six hundred preceding years are the avenue
through which to approach the years from the death
of King Herod to the fall of Jerusalem ; yet I found,
to my surprise, that they were among the least ex-
plored periods of history ; and, but for Dr. Raphall,
their history would have been a repellant roll of
meaningless events. The learned rabbi taught me
how to feel the pulses of that time. Its study be-
came a fascination. Its memorials were few, and
within my reach. I read the scanty Hebraic litera-
ture of those days. I studied the graphic pages of
that fine old reprobate, Josephus, until it almost
seemed as if his pages had never been studied be-
fore. I began to know something about the He-
brew people — their struggles and vicissitudes, the
changes of their language, the swift glories of their
heroic age, their sects, their politics, their modes of
thought and ways of life — from the time when
Daniel was chief of the Wise Men of the East and
the Far-East, until, in the year of grace, Christ Jesus
was born in Bethlehem of Judea.

Then, as the first step toward making the days of
the disciples life-like, I made out lists of the names
of all the men and women in each one of the four
Gospels, thinking to bring together all that was said
of them in each, and in all, of the Gospels. The
names were somewhat different in each of the lists ;

BEARINGS OF THE DISCOVERY. 1 63

and, running them over, and recalling what I could
remember of the men and women named in each,
the thought came into my mind that in the earliest
Gospel there was a designed secrecy and silence as to
certain persons and events. I quickly took in the
points of the case, and was soon assured that this
was the true conclusion.

I saw the bearings of this discovery upon the
criticism of St. Matthew's Gospel. In the style of
that Gospel, artless and unstudied though it be, the
characteristics of the same mind are every-where to
be seen. As no one else would have written any
line just as Tacitus did, so St. Matthew wrote no
paragraph of his Gospel just as any one else would
have written it. Every-where the organic life of his
Gospel is felt, and the bristling titles and closely
printed tomes of those who, like Ewald, have denied
its unity have not proved to me the critical sagacity
of any of them. I see their arguments, and I see
through them. Yet I see, as clearly as any of those
theorists can, that St. Matthew's Gospel has at one
or two points a fragmentary look. Were this inex-
plicable it would be nothing against the fact that
his Gospel is the product of one mind. But I think
I can show that it is St. Matthew's caution as to
certain persons and events that gives this appear-
ance to his Gospel at those points. I am now to
prove this caution ; and, by the same evidence, to
prove that St. Matthew's Gospel was written as early
as the time of the persecution that began with the
murder of St. Stephen.

164 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

FOR at least seven years after the veil of the
Temple was rent in twain the Christians were, in
outward form, a sect of the Jews. They continued
daily in the Temple, their women were purified,
their first-born sons were redeemed.

Sects were not unknown among the children of
Abraham ; and it was the underlying thought of
Gamaliel's argument — a noble example of the elo-
quence of the Sanhedrim — that an everlasting relig-
ion had nothing to fear from a sect that would en-
dure but for a time. His idea was much the same
as that of the Jews of the present day, with whom
Christianity is a Hebrew aberration, whose long-
enduring course is running out. Gamaliel's policy
then seemed possible and politic. As the Jews did
concede that John the Baptist was a Prophet, they
could concede that Jesus was a Prophet ; and, though
His dream of a spiritual religion had touched the
imperishable Temple, yet the vitality of His error
died with Him. The Jews could tolerate a heresy
whose consequences were so little foreknown, even
by those who held it. The most far-sighted could
see no danger to religion from sectarians held to-
gether by insane devotion to a malefactor, who had
openly perished in the sight of all the people.

On the other hand, those whom we have to call
Christians — a little in advance of the time when
they were known by that name — believed that
Jesus was the Christ who would soon come again.
But their hope in his coming was Hebraic. They
looked for him to be King of the race because he
was to be King of the Jews. " Out of Zion was to

CHANGE IN THE JEWISH FEELING. 1 65

go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem." The significance of the Sacrifice, that
made needless the symbolism of the temple-wor-
ship, was not well understood. Jesus said that He
came not to destroy, but to fulfill the law, and those
words seemed in harmony with the hopes they
cherished. Thus there seemed to be no need of a
fatal breach between the old and the new, and, for
a time, there was a truce between the Jews and
the Christians. The as yet nameless sect provoked
little curiosity and less fear.

The citizens of Jerusalem knew less of Jesus
than we are apt to think. His person was hardly
known to them. His comings had been few, His
tarryings brief, and when the city was thronged
with strangers. At His last visit they cried, " Who
is this ? " Those who answered, " Jesus, the Proph-
et of Nazareth in Galilee," were Galileans.

Deep the mark of his words on the souls of a
few, and the city shuddered at his crucifixion. All
heard of his resurrection, a few thousands believed
it ; but the city beheld Jesus no more. Feasts and
passovers went on. Millions of strangers came and
went away. A metropolis sees much and forgets
much. After the death of Jesus, as after his birth,
the few remembered, the many forgot, the signs and
wonders.

Seven years after the crucifixion Jewish indif-
ference changed to open hostility. St. Stephen
was charged with saying that Jesus of Nazareth
would destroy the Temple and change the Law.
His defense tacitly admits that the charge was sub-

1 66 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

stantially true. He made a historical argument to
prove that the Hebrew religion did not belong to a
family, a tribe, or a people, but to all the world.
Some of his judges had heard it before, for they
would not suffer his argument to go on. St. Ste-
phen felt it was useless to plead, and he turned
upon his enemies with invectives that hastened,
but did not cause, his murder. His taking off had
been planned before ; and not without good reason
in the eyes of his judges, for St. Stephen took the
same ground as to the ritual of Moses that was
afterward taken by St. Paul. He taught that Jesus
was instead of the holy Temple. He reaffirmed
that for which Jesus had been tried, condemned,
and punished. In this St. Stephen was not alone.
His judges knew that he had a following. It was
clear to the Jews that the crucifixion had not put
an end to the Nazarene. The delusion was grow-
ing, not dying out. The Nazarene was becoming a
power in the land, and something had to be done.

The Jews were too weak and they were too saga-
cious to strike at the witnesses to the Resurrection.
That was neither possible nor politic. No law
made it a crime to have seen Jesus, who had died,
alive again ; and the number of the men and women
who had seen him was both too few and too many.
The risen Lord had not shown himself openly.
The witnesses to his resurrection were a small
company, and yet the five hundred who saw him
at one time were too many to be made way with.
The trial and the condemnation of two or three of
the common people would avail nothing ; it would

STRONG MEASURES PREFERRED. 167

neither destroy the witness of the others nor their
own. Dying enthusiasts adhere to their convic-
tions, and their testimony, sealed with their blood,
is more convincing than ever. The Sanhedrim had
not the legal right to put any one to death ; and it
was far from safe to do it by a public tumult, or a
private execution. It was wiser to treat the wit-
ness to Christ as fraudulent, or as the delusion of a
few enthusiasts.

Such would have been their shrewdest conclusion
had their power to punish been as great as they
wished. They had to go further back than the
witness to the Resurrection. They had again to
stamp down the pretense that Jesus was the Son
of God, for His Resurrection was an almost irresist-
ible inference from his Divine humanity, and a lit-
tle evidence would prove what was antecedently so
credible.

Those strong men preferred strong measures.
They determined to punish some of those who, by
colluding with Jesus when alive, had made them-
selves liable to indictment for having aided and
abetted in the crime of blasphemy. Of course the
Jews tried to keep their design a secret, and it did
not become public through its success. St. Luke
says nothing of it, but his sketch of the persecution
that began with the arrest of St. Stephen accords
with such a design. The record may seem to be
meager and insufficient ; but as a few pencil marks
from the hand of a master, so there, a few lines tell
a great deal. They may even suggest more than
was known to St. Luke, just as a portrait may

1 68 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

have in it more of a man's history than the artist
knew.

That persecution was not one of those casual
outbreaks that are common in passionate Oriental
cities of divers races and religions. It began in a
session of the Council. The judges of St. Stephen
were his executioners, and Saul, who was conspicu-
ous at the martyrdom, was a pupil of Gamaliel.
How long the persecution lasted is unknown ; but
for a time, certainly, there was no intent to let the
heretics go, and it lasted long enough to fill the
prisons. Men, women, and children could not
readily escape from that walled and guarded town;
and in hiding they waited to dispose of their effects,
for their sick to get well, for a safe chance of flight ;
and months may have passed before the Jews
changed their purpose and drove all the heretics
out of the city.

On looking into the record of this persecution
we are struck with some things that are peculiar.
Though every house was broken into, yet not one
of the Twelve was arrested ; though a multitude
were dragged to prison, both men and women, not
one of them was tried. Such is the impresssion
St. Luke gives, and his narrative at least makes it
certain that there was no public trial or execution
of any person of such note, that he felt called upon
to speak of it. But it can hardly have been that in
such an outbreak of rage and zeal there was no
bloodshed. This idea harmonizes the history in
St. Luke with the frequent allusions to those days
in St. Paul's speeches and letters. St. Paul says

THE SENDING TO DAMASCUS. 1 69

that he voted (in the minority, perhaps) that here-
tics should be put to death, that he tried to make
them blaspheme, (whether any of them did so may
be doubted,) and that he persecuted them unto
death. Possibly these last words refer to his intent,
or to the death of Stephen ; but the punishment of
scourging in the synagogues was permitted by the
Romans, and, at such a time, it is likely to have
been inflicted with such a cruel disregard of the
usual merciful restrictions, that, in some cases,
death may have ensued. And due regard being
-had to the way that St. Paul is speaking, if even
one aged or infirm person was tortured to death, it
might answer to his words. They point to horrors
that harrowed up his soul as they stood up in the
accusing past, yet were not of sufficient consequence
to be noted by the historian.

The mission of Saul to Damascus falls in exactly
with our general view. Not till Jerusalem and its
suburbs had been thoroughly searched could there
have been any thought of searching elsewhere. But
when that was unsuccessful the question arose,
Where can those whom they wished to seize have
gone? There was an idea that they might have
fled to Damascus, and pursuers, armed with a man-
date from the high-priest, started for that city.
They were in great earnest, for the distance was
considerable and they set out on an uncertainty.
This is implied in the words, " If they found any of
that way." And if they did, what then ? Were
they to accuse them before the synagogue and there
have them punished ? No ; they were to bring

170 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

those whom, perchance, they might find, in bonds to
Jerusalem. Why bring them to Jerusalem? There
were in Jerusalem heretics enough, some thousands
of them, and there were already prisoners enough.
The number of those whom they could have brought
to Jerusalem in bonds could not have been many.
And those whom they could not find in Jerusalem,
and hoped to find in Damascus, must have been
few in number, and they must have been persons
of note.

All is clear and consistent on the supposition that
certain persons were sought for ; and what St. Luke
records might more properly be called an inquisi-
tion than a persecution, were it not for the final
enforced scattering abroad of the whole Congrega-
tion, when the secret purpose of the inquisitors had
failed.

For whom were the inquisitors searching? Was
it for the Twelve ? Within the city itself they all
outstayed the persecution, and as no miracle hid
them from the eyes of the Jews, we must conclude
they were not specially sought for. For whom,
then, were the inquisitors searching? I think we
shall prove that they were searching for the family
of Bethany, and for the Blessed Mother of the cru-
cified Son.

Bethany was one of the suburbs of Jerusalem.
The miracle there wrought was the immediate oc-
casion of the arrest and trial of Jesus, though the
hatred of the Jews had kindled to the heat of mur-
der before the raising of Lazarus, and even the
neighborhood of the unholy city had become so

THE PURPOSE TO KILL LAZARUS. 171

unsafe that Jesus stayed on the eastern bank of the
Jordan. While there Mary and her sister Martha
sent this message, " Lord, he whom thou lovest is
sick." And, when He would go to Bethany, the
thoughtful Thomas said, " Let us go and die with
him." These words disprove the notion that most
of the disciples were then away from their Master ;
His time was too near for that ; but they do prove
not only the chivalry of St. Thomas, but his sagacity.
He judged rightly of the peril of the place and time ;
for, as soon as the chief priests knew that Jesus was
again so near, and heard of what He did at Bethany,
they took counsel how they might kill Him.

At that time it was their plan to kill Lazarus
also. Only St. John records this, and he does not
say how Lazarus escaped. But such was the wealth
and rank of the family of Bethany that its love for
Jesus greatly enraged the rulers of the Jews ; and,
as Mary foresaw the Lord's death, she may have
seen the danger of Lazarus, and the family have
had the power to guard against it. Perhaps they
did so because of some intimation from their Lord ;
all we know is, that the Jews then failed to kill
Lazarus. But such was their purpose then ; and
this purpose would naturally revive in the midst
of the provocations that led them to murder St.
Stephen.

The Mother of Jesus had been his accomplice in
the crime of declaring himself the Son of God ; a
crime for which the Jews said that Jesus had been
fairly tried by the law of Moses and justly con-
demned. In their judgment, she was worthy of

172 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

death ; and they thought that nothing would so
effectually stay the mania about the Son, as the
trial and punishment of the Mother.

As such was the intent of the inquisitors, they
had to inquire into the lineage and kindred of Jesus,
of which the Jews of Jerusalem knew little. Jesus
had been called the Son of David, but it might
have been in a figurative sense. His kindred were
humble people, who had lived in an out-of-the-way
mountain village, in a distant corner of the land.
It is somewhat probable that even His chosen dis-
ciples— save Peter, James, and John — were not
well-known, as none of them were arrested. Be
that as it may, witnesses had to be hunted up, and
from among the heretics. But it was not so easy
to find out who the heretics were. Their observ-
ance of the sacrament was private, and they kept
up the rites of the Hebrew religion. In dress, man-
ners, and looks they were Jews. At an earlier time
" they were in favor with the people," " a great
company of the priests became obedient to the
faith;" little or no concealment of their doctrines,
or of themselves, was then thought of. But, in the
premonitions of coming danger before a persecu-
tion breaks out, frankness gives way to prudence ;
and the policy of the heretics changed when the
people began to be "stirred up against them."
Their Master shunned death so long as it could
rightly be shunned ; and the peril of the time laid
on those suspected of being Christians the duty of
guarding every act, word, or look that might send
a brother or sister to prison.

ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 1 73

Suddenly as the persecution may have come at
last, it could not have taken the Twelve wholly by
surprise. Their Master had forewarned them of evil
times, brother delivering up brother to death, and
the father the child. He had foretold St. Peter's
violent death. Such warnings must have quickened
their foresight ; and through private means of infor-
mation, or through their own sagacity, the Disciples,
no doubt, foreknew the coming of the persecution,
and divined something of its secret purpose.

Their foreknowledge of the troubles, that sooner
or later were sure to come, must have deepened
their conviction that the oral Gospel would not al-
ways suffice for the wants of the Congregation ; and
we shall prove that within the seven years after
the Pentecost, St. Matthew either finished his Gos-
pel, or that, when the persecution came, he did so at
once. In seven years there had been time for him
to plan and to think over his closely-reasoned and
mighty argument. His Master gave him no such
intimation of length of days as He did to his brother
Evangelist, St. John, and the coming on of the per-
secution warned him against delay. For safe-keep-
ing, copies of his manuscript had to be sent out of
the city. And St. Matthew felt, that when the
scattered Congregation went every-where preach-
ing the word, it was not enough for them to carry
in their hearts the oral Gospel of the Twelve, but
that they ought, also, to have the written apostolic
Gospel.

Thus far I have given my conclusions as to the
meaning of the persecution in Jerusalem, drawn

174 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

from its record in the Acts as compared with the
Gospel of St. Matthew. I am now to present the
evidence of their correctness, which I find in that
Gospel. If some of the facts concerning the history
of a new sect were not generally, and some were
not known at all, to its enemies, a manuscript recit-
ing its origin would contain very dangerous mate-
rial at a time when many of the actors in the events
it related were in a city where search was made for
them, when spies were watching the gates, armed men
were breaking into houses and trying all the divers
means of detection, using in their turn fraud and
force, imprudence, weakness, or treachery, to steal
or wrench from their victims the names and hiding-
places of other heretics. If such a manuscript were
written out before the persecution came, common
sense and common prudence would dictate that it
should so be altered that it would not imperil any
of the brotherhood and sisterhood. So far as pos-
sible within the scope of its intent, all that was
dangerous would be suppressed. Nothing would
be left that needlessly implicated any one. It
would bear the marks of having been so written or
so altered, that, if an inquisitor tore one of its copies
from the bosom of a martyr, or if, by accident or by
treachery, one of them fell into his hands, it would
not put him on the track of fresh victims.

As many incidents of far-off time are unknown,
just what names, places, and events might safely be
mentioned in such an ancient manuscript at the
time it was written, and just what dangerous facts
or hints there must be in it, could not be ascertained

ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 1 75

beyond all caviling ; and yet, in such a manuscript,
indisputable marks of caution would be manifest
when they came to be looked for. It might take a
microscope to see them all, but some of them
would be deep-cut and plain.

On such a manuscript its date would be stamped
in more ways than one. And it would set forth
some things so guardedly and briefly that other
manuscripts, going over the same ground at a later
time, might, here and there, seem to contradict it.
If its true date, and, consequently, the knowledge
of the circumstances in which it was sent forth, were
forgotten, its peculiarities in this and in other ways
might give rise to perplexity and wonder; and yet
successive generations in whom the critical faculty
was not awake might read such a manuscript with-
out noting those marks, or at least without think-
ing they had any special meaning — just as the great
bird-tracks on the stones in the valley of the Con-
necticut, always there and always as plainly visible
as now, were passed unseen till our own day ; or, if
seen, were only wondered at, and, so far from being
made to give up their meaning, were not thought
to have any meaning.

St. Matthew's Gospel bears marks of having been
written at the time of some general persecution ;
and as the only general persecution of the Chris-
tians in Judea was the one which began with the
arrest of St. Stephen, it must have been written at
that time ; or else (which I take to have been the
case) changes were then made in the manuscript
that fitted it to the circumstances. In St. Mat-

iyd THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

thew's Gospel there are signs of general caution as
to all whom its disclosures were likely to endanger,
and signs of special caution for Lazarus and his
sisters and for the Mother of our Lord. This will
be proved from what St. Matthew does say and
from what he does not say — from his handling of
some facts, and from his silence as to others. But
his silence as to the ministry of our Lord in Judea
came from other causes, and will form no part of
the argument ; nor will his treating so briefly of the
Resurrection and his bringing his Gospel to an end
without a word concerning the great events that
soon followed in Jerusalem. In these things there
may be confirmation of our argument, but to sepa-
rate this out and to measure its force does not seem
possible, and the case is strong enough without it.
Herod the king, Herod the Tetrarch of Galilee,
Philip his brother, and Herodias, Caiaphas the
high-priest, and Pilate the Roman governor, John
the Baptist, Joseph, and Mary the Mother of the
Lord, are named by St. Matthew. " His brethren "
— " James and Joses and Simon and Judas " — and
" sisters " of his are spoken of, but the names of the
latter are not given. He names the twelve chosen
Disciples, also Simon the leper, Simon of Cyrene,
Joseph of Arimathea, Mary the mother of James
and Joses ; and he speaks of the mother of James
and John as the mother of Zebedee's children. St.
Mark names two others, Jairus the ruler of the
synagogue in Capernaum, and Timseus the blind
man of Jericho. St. Luke gives the names of the
Caesars, Augustus and Tiberius ; of Lysanius the Te-

NAMES IN THE GOSPELS. 1 77

trach of Abilene, of Cyrenius the Governor of Syria,
of Annas the high-priest ; also those of Zacharias
and Elisabeth his wife, of Simeon and Anna, (four
aged persons at the time of Christ's birth, who
could not have been living at the time of his Minis-
try.) He names Simon the Pharisee of Capernaum,
Zaccheus of Jericho, Cleopas of Emmaus, Mary and
her sister Martha, Susannah, and Joanna the wife
of Chuza, Herod's steward. He also names Mat-
thias and Justus, who " companied with the disci-
ples all the time from the baptism of John." To
the names given in the three earlier Gospels St.
John adds those of Nicodemus, of Lazarus, and of
Malchus, a servant of the high-priest.

There are not many names in the Evangeliad.
Had there been a legendary element in the Gospels
there would have been more. For the Magi, tradi-
tion invented names ; scholars conjecture some of
those of the doctors in the Temple, and Claudia
Procula, the name of Pilate's wife, seems to be re-
membered. The Evangelists could have given more
names — those of the seventy disciples, for example.
They could have given some of those of the court
that tried our Lord ; but their names have little
more of true interest than those of the Roman sol-
diers who watched the cross or who guarded the
tomb. The Evangelists thought more of the char-
acters of men than of their names ; and had they
given the name of that blind beggar who answered
the Jews so well, of the father whose child Christ
healed when He came down from the Mount of

Transfiguration, or of the two demoniacs, their
12

178 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

pictures would not have been more life-like. The
title of the centurion naturally took the place of
his name. Of the ten lepers only one returned to
give thanks, but even his name is no more to us
than the name of the Good Samaritan in the par-
able. The names of the two false witnesses at the
trial are well forgotten. Actions often live in the
memory though the names of the actors were un-
known. The disciples were moving about, and
they may not have heard the names of the young
ruler or of the Syrophcenician woman, or, if they
did, may soon have forgotten them.

But St. Matthew's avoidance of some events and
his keeping back some names is not to be explained
on general principles. Throughout his Gospel there
is a cautious reticence; and, though it be not cer-
tain that caution was the motive for his reserve or
silence in each and every instance when it looks
very much like it, yet, from all such cases taken to-
gether, the inference of caution is certain. He de-
liberately suppressed names and facts.

The conclusive evidence of this is in the later
chapters of St. Matthew, but his handling of events
in the Ministry in Galilee suggests the idea of cau-
tious regard for the safety of persons whom his dis-
closures might endanger. Sometimes he tells what
a person did and suppresses the name. Sometimes
both name and fact are suppressed. He does not
give the name of Jairus, the ruler of his own syna-
gogue, and he says nothing of that nobleman of his
own town of Capernaum, who, with all his house,
believed. Is there not something here that looks

CAUTION OF ST. MATTHEW. 1 79

like caution? He does not mention Joanna, who
ministered of her substance to the Lord, and whose
home was in the neighboring town of Tiberias.
May not this have been from caution ? The court
of that Herod who murdered the Baptist was at
Tiberias, and Chuza, Joanna's husband, was the
steward of his household. Bartimaeus, the son of
Timaeus, was in some way distinguished among the
blind, who, after the manner of the East, sat in the
gates of Jericho begging. St. Mark gives his name.
St. Matthew leaves it out. Probably in that there
is no significance, but there is significance in St.
Matthew's silence as to Zaccheus. As he recalled
the days when his Master stayed in Jericho, he could
not have forgotten its publican, his eagerness to see
the Lord, his climbing up into " the sycamore tree,"
the honor Christ gave him when He said, " I must
abide at thy house." Surely Matthew could not
have forgotten the feast the publican gave, so like
his own ; yet, he left it to St. Luke to record the
story and the name of Zaccheus. It is probable
that the begging from Pilate, by Joseph of Arima-
thea, of the body of Jesus, while it yet hung upon
the accursed tree, (which is related by St. Matthew,)
was too public for caution ; and it was safe to give
the name of Simon, who was made to bear the cross,
for he lived in distant Cyrene. But St. Matthew
left it to be made known in a safer time that in
the garden and at night Nicodemus embalmed
the Crucified. He names two women, mothers of
Disciples, and, if they were with their sons whose
names are in his list of the Twelve, this may have

ISO THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

had something to do with his naming those women.
Zebedee, the husband of one of them, was living
when our Lord's ministry began, but seems to have
died before it ended. St. Matthew also names
Mary Magdalene ; and Simon the leper, who had
been afflicted with disease, and may have died be-
fore St. Matthew wrote.

Our argument yet needs one case where St. Mat-
thew must have known a name, where he was called
upon to give* that name, and where he suppressed it.
There are two such cases ; and there is a third that
is almost or quite such a case — the name of the
man in whose house the Last Supper was instituted.
Of the many who come and go in the Gospels, few
enkindle more of sacred curiosity. Disciples were
sent to meet a -man bearing a jar of water. They
were to follow the water-canier home, and there to
give this word from the Lord, " My time is at hand.
I will eat the Passover at thy house. " This mes-
sage— " My time is at hand " — recognizes, in the
master of the house, a spiritual insight such as
elsewhere appears but once in the Gospels ; and I
remark, in passing, that his discipleship is not ex-
plained by any thing in the earlier Gospels ; yet,
strangely as the story there reads, it is in harmony
with what the last Gospel alone tells of Christ's
teachings and miracles in Jerusalem.

St. Matthew kept back the name of that man so
trusted, and so worthy of trust. St. Mark copied
his example. His name may not have reached St.
Paul, who was not in the "large upper chamber."
Yet that name must have become well known to the

CAUTION OF ST. MATTHEW. l8l

Twelve in their sojourn in Jerusalem ; and, if St.
Matthew wrote his name in his manuscript, he
struck it out in that time of common danger, when,
perhaps, some of the Twelve were concealed in that
man's house.

Those who, in spite of its organic unity, contend
that St. Matthew's Gospel was made up of frag-
mentary sayings, around which a frame-work of
events was afterwards constructed, may plead that
all the facts cited agree with their patch-work
theory. Some of them do ; but the strength of our
case is in the harmony of so many facts that there
can be no reasonable doubt of the conclusion drawn
from them collectively ; and, though a perfect knowl-
edge of this cumulative evidence might set some of
those facts aside, yet that larger knowledge might
know of others to fill their places. St. Matthew's
caution is quite certain from the evidence already
given. But the evidence is not all in. The most
decisive part of it is found in two facts, one proving
special caution for the family of Bethany and the
other for the Mother of our Lord.

This generation, too much in the habit of reading
the four Gospels as one continuous history, or, rath-
er, too little in the habit of studying each of the
Gospels by itself, was wonder-struck when infidels,
searching them one by one and then comparing
them, pointed out that the three earlier Evangelists
seem to know very little of the family of Bethany,
and nothing of Lazarus, whose calling by the Lord
from the tomb now stirs the soul like a sound from
the archangel's trumpet. Some were so bewildered

1 82 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

that they felt compelled to ascribe to the Gospels a
character that vacillates between history and tradi-
tion ; and the reticence of St. Matthew as to that
family, continued as it is by St. Mark and St. Luke,
is indeed strange. Our Lord's affection for that
family was well known to his Disciples, and nothing
he ever did was better known in Jerusalem, and in
all the region round about, than the raising of Laz-
arus ; yet in St. Matthew's Gospel only one cold
line alludes to the blessed home of Mary and her
sister Martha : " He went out to Bethany and
lodged there." St. Mark barely names Bethany,
and says nothing of the family. St. Luke does not
locate the home of Martha and Mary: with him it
is " a certain village ;" and he does not say they
were sisters of Lazarus. Like St. Matthew and like
St. Mark, St. Luke does not name Lazarus at all.

The danger which surrounded that family was
the reason for this silence. St. Matthew sup-
pressed the names of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus,
because the hatred of the Jews was such that no
word could then be written of them, that, by any
evil chance, might make their lives less secure. It
may be that nothing could have made that hatred
more intense or their danger greater; yet St. Mat-
thew did as any careful man would have done.
Written with quickening pulses of his heart, his
brief, cold line was designedly brief and cold. Well
he loved that family, and well he knew the worth
of their history ; but he knew as well it would not
be lost, for his colleague, St. John, would record it
in a later and safer time. The silence of St. Mark

DECISIVE MARK OF CAUTION. 1 83

is to be explained in the same way ; or he may-
have felt that he ought to take the same course
that the Apostle had taken. In St. Luke's sketch
of Mary and Martha a touch of contrast identifies
their likenesses with their full portraits from the
pencil of St. John ; but St. Luke tells so little of
them, and that little is comparatively so unimpor-
tant, that it looks as if St. Luke felt that he ought
to show that the sisters were known to him, and
had some reason for not saying more.

The Christians in Judea were never safe, and a
continuing deadly purpose of the Jews toward the
family of Bethany would explain the continuance,
through the second and third Gospel, of the silence
of the first Gospel about them. There is a similar
caution concerning the Blessed Mother in the first
Gospel, that continues in the second, and ceases in
the third, doubtless because the reason for it had
ceased with her death.

St. Matthew's withholding the name of the man
in whose " upper chamber " our Lord kept the
Passover, is good evidence of caution ; his with-
holding another name is decisive evidence of it. It
stamps upon his Gospel one mark of caution as to
the family of Bethany that cannot be disputed.
Our Lord himself commanded that a certain act of
a woman of that family should be told forever as a
memorial of her. And though it break in upon the
continuity of our argument, let us pause, for here
something may be learned of Christ, as a man, not
elsewhere to be learned so well. At a feast in the
house of Simon of Bethany, Mary, the sister of

1 84 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Lazarus, moved by the prophetic intuition of faith
and love, anointed the body of Jesus, his hands and
his feet, for burial. With an insight into the Script-
ures far beyond that of the disciples, she knew that
the Lamb of God would atone by suffering unto
death for the sins of his people. Her sister Mar-
tha had the same high order of intellect. Jesus
said unto her, " I am the resurrection and the life.
He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in
me shall never die." Then — as if what the Christ
had said was implied in what she was saying — Mar-
tha answered, " Yea, Lord, I believe that Thou art
the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into
the world."

Mary knew, what that Man of the house knew
and the disciples did not know, that the time of
the Master was at hand. The uncomprehending
Disciples looked coldly on her anointing of Jesus as
one who was dead ; but He who alone understands,
who alone appreciates any one, understood and ap-
proved. He felt that she appreciated his suffering
that was to come, as though that suffering were in
the past. Appreciation is as needful and grateful
to the human soul as love, and is perhaps more
rare. Our Lord had so little of appreciation that
the loneliness of his life on earth passes all imagin-
ing. His Disciples at last proved themselves wor-
thy of his trust ; but then their faith was dark in
the clear light of that woman's. She felt the
shadow of fast-coming death that was falling on her
Lord. She knew his human solicitude that his

THE HUMAN FEELING OF OUR LORD. 1 85

poor remains should be decently cared for, and
from what he then said we know that he shared in
that human feeling which dimly preintimates that
the body will come again from the dust, — as in some
far distant cycle it will, when Christ shall destroy
the " last enemy," and, by the redemption of the
body as well as of the soul, give divine complete-
ness to His victory over death. That real human
feeling belongs to all born of the Woman who heard
the inexorable decree and the mysterious promise,
that one of woman born would redeem from death ;
and our Lord's solicitude for his remains proves his
real human nature. But how could Mary have
known that feeling ? She may have known it from
the Scriptures, for there God, as if touched by this
solicitude of his Son, ordains that his grave shall be
with the rich in his death : — a decree that came to
pass when his body was laid in that " new tomb in
the rock, wherein never man was laid."

How that wonderful woman knew that feeling of
her Lord, or how her anointing of his living body
had such significance, I do not fully comprehend,
but she knew that his executioners would keep her
away from him when he died. She was in sympa-
thy with her Lord, and she heard his commenda-
tion : " She hath done what she could. She is
come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.
She hath wrought a good work upon me. Why
trouble ye the woman ? " This He said because the
disciples " had indignation " when they saw " the
waste " of that " costly offering." Judas murmured
that " it might have been sold for more than three

1 86 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

hundred pence and given to the poor;" as though
there were only one poverty ; as though, in the lack
of all that makes the wear of life easier, in the want
of honor and of love, Jesus was not poorer than
the poor. Judas, troubled for the poor, went out
and sold his Master ! Jesus knew why Judas went,
and yet he then foretold that his Gospel should be
preached in all the world.

But it is not his divine foresight, so often shown
elsewhere, it is his human gratitude, that he rarely
had occasion to show, that here claims our thoughts.
The spirit in which he said, " He that shall give a
cup of cold water to a disciple of mine, for my sake,
shall in no wise lose his reward," here breaks forth
as nowhere else in all his life. His affluence of
gratitude shows his heart as. a man, and his bound-
less reward is befitting him to whom all time, all
space belonged. " Wheresoever this Gospel " —
the Gospel, known to Mary, that his death would
save his people — " wheresoever this Gospel shall be
preached, in the whole world, there shall also this,
which this woman hath done, be told as a memorial
of her r

With that command we resume our argument.
In the act of obeying that command St. Matthew
disobeyed it ; he told what that woman did, and
kept back her name. It is evasive to say, that her
intelligence, her sympathy, her faith, her love, were
to be remembered ; that it is immaterial who she
was, what name she bore. The command is plain,
what that woman did shall be told as a memorial
of her ; and St. Matthew, when telling what he felt

THE NAME OF MARY. 187

he must and did tell, must have had strong reasons
for keeping back her name.

It is folly here to allow the thought of fragment-
ary tradition ; for, with pious zeal, tradition would
have invented a hundred names for that woman,
rather than have had her story go forth in this un-
satisfactory way. Her name would have been seen
in the clouds, whistled in the winds, whispered of
angels ! There is the soberness of history in St.
Matthew's silence ; and what can have been his
reason save the caution which is shown throughout
his Gospel, and is here specially manifest toward
the family of Bethany ?

St. Matthew twice points as straight to that
family as prudence permitted. Once, when all but
intimating that it was the custom of Jesus, he says,
He went out to Bethany and lodged there ; once,
when he locates what he told of that unnamed
woman in the house of Simon of Bethany. This
makes against my argument ; still, he may have
felt constrained to say something that would tend
to identify that woman in a better time ; and it is
caution that is here to be proved, not its metes
and bounds.

That St. Matthew, having said all that he could
consistently with that woman's safety, left what he
could not say to his colleague St. John, is curiously
confirmed by the way that St. John brings in her
name. St. Mark had told the story, and, like St.
Matthew, had suppressed the name. St. John re-
peats the story twice told before, and, as if quick to
supply the omissions of his brother Evangelists and

1 88 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

do what they expected, he gives her name the first
possible chance, before he tells her story in its
proper place farther on. And it looks very much
as if he had in mind St. Luke's unnamed " village "
when he writes thus : u Now a certain man was sick
named Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and
her sister Martha!' Then he at once goes on to
say : " // was that Mary which anointed the Lord
with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair,
whose brother Lazarus was sick." St. John's ready
way of referring, beforehand, to the story of Mary,
also shows that the Gospels of St. Matthew and St.
Mark were well known to his readers ; and he could
safely name Mary and Martha and Lazarus, for he
had long outlived them all.

The caution of St. Matthew for the safety of the
Blessed Mother remains to be proved. This led to
a peculiar presentation of some facts and an omis-
sion of others, that give to his Gospel, at certain
points, a fragmentary appearance which heretofore
has baffled the critical sagacity that has tried to ex-
plain it. The reason for these enigmas is St. Mat-
thew's caution, which also vindicates his Gospel
from any seeming want of honor for her " whom
all nations are to call blessed."

Concerning the Blessed Mother there is a myste-
rious reserve and silence in the two earlier Gospels.
We are astonished at the absence of so much of
the glory and grace that shine around her in the
third Gospel. It is true, that St. Matthew marks
that her faith led to th i worship of her divine Son
by the pilgrims from the Far-East, and this, with

RESERVE AS TO THE HOLY VIRGIN. 1 89

what he records in his first chapter, is enough to
show, that, in honoring her, the first Gospel is in
harmony with the third; and still, its mysterious
reserve and silence remain.

This lessens not the perfection of the written
Gospel, for all the Gospels were to be together, and
the congregation was to form its idea of the holy
Virgin from them all ; and yet this does not explain
the reserve of the earliest Gospel. It refers to her
but four times : once when the angel told St. Jo-
seph that the child of the Virgin would save His
people from their sins; once, when at Bethlehem
the Magi worshiped the Child ; once, in the minis-
try of Jesus, when she stands outside of the circle
around her Son ; and once, as living among the
Nazarenes. The two last allusions show that she
was living at the time of the ministry of her Son ;
but that may have been well known to the Jews,
and St. Matthew may have thought that it should
be known to all, that more ready credence might
be given to revelations of hers that would be made
at a later time.

St. Mark's Gospel has only those two later allu-
sions; and it is startling to find that her name could
not be known from his Gospel were it not for the
taunt of the Nazarenes, " Is not this the carpenter,
the son of Mary ? " In the third Gospel there is a
great change. The reserve of St. Matthew and St.
Mark is there ended by an evangel that came -from
the Blessed Mother herself. In the last Gospel she
is at the marriage-feast, where her faith led to the
first miracle, and she is near the cross, when our

190 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

dying Lord intrusted her to the care of his beloved
Disciple.

It seems unreal that any wrong could have come
near the Mother of the Lord ; yet so full of evil was
the time that she must have been in danger from
the wrath of man so long as she lived. The Satanic
purpose to crucify her Son did enter into the souls
of wicked men ; and, though it seems too wicked to
think of, yet, when their hatred of Christ broke out
anew in the murder of St. Stephen, the course of
events in that persecution and the caution as to any
thing that might, by any chance, endanger her safety,
point to a purpose of the Jews to find the Mother
of Jesus, to try her on the charge of blasphemously
conspiring with her Son, and, as they murdered
Him, to murder her through the violated forms of
law, and thus to put an end to heresy.

For all St. Matthew's caution, strange as it may
seem, there was, then, as strange a reason. This
caution agrees with his seemingly casual allusion
tq the birth of Jesus in the first verse of his second
chapter ; this caution opens the way for an explana-
tion of the seeming variance between him and St.
Luke as to the home of the holy family, and also
of his proving the Messianic ancestry of Jesus
through St. Joseph's genealogy ; but such are the
intricacies of those questions, and they involve so
much that belongs to them only, that their answers
must be put off until our next chapter. And, though
still leaving some further evidence of it to come out
in the discussion of those questions, we here finish
our argument with one decisive fact.

CARE FOR THE HOLY VIRGIN. 191

As at the close of our proof of St. Matthew's
caution for the family of Bethany, so here, at the
close of our proof of his caution for the Blessed
Mother, one fact clinches the case. With the Dis-
ciple whom Jesus loved She stood near the cross ;
Jesus said to his Mother, " Woman, behold thy
son;" and, from that hour, that Disciple took her
unto his own home. This must have been well
known to all the Twelve, to St. Matthew with the
rest, and his not speaking of it is proof, not of silence
merely, but of secrecy. This is clear on comparing
his Gospel with that of St. John. " Many women,"
who followed Jesus from Galilee, beheld the cruci-
fixion. When St. Matthew speaks of them they
were gazing afar off. Some of them afterward sep-
arated from the others ; for St. John speaks of some
women as near the cross, and evidently he speaks
of a group that came from the company of " many
women," spoken of by St. Matthew ; for each Evan-
gelist singles out some of the most noteworthy of
those women, and the name of Mary Magdalene is
in both lists. Now, from the names so honored,
St. Matthew leaves out that of the Blessed Mother,
yet he must have known that she was one of the
company of women whose presence he commemo-
rates, and three of whom he names. He was silent
as to her being there, because he wrote with due re-
gard to her safety, when persecution, raging against
those who believed in the divine Son, raged most
fiercely against the Blessed Mother, who was then,
no doubt, with St. John in Jerusalem.

When our Lord, thoughtful, in death, for His

192 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Mother, intrusted her to the care of St. John, He
may have foreseen that the Jews would seek to
compass her death as they had His own, and that
she would be safer away from her kindred. This is
possible, though we would not weaken our argu-
ment by laying stress upon it. But, surely, in that
evil time, the Twelve were always solicitous for her
safety. And when persecution was drawing nigh,
and St. Matthew saw the need of prudence, his care
for her, naturally and inevitably, gave a peculiar
turn to what he wrote. Some things, that he could
not omit, he wrote in a peculiar way, and he was
silent as to others, of which, in other circumstances,
he would have spoken. Thus passes away all sem-
blance of any difference in their tone between the
first two Gospels and the third, when speaking of
the Blessed Mother — a semblance more painful to
thoughtful souls than the semblance of any histor-
ical differences.

In conclusion, one statement sums up the case.
Had there been a trial of the Blessed Mother on the
charge of being the accomplice of her Son in the
crime of blasphemy, and had St. Matthew's Gospel
been produced on that trial, no evidence could have
been found in it to sustain that indictment. So far
as could be known from his Gospel, She was away
from the place of crucifixion. In it She is never
openly engaged in aiding in his ministry. The Gos-
pel is full of proof that Christ Jesus was the Son
of God, but its direct testimony of this is his own
affirmation on his trial, the witness from heaven, and
the words of the angel to St. Joseph.

THE LATER TIME-MARK. 1 93

Internal Evidence thus proves the date of
St. Matthew's Gospel ; and yet, in that Gospel, a
time-mark is twice repeated that seems to disprove
that evidence. With the thirty pieces of silver the
priests bought the potter's field — " Wherefore that
field was called the field of blood, unto this day."
Again : they bribed the Roman watch set over the
sepulcher, to say, " His disciples came by night, and
stole him away while we slept. . . . And this saying
is commonly reported among the Jews until this
day." The words, " until this day" were written
later than the martyrdom of St. Stephen. But
there is a limit to the time in the fall of Jerusalem,
some thirty-seven years after the crucifixion. It
might have been written at the end of those years
or of half of them,* for time seems longer or short-
er in proportion to its events, and those years were
years of change.

Writing as early as the seventh year after the
crucifixion, and primarily for Jews of Palestine, St.
Matthew wrote, as St. Paul spoke to them, in their
native tongue. But when the world became the

* I quote this from a Review of a book on " The Second French
Empire" in one of our journals, as apt confirmation of what is said
above: — "When we contrast the condition of Europe of to-day —
the unity of Italy, the rise of the German Empire, the passive and
pacific position of the French Republic — with the dreams and hopes
and aims and schemes of the Bonaparte dynasty seventeen years ago,
we can hardly help feeling as if we were reading a history of the Mid-
dle Ages. Every thing seems so changed. It all seems so long ago."

For the same reason this sentence is quoted from another writer : —
"I am about to speak of Ireland as it was some four and twenty
years ago, and feel as if I were referring to a long past period of his-
tory, such have been the changes, political and social, effected in
that interval."
13

194 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

field of Christianity, there was urgent reason why
St. Matthew should turn his Hebrew Gospel into
Greek — as he could in a few days. His Hebrew
Gospel, if rendered into Greek, could be read in
Palestine, and be read every-where.

Scholars are well agreed that our Greek Gospel
of St. Matthew is not a translation. In the second
century the Syriac version was made from it, and
the Syriac language is so like the later Hebrew
that the Syriac translators would have followed St.
Matthew's Hebrew text, had they not been sure
that he also wrote the Greek text they translated.
A translation would never have been received as of
the same authority with an original Gospel had it
not been accredited by something so remarkable as
to be well remembered. If our Gospel of St. Mat-
thew were a translation it would be known who
made it, and the place, time, and circumstances ;
but even tradition does not claim to know any of
these things.

Such were the circumstances in which the few
copies of St. Matthew's Hebrew Gospel were sent
forth, and such the calamities that bereft Palestine
of its Jewish inhabitants, that it is not strange that
its few copies early disappeared. Only Palestinian
Jews could read it, and, even with them, when away
from Palestine, St. Matthew's Greek Gospel took
its place.

Confusion and uncertainty would have followed,
had St. Matthew altered his Gospel when he turned
it into Greek, and there is no probability that he
ever thought of it. Still he might have naturally

CONCLUSION. 195

inserted the words, " until this day," when speak-
ing of the Potter's Field, and of the story told by
the Jews. That story touched him deeply, for he
relates the facts with a fullness unlike his usual
brevity ; and the space he gives them seems almost
too great when we think of other things which he
might have given in their stead. To St. Matthew
it was an old story then, for in thought and feeling
he was even then far from the time when his Mas-
ter's body lay in the tomb ; yet when, some years
later, he turned his Hebrew Gospel into Greek, the
Jews were still circulating the old calumny which
he exposed seven years after its fabrication. And
if, as we may easily imagine, something brought
this sharply home to him as he was writing, he
may then, in wonder and in sorrow, have said that
little ; and it was like St. Matthew to say no more.
Our conclusion, then, is this : After St. Matthew
wrote his Gospel in his native tongue he turned
that Hebrew Gospel into that Greek dialect which
his brethren used in their writings, and those words
which we have considered merely show that this
was done some years after he wrote the Gospel in
the Hebrew tongue.

I96 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

CHAPTER III.

THE GENEALOGY IN ST. MATTHEW.

tHE discovery verified in the last chapter throws
some light upon St. Matthew's proving the
Messianic ancestry of Jesus by the genealogy
of Joseph, and upon alleged variances between St.
Luke and the first two chapters of St. Matthew.
Heretofore, their defense has hardly gone beyond
saying that St. Luke does not absolutely contradict
any thing that is said in them, yet no two chapters
in the holy Gospels are denied with more strength
of conviction. Some critics say they are made up
of three disconnected fragments ; that, by its own
showing, the genealogy has nothing to do with
Jesus, and was stupidly prefixed to the second
fragment. They say the last fragment (the second
chapter) is a jumble of astrology and fable ; and
Norton, one of the most judicious of such critics,
threw those two chapters aside, and began his
translation of the Gospels with the third chapter
of St. Matthew.

Elsewhere I have defended the second chapter
of St. Matthew by explaining it ; and I am now to
try to do the like with his use of the genealogy of
St. Joseph. The New Testament is the comple-
tion of the Old. The Old Testament foretold that

THE GENEALOGY. 1 97

the Messiah would be the Son of David, the Son of
Abraham, and the first apostolic record of Christ
Jesus could not pass over his Messianic lineage ;
nor could St. Matthew have left this out unless he
changed the whole plan of his Gospel. For it was
one of his purposes to prove that the prophets of
God so prophesied of the Son of God that the old
revelation was fulfilled in the new. It was not so
with the second Gospel. St. Mark says nothing of
the Messianic ancestry of Jesus, and little of Mes-
sianic prophecy, but St. Mark wrote after St. Mat-
thew, and there is no presumption, from his silence,
that each was not an indispensable part of the ear-
liest-written Gospel ; for St. Mark's Gospel was not
to go forth independently of St. Matthew's, and
the two Gospels made the circuit of the world to-
gether.

Josephus, who was a man grown when St. Mat-
thew was an old man, says that " he set down his
genealogy as he found it in the public records,"
and St. Matthew offers such a table. In courts of
law a family record is evidence of descent, and the
table offered by St. Matthew combines the weight
of a family record and a public record. He gives
the proper evidence in good legal form.

A genealogical table, reaching through many
generations, would be likely to have some inaccura-
cies ; but if they do not touch the points to be
proved, nor raise any suspicion of fraud, they rather
strengthen its evidence by showing it to be an hon-
est old record, and not one gotten up for the occa-
sion. Such inaccuracies, if such there be, would

I98 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

not make against the inspiration of St. Matthew's
Gospel. His inspiration vouches only that " the
Book of the Generation of Jesus " proves his de-
scent from David and Abraham. Thus far his in-
spired witness to its accuracy goes, and there was
no need that it should go any farther. He had to
quote the table as he found it ; if there were any
such inaccuracies, and he had corrected them, he
would have tampered with the evidence.

Still he might, perhaps, have made some changes
not meant to give it any weight that did not belong
to it as an old, legal, Jewish genealogy — changes
that did not vitally affect its evidence — and it looks
as if he did. For surely in such documents it was
not usual to give the names of women ; yet the
Evangelist names Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, and
speaks of her that had been the wife of Urias.
Thus he marks, that Jesus, though of blessed and
kingly ancestry, was associated in his lineage, as in
his life, with sinners ; and though Ruth be of pure
and gentle memory, yet she was of the Moabites,
whom an old law shut out of the congregation of
Israel. So that even into that dry genealogical
catalogue of names the Evangelist interweaves in-
timations that the mercy in Christ will reach to sin-
ners and to Gentiles. This St. Matthew did in the
same spirit in which he told of the coming and
worship of the Magi, and these "disconnected frag-
ments " bear the impress of the same heart and the
same mind.

In his seventeenth verse he points out three
periods in the table, each ending with a person or

THE SEVENTEENTH VERSE. 1 99

an event easily remembered, and he may have had
in mind that his manuscript would sometimes be
committed to memory. But, surely, this cannot
be the exhaustive reason for the verse ; it is a su-
perficial and unsatisfactory reason for a word of
inspiration. According to the Evangelist, the time-
cycles of the Hebrews (and if so, the time-cycles of
the world) had relations to the coming of the Lord.
He points out that the life of the Hebrews unrolled
in three time-harmonies, one ending in triumph,
one in mourning; and thus may intimate that in
the end of the third the notes of the two former
blend. This remarkable verse, then, may reveal
that as the visible world was framed in harmony
with numbers, so the world's life unrolls in har-
mony with time-laws ; and it may be the germ of
a science yet to try the powers of man, quickened
by mysterious sayings of the Sacred Oracles, to di-
vine time-laws yet unknown. But the verse gives
little help in discerning those laws beyond disclos-
ing their existence, for some generations are stricken
out of the table, manifestly for their sins. In the
thought of God those unnumbered generations
seem, in some respects, to have become as if they
had never been. And so, for this world at least,
those truths whose existence this difficult verse in-
timates, would hardly seem to pertain to the
thoughts of man, but only to the thought of GOD
" whose glory it is to conceal a thing."

St. Matthew proves the ancestry of Jesus by that
of Joseph, and, until we understand how his evi-
dence applies, it seems not only to be irrelevant,

200 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

but to make what he relates self-contradictory. For
he reveals that Jesus was born of the holy Virgin.
How, then, can Joseph's genealogy have any thing
to do with Jesus? And why did not St. Matthew
prove his Davidian lineage through his Mother?

Some answer these questions by saying that Jesus
was the adopted son of Joseph ! And skeptics say
that the placing the genealogy where it is, is evi-
dence that St. Matthew's Gospel is a hap-hazard of
traditions. Yet, as usual, they refute themselves ;
for, if what they say be true, an idiot put the gen-
ealogy where it is. And it can be shown that the
genealogy of Joseph is evidence of the lineage of the
Child of the holy Virgin.

Much archseologic and historic knowledge con-
cerning the Hebrews has perished. Much was bur-
ied in the deluge of their calamities. Christianity
went forth out of Judea, dwelt in other lands, spoke
new languages, was busy with new duties, and forgot
somewhat of the Hebrew past from which she was
so widely separated. It is providential that so
much biblical knowledge of Jewish origin yet throws
light upon the writings of the Evangelists. In each
generation something is added to our knowledge of
their meaning. New searching for lost treasure finds
some treasure overlooked before : a manuscript in
the monastery of some far-off promontory or sacred
mountain, or among some decivilized sect ; a sen-
tence in some half-forgotten scribe, a name on a
crumbling arch, a picture in a tomb, or a custom
kept up by the children of the desert. The ocean
rolls pieces of the wreck on shore, a leaf floats to

THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE. 201

the strand, a coin is washed up by the waves. Each
year something is given up by the sea.

There is another way in which that knowledge
slowly and surely increases. Many minds turn to a
truth whose defense and illustration require the dis-
covery of some lost truth. The search from what is
but a seeming truth to an unknown truth is apt to
lead from error to error without end ; but the search
from a known truth to an unknown truth is a hope-
ful search. The one truth is the complement of the
other. The known truth hints of the unknown
truth, and there are nice fittings in of the one to the
other that are never seen till the two are brought
together. When a false discovery is made, however
satisfactory it may be for a time, it will not continue
satisfactory ; but whenever a true discovery is made
it will more and more approve itself to be a true dis-
covery. When the right conjecture hits upon the
truth unthought of coincidences and relations with
other truths then disclose themselves, and some
historic evidence, before unnoted, is often seen to
confirm it. A cheering book might be compiled
of archaeological, historical, and critical conjectures
concerning difficult verses of Scripture, and of theo-
logical conjectures as well, that, for a time, seemed to
have some life in them, but at length were buried
out of sight and forgotten, while at last came the
right conjecture with the vitality of truth, and lived
on. Half truths — there are many such — some-
times hinder the way of the truth, sometimes help
toward it. Oftentimes a slight touch frees some of
these half-truths from the quality of error, and some,

202 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

by gaining that which they lacked, become whole
truths. Thus the interpretation of holy Scripture
grows more perfect ; and we cannot foreknow how
much may yet be added to sacred knowledge of his-
torical or critical truth, nor tell how much of moral
and spiritual truth may yet brighten from out of the
unimaginable depths of the brightness of God's
holy word.

St. Matthew thought the genealogy of Joseph, in
connection with some other facts, was fitting evi-
dence of the Messianic ancestry of Christ Jesus,
and, whatever the difficulty of understanding his
method of proof to us, who are so far from the old
Oriental and Hebrew world, he puts it forward so
readily that in his time there could have been no
difficulty about it.

His genealogical document runs straight down
from Abraham to Joseph, and there ends without
naming Jesus. This document, though incorporated
into, and becoming part of, an historical statement
which avers that Jesus was no son of Joseph, is said
to be "The Book of the Generation of Jesus." Here,
then, its genealogical value must be unique, and its
superscription, heading, or title, " The Book of the
Generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the
Son of Abraham," is of special significance.

The document is the book of the generation of Jo-
seph. In and of itself, it is nothing else. So much
is clear on its face. But its superscription alters its
character so that, while originally it was "The Book
of the Generation of Joseph," it somehow becomes,
in its place here, according to its heading or title,

THE GENEALOGY. 203

" The Book of the Generation of Jesus" and here it
proves that one of the two persons named in its
heading was the national, and the other was the
family, ancestor of Jesus. The question then is,
How can the genealogy of Joseph prove these facts
concerning Jesus? This we are to learn from these
four statements which St. Matthew puts, side by
side, on the same page : That Jesus was of the line
of David, that He was the child of the Virgin, that
Joseph was betrothed to the Virgin, and that Jo-
seph was of the line of David. To St. Matthew the
last three of those facts, as by him connected, were
satisfactory evidence of the first — that Jesus was of
David's line ; and he left that as proved.

Now, it is clear from what he says, that the de-
scent of Jesus from David cannot have been through
Joseph. It can only have been through the blessed
Virgin. And St. Matthew's proof, by the genealogy
of Joseph, that Jesus was of David's line, evidently
turns on the betrothment and marriage of the holy
Virgin to a prince of the house of David. What,
then, we further seek to know is this : How does the
marriage of Mary with a descendant of David prove
Mary herself to be a descendant of David ?

The royal house of David never could have ceased
to be of interest to the Jews. They had become
very humble, but could not have been forgotten. It
is said that at a later time search was made, by order
of the Emperor Domitian, for some of them, and
they were found in so low an estate that they were
left unharmed. And such being their condition,
that it had become the custom of the family of the

204 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

great king to marry only among themselves, and
that this was known to the Jews, are hardly less
than certain. Royal blood intermarries with royal
blood. When Victoria was betrothed to Albert
every one knew that Albert was a prince, and every
one would know that the betrothed of a Czarovitch
or of a Prince of Wales was a princess. The family
of King David, obscure people for centuries, must
have married below their rank, or have intermarried
among themselves. That they did the latter is so
probable, from the tendency of Jewish families to
keep together and from the usage of royal families,
that it may be held for certain that when St. Mat-
thew stated that Joseph, a prince of the house of
David, married Mary, he plainly told his country-
men (and, if he thought of others, he thought that
through them all would know) that the betrothed
of this prince was a princess of the house of David.

The Evangelist was not called upon to mention
the Davidian lineage of Joseph for its own sake.
If that fact had relation to Joseph only, to have
mentioned it would hardly have been in keeping
with the simplicity of a Gospel. The Evangelist
was called upon to mark the Davidian lineage of the
holy Virgin. In his Gospel the fact was a vital one ;
but if it be not implied in what he says of her husband,
he did not mention it. Nay more, it is hardly too
much to say, that unless he thought that the mar-
riage of the Virgin proved that she also was of the
royal family, by pointedly naming only the Davidian
lineage of Joseph he denied that of the Virgin.

The millions of the tribe of Sheikh Abraham kept

GENEALOGICAL USAGE. 205

the tradition of its blood with a fidelity beyond even
that of the unchanging memory of the desert. It
expanded a unique and wonderful system of gene-
alogical notation, by means of which every one of
that race could trace the lines of life, that met in
himself, back to where they began in the common
ancestor. In such a system there may have been
usages that helped to make St. Matthew's use of
the genealogy of Joseph very plain to Jews. Cer-
tainly there seems to have been one such usage ;
for the Mosaic code provided that " every daughter
that possessed any inheritance in any tribe of the
children of Israel should be wife unto the family of
the tribe of her father." The mode of proving the
flowing down of the blood of the ancestor was im-
material, and as genealogies of women were little
in use, it is probable that the lineage of such women
was proved by that of the man they married. The
Jews, then, were familiar with a class of women in
which the wife had the same ancestor with her hus-
band, and when St. Matthew proved the descent of
the Child of the Virgin by the genealogy of the
man she married, no doubt he proved this in a
not uncommon fashion. And though, in this case,
there was a limitation within a tribe, the Jews
would understand this more specific limitation from
the well-known usage of those of royal blood to in-
termarry with those of royal blood, and from the
custom of the house of David.

To all this St. Matthew may fairly be regarded
as a witness. To illustrate this, let it be supposed
that the lost historical books of Justus of Tiberias,

206 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

a contemporary of St. Matthew, had been pre-
served, and that in them it was said that the son of
a widow was of the blood of Mattathias of Modin,
the founder of the royal Asmonean house ; that the
widowed mother of that boy married Simon ; and
that, to prove this Mattathias was the family ances-
tor of her son, Justus brought forward " The Book
of the Generation of Simon," and proved that Simon
was of the heroic, kingly line of the Maccabees.
The use of such a mode of proof by a Jewish histo-
rian would make it clear that it was the well-known
usage of the Asmoneans to intermarry only with
their own family, and that the descent of the As-
monean women from Mattathias was proved by the
genealogies of their husbands. Justin's method
would be evidence of this, and, with our imperfect
knowledge of Hebrew archaeology, would be held to
prove it in secular history. St. Matthew's mode of
proving the lineage of Jesus should be treated in the
same way. It is evidence offered by a Hebrew who
evidently proceeds according to usage well estab-
lished and well understood.

The conclusion thus reached is, I think, upheld
by the Gospel of the infancy as given by St. Luke,
a great part of which is unquestionably of Hebraic
origin, and, as I believe, is the gift of the holy Vir-
gin. There it is written : " The angel Gabriel was
sent from God to Nazareth, a city of Galilee, to a
Virgin, espoused to a man whose name was Joseph
of the House of David, and the Virgin's name was
Mary." Here Joseph is brought in because of his
betrothment, and the mention of his lineage (though

THE GENEALOGY. 207

natural) as in St. Matthew is not strictly in place,
unless his lineage implies that of his betrothed.
Again, it is written : " Joseph went up to the city
of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was
of the house and lineage of David, to be taxed with
Mary, his espoused wife." It would have been so
natural to say, " Joseph went up to be taxed
with Mary his espoused wife, because they were of
the house and lineage of David," that the language
carries with it the idea that the Davidian lineage of
the wife was thought to be clear from that of her
husband. Unless it be thus named by implication,
it is nowhere named in this part of the third Gos-
pel. St. Luke, in a genealogy supplementary to the
one given by St. Matthew, brings legal evidence,
from the public registries, that the blessed Virgin
was of the house of David ; but this table comes
after the Gospel of the infancy, and the fact that
Joseph is there twice entitled, in connection with
the blessed Virgin, prince of the house of David,
without, in either case, its being said that she was a
princess of the same house, is evidence that St. Mat-
thew's mode of proving her lineage is explained by
a custom of the family of David to marry only
among themselves. And as St. Luke was a Greek,
this justifies St. Matthew's leaving his Gospel at
this point as he wrote it in Hebrew, and not chang-
ing it when he sent it forth in Greek to all nations.
It is said there were no genealogies of Hebrew
women ; be that as it may, in so remarkable a case,
St. Matthew might naturally have given that of the
holy Virgin ; for he could have gotten her father's

208 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

genealogy, which was hers, from the registers, as
easily as any one's. But then St. Matthew would
have represented a woman of David's family as
marrying a man not of that family; yet, as a word
could have set that right, this only shows how full
St. Matthew's statement really is on every point.
Certainly its form is peculiar, and yet, it is a com-
plete, compact, national statement.

Every way it can be explained : but the decisive
reason for its peculiarity was St. Matthew's care for
the safety of the Blessed Mother. The peril of the
time made him extremely cautious. He had to say
what he must say of her in such a way as to do no
harm. St. Joseph's genealogy threw the light that
had to be thrown upon her ancestors, and no more.
All that inquisitors could extort from his table was
the name of Joseph, the names of his ancestors, and
that Mary was the name of the holy Virgin. Joseph
had long been dead, and his genealogy imperiled
few or none. But with the genealogy of the Blessed
Mother it was somewhat different. And St. Mat-
thew gave that proof of the lineage of Jesus which
he had to give, in the way that would do the least
possible harm to her and to her kindred.

THE GOSPEL OF THE INFANCY. 209

CHAPTER IV.

THE GOSPEL OF THE INFANCY.

N comparing the story of the Infancy in St.
Matthew's Gospel with that in St. Luke's,
skeptics say, that each Gospel follows a tradi-
tion of its own. They say, that St. Matthew knows
nothing of St. Luke's reason for the journey of the
Virgin to Bethlehem ; that with him Bethlehem is
the home of the Holy Family, for Jesus is born
there ; that the coming of the star-led Magi to the
village is told without a hint that the family lived
elsewhere ; that when Joseph and Mary came up
out of Egypt they are going back to their home in
Bethlehem ; and not until they are told to go to
Nazareth, a village of which they may never have
heard, do they think of living there.

In St. Luke, they say, there is quite another
story. The home of Joseph and Mary is at Naza-
reth. There they are betrothed, there they are
married. A reason for their journey to Bethlehem
is given. The holy Child is presented in the Tem-
ple, and after the usual rites are over, Joseph and
Mary, as quietly as they came, go back to their
house and home in Nazareth. Of the Wise Men
and the star, of the flight, of the massacre, St. Luke

knows nothing; and he is equally ignorant of the
14

210 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

command to Joseph and Mary to hide in distant
Nazareth. The parts of the evidence of this seem-
ing variance fit nicely to each other ; and I know
of nothing of its kind that is stronger.

And here let us mark the importance of the tes
timony of the ever-existing Congregation to the
order in which the Gospels were written. Thos&
orthodox critics, who have suffered themselves to
be drawn into conjectures opposed to that testi-
mony, imperil the defense of the Gospels they wish
to aid, but whose conditions they do not under-
stand. For the defense of those two Gospels here
rests upon their time-order as it has ever been
known. And St. Luke's course is of itself good
evidence that he wrote after St. Matthew, and that
St. Matthew's Gospel was known to the whole Con-
gregation ; for, evidently, St. Luke was silent as to
the flight into Egypt and all that went with it, be-
cause he needed not to add one word to wThat St.
Matthew had written.

And strange as St. Luke's silence would be in a
like case in a modern writer, who would, at least, so
allude to what was written before as to show his
knowledge of it, an ancient writer might have done
as St. Luke did. It is not more strange than the
passing over of the Ministry in Judea by all the
three earlier Evangelists without a word of their
own, to show that there ever was any such. And
here, as usual, the criticism of unbelief ends in diffi-
culty greater than the difficulty it rejoices in thinking
it has found ; for it is utterly unable to explain the
silence, not only of St. Luke, but also of the other

WHY ST. MATTHEW WROTE AS HE DID. 211

Evangelists, concerning the coming of the Magi
and the flight into Egypt.

But still there is need to consider St. Matthew's
omission to state that Nazareth was, and that
Bethlehem was not, the home of the Virgin before
the birth of the holy Child. For the home of a
mother is likely to be where her child is born, and
usually may be inferred from it. But the guarded
silence or reserve of St. Matthew concerning all
that might touch the safety of the Blessed Mother
or of her kindred, shaped some things that he wrote ;
and thus it may have been that he made only this
mention of the birth of the Lord : " Now when
Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, . . . there
came wise men from the East." The inference from
this verse, that St. Matthew took Bethlehem to be
the home of the Holy Family, would have been
stronger were it not that in such a passing allusion
to the birth of Jesus nothing could have been said
of their home. But with some show of reason
skeptics insist, that this would have come in, nat-
urally, in the course of the chapter ; and that, with
what is told of the return from Egypt, the infer-
ence drawn from the whole narrative that Beth-
lehem was the home, is as certain as that St. Luke
says, it never was at Bethlehem and always was at
Nazareth. And it is only by gaining some insight
into why St. Matthew wrote as he did, and by
marking just what he did say and what he did not
say, that it can be made clear that his Gospel and
that of St. Luke are not at variance.

Though on reading the earliest Gospel only, we

212 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

suppose that Bethlehem was the home of the Holy
Family, that from Egypt they meant to go back
there, and had not lived in Nazareth ; yet, when we
learn from St. Luke how those things were, and
then look more closely, we see that what we took
to have been the facts were only probabilities, were
conclusions of ours, not statements of St. Matthew.
The facts were these. The Holy Family did not
sojourn long in the land of the Nile, for vengeance
hurried fast on the footprints of crime. Very soon
Herod and Antipater, " they who had sought the
young Child's life," (for such is the historic signifi-
cance of the plural the angel used,) both died mis-
erably, the son slain a few days before his father's
death and by his father's command. Then the
angel told St. Joseph to go into the land of Israel.
After that the angel told him to go into Galilee.
He went there ; and he dwelt in Nazareth.

In holy Scripture the words of the angels prove
themselves to be supernatural words by the fullness,
the depth, and height of meaning they express in
a small compass. What fullness in the brief anthem
at the nativity ! " Glory to God in the highest !
On earth peace and good-will to man ! " How great
the thought, how few the words ! The words of the
angels are always few. In precision and brevity
their speech compares with the speech of men as
the wording of a telegram with that of a letter, and
hence there is need to mark what they do not say
as well as what they do say. When St. Joseph
came up out of Egypt the angel did not tell him to
go to Bethlehem, but to go into the land of Israel.

THE PURPOSE OF ST. JOSEPH. 213

From the next verses we learn that Joseph came
into the land of Israel, but when he heard that
Archelaus — to whom he hoped that Samaria only,
or Galilee, or the region beyond Jordan, might be
assigned — " did reign in Judea, he was afraid to go
thither." Precisely here, where the wording of St.
Matthew's Gospel has legal precision, skeptics as-
sume that St. Matthew says that St. Joseph was
going to Bethlehem ; and then they argue, that when
this new fact is joined to his statement that Jesus
was born in Bethlehem, and to his silence as to His
Mother's living elsewhere, it is certain that St. Mat-
thew took Bethlehem to have been her home.

All this is clearly wrong. St. Joseph was told by
the angel to "go into the land of Israel," and then
the narrative, through its mention of his being afraid
to go into Judea, is definite as to the province where
St. Joseph was going, and it is definite as to nothing
else. It does not say whether St. Joseph meant to
dwell in Jerusalem, or in Bethlehem, or in Hebron,
or elsewhere in Judea. And if St. Joseph had been
going back to Bethlehem the verse would probably
have run thus : " When he heard that Archelaus did
reign in Judea he was afraid to go to Bethlehem."
It may, however, be said that, as the holy Child
was born there, and as the Holy Family set out from
thence when they fled into Egypt, the fair presump-
tion is that they were going back to Bethlehem. That
is a fair presumption ; still St. Matthew does not say
they had any such purpose ; and there is a strong
presumption from his narrative that St. Joseph had
no thought of going to Bethlehem again. The

214 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Egyptian Jews were in constant communication
with their mother country, and St. Joseph, alive to
every rumor, could not have been ignorant of the
murder of the boys of Bethlehem ; and it is not
to be thought that, without a divine command, he
would have dwelt among that bereaved people, in
the last place where the Holy Family could have
lived in happiness or in safety.

And there is another strong presumption against
it. When recalled into the land of Israel the
breadth of the command was consistent with his
dwelling any where within the original boundaries
of the tribes ; but only in Judea was the sanctity
that once hallowed all the land of Israel unprofaned ;
and there was the temple of the one living and true
God. It is probable, then, that St. Joseph was go-
ing to the holy city. There he would be cheered
with the piety of Zacharias and Elisabeth, of Simeon
the Just, of Anna the aged prophetess, and of all
who looked for redemption in Israel. There, in the
Temple, he might take counsel with God. And he
naturally felt that the holy city was the only fitting
place in which to bring up the holy Child. But
the earthly guardian of the Mother and the Child
was burdened with great responsibilities, and even
before he heard about Archelaus he may not have
fully decided what he ought to do. Thus we come
back to the indefinitely definite statement of the
Evangelist, that the family was on its way to Judea.
That is all we are told ; still, it is very certain that
they had no thought of living in Bethlehem, and it
is very probable that the decision of the question

THE DWELLING IN NAZARETH. 21 5

whether they should live in Jerusalem, or in He-
bron, or elsewhere, was left to the councils of holy
men and women, the course of events, and the in-
timations of the will of God.

Those skeptics who say that St. Matthew makes
Bethlehem the home of Joseph and Mary also say
that they dwelt in Nazareth solely because of a di-
vine command, and then they argue that here Mat-
thew and Luke are at twofold variance, that they
disagree as to the home before the birth, and as to
how it came to be afterwards at Nazareth. Error
here fits curiously well to error. But if the reserve
of St. Matthew as to the blessed Mother explains
his passing over the fact that her home was in
Nazareth when he speaks of her in Bethlehem, it
explains it in all cases, be they ever so many.

Even had St. Matthew said that Nazareth became
the home of the Holy Family by a divine command,
he would then have given the supernatural, and
St. Luke the natural, reason why the holy Child
was brought up in Nazareth ; and it might have well
been said that a supernatural direction properly de-
cided so great a question.

But the facts were these : Tidings of the death
of Herod and of the accession of Archelaus went
down to Egypt very close together ; yet before the
couriers, racing over the desert, had carried the
later news, St. Joseph, told by the angel of the
death of Herod, was on his way " to the land of
Israel;" for while journeying over that same desert,
he thought that Antipas, a prince of a gentler kind
than Archelaus, was in his father's place. When

2l6 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

he came into the settlement and heard the ominous
news then flying over the seas to Rome, of the
massacre in and around Jerusalem, that signalized
the accession of Archelaus to power, St. Joseph
feared those hills, whose dark outlines he saw along
the eastern edge of the plain. He dared not enter
the pass that winds its way up to the city. He had
reasonable, insoluble, fearful doubts, and knew not
where to go. In his perplexity he was told to
move on to Galilee. He was told that much, but
no more. The burden on his soul had been that
he must take the holy Child into holy Judea, and
when told that he might move on to Galilee, he
knew just where to go in Galilee ; and by saying
" he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth,"
St. Matthew refers his going there to St. Joseph
himself; for, otherwise, he would have said, " Being
warned of God in a dream, he turned aside to Naz-
areth in Galilee." The words of St. Matthew point
to some fact that he does not state ; and learning
from St. Luke that the home of Joseph had been
in Nazareth before he went to Bethlehem, we know
why Joseph, divinely told that he might go into
Galilee, went to Nazareth. He had lived there be-
fore, and had been only a few months away.

How it came about that the holy Child was
brought up in that wicked town would never have
been known, but for St. Luke. There would have
been none to tell that, perhaps ages before, some
of David's humbled line had sought the village at
the head of the glen, out of the way of armies, too
poor and too weak to provoke the cupidity or the

THE EVIL FAME OF NAZARETH. 2\J

anger of kings, and that the Virgin lived there be-
fore she was called to King David's town of Bethle-
hem.

Another example of how one verse of Scripture
often clears up another is seen in the verses, " Then
was fulfilled that which was spoken by the proph-
ets, He shall be called a Nazarene," and, "Can
any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " From
Nathanael's question we know that Nazareth was a
village of evil fame ; and this agrees with what St.
Luke alone tells of the evil conduct of the Nazarenes,
so unlike any thing that Jesus met with elsewhere
in Galilee.

I do not remember having ever seen even a con-
jecture as to why Nazareth had that character, but
may not the reason be found in the following facts ?
The village was at the head of a pass that, in five
or six miles, winds its steep way more than a thou-
sand feet above the rich plain of Esdraelon. In the
troubled times in Israel, marauding Arabs came
into that open plain and carried off flocks and har-
vests. The Nazarenes may have gone down there
for plunder, and if pursued on their way back, no
body of horsemen could well have followed them,
(though the valley be somewhat open,) for here and
there a few ruffians could have held the way against
a hundred armed men. The land, under the Ro-
man rule, was quiet, and flocks and herds and har-
vests were secure, but an evil name and an evil
character live long.

Whether this be sufficient to account for it or
not, it is certain that Nazareth had a bad name.

218 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

All the prophets, consenting together, foretold that
the Messiah would be despised, and Joseph, by
living in Nazareth, unconsciously aided in the ful-
filling of their prediction. For thus it came to pass
that Jesus was styled the Nazarene. The reproach
of this name passed over to his people, and to this
day, wherever the widespread Arabic is spoken, his
people are known to Jews and Mohammedans as
Nazarenes.

Heretofore the defense of these chapters of St.
Matthew — two chapters so much spoken against
that if defended, unbelievers must confess that there
are no chapters in the Gospels that may not be de-
fended— has given no reason why St. Matthew did
not say that Nazareth originally was, and that Beth-
lehem was not, the home of Joseph and Mary. Yet
one thing should have been clear. It was so nat-
ural for Matthew to say that little about Bethle-
hem, or that little about Nazareth, it was so diffi-
cult for him to keep from some intimation of how
the facts were, that only by design could he have
avoided every thing of the kind. With this in
mind, it seems as if he struck out something writ-
ten in his first two chapters, and this would give
them the fragmentary look they are thought to
have, and the like of which is nowhere else in his
Gospel. But whether he left out something, or
whether the pages now stand as he wrote them at
first, his veiling of that fact as to Nazareth may
have come from his unwillingness to disclose more
than he must disclose concerning the blessed Mother
and her kindred. From what he wrote an inquis-

ST. MATTHEWS CAUTION. 219

itor might have taken Bethlehem to have been
originally her home ; but as to that, he needs no
defense, for whether he was bound to tell all he
knew was a question for him to decide.

All the Jews knew that Jesus came from Naza-
reth ; his enemies never tired of calling him the
Nazarene, and St. Matthew's stating only what they
knew so well proves that he did not care to have
it known, from what he wrote, that Nazareth was
aforetime the home of the blessed Mother and her
kindred ; but still, my idea of his reserve as to
Nazareth (or rather, of the reason for it, for the fact
is certain) may seem to my friendly and tireless
reader to carry St. Matthew's caution beyond all
bounds. And yet, though I had to confess that in
my view of St. Matthew's course at this point there
is something that looks like excess of prudence, still
I might repeat that it is caution I am proving, not
why it went further than we might think it would ;
and that it would be hard, when so many of the
circumstances in which he wrote are forgotten, even
to conjecture the forms it might take, and just how
far it would go.

And I yet have evidence that may have some
bearing on the question as to Nazareth, while it
strengthens my general argument. With this evi-
dence I close the case, and submit it to the Church,
holy and universal. My readers will have noted
that more than once I have spoken of St. Mat-
thew's caution, not only for the blessed Mother,
but also for her kindred, when he sent his Gospel
forth amid the perils in which the first Christian

220 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

martyr died. I now ask attention to evidence of
his caution for them. As evidence of his general
caution I have before pointed to his silence concern-
ing the healing of the son of the nobleman of Ca-
pernaum, and I would have my readers picture for
themselves busy Capernaum on the day that mira-
cle was wrought — the crowds marveling in the
gates, in the market-place, and around the house.
It was the first kindling up of the great light that
was to shine along " the way of the sea." It opened
the way for the dwelling of Jesus in Capernaum.
It may have led to the conversion of St. Matthew.
But I touch upon these things only to bring out the
greatness of the wonder that Matthew does not
speak of that miracle. Neither does Mark or Luke.
It seems most strange !

One of the Fathers tells us to study the Gospels,
searching for the reason of each recorded fact. Here
it is in the line of his precept to search for the rea-
son why a miracle is not recorded where we should
think it would have been, for surely we may look
for a record of that miracle in the Gospels of both
St. Matthew and St. Peter, for they were Caper-
naum people. They knew that nobleman, for Peter
had sold fish in the court-yard of his palace, Mat-
thew had receipted for his tax. And in the third
Gospel the record may also be looked for, for it was
a Galilean miracle.

My readers will remember that when Jesus
wrought this miracle in Capernaum He was Himself
in Cana. They will also remember that this was
the second miracle that Jesus did in Cana of Gali-

CANA OF GALILEE. 221

lee ; and that, although the earlier miracle was the
first manifestation of the divine energy of the Lord,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are silent as to both. It
is true those two miracles were before the imprison-
ment of the Baptist, from which the earlier Evangel-
ists date the fullness of our Lord's ministry ; but
we feel that this can hardly be the sufficient and
full reason for this remarkable and continuous si-
lence of all those Evangelists concerning the mira-
cles in Cana of Galilee.

As both of them were wrought in the same vil-
lage, possibly the place had something to do with
their silence. And I think we shall conclude that
it did grow out of the fact that Cana was the home
of kindred of the Virgin. It was their home at the
wedding-feast ; for she was there, ordering with a
kinswoman's right, and her Son was sent for and
came to the wedding. Nazareth was then her
home ; but after the brutal rage of the Nazarenes
toward Jesus it could not long have been the home
of any of her kindred. Sooner or later their spite-
ful neighbors must, in every evil way, have worried
them out of the town. They were too poor to go
far. Cana was not far, and it was already the home
of some of them. The holy Mother lived in Jerusa-
lem with St. John ; but that Cana became the shel-
ter for her kindred, from time to time the gather-
ing place of them all, I think is certain from the
silence of the three earlier Evangelists as to that vil-
lage. While inquisitors were searching all the way
to Damascus for the blessed Mother and for her
kindred, St. Matthew would not draw attention to

222 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

that village. He knew that his colleague St. John
would record those miracles — in one of which the
fact that he was screening could not but appear —
and he said not a word of Cana. His reason for
caution continued when the second Gospel was
written ; there was his example also ; and St. Mark
said not a word of Cana. Before the third Gospel
was written all need of caution for the blessed
Mother had ceased ; but, as in the case of the family
of Bethany, there was still reason for caution con-
cerning the kindred of the holy Virgin ; and like St.
Matthew and like St. Mark, both of whose exam-
ples were before him, St. Luke said not a word of
Cana. That silence was not broken till Zion was a
plowed field — then, when all need of caution had
passed, the last evangelist told of the marriage and
the miracles in Cana of Galilee.

In Nazareth Jesus grew in wisdom and stature,
in wicked Nazareth he grew " in favor with God and
man." He lived there until he was " about thirty
years of age." He waited there for " the fullness
of time ; " and that waiting in years of silence
is not the least instructive lesson of His life. Mean-
while " the fullness of time " was preparing. The
weak and cruel Archelaus ruled for some eleven
years ; then the Emperor Augustus, feigning to
yield to the outcries of the Jews, but carrying out a
policy determined upon before the death of Herod,
banished Archelaus to Gaul, where he died an exile.
The Emperor then annexed Judea to the imperial

JUDEA IN THE ROMAN AGE. 223

province of Syria. Thus, at the time of the con-
demnation of the Son of Man the union of Judea
with Rome was a more direct and vital one than
that of such districts as Galilee or the regions be-
yond Jordan, where native princes (Herod Philip
and Herod Antipas) were suffered to rule ; and it
was more direct and vital than that of provinces
over which the Senate had a nominal sovereignty —
so much had the Emperor become identified with
Rome.

In Syria, at Antioch, once the regal city of Greek
kings who succeeded to dominions of Alexander,
Caesar was represented by a propraetor. In Judea
he, in his turn, was represented by a procurator,
(the Roman governor of the Evangelists.) His pal-
ace was at Caesarea, by the sea, and from time to
time he came up to Jerusalem. He enriched him-
self and his minions, and, careless of all else, he in-
terfered but little with the local and ecclesiastical
rule of the Sanhedrim. That parliament of the Jews
was hardly more than a tradition during the long
tyranny of Herod, but it had regained, and was
sternly bent on keeping, a little of power. Tibe-
rius, the heir of Augustus Caesar, was severe and
jealous, yet impartial. Under his rule the imperial
provinces had less cause of complaint than under
the rule of some of the later Emperors ; and the
change from the Herodian to the imperial house,
and the restoration to the Sanhedrim of a sem-
blance of its ancient honors, was followed by com-
parative repose. Yet the Romans troubled the
people, and so did the ecclesiastic noblesse. They

224 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

suffered from the Romans in common with others,
yet secretly they favored their rule. The people,
deluded by their leaders yet mistrusting them,
grew more unquiet, more and more bitter against
the Romans, until, at last, the exactions of the rep-
resentatives of Caesar, and the restlessness caused
by the popular expectation of the coming of the
Messiah, drove the Jews into that war with Rome
which was the beginning of their punishment for
the crime of rejecting the Son of Man. While the
storm was gathering there was a breathing space.
In that pause Christ Jesus came, and only then, in
the Roman Age in Palestine, was the state of the
government and of the people such that even His
brief ministry was possible.

Both the date of the Gospels and the historic
truthfulness of the Evangelists are attested by their
living intimacy with the character and life, the
hopes and fears, the opinions, prejudices, and pas-
sions of the Jews in the interval between the ban-
ishment of Archelaus and the fall of Jerusalem, and
with the peculiar and complicate state of political
and social affairs in Judea. They take us right into
the midst of them. They give no formal descrip-
tions of them, for they do not feel the need of any.
They take them to be known to all as uncon-
sciously as seamen take seafaring ways to be known
to every body. St. Matthew and St. John tell of
what they had seen and heard. St. Mark had seen
something of what he described, and both St. Mark
and St. Luke knew from living men of the things
of which they wrote. It is almost as apparent when

THE VOYAGE OF ST. PAUL. 225

St. Luke treats of what was done in Judea that he
is treating of what took place in his own day and
generation as the like is in the writings of the other
Evangelists ; and this is quite as apparent when he
takes us out of that country. The minute accuracy
of his descriptions has often been shown, and never
better than in what a seaman did to clear up and
verify the narrative of the shipwreck of St. Paul.*
The writings of the Evangelists unmistakably

* An Englishman, James Smith, Esq., of Jordanhill, who in his
yacht made voyages to clear up the voyage of St. Paul. He studied
the building, rigging, and handling of the ships of the ancients ; he
sailed the seas over which the Apostle was borne ; felt their winds,
noted their currents, the headlands of the coasts, and visited their
harbors. He knew how sailors describe the land as seen from
shipboard, and understood the meaning of their terms, which, as
repeated by. St. Luke, had puzzled ministers. His sea-faring, his
knowledge of the matter in hand, and his good sense, cleared up
all that had been obscure in St. Luke's journal of the voyage ; and
some strange fancies then disappeared — such as that of the poet
Coleridge, who, having written " The Rhyme of the Ancient Mar-
iner," was very sure that he must be right in his opinion that the
scene of the shipwreck was in the Adriatic, a nautical impossibility
as the course of the vessel and the winds were ; or that of another
dreamer, who was equally sure that the hunger of those storm-
tossed heathen was a voluntary fast for the good of their souls!
The readers of the latest English Life of St. Paul are not made
aware how much the elucidation of the voyage by the clergyman
owes to the book of the sailor, (published by Longman in 1848, and
not, I think, reprinted here ; ) but in their Life of the Apostle
Conybeare and Howson justly speak of it as "a standard work not
only in England but in Europe." The sailor showed what can be
done when the right man takes hold of a thing in the right way.
What he did was well done and well worth the doing ! Yet such
the self-evidencing force of simple truthfulness, that I cannot but
think that all right-minded souls have ever felt as sure of the truth
of St. Luke's picture of the voyage as they do now, when, point by
point, it has been cleared up, tested and proved.
15

226 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

belong to the time of which they treat. Only men
who lived in that time could have known it so well.
Some of the evidence of this comes from out-of-the-
way places, where scholars have to hunt it up ; as
when, for instance, a peculiar title given by St.
Luke to the magistrates of Thessalonica was found
on an inscription of that time on a crumbling wall
in that city. But no antiquarian lore is needed for a
just appreciation of the best part of this kind of
evidence for the time in which the Gospels were
written. The best part of this evidence is like the
best part of the evidence in nature of the being of
God, which comes not of dredging in the sea, nor
from delving in the strata of the earth, nor from
calculating the flight of comets ; it comes not from
discoveries that make us think of man's cleverness
as well as of the wisdom of God, but comes from
the broad, open face of nature, from the earth and
the sky, from the mountains, the plains, the rivers,
and the sea. That best part of the evidence of the
being of God is open, is common to all, and is so
clear that science can no more add to its satisfying
power than it can take it away. And thus open,
common, and clear to all is the best part of the evi-
dence of the historic truthfulness of the holy
Gospels.

PART THIED.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORAL AND THE WRITTEN GOSPEL.

jT/gjET us open the Third Part of this volume
\ILi/ with a glance at the relations of the Miracles,
Discourses, and Parables in the Four Gospels
to the oral Gospel. The recorded miracles are
thirty-three in number. The sacramental miracle,
the feeding of the five thousand, is the only one
that is given by all the Evangelists. Six miracles
are given only by St. John. To find out which of
the other twenty-seven miracles belonged to the
oral Gospel I count those that are common to the
three earlier Gospels. As we might almost have
known beforehand, their number is twelve. They
are : the cleansing of leprosy, the cure of fever, of
paralysis, of a withered hand, of blindness, of an
issue of blood ; but the record of the last is inter-
woven with that of another miracle. The other
five are the walking on the sea, the stilling of the
storm, the feeding of the five thousand, the cure of
the demoniacs, the raising of the dead.

In these miracles Jesus is the giver of the bread
of life, the redeemer from the leprosy, the fever, the
paralysis of sin, the Saviour from death, the conse-

228 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

quence of sin. They reveal his power over nature
and over the spirits of evil. The teaching of this
cycle of typical signs is very complete, and these
twelve miracles (more than any others, save some
that are given only by St. John) are the miracles
that now dwell in the mind and memory of the
family of Christ.

Such the confidence of His chosen Witnesses in
the proof they offer of the divinity of the Lord that
they feel there is no need to accumulate even such
evidence of it as the raising of the dead. They
select but one such miracle for their oral Gospel ;
and their example accounts for the absence of the
miracle at Nain from the first and second Gospels.

Of the other fifteen miracles in the earlier Gos-
pels five are twice told. Three of these — the feed-
ing of the four thousand, the healing of the daugh-
ter of the Syro-Phcenician woman, and the withering
of the fig-tree — are given by St. Matthew and by St.
Mark. The healing of the demoniac in the syna-
gogue at Capernaum is given by St. Mark and by
St. Luke, and the cure of the centurion's servant by
St. Matthew and by St. Luke. All of the fifteen
miracles formed a part of the teaching of the Wit-
nesses. Still, I think it likely that only the twelve
miracles, common to the earlier Gospels, belonged
to the more fixed, authoritative, common form of
the oral Gospel ; for I find in the recital of nearly
every one of those fifteen miracles (if not, indeed, in
all of them) some relation between them and the
characters of the Evangelists or the plans of their
Gospels, such as goes to account for the Evangelists'

THE FIFTEEN MIRACLES. 229

overstepping the bounds of the oral Gospel. Thus
the two miracles that are in the second Gospel
only, are cures of blindness and deafness wrought
gradually, with some use of means ; and such un-
common facts would naturally strike the curious
and active mind of St. Peter. Two blind men were
taken into a house and charged to say nothing of
what was done, and St. Matthew may have given
this miracle because of its unwonted privacy ; not,
indeed, (and throughout this inquiry it is to be kept
in mind in all similar cases,) that the reason given
is the sole or the chief reason, but merely that it is
the reason seen from our present stand-point.

When St. Matthew tells of the smiting of Malchus
we listen to one who was there, though some argue,
from his silence as to the healing of the wound, that
here his Gospel is fragmentary or legendary. The
wound was little thought of on that awful night,
and St. Matthew speaks of it, not for its own sake,
but for the sake of what his Master said, and not so
much for the words, " They that take the sword
shall perish by the sword," memorable as they are,
as for the words, " Thinkest thou that I cannot
now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give
me more than twelve legions of angels ? " Those
words touch the darkness of that hour with a ray
of " the light that never was on sea or land."
Those words attest to the majesty of Jesus in that
permitted hour of the Prince of this world. They
do more — the reason for what then was suffered to
be, was struck out (as truth often is) in the collision
of events, for his words show that Christ Jesus sac-

230 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

rificed Himself for the sins of His people, and that
the prophets told of this beforehand.

How strong the contrast here between the divine
and the human ! And on the human side all how
natural ! That eleven men of Galilee stood by and
struck no blow for their Prophet, though strong the
array that came against him, never could have been.
Peter could not have been there, nor Thomas, who
would have died for his Master, nor the two " sons
of thunder." It would have disgraced human na-
ture had not that blow been given for the Son of
Man ! It almost redeems the after behavior of the
disciples. That was strange, but their Master's
course was strange to them. " Put up thy sword,"
they could not understand. Peter's mind and the
minds of them all reeled with the shock. They all
forsook him and fled. But they came at last to un-
derstand ; and as often as St. Matthew recalled the
never-forgotten night of woe and shame he thought
of his Master's words ; but he neither then nor aft-
erward gave a thought to the healing of the wound
-^not that he forgot it, but it was to him as if he
remembered it not. St. Luke, who was not there,
wrote more as an historian would ; he tells of the
healing, and this he was all the more likely to do,
because it was a surgical miracle (the only one of
its kind) and St. Luke was a doctor.

In the recital of this train of events there is some
confirmation, of what before was intimated of an
argument for the date of the Gospels, that might be
drawn from their handling of names. Peter knew
not whom he struck, and cared not. In the stroke

THE FIFTEEN MIRACLES. 23 1

of his sword there was an outflash of Galilean fire
that all the Disciples in their hearts admired ; yet,
as it did not meet their Master's approval, they
cared not to say who struck the blow, and the ab-
sence from the earlier Gospels of the names of the
smiter and the smitten is a natural one. St. John
wrote when the lapse of time had deadened the
early feeling, and in his narrative both names come
out incidentally. That night Peter was in the court-
yard of the palace, warming himself at a fire, for the
night was cold. John (to whom the high-priest's
household were known) was with him. " The son
of thunder " was a brave man, but he never forgot
the start of apprehension with which, in that peril-
ous place and time, he heard a servant, whom he
knew to be a kinsman of him who was struck, say
to Peter, " Did I not see thee in the garden ? "
St. John could hardly tell of these things without
its coming out that Peter struck that man with his
sword ; and, full of the memories of that night, he
says, so naturally that we hear him say it, " And
that man's name was Malchus." *

To have imagined such a train of events was be-
yond Shakspeare, its consistent naturalness was
beyond De Foe ; yet this is only one (and is far
from being the most striking one) of the multitude
of narratives in the Evangeliad that are like it in
consistency, in naturalness, in depths of truth be-
yond the thoughts of men ; and when critics, with
an insolent affectation of contempt for those who
know better, decry the Gospels as legendary and

* Matt, xxvi, 51; Mark xiv, 47; Lukexxiii, 51 ; Johnxviii, 10,18, 26.

232 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

fragmentary, their criticisms can only be the out-
come of their hatred of truth !

Antecedently it is probable that some of the
fifteen miracles were selected out of those that be-
longed to the oral Gospel. The miracle of the
healing of the woman with a spirit of infirmity was
also a cure of demonism ; that miracle and the cure
of the man with dropsy were among the seven Sab-
batical miracles. Great would be the loss of those
narratives, even looking at them merely as lighting
up the difficulties and dangers of the mercy of the
Saviour, the evil spirit it called forth, and His way
of meeting it ; and yet it should be noted (though
it may press the argument too far) that those mira-
cles are told only by the physician.

Whatever be thought of this, it is characteristic
that the collector of taxes tells (and he is the only
one that does) of the miraculous procuring of silver
to pay a tax. Of course there were other reasons,
and on these let us pause for an instant. Some of
the fathers, and some good interpreters since their
time, hold this tax to have been the Roman trib-
ute ; and it is a cheering sign of an ever-growing
intelligence of Scripture that this has given place
to the idea that it was the Temple tax. All Israel
paid the Temple tax so readily that Peter promptly
gave his word that his Master would pay it. His
Lord's questions taught Peter his Lord's true rela-
tion to the Temple ; for His theocratic claim that
He was greater than the Temple is as clearly implied
in the questions of the earlier Gospel as it is clearly
expressed in the words of the last.

THE FIFTEEN MIRACLES. 233

To all the ridicule of the fish with the silver in
its mouth it has often been well answered that
while it became the Captain of our salvation (as He
said at his baptism) to fulfill all righteousness, yet
if he paid that tax there was a strong reason why,
in so doing, he should vindicate his claim to be the
Son of God, lest that payment should seem to con-
tradict it. To those who have eyes to see, the mir-
acle plainly shows the omniscience of the Lord and
his power over the natural world. And what our
Lord did is characteristic in its being suited to him
for whom it was done, He who taught star-gazers by
a star, teaching the fisherman by the miracle of the
fish. St. Matthew tells of these things after he says
that the disciples were exceeding sorry because of
what their Lord foretold of His death ; and though
there be an air of strangeness about this miracle,
the infidel notion that here there is something
legendary is decisively refuted by St. Matthew's
handling of the history. Many have spoken
against and many have defended this miracle, who
have not marked that St. Matthew says nothing di-
rectly about it. The miracle is always spoken of
as if it were wrought : it comes into every list of the
thirty-three recorded miracles, and yet there is no
record of it. Surely this could not have been were
there any thing legendary here, and surely any
other writer would have said more. The sign-man-
ual of Matthew the Silent is stamped on the page.
He stops with the command of his Lord, and what
he does not say is as effective as what any one else
would have said. We are as sure from his silence

234 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

as we could have been from any words, that Peter
ran to the lake, threw the line, and paid the silver.*
The healing of the daughter of the Syro-Phceni-
cian woman is in keeping with the design of St.
Matthew in that section of his Gospel where it
comes in. The recital of the miraculous draught

*Farrar says, in his "Life of Christ," (chap, xxxviii :) "When
Paulus calls this ' a miracle for half a crown ' he only shows his own
entire misconception of the fine ethical lessons in the narrative.
Yet I agree with Olshausen in regarding this as the most difficult to
comprehend of all the Gospel miracles." "It is remarkable," says
Archbishop Trench, " and is a solitary instance of the kind, that the
issue of this bidding is not told us." He goes on to say, indeed, that
the narrative is evidently intended to be miraculous, and this impres-
sion is almost universal. Yet the literal translation of our Lord's
words may certainly be " on opening its mouth thou shalt get, or ob-
tain, a stater ; and the peculiarities of the miracle and of the manner
in which it is narrated leave in my mind a doubt whether some es-
sential particular may not have been omitted or left unexplained."
This insinuated questioning of the narrative has not escaped the
writer of the infidel article on the Gospels in the "Encyclopaedia
Britannica," and is there used against the Scriptures.

The Commentary edited by Bishop Ellicott leans to the idea (sug-
gested also by Farrar) that there was no miracle. " The wonder
does not originate in our Lord's compassion, nor depend upon faith
in the receiver, [how does he know that ?] nor set forth a spiritual
truth. [But it was wrought in attestation of our Lord's divinity at a
time when the Disciples greatly needed enlightenment and confirma-
tion of faith, and there may have been special need of this in the
training of Peter.] This would not be of much weight against a
direct statement, but it may be of some significance in the excep-
tional absence of such a statement. On these grounds some explain
our Lord's words as meaning, in figurative language, that Peter was
to catch the fish and sell it for a stater?' In view of such comments
(and there is not space for others like them) the importance of what
is said above of St. Matthew's style will be seen. Here, as in sev-
eral other places, clearer insight into his peculiarities as a writer is
needed, to clear up what has not been made clear by those who have
written concerning this miracle.

THE FIFTEEN MIRACLES. 235

of fishes (at the call of the Apostles) did not consist
with his plan in the earlier part of his Gospel ; nor
did the describing of it consist with St. Peter's ret-
icence as to things personal to himself. St. Luke,
seeing their omission of this miracle, records it ;
and that he did so seems providential (if the word
may be permitted as conveniently expressing what
cannot be misunderstood) when the teaching of this
miracle, at the opening of our Lord's ministry, is
compared with the teaching of the similar one after
His resurrection, given only by St. John.

So many have said that St. Matthew's Gospel
has no plan that there is need of proving what has
just been said, but this would pass our present lim-
its. None have questioned that St. Luke had a
plan, and every one will see that his recital of the
healing of the ten lepers (given, like the parable of
the Good Samaritan, only by him) is in fine accord
with the spirit of his Pauline Gospel. On looking
from our present point of view, he may be said to
have given it a place for the sake of these words :
" When one of the Ten saw that he was healed he
turned back and with a loud voice glorified God
and fell down on his face at the feet of Jesus giv-
ing him thanks, and he was a Samaritan!' St. Luke
passes over the typical and prophetic miracle of the
withering of the fig-tree, a kind of acted parable, but
he relates a parable of a fig-tree (given only by him)
where the lesson is much the same.* And I think it
has become certain to my readers, from the selection
by the Evangelists of the fifteen miracles, that the

* See St. Luke, chap. xvii; 11-19.

236 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

fullness of a living tradition was flowing around
the Evangelists when they wrote.

Reasoning in the same way concerning the dis-
courses in their Gospels, we conclude that the whole
or a part of the Sermon on the Mount belonged to
the oral Gospel, and also the prophecy on Mount
Olivet. Our Lord's prophecy of the destruction of
Jerusalem must have had a place in all the early
teaching of the Apostles ; but, though the proph-
ecy passed far beyond the judgment of Jerusalem,
yet having been fulfilled so far as Jerusalem was
concerned, and having been thrice recorded, the
prophecy (and for the same reason, in part, the
Sermon on the Mount) is not given by the last
Evangelist.

Our course of reasoning farther leads to the con-
clusion that three of the thirty recorded parables —
the Sower, the Mustard-seed, and the Wicked Hus-
bandman— belonged to the common oral Gospel.
When we before said that the Evangelists thought-
fully marked times and seasons when it was of psy-
chological and spiritual moment, we should have
said that St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke care-
fully note the occasion or reason for our Lord's
teaching in parables. The like, no doubt, was done
by all the Twelve ; but they could hardly have noted
our Lord's new manner of teaching without giving
the first example of that manner ; and in that par-
able, the Sower is Christ himself. The parable of
the Mustard-seed, revealing that, from a small be-
ginning, sure and vast would be the growth of the
kingdom of Christ, conveyed instruction well-suited

NO PARABLE IN THE LAST GOSPEL. 237

to the early Christians, as also did the parable of the
Wicked Husbandman, which is in such harmony
with the word on Mount Olivet. Our course of
reasoning also leads us to conclude that two other
parables — the Lost Sheep and the Leaven — be-
longed to the oral Gospel. Besides those five par-
ables, it is probable that some of the ten given by
St. Matthew and some of the twelve given by St.
Luke, also formed part of the oral Gospel, although
it is not likely that this was the case with all those
twenty-two parables.

By those who press the seeming difference be-
tween the Evangelists, much has been made of the
fact that there is no parable in the last Gospel ; but
it seems to me that the thirty parables recorded in
the Gospel before St. John wrote, may have been
all the parables that our Lord ever uttered. If that
were so, it would seem to end the matter ; but the
charge is so made as not in. this way to be fully dis-
posed of. For, in the last Gospel, our Lord's style
and manner of teaching are said to be unlike His
style and manner of teaching in the earlier Gospels,
and one of the items of the evidence of this, is the
absence of parables from the last Gospel. I have
before touched upon this charge, and here reply to
it only so far as parables are concerned. Our Lord
made this kind of teaching so rich, so tender, so
divinely wise, that we are apt to forget (although
we are told so in the Scripture) that he did not use
this kind of teaching until the more hopeful days
of his ministry were over ; that his enemies drove
him to it, and that he was not in the way of using

238 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

it toward his friends. Now, in the first four chap-
ters of St. John parables are not to be looked for,
because those chapters are given to a time before
our Lord began to use them. Neither are parables
to be looked for in long discourses. There are none
in the Sermon on the Mount, none in the Prophecy
on Mount Olivet, though the word is there applied
to a brief saying. Parables would have been out
of place in our Lord's long, last farewell to his own
family; and parables are not to be looked for in the
chapters that tell of his Trial and Crucifixion ; nor
in those that are given to what took place after his
Resurrection.

Here a little humble arithmetic avails ; for let us
subtract from the twenty -one chapters of St. John
the thirteen chapters in which no parables are to be
looked for, and only eight remain. In the long
chapter given to the Raising of Lazarus the circum-
stances and the persons are such that there was no
place for such teaching: and, thus, the question is
narrowed down to seven chapters, that cover only
as many days. The charge, then, comes to this :
Seven days in the life of our Lord are recorded in
the Gospel of St. John, in which he uttered no par-
able ; and surely there may have been seventy times
that number of such days in the course of the three
years of his ministry !

In the last Gospel, the form of His utterance (as
has often been noticed) is parabolic : " Whosoever
drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall
never thirst, but the water that I shall give him
shall be in him a well oi water springing up into

NO PARABLE IN THE LAST GOSPEL. 239

everlasting life." And, as the evidence of the charge
of variance between the earlier and the last Gospels
so far as parables are concerned, has been ciphered
down to the unimportant fact that for seven days,
or parts of days, our Lord uttered no parable, it is
clear that of the items of the evidence of that alleged
variance this one of the parables must be struck
from the list.

240 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

CHAPTER II.

ST. JOHN AND THE EARLIER GOSPELS.

LMOST unconsciously we have passed on to
the relations of the Evangelists with each
other. Reasons why the earlier Gospels were
so limited to the ministry in Galilee and regions
outside of Judea were given in treating of the
division of the field of our Lord's ministry made
between the elect Evangelists St. Matthew and St.
John, and in treating of the general relations of St.
Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke to the oral Gos-
pel. But it has been charged that St. John dis-
agrees with St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke as
to the beginning of our Lord's ministry. This
charge of variance grows out of the four earliest
chapters of St. John's Gospel, which are given to
ministrations in Judea before the imprisonment of
the Baptist ; and we are to answer it by showing
from those chapters that up to that date our Lord's
course was of a tentative or preparatory kind. In
those chapters relations of the final with the earlier
Gospels, which meet other charges of variance, dis-
close themselves ; and some further reasons for the
structure of the earlier Gospels appear. The stand-
point from which we look upon those chapters is
not the common one. Their facts will be seen in

THE BEGINNING OF THE MINISTRY. 241

somewhat of a new light. They have given rise to
several questions of their own ; and, interweaving a
running comment into my argument, I shall discur-
sively treat of those chapters with more fullness
than my immediate purpose requires.

There are beginnings on beginnings in the king-
doms of nature and of grace. Things so run into
each other that no one beginning excludes the
thought of all others. What was, so becomes one
with what is, that lines can hardly be drawn be-
tween the stages of the growth of the present out
of the past ; and though there be one instant when
each created thing and each course of events most
truly may be said to begin, yet to select, out of
others that have some claim, the moment that has
the most indisputable claim to rank as the begin-
ning, is often equally difficult and unimportant. One
history opens the story of a war with the hostilities
that led to its declaration, another with the decla-
ration itself; and, however it may be in science, it
is sometimes a matter of indifference in history
which of several moments is fixed upon as the be-
ginning in a course of events, if it be a clear point
of division.

With some reason the baptism of Christ Jesus
might be held to be the beginning of his ministry.
Of the baptism there was nothing left for St. John
to tell ; yet his silence concerning it is said to dis-
credit the evidence of it in the other Gospels. This
is strangely perverse, for St. John recites words of
his old master that allude to facts at the baptism,

and he leaves them unexplained, evidently because
16

242 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the previous Gospels had made the facts universally
known. The personal witness of the Baptist to
Christ Jesus, given only by St. John, was known to
St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke only by hear-
say ; yet there was a stronger reason for their pass-
ing over that witness, and in this was more than
their own wisdom ; for had they told of his witness
when telling of the open heaven, the descent of the
Spirit, and the Voice, the human testimony would
have come too closely in contrast with testimony it
could not equal, could not strengthen, and that
needed nothing. Still that witness was precious ;
and the same Will that forbade its utterance by them
treasured it up in the faithful heart of the Baptist's
own disciple until it was given in a Gospel where
its power is not lessened by too immediate compar-
ison with the witness from heaven.

The great orator was not wholly a man of fiery
zeal, of invective bitter and bold even to the verge
of rashness. St. Matthew's portrait of the last He-
brew prophet is true to the life, but is only one
portrait ; that which St. John drew of his old mas-
ter, whom he knew so well that he not only revered
but loved him, is another portrait. The difference
has not escaped the eyes of hostile critics ; but the
good sense and good feeling of the Baptist's coun-
sel to soldiers and publicans (in the third Gospel)
harmonizes the portrait by St. Matthew with that
by St. John. The one drawn by his pupil has fine
touches and a grandeur of its own ; and these
things are noteworthy, not for their own sake only,
but because there is some difference between St.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BAPTISM. 243

Matthew's and St. John's portraiture of our Lord,
that may, perhaps, be traced in part to a similar
cause; for the pupil of the herald and the " be-
loved " of the King had been nearer to both, than
St. Matthew.

There are touches of difference in the descriptions
of the Baptism, and one of these is characteristic of
the third Gospel. St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St.
Luke all mark that the signs were revealed after
our Lord came up out of the water, after he had
done what He himself said it was his duty to do ;
but only St. Luke says they were revealed when our
Lord prayed. St. Luke repeatedly speaks of our
Lord's praying when the other Evangelists do not,
as at His transfiguration ; or with more emphasis
than they, as when ■' He prayed earnestly, and his
sweat was as it were great drops of blood." There
may have been something in St. Luke's own expe-
rience that made him more alive than the others to
the praying of the Lord. If that were so, still there
is another fact that should go with it: St. Luke,
one of the heathen-born, was quick to mark our
Lord's habit of prayer; for prayer, such as the
Psalms had made familiar to all the children of
Israel, was quite unknown- to the heathen. But
hereafter we may see reason to refer this character-
istic of the third Gospel not so much to the expe-
rience of the Evangelist as to the experience of St.
Paul, of whom the Lord said at Damascus, " Behold,
he prayeth."

What the Baptist says of knowing Jesus has been
strangely dealt with, for it is consistent and clear.

244 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Jesus was not known to him personally before they
met by the river ; and this might be inferred from
St. Luke's saying that, until the time of his showing
unto Israel, John lived in the desert — the Arabian
Desert — that great sand ocean that laved the hill
country of Judea on the south, and came up so
near to Hebron that it was as natural for the boys
of Hebron to go down there as for boys living in
sight of the ocean to go to sea. Born as a sign
unto Israel, the child of the old priest was safest in
the black tents of some kindred or friendly Emir of
the desert. That he was brought up there explains
St. Matthew's picture of his dress and manner of
living — the raiment of camels' hair, the leathern
girdle, and the locust meat. He came unto Israel
in the garb as well as in the spirit of Elias ; for, in
dress and manner of life, Elijah was an Arab of the
desert.

Jesus and John never met before, but doubtless
Jesus told John that he was the son of Mary, the
kinswoman of his mother; and though John's par-
ents must have died when he was little, doubtless
he afterward heard of the signs at the birth of his
cousin ; for, before the baptism, he looked up to
Jesus, apparently with the hope that he was the
Messiah.

The Baptist came to call the people to repent-
ance. It was a proverb with the Jews, that " if
Israel would repent for one day the Messiah would
come ;" and along the line of this feeling the Bap-
tist did prepare the way of the Lord ; but this is
what he himself said of the chief end and aim of his

PRIVACY OF THE BAPTISM. 245

coming : " He that sent me said, Upon whom thou
shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining, the
same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost, and
that he should be manifest to Israel ; therefore I am
come baptizing with water." When the sign was
given the Baptist's hope became a certainty, and
then he knew, what before he knew not, that Jesus
was " the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin
of the world."

With greater reason the Baptism might be held
to be the beginning of our Lord's ministry — as in
some true sense it was — had its signs and wonders
been open and visible. Our habit of thinking that
they were, is so fixed that it is hard to change it ;
and yet we ought rather to have thought they were
not visible, for the great moments in the kingdom
of grace do usually " come without observation ; "
and it was so then. Even as the eye sees not the
spiritual miracles that now pass before it, so then
the common eye saw nothing in the baptism of
Jesus different from the baptism of others. This is
implied in St. Luke's description. This is also cer-
tain from the Baptist's privately making known
who Jesus was to a few of his own disciples ; and it
is stamped upon the words, " I saw and bear wit-
ness " — words of one who speaks for himself alone.
To him alone of all that multitude was given what
the Scripture calls " open vision." To all but him
the Son of Man went down into the water and came
up out of the water like the rest. The Congregation
of the Lord, who now forever behold the open
heavens, the Spirit descending, and hear the voice,

246 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

are highly favored above those who were baptized
the same day with Christ in the Jordan.

Our Lord is not said to have spoken of the signs
at his baptism. The words, " There was a man sent
to bear witness," prove that all human knowledge
of them rests on the testimony of the Baptist ; and
St. Peter may have had this in mind when he said
that the one to be chosen as an apostle must be of
those who had known the Baptist. St. Matthew,
St. Mark, and St. Luke are inspired vouchers for
the truth of what the Baptist said, yet their knowl-
edge of the Baptism came from him, and he is the
sole witness of its signs and wonders. His testi-
mony, whether heard from his own lips by St.
Peter, or from the lips of his disciples, made the
baptism so real to the Evangelists that their de-
scriptions of it read as if they themselves had beheld
its wonders. The Baptist's witness convinced then,
and it convinces now. It is true, those signs bring
their own evidence. That any one could have im-
agined things so fitting the hour, the Man, and the
world's future is not possible. In virtue of what
they are, and of their having been made known in
the Gospel, they are divine testimony to Christ
Jesus ; and yet the Baptist's human testimony to
those signs and wonders is hardly less effectual, so
much nearer to us is the man than the facts. He
is their sufficient witness to the human race. It
seems to me that if one had seen the rending of
the heavens and heard the voice he could doubt it
as easily as he could doubt the word of the Baptist.
What Josephus says of his power with the people

THE WITNESS OF THE BAPTIST. 247

seems unhistorical, inexplicable, almost impossible,
for the Baptist wrought no miracle ; and, save as
opening the way in the hearts of a few of his disci-
ples for the Messiah, his influence over the people
came to nothing; yet what Josephus says is borne
out by the Pharisees when they would not answer
the question of Jesus " because they feared the
people." * Our Lord, also, said there never had
been a greater man than John the Baptist, f and
the power of his solitary witness is the seal set in
history to our Lord's declaration.

Besides his witness to those signs and wonders
there is a witness of the Baptist to Christ Jesus,
given only in the final Gospel. Besides that, there
is a still weightier witness in the surprising way in
which St. John brings the Baptist into the sublime
prelude to his Gospel. In that prelude the Apostle
reveals the Eternal Word as He is hardly with equal
clearness elsewhere revealed. The Apostle speaks
with an awe-inspiring earnestness, yet with the
calmness of deepest thought. He bends the whole
force of his mind to make the facts as clear as they
are certain. The inexpressible was never so well
expressed. Never was so much truth embodied in
words so few ; not even when in the space of the
palm of the hand Moses wrote of the world's gen-
eration, from the quickening of the first form of
matter by the element Light, until it grew to be

* See Matt. 21, 23-27

f See Matt, xi, 2-15 : "Verily I say unto you, Among them that
are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the
Baptist."

248 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the fitting home of man. St. John recalls that reve-
lation because of the correspondence between the
material and the spiritual worlds ordained by the
Word who created both, and from it he takes the
figure of Light, which in each is the symbol of the
Word creating. The compass of his revelation
transcends that of Moses as much as the spiritual
transcends the material universe, and yet it is even
more compressed. The utterance is measured and
rhythmical, the statements are reduplicated, but this
is the zigzaging of lightning that at night suddenly
illuminates the heavens. Almost inconceivable is
the swiftness of the thoughts ! Most astounding,
then, this sudden interruption, " There was a man
sent from God whose name was John." We seem
to have come to the end of the train of thought ;
but no, for St. John goes on with it again as if there
had been no interruption. What can this mean ?
How came this verse into such a revelation ? What
place can there be for this fact in this wonderful
procession of facts ? Why is this man here, as if
here he could witness to the Eternal Word ? We
know the man ! He was mortal like us. He was
beheaded in the dungeon at Machasrus. He was
born in King Herod's time. His father was the old
priest Zacharias. His mother was Elizabeth, of the
daughters of Aaron. Why is he here in these days
of the beginning? Can any thing make his pres-
ence unobtrusive in the midst of this wonderful
revelation ?

Before trying to show that the Baptist's presence
fits the train of thought, let me point to touches of

THE WITNESS OF THE BAPTIST. 249

a pupil's feeling for his old master. " A man was
sent from God, whose name was John" — there
speaks the enthusiast of other days ! So St. John felt
in his youth, so he always felt, and never more than
now! He says that man was sent to bear witness
of the Light, and only a pupil could say, " He was
not that Light." The words echo the thoughts of
the boy who wondered at the Baptist, until he al-
most believed he was the long-hoped-for of Israel !
These seemingly needless and strange words at such
a place and time are the clear mark and sign that
the writer is St. John. By those words, the far-see-
ing Wisdom, who works out His own Will through
the nature of man, provides against the unbelief of
these times !

But there is more than a pupil's honor for his
master, there is more than the memory of an old
man recalling his youth, in the place that St. John
gives to the words, "There was a man sent from God
to bear witness of the Light." The testimony he
thus brings in is closely linked in his own soul with
the great truths that open his Gospel ; for his soul is
full of the thought of the Eternal Word ; he bears
inspired witness to His glory — He is the Maker of
all that is made, the Life in nature, the Light in the
soul, the Unity of things created — and the witness
which St. John the Apostle and Evangelist here
bears to Christ Jesus as the Eternal WTord, John
the Baptist himself had borne.

Here, in this sublime prelude to St. John's Gos-
pel, whose far-reaching, wonderful revelation of the
eternal glory of the Lord Jesus, has seemed to many

250 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

unreconcilable with the earlier Gospels ; here, where
this idea has been pressed with an almost unequaled
strength of conviction, and with disastrous effect
upon the faith of some who would fain believe ; here,
where the train of thought is so strangely inter-
rupted, the earlier Gospels justify that interruption ;
and just here the relation between the earlier Gos-
pels and the last Gospel proves that St. John so
looked to them to make what he wrote intelligible
that they are in perfect harmony with him as to the
Eternal Glory of Christ Jesus. For one after the
other, in almost the same words, (save with this in-
structive difference, that what St. Matthew and St.
Luke give as the utterance of Isaiah St. Mark gives
as the utterance of all the Prophets,) each and all
of those three inspired Evangelists declare that
John the Baptist was the Voice who was to cry,
" All flesh is grass, and the glory of man as the
flower of grass; the grass withereth and the flower
fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand for-
ever." * In that prophetic word the withering of
the grass is not the quick passing away of mortals
one by one, it is the withering away of the race of
man. In the thought of God man's continuance on
th*e earth is a duration as brief as that of the wither-
ing grass to human thought, yet to us the genera-
tions of men seem to come and go forever ; and it
is the whole time-cycle of man (its briefness in the
sight of God giving emphasis to the truth revealed)
that is put in contrast with the Being of the Eter-
nal Word. And this prophecy of the Eternal Word
* Isaiah xl, 3-9.

PLATO, PHILO, AND ST. JOHN. 25 1

was the Baptist's cry in the wilderness, the burden
of his message to Israel. By marking this, the ear-
lier Evangelists (whose insight into the truths they
reveal will ever be more apparent as man grows to
be more in sympathy with their intelligence and
grace) reveal the same truth that is revealed by St.
John; and in them alone is found the reason — when
once seen, a most sufficient, plain, and certain rea-
son— why St. John brings the witness of the Baptist
into the prelude to his Gospel.

Scholars of a skeptical turn of mind have busied
themselves with the question, Where did St. John
get the germ of his idea of the Eternal Word ?
Not choosing to see that the chapter of Genesis
(which was in his mind while writing) may have
suggested it, they used to say that he got it from
Plato. This is one of many scholastic illusions
closely verging on deceptions, that carrying with
them a weight of authority to humble souls trouble
their hearts ; yet there is no likelihood that St. John
ever read a Dialogue of Plato, and if he had known
all of Plato's Dialogues by heart he could not have
gotten out of them what is not in them. That
error is a thing of the past. Now they say that he
found the germ of his thought in the books of Philo
of Alexandria. It is time that this error was buried
in the same charnel-house with the bones of the
other. St. John's idea of the Word made flesh is
conspicuously absent from the pages of Philo-
Judaeus. He did know something of that revelation
of the Word of God in Hebrew Scripture, which — as
the Targums witness — was more thoroughly traced

252 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

out and believed by the devout Jews of his time
than, to our shame and loss, it is now ; but Philo
would not follow that revelation where it passed
into a prophecy of the man Christ Jesus. He was
a mystic to whom the history of Israel was allegory;
and he did not share in the belief of his countrymen
in the Messiah as a man. Philo was a Deist ; and
by logical consequence his belief in the Messiah, (if
he can be said to have had any,) was of ghostlike
unreality.

It is common to all who thus seek for the germ
of St. John's idea, that they will not see that he is
stating facts, not s'etting forth opinions. If there
must be a question here, it should be, Whence did
he get his facts ? From inspiration, is the answer.
But earlier revelation is ever a source of later revela-
tion. The widening and deepening river that makes
glad the City of God is one and the same river.
St. John's knowledge came to him from the begin-
ning of Scripture. It came to him from beholding
in heaven a Man on whose head were many crowns,
his vesture dipped in blood, with a name that no one
knew but Himself, and that name was the Word of
God. And his knowledge, to which the Holy Ghost
gave all needed completeness of truth, alike in itself
and its utterance, came, as he says himself, from
what he had seen and heard of the Word of Life.
And yet, apart from all these sources of his knowl-
edge, earlier perchance than any of them, the germ
of this knowledge in his soul was the fact that his
old master, the Baptist, was the Voice foretold ; and
of this there is evidence in that association of ideas

THE WORDS OF ST. PETER. 253

which led him to bring the Baptist into the midst
of his own revelations of the Eternal Word.

Before passing on let it be noted that not only
do all the earlier Evangelists mark that John the
Baptist bore witness to Christ as the Eternal Word,
but that the chief Apostle applied the same proph-
ecy that was the foreordained Cry in the Wilder-
ness to Christ Jesus : " Ye are born again not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word
of God which liveth and abideth forever. For all
flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the
flower of grass ; the grass withereth and the flower
thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord en-
dureth forever, and this is the Word which by the
Gospel is preached unto you."

254 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

CHAPTER III.

THE EARLIER CHAPTERS OF ST. JOHN.

fHAT the herald continued to proclaim the Mes-
siah's coming after he knew that Jesus was
the Messiah has been perplexing to some ;
and the more so, because disciples of the Baptist
are met with in the Acts some years after his death,
and in the East the sect long continued.* All this
is said to be irreconcilable with what the earlier
Evangelists tell of the baptism of Jesus. It is said
to prove that John was never, in his own mind, sub-
ordinate to Jesus, that his course was independent,
that he was only a reformer and preacher of repent-
ance. But to minds that give any heed to the
Evangelists all that gives rise to these infidel con-
jectures is partially explained by what has been
said of the privacy of the Baptism ; and, farther, it
can be shown that the course of the herald was
called for by the state of things in Judea. John
was a man exceeding bold ; the fire of the desert
burned in his veins ; yet true courage marches hand
in hand with prudence, and John never preached
in walled Jerusalem. He was earnest, he was stern,

* This, however, was a general consequence of the Baptist's
preaching, no doubt, and is not specially to be attributed to his con-
tinuing in his work.

PRUDENCE OF THE BAPTIST. 255

but he had thoughtful delicacy of feeling. He was
not sure that Jesus was the Messiah, yet his request
to be baptized troubled him, (as it has so many
since ;) for Jesus had to say to John, " Suffer it to
be so." Such a man as John, when he knew that
Jesus was the Christ, never went on with his work
on his own responsibility, never without consulting
with his Lord. The idea (from which our minds
can hardly free themselves) that the signs at the bap-
tism were visible to all, makes the course of our
Lord and of the Baptist different from what we
should think ; yet, when the whole state of the case
is known, it is plain that it could hardly have been
other than that which is described. The ministry
of the Baptist was a divine intimation that the min-
istry of the Messiah was nigh ; and the veiling of the
signs at the consecration of Jesus to his work was a
divine intimation that the full time of His ministry
had not come. The Baptist's insight into the perils
of the time was such that the question must have
arisen whether Judea was a safe field for Jesus. St.
Matthew at once, and more clearly than the other
Evangelists, discloses the evil state of things ; yet
St. John accords with St. Matthew. In his Gos-
pel the Baptist tells the emissaries of the Sanhe-
drim that the Messiah was then in the multitude
around him ; that he would not hide. That far
he went, but they knew he would go no further ;
for even those " priests and Levites sent from Jeru-
salem " dared not ask him who the Messiah was.
They knew the Prophet would nof tell them. The
near future justified the Prophet. The Roman

256 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

power was some protection, yet even from the be-
ginning Jesus was in danger from the ecclesiastics
of Judea. His life was nowhere safe in that prov-
ince, not even in the throng of the Baptist's adher-
ents in the wilderness. The proclamation that the
Messiah was coming at once aroused a wrath in
Pharisee and Sadducee that never slumbered nor
slept till John and Jesus were murdered, nor then,
nor now !

The Son of God was truly man. No miracle
taught him to speak or to read. He was not raised
above care and danger. He was not free from fa-
tigue of body; when tired he sat on Samaria's
well ; and he was not always free from care of mind.
Hard duties were laid upon him, and he had to find
out what they were. He had to find his path, as
men find theirs, by the use of all his faculties ; by
watching the hintings and guidings of providence,
by searching the Scriptures, by fervent prayer.
God makes no mistakes, and his Son made none.
He found the path of his duty as no man ever found
it. He never mistook it ; he ever walked in it ; but
man will never know the earnestness with which he
sought and found and did his duty. Musing at St.
Helena, Napoleon said of Christ Jesus, " In the
power of his will I feel the power that created the
world."

The finer fabrics of human skill bear no painful
trace of the designer's difficult thought or of the
workman's hard toil. What is well and completely
done seems in the retrospect to have been easily
done. The beauty of the life of Jesus veils and

PARTIES AMONG THE JUDEANS. 257

hides its labor and pain. It is written, that he
learned by what he suffered. He knew what was in
man as no other has ever known ; yet he no more
dispensed with prudent forethought than with food
and sleep.

" The heart is deceitful above all things, and des-
perately wicked." The Pharisees' hatred of holi-
ness was the root of their hatred toward Jesus ; yet
the Pharisees thought they were pious, and the peo-
ple were under the same delusion. They kept times
and seasons, paid tithes, and made long prayers.
How came it, then, that the Pharisees more than
others were the deadly enemies of Christ Jesus ?
How came it that in what they did against Christ
Jesus they thought they were doing God service —
as afterward one of them thought when consenting
to the murder of St. Stephen ? The Pharisees were
about six thousand in number ; the Sadducees were
less numerous, but with both are to be numbered
their families, dependents, and servants. The two
sects formed the ruling class in Judea; all the polit-
ical power the Romans left to the Jews was in their
hands. The two rival sects combined the power of
a hierarchy with that of an aristocracy. They had
the ideas and aims that are common to all aristoc-
racies ; the Pharisees were more prone to court the
people, yet Pharisees and Sadducees, openly or
secretly, worked together in upholding their com-
mon power. The Herodians were the Bonapart-
ists of that time ; they looked back to Herod and
forward to what did come, when Agrippa regained

his grandfather's throne. There was in Judea
11

258 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

a larger class that was distinct from the noblesse ; *
yet in Judea, as every-where else, the nation was
represented by, and in a manner identified with,
the governing class.

Christ was rejected by the people through the
misrepresentations, solicitations, and maneuvering
of their rulers ; yet in this the people sinned. But
after his Resurrection, though his reappearing was
for a short time, to a small circle, and his kingdom
was then seen to be not of this world, many of the
people and some of the nobles believed. That they
believed in Jesus then accords with his own decla-
ration that his Death and Resurrection was the
great sign of his Messiahship. Had it not been for
that belief, our Lord's claim to be the Messiah would
have been so rejected by his own countrymen as to
be an almost unanswerable argument against that
claim. There was no such rejection. In his own
day and generation there were enough of his own
countrymen (even those men and women who spread
his Gospel throughout the world) to bear sufficient
testimony that he was the Messiah whom their
prophets foretold.

Still, the condemnation of Christ to death was a
national crime. The nobles presented the question
suddenly to the people, they left them no time for
reflection, but they did persuade them to reject
Jesus ; and the common outcries of them all drove
the Roman Governor to order His crucifixion.

* In the earlier Gospels these classes are quite distinct, and so,
too, in the last, though in that Gospel, written after the ruin of the
nation, they are all spoken of as the Jews.

THE RULING CLASS IN JUDEA. 259

Caiaphas was high-priest that year ; he was a
Sadducee, and then, as for sometime before and
afterward, the office of high-priest was in the hands
of a powerful Sadducean family. But in all the
Gospels the Pharisees are the earliest, the most
bitter, and for a time the only active enemies of
Jesus ; they seek for, they contrive, and they bring
about His death. It was their work, although they
secured his arrest and his crucifixion at the hands
of the Romans through the powerful and ready aid
of the Sadducees, and with the assent of the Hero-
dians and of the people.

The inquiry, then, into the causes of the danger
that was ever near the Messiah in Judea — causes other
than the sinfulness common to man — is an inquiry
into the causes of the hatred of the governing class
in Judea toward Jesus. In the eyes of those aris-
tocrats their welfare was bound up with the estab-
lished order of things. They could see no change
that would benefit themselves. To them the Mes-
siah's coming was the unphilosophic illusion of un-
cultured people. They had no faith in the Christ,
but they had faith in the fortune of Rome. They
feared that the belief of the people in the Messiah
would lead to rebellion, and they measured too
well the Roman strength to believe in the success
of that rebellion. In such a war they knew they
would lose their power. They loved power even
more than they loved money, and in that war they
would lose both. They took no pay for their relig-
ious ministrations — as the nobles and gentry who
sit in the House of Lords or Commons take none

260 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

for their services — yet through their ministrations
they gained and kept the favor and the reverence
of the people, reached their whole life, controlled
their affairs, and held all the offices. Thus indi-
rectly wealth came to them from religion, which
was their trade, and woe to him who endangered
their trade. For spiritual blessings they cared lit-
tle, and believed little in them, though they were
full of the proselyting zeal that is common with
those with whom the forms of religion take the
place of the realities of religion. They studied the
laws of Moses for their own ends ; they enforced,
they redoubled his requirements with a zeal that
was equal to their selfishness. A revival of relig-
ion, such as the Baptist preached, would run into
political changes, and from a love of their own in-
terests, which they mistook for a sense of duty, they
were opposed to all changes. Whatever flashes of
light, whatever convictions of sin, smote them in
their course toward Jesus, they thought they were
doing right. Selfishness took on the guise of pa-
triotism, and patriotism took on the guise of relig-
ion. To them reform meant ruin. Their ruin was
the ruin of Church and State. Without them the
Church and the State would have no stability or grace,
for they were the Church and they were the State.
All aristocracies hate those who endanger their pow-
er; but all there has elsewhere been of that hate is a
shadow compared with the hatred with which the re-
ligious and political aristocracy of the Jews sought
the lives of the murdered Baptist and of the cruci-
fied Son of Man. Yet at times they seemed to

TESTING THE FITNESS OF JUDEA. 26 1

have been haunted by a presentiment of the ruin
their vengeance would bring upon themselves, and
in their near judgment their Church and State per-
ished, and they perished with them.

The preaching of the Baptist aroused the watch-
ful jealousy of the Pharisees, and even without this
stimulus, such was the state of things that the min-
istry of Jesus in Judea would have been a perilous
one. In His life some outshinings of his omnis-
cience witnessed to his true divinity ; yet he did
not avail himself of his omniscience in lieu of his
human foresight. Murder haunted his footsteps
from Nazareth to Calvary, yet he guarded against
danger (for the most part at least) by prudence and
forethought. Growing to manhood and living in
Galilee, He had small means of judging of the fitness
or unfitness of Jerusalem and Judea to become the
chief field of his ministry. He had to test that ;
and while the continuing proclamation of his Herald
kept the common eye fixed upon the Baptist, there
was a comparatively safe opportunity for Jesus to
make the test which he made in that part of his life
omitted by the other Evangelists, and described in
the first four chapters of St. John.

In some real and true sense the ministry of the
Redeemer was ever going on from_the hour of con-
secration at his baptism ;* still it is a question on
the answer to which, at one important point, de-

*Of the forty days only the supernatural is made known; yet it
seems probable that in his meditations in the solitude of the desert
the principles that were to guide his course were fixed before his
decisions were tested.

262 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

pends the harmony of the earlier Gospels and the
last Gospel — Was there any moment before the im-
prisonment of John that, in every respect, answers
to the idea that it was the beginning of the fullness
of His public ministry? Such was the privacy of
the baptism that it does not perfectly answer to the
idea of that beginning ; neither does the temptation
in the solitude of the wilderness. It only remains
to consider whether the course of events described
only by St. John fully answers to it ; and I think
that in those events, and in the way in which they
are told, we shall find evidence that they were pre-
paratory to the fullness of our Lord's ministry,
which, in the other Gospels, dates from the Bap-
tist's imprisonment.

When the Messiah came up out of the desert he
began at once to provide for a witness to himself;
but that calling of Simon, John, Andrew, Philip,
and Nathanael, though an official act, was hardly a
public one. Jesus there began to form his band of
disciples, but its organization was afterward com-
pleted in Galilee, where a later and more emphatic
summons was the true beginning of the discipleship.

Sent for, no doubt, by his mother, and attended
by the five, (whom St. John naturally speaks of
then as disciples,) Jesus came to a gathering of his
family at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. The family,
as truly as the Church or the State, is ordained of
God, with inviolable rights and holy ministrations
of its own. The presence of the Lord at that wed-
ding was the Messianic reconsecration of the family.
There our Lord wrought his first miracle ; but,

THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 263

though it has peculiar glories, it was a household
miracle ; it was wrought in and for a family ; it was
long before it was made known in the written Gos-
pel ; and, therefore, the mind is left free to seek for
some other hour as that of the fullness of our Lord's
ministry.

From Cana He soon went up to Jerusalem, and
there he cleansed the unholy Temple. No act
more public, few more significant ! It was well re-
membered, and His words rankled in the hearts of
those who heard them till they wrought mightily
toward his own death. Yet the cleansing of the
Temple, I hardly know why, has not impressed me
— I do not know that it has impressed any one —
as that full beginning of our Lord's ministry that
makes all other beginnings preparatory to itself.
But I do see it was not the manifestation of the
Messiah then, that it is now. In the Man before
them no astonished priest or citizen then recognized
that Child whom long years before the Magi came
from the Far-East to find. That Child was mur-
dered with the boys of Bethlehem ! The other
signs at the birth of Jesus had been hidden away
in the hearts of the pious few who witnessed them,
or of the few to whom they could be safely told ;
for the birth of an heir to the throne of David was
a dangerous secret. Of those few the old were
dead. A quarter of a century had gone, and much
had come between. The cry of the Baptist was
heard in the land, but there was nothing to connect
his proclamation with this Stranger. His act, then,
was not so rash as it seems. Outbreaks of religious

264 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

zeal are common in the East ; and this deed was
done before the rulers knew it. The Pharisees
made popularity a profession, and there was some-
thing in the deed that would please the people, one
of whom the Stranger seemed to be. What our Lord
did was of less public consequence at the time than it
seems to us now, and it hardly answers to the idea
of the true beginning of His public ministry.

Still it was an assertion of sovereignty over the
Temple which should have prevented any one from
saying that our Lord gradually formed an idea of
his mission, changing and enlarging it as time went
on. This fatal error is forbidden by His words in
the Temple while yet a youth obedient to his par-
ents, and again by what is recorded here. Though
He was then looking into the way of carrying out
his mission, it proves that in his own mind he had
determined what his mission was ; and the reason
for the act itself may, in part, have been, that no
reasonable doubt on that point should ever arise.
It stands out almost in the way of contrast to the
course ©f events in which it occurred. Still it does
not destroy its tentative preparatory character.
There is nothing of that color in any thing that is
told of the life of Christ after the imprisonment of
John, and there is something of that color in all that
came before it.

I do not think that Nicodemus for his own sake
feared to come to Jesus by day, but because that
what our Lord did and said in the Temple had
aroused a feeling in the strong men of Jerusalem
that would have been perilous to the Stranger, but

THE SILENCE OF ST. JOHN. 265

for his seeming insignificance and loneliness. The
Jewish ruler does not speak as if he were ashamed
of coming ; and had he come by night from cow-
ardice he would not have been welcome, for cowards
are not wanted in the kingdom of heaven.

This nobleman speaks of miracles wrought at
that time : " No man can do these miracles which
Thou doest except God be with him." St. John be-
held those miracles, but he does not describe one of
them. Now, we are studying writings of artless sim-
plicity yet of unfathomed mental power, in whose
pages there are plain indications of careful thought
as to all that is written, signs of an intelligence in
the selection, arrangement, and utterance of his facts,
that ever more and more is disclosing itself, yet is
not fully known to any man living, and for genera-
tions, and it may be forever, will be more and more
visible. This is the writing of so great a master of
history that no other save his colleague, St. Matthew,
is to be named with him ; and any one looking at
what is here written must see that St. John would
have altered the whole coloring of this course of
events if he had described a single one of those mir-
acles as minutely as he afterward described that of
the beggar blind from his birth. And, further, it
agrees with the view that has been taken of this
course of events, that when St. John says that
" many believed on his name when they saw the
miracles which he did," he goes on to say, " but
Jesus did not commit himself unto them."

Out from walled and guarded Jerusalem Jesus
went into the open country. There He " tarried,

266 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

all men came unto him," and his disciples bap-
tized. Now, if all these things — the cleansing of
the temple, miracles in the city, the gathering in
the country — did not constitute a full beginning of
Christ's ministry, what could ? There is force in
the question ; but the doings of the heir-apparent
to a vacant throne are of kingly significance and of
public moment before he becomes, at his coronation,
in the full sense, a king. The continuing of the
Herald to proclaim the coming of the King, forbids
the otherwise certain inference from this train of
facts ; and it is some confirmation of this that up to
this time the disciples of Jesus baptized, but in our
Lord's full ministry they never baptized.

We come now to almost the last of the facts that
bear on the question, whose answer we have been
so long journeying to find — following the winding
road, and turning into other paths. " John was
baptizing near to Salim, because there was much
water there, for John was not yet cast i?ito prison.
The Evangelists were not writers by profession,
and what they say to clear up things is sometimes
thrown in so abruptly and so briefly as of itself to
need clearing up. Here it looks as if one stupid
scribe wrote that last line in the margin of his copy
and another let it slip into the text ; for if John was
baptizing, it seems needless to say that he was out
of prison ; but for that line there is a good reason.
The verse before states a fact, this one gives a date,
and it is natural to suppose that just here the need
of that date occurring to St. John, he named it in
the quick way that he would have done in conver-

DATE OF THE MINISTRY. 267

sation. As the date of the Fullness of the Ministry
given in the other Gospels, it was well known to all
the Christian congregation — hence St. John's brief
way of speaking; and his recognition of it gives to
all he before related its true character of a prepara-
tion for that epoch.

The Baptist's last testimony follows that line
almost immediately. A Jew set on his disciples to
make the Baptist jealous by telling him of the
crowds that came to Jesus ; a way of working mis-
chief that never would have been thought of had
our Lord's course of action up to that time clearly
brought out the breadth of the difference between
Himself and the Baptist. Surely John could not
but have known that of which his disciples spoke
to him, and it was hardly a temptation to one to
whom Christ Jesus had been revealed as " the
Word made flesh ; " yet such is the frailty of man
that the quietude, the humility, the meek unself-
ishness with which he answered his disciples is
truly touching in a man of so fiery and high a na-
ture ; and it may have been that because of this vic-
tory over himself in that good hour the Spirit of God
so touched his soul that his utterance became one
of the marvels of prophecy. Then was the glory of
the Eternal Word so revealed that many believe
that the witness of the inspired Apostle here joins
with that of the Baptist ; and when the soul of the
Baptist's aged disciple stirred within him as he gave
more than wonted power to the words of his old
Master by writing them out, he may have carried
on their line of thought. If he did, he also spake

268 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

as he was moved by the Holy Ghost — but in the
months at ^Enon John was near to Jesus ; he had
time for communion with his Lord ; and as the Lord
made such revelations to the Jewish ruler, what
may he not have revealed to the son of his moth-
er's kinswoman, to the child of Elisabeth, born in a
prophetic hour, and, perhaps, more to him than any
other man !

In his last testimony to Christ Jesus, just before
his imprisonment, the Baptist said, " He must in-
crease, but I must decrease ;" and though there is
nothing decisive in the words, yet they do sound
as if he had a presentiment of the near close of his
own ministry and of the Fullness of the Ministry
of his Lord.

I find that the last Evangelist does not give the
same reason for our Lord's departure from Galilee
that the others give; still his reason does not clash
with theirs; it is additional, and rounds out the
harmony of the earliest and of the last Gospel as
to the evil of those days. Some one (we know not
whom — Nicodemus, possibly, or one of those for
whom the unrecorded miracles were wrought in
Jerusalem) sent to Jesus a word of warning; and
when he knew that the Pharisees had heard that
his following outnumbered that of the Baptist He
left the province of Judea.

The hatred of the Pharisees for the Baptist, seen
in this warning, looks a little as if they had some-
thing to do with his imprisonment ; but St. Mat-
thew and St. Mark give, as the cause, his rebuke
of Herod for marrying his brother Philip's wife.

HEROD ANTIPAS AND THE PREACHER. 269

Josephus says that John was put to death because
Herod feared his influence with the people ; yet the
history is consistent. It is rather strange that the
Tyrant for awhile " heard John gladly, and did
many things " at his bidding ; but Oriental rulers
(and all who have mastered the art of ruling) give a
politic show of honor to those whom the people
" count as prophets." Herod Antipas was a tiger's
cub, but he had the craft of the fox. The honest
Preacher thought too well of the man ; and yet
there was dramatic propriety in his rebuke of the
wantonness of Herod. The fire of the old Prophets
kindled up as it went out forever. The last of that
king-defying race spoke out as bold as any. He
made a deadly enemy of the woman the king lived
with ; but her wrath was not the sole reason for his
laying hands on John. It was one reason, and it
was politic for the king to give it out as the only
one, for then some would say the Preacher had
meddled with what was no concern of his, and the
people would resent his fate less than if its cause
had been a political one. The familiarity of Jose-
phus with the Herodian princes made it inconven-
ient to give all of Herod's reasons, but he is right
as to the one he does give. The Reformer's popu-
larity troubled the tyrant. The gatherings to his
field-preaching and his proclamation of the Mes-
siah's coming were dangerous. Herod felt this,
but it was his nature to drift. His fear of the
people tended to make him lay hands on the
Preacher, and also to let him alone. He was curi-
ous to see him, he wished to get him in his power,

270 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

and he sent for the holy man. He felt his good-
ness, he was moved by his eloquence, and he list-
ened with patronizing condescension. But there
was no real conviction of sin in his languid nature.
In sudden anger he took the first step toward mak-
ing way with the Preacher, but he was not old
Herod's son if he did not think of it before. The
drunken revel, the dancing Herodias, and her Jeze-
bel of a mother made his crime a public one; but if
things had not been as they were the murder would
have come — a prison is but a prophet's resting-place
on his way to the grave.

The Evangelists were not likely to have known
of Herod's secret motives. Herod needed no
prompting of the Pharisees ; but they feared, hated,
and watched the Preacher, and the warning sent to
Jesus rather looks as if they had something to do
with the fate of the Baptist ; but if they had, it was
one of their dark secrets, and suspicion of it, at the
time, was hindered by the apparent reasons for the
imprisonment and murder. Tidings of the favor of
Jesus with the people smote the Pharisees just when
they learned that the Reformer would trouble them
no more, (for they knew he would never come out
of his prison alive.) In their exulting they heard
there was more danger from Jesus than there had
been from John. At such a moment, in such a
mood, they may have planned a like fate for him.
Whatever their evil design, it was known to some
one, who sent Jesus a word of warning, and his in-
stant flight shows the warning was timely and sure.
Here, for the moment, the two elect Evangelists

THE WARNING SENT TO JESUS. 27 1

are on common ground, but the warning is named
only by St. John. He may have seen the runner
who brought it ; he could not forget it, for he fled
with his Master. Far to the north, St. Matthew
was busy, that day, in the custom-house, and could
not have heard of the warning until afterward : and
had he spoken of it, it might have seemed that the
course of Jesus was determined by it, rather than
by general reasons. Yet the stronger reason — the
imprisonment of John — given by the earliest Evan-
gelists for our Lord's quitting Judea agrees with
the immediate reason given by the last Evangelist.
Having their Gospels before him, St. John cleared
up what was not entirely clear in them (since Her-
od's' anger with the Baptist did not directly imperil
Jesus, and in Galilee He was within his dominions)
by recording the warning, which shows that such a
crisis had come that Jesus could no longer safely
stay in Judea.

Again, by way of clearing up things, St. John
throws in a line, " He must needs go through Sa-
maria," which soon becomes more clear when we
are told that " the Jews have no dealings with the
Samaritans." The former line emphasizes the ur-
gency of the flight. Jesus shunned the more com-
mon road across the river, which his enemies would
think he had taken when they missed him, and
went through the alien land. But His peril was not
on his journey only. The danger was so nigh that
He had no time, before starting, to procure the
food that Syrian travelers must needs take with
them.

272 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

There was, then, a dark background of dangers
past to the scene, when, wearied with His journey,
Jesus sat on the well of Samaria and his disciples
were gone to buy meat. What then took place
passes my limits ; yet as what preceded throws some
light upon it, it may be permitted to include it
within them, though I see but as in a glass darkly
the verisimilitude of that scene, and cannot hope to
make what is only partially clear to myself wholly
so to others. What is told is barely within the
elastic bounds of possibility, and were it not for
that little-noticed word of warning its verisimilitude
might baffle us wholly.

How could that announcement of our Lord's
Messiahship, never before made in terms so clear,
have been made to that woman ? The credence
she gave to it goes far to show its wisdom ; but
then, again, hardly less strange than His confiding,
is that faith of hers ! His insight into the secrets
of her life carried with it (as in the case of Nathan-
ael) a peculiar power to convince ; yet how many
beheld great miracles of the Lord and did not be-
lieve ! And then the guise in which He came !
That tired-out traveler on foot, unarmed and un-
attended by any royal company, hardly seemed a
king !

There have been ages (as their images and pict-
ures show) when it was thought there was no come-
liness in the person of Jesus, but the majesty of his
presence was never doubted. Once it struck fear
into the hearts of his own Disciples ; once his ene-
mies fell to the ground before it ; and there may,

THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 273

there must, have been something of unearthly maj-
esty in his look when he told the woman who He
was. That he told this to her is passing strange !
but deep is the mystery of human utterance ! The
soul has its own times of speech and its own times
of silence. The moments come when a man must
speak, and moments come (as when Herod ques-
tioned Jesus) when a man will not speak though he
die ! The course of the Son of God, pre-ordained
before the foundation of the world, had hardly be-
gun, yet he was a hunted fugitive from the city and
house of his Father ! He had taken refuge in Sa-
maria, and his soul was stirred in no common way
when there, by Jacob's well, he heard the woman's
belief in the Messiah. Better than all others Christ
knew the heart. She felt his truthfulness, and He
knew that her heart was better than her life. Her
own hard lot, the sin and misery of the weary
world, had not driven her, as they have so many,
to curse God and die. The very evil of the world
had led her to hope for an intervention of God.
She had been told that in his own good time He
would straighten the world out, and this seemed to
ner so needful to be done and so God-like to do,
that she was sure that He would. Her words were
no echo of the heartless talk of her time — had they
been they would never have brought forth the re-
sponse they did. There were few, even in Israel, in
whom desire had so passed into hope and hope into
assurance. To such a woman, at such a time, it is
not strange that the Messiah said, " I that speak

unto you am He." It is not so strange as that the
18

274 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

words could not then have been safely said in the
Holy City ! Many strange things are true, and
many strange things bring with them their own
evidence. Such an interview it were impossible to
have imagined. It is hard to bring it even within
the bounds of possibility ! but these are self-authen-
ticating words of the Son of God : " The hour com-
eth, when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet
at Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the
Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit :
and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth."

ST. JOHN AND THE EARLIER GOSPELS. 2?$

CHAPTER IV.

ST. JOHN AND THE EARLIER GOSPELS.

ATHANAEL'S confession, " Thou art the
Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel," *
which, doubtless, uttered the feeling of Peter,
Andrew, James, and John, has been said to be at
variance with the lower tone of the faith of the
Disciples after a longer and larger knowledge of
Jesus; yet how natural their feeling at that great
hour of their lives ! Like all around them, they
were wondering whether the Baptist himself were
not the Messiah ; he pointed them to " the Lamb
of God, who taketh away the sin of the world."
What Jesus said to Nathanael and to the others
confirmed the words of the Baptist, and for the mo-
ment they fully believed. The first lighting up of
faith, as of love, is with a vividness that afterward
sinks and wavers, though, if it be a true light, it
lives on till it burns with a steady flame. The ear-
lier brightness, then, of the sudden light and its
deadening for a time are true to human nature.
The quickening of a seed is always a contrast to its
slow and difficult growth, which, checked in some
ways and carried forward in others, at last makes

* Given only by St. John. See chap, iii, 29-50.

276 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the plant become what the vanishing prophecy in
its quickening foretold.

All that is needed to give probability to so early
a Confession of our Lord's Divinity is a clear in-
sight into the belief of the spiritual in Israel con-
cerning the Messiah ; but much of all that has been
written, about the Jewish idea of the Messiah has
utterly failed to mark that faith of the true Israel
which was uttered in Nathanael's cry, "Thou art the
Son of God ! " That faith of the Disciples was after-
ward perplexed by the mystery of the two natures
in Christ ; but this would hardly make a semblance
of a variance here were it not further said that the
earlier Evangelists know nothing of the earlier call,
and St. John knows nothing of the later call. This
disingenuous special pleading begs the question.
That they do not give the earlier call, and that he
does not give the later one, is explained by the con-
struction of their Gospels, for they begin with the
Full Ministry, and St. John with a train of events
preparing for that Ministry.

It is further said that two calls are unkistoricaly
and one or the other must be given up ; yet if a
single look and word had made them leave all, this
would have been denied as miraculous by those who
now deny the more human course of events. And
unhistoricaly the talismanic word with these critics,
is here brought in as usual ; for those intelligent of
affairs know that if their calling was not wholly a
miraculous one, there were several stages in the
gathering of the Disciples before they left all, to go
with the Nazarene.

CONFESSIONS OF THE DISCIPLES. 277

In his retrospect of the experience of the Disci-
ples St. John recalls the sifting and testing mo-
ment* after the Discourse in the Synagogue at
Capernaum, when " many went back and walked
no more with Jesus." The Confession of our Lord's
Divinity then made by all of the Twelve goes as
far as the later Confession at Caesarea Philippi, for
our Lord then said to them all, " Will ye also go
away?" and Simon Peter answered for them all:
" Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the
words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure
that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."
But honest and true words may be spoken with so
much more of intelligence and depth of feeling at
one time than another as not to be the same. It
is needless to say this to people of common obser-
vation ; yet there is a need of it which justifies my
having said that it is humiliating to contend with
some of the criticism of the Holy Gospels that
comes from the highest seats in the synagogue of
criticism, for there are some who take the Confes-
sion recorded by St. John to be the Great Confes-
sion made at Caesarea Philippi. I will not go into
reasons that should be apparent to every one why
time, place, and subsequent events forbid this error,
but content myself with marking (what one late
effort f to confound the two does not notice at all)

* See John vi, 60-71, and compare Matt, xvi, 16.

\ Dr. Bernhard Weiss, on " The Day at Caesarea Philippi," in
the " Princeton Review," January, 1879. This article, in other re-
spects worthless, is of painful interest as showing how at this pres-
ent instant German scholarship, even of a sanctimonious kind, trifles
with the Gospels. This will appear from a few of the notions scat-

278 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

how our Lord received the earlier Confession. I
need not recall to my readers the joy with which He
hailed the Confession at Csesarea Philippi ; it was
utterly unlike the feeling with which he heard the
earlier Confession. " Jesus answered them, Have
I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a
devil ? " Difficult questions can be raised as to
this answer — it is often so with what is said at
moments when great interests are at stake — but the
difference in our Lord's feelings, when he rejected
the earlier Confession and when he heard the ac-
ceptable one at Caesarea Philippi, is so plain that in
the attempt to confound the two the gates of hell
cannot prevail.

Of all the general or special efforts to discredit
the Holy Gospels few are as effective as the aver-

tered here and there throughout this elaborate affectation of research.
The writer of what is known as Matthew's Gospel used St. Mark's
as the groundwork of a Life of Christ, he also had an old apostolic
document with a rich store of sayings, fragments of which appear,
and also in the third Gospel. Later utterances have probably been
added. The Confession at Csesarea Philippi is made up in part out
of some things brought forward from chap, xi, 25, and anticipated
from chap, xviii, 18. It is, however, a recasting from the old docu-
ment, for the speaking of Simon Barjona indicates the Aramaic
foundation of his authority. [It merely indicates St. Matthew's own
Aramaic Gospel, translated by him into Greek.] There is more of
this dream-talk, (though nothing that is really new,) such as fancy-
ing the miracles of the feeding of the Five Thousand and of the
Four Thousand may be the same miracle twice told in different ways.
The opinions of such a mind can be right only by accident ; and how
consistent they are is seen when having asserted his " unshaken con-
fidence in the genuineness of St. John's Gospel," he afterward says,
" St. John can make less claim than the others to complete and
literal exactness," and thinks that he touched up and colored some
of St. Peter's words.

HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. 279

ment of a variance between the portraiture of the
Lord in the earlier Gospels and the last. Two of
the facts given as evidence of this variance — the
style and manner of our Lord's teaching in some
of the chapters of the last Gospel, and that there
are no parables in that Gospel — have been admitted
and explained ; but the weightier part of the evi-
dence of the charge is in the assertion that the earlier
Evangelists know not the truth with which St. John
opens his Gospel, or, as one of the orthodox cau-
tiously puts it, "had no well-defined idea of the
nature of Christ." In some sense that is true, for
the nature of Christ is a mystery that is beyond
comprehension. No one would have been more
quick to own this than St. John, for he beheld in
heaven One who had a name written that no one
knew but He himself, and his name was the Word
of God. But that his idea of the Eternal Glory of
Christ was at variance with that of the other Evan-
gelists has already been disproved by the way he
brings the Baptist into the prelude to his Gospel as
a witness to what is there revealed. That error
could not do the harm it does were it not for the
tendency even of orthodox scholarship to underesti-
mate the intelligence of the Holy Evangelists ; but
surely the Evangelists ought to be presumed to
know, surely they did know, all the bearings of
what they wrote much better than their critics.
St. Matthew closes his Gospel with truth in har-
mony with that with which St. John opens his ; he
also puts that truth in the forefront of his Gospel
when he cites the prophecy that the name of the

280 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

child of the Holy Virgin shall be Emmanuel — God
with us. St. Matthew did not mean that Emman-
uel would be one of the names of Christ Jesus, as
he might have meant had he written that line in
modern days. Both the Prophet Isaiah and the
Evangelist had ideas as to names, which (though
frequently appearing in the Scriptures) are now but
little understood. In the beginning, the naming of
things animate or inanimate tasked the thought of
man, and it is commemorated in the Sacred Records.
The primal sense of each name for things (a sense
now for the most part forgotten) tried to sum up as
far as could be done in a word all that was known
of its nature.* The Hebrews remembered the orig-
inal significance of naming, and the Prophet never
thought of the name Emmanuel in the way we now
think of a name. In no such way was the prophecy
ever fulfilled. It was not a name for Jesus in the
Holy Family. He was never known by that name,
and the Prophet never thought he would be. St.
Matthew, who never heard his Master called so,
understood the prophecy as the Prophet meant it
should be understood, and as it has always been
understood by the Christian congregation.

The general sense — far wiser as to the intent and
meaning of Scripture than the scholastic mind — has

* Related to this subject are the names of the Hebrews. In " The
Divine Human" Dr. Tayler Lewis wrought out an original argu-
ment for the truth of the Sacred Records from the recurrence in them
of pious names given in a spirit of faith or prophecy. For this
branch of the subject see Gen. v, 29; xvi, 11 ; xxvii, 36; Exod.
xviii, 3, 4 ; 1 Sam. xxv, 25, with other scriptures, and, especially,
compare Gen. v, 2, with Matt, i, 21.

METHOD OF ST. JOHN. 28 1

seized firm hold of the thought of the Prophet,
and uses that name only as descriptive of the
Divine Nature of Him who was born of the holy
Virgin. It uses that name, Emmanuel, only in lyric
outbursts of devotion. But the Christian heart has
thus seized firm hold of the sense of the prophecy,
more through the analogy of Scripture and fine sym-
pathy with the truth, than through any thought of
that Hebrew idea of the significance of naming,
which often lights up Scripture with new light, as
in the case just cited from the vision of St. John.

To begin to apprehend the fullness and depth of
the intelligence of the holy Evangelists, is to har-
monize the revelation of the Being of the Lord in
the earliest and in the last Gospels. Illustrations
of this might be multiplied ; its importance should
be insisted upon — but I have to leave this line of
thought with merely asking, What idea of the nature
of Christ Jesus a man of St. Matthew's intellect
must have received from what the angel said to St.
Joseph — He shall save his people from their sins ?

Were we to give up our minds for the moment
to that criticism of the Gospel of St. John which
says it exalts Christ Jesus to a height which it did
not enter into the minds of his brother Apostles to
conceive of, and were then to read his Gospel for
ourselves, we should be amazed to find the human
nature of Christ there brought out (if that were
possible) even more touchingly and forcibly than in
the earlier Gospels — as at the well of Samaria or at
the grave of Lazarus. We should find that the
Gospel, said to give an idea of the glory of Christ

282 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Jesus so transcending that in the other Gospels as
to be at variance with it, brings out his divine na-
ture— and truly this is a marvel — by laying an em-
phasis on his human nature. In this the secret of
St. John's method, like that of the color of the Old
Masters, eludes us. It could be seized only by a
man of the historic power of St. John, and the world-
time may run out before such a man is born: yet
this is plain — the effect comes in part from the con-
viction of the witness, that whatever is seen or heard
of Jesus reveals " the Eternal Life that was with the
Father." St. John's conviction of that is so sincere,
that having declared the fullness of the glory of
Christ Jesus in the wonderful prelude to his Gospel,
he does not go on to prolong and uphold that high
note, by the voice from heaven at the Baptism, nor
by the glory of his Transfiguration — great signs, of
which St. Matthew tells — but he goes on to give a
talk with a Jew by night, with a Samaritan woman
at a well ! The revelations of the Divinity of Christ
that from the opening of his Evangel we hoped for,
do indeed come, but not in the guise we thought
of! We look for marvels, we find these things and
are content ! Truly John was of great faith, for,
beginning his Gospel as he did, he feared not to go
on with it thus ! And truly Jesus was the Son of
God, truly his life breathed of Divinity in every act
and word, when such comparatively human and
humble moments are so in harmony with the open-
ing of the last Gospel !

Long before St. John wrote the other Gospels
were given, and after what they had revealed of the

HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. 283

birth, the death, and the resurrection, St. John
could at once say, " In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. He became flesh, and dwelt among us."
After what the whole congregation had been told
of Jesus, their knowledge was in harmony with
those words. St. John felt this, or he never could
have begun as he did. His utterance is not that
of one who is saying something so new, so unex-
pected, that it must surprise, startle, and confuse;
it is that of one speaking to those in intelligent
sympathy with himself. What then becomes of
the pretense that the revelations of the glory of
Jesus in the Gospel of St. John are at variance with
those in the earlier Gospels?

In that part of the life of our Lord described only
by St. John, the human element of prudence comes
out more fully than in the earlier Gospels. In the
latter his ministry opens with no appearance of the
forethought * that goes with well-ordered human
affairs. In those Gospels the course of Jesus at its
beginning seems raised above the needs and appli-
ances of mortal wisdom. It was ordained that his
people should thus have their first idea of Jesus as
sent from God ; and this is ever their first idea,
because the Gospels are read in the order in which
they were written ; his Church by keeping them in
their time-order ever perpetuating the teaching thus
inwrought into their construction. Those Gospels

* Save, perchance, such as may be thought to pertain to his medi-
tations in the desert ; but that is a matter of conjecture ; concerning
it there is nothing directly revealed.

284 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

could not so decisively have given that true im-
pression, had they not passed over the events in the
life of Jesus from the Temptation to the imprison-
ment of John ; for (as we have seen) there was in
them something of a tentative and preparatory
character. From the course of events described by
St. John, we learn something more than we are told
by St. Matthew and the others, of the wisdom with
which Jesus went on his way amid the complica-
tions, difficulties, and dangers of his human estate.
Here, for the moment, the Evangelists, St. Matthew
and St. John, exchange characters ; in the later
Gospel our Lord enters upon his labors with more
of the thoughtful caution befitting the Son of Man,
in the earlier Gospel with more of the instant direct
action of the Son of God !

Let us now mark another divinely ordained rela-
tion between the construction of the three earlier
Gospels and the last, that is of far greater moment.
On comparing the two apostolic Gospels, we were
struck with St. Matthew's having passed over the
life of our Lord from the Temptation until the im-
prisonment. The same course is taken by St. Mark
and also by St. Luke. Neither of them speak of
the Saviour's going up to Jerusalem until he went
there to die. We have again and again considered
the several reasons for this on its human side; now
let us reverently mark, as its only sufficient, highest,
and true reason, the ordaining will of God that, by
this construction of the Gospels of his Son, the
proper place should be given to the Sacrifice on
Calvary. For this structure and sequence of the

THE ONE GOING UP TO JERUSALEM. 285

Gospels (though its reason has been little under-
stood, and so has been little thought of) is by no
means the least effectual of all the many ways in
which the Bible gives to the Atonement its true
place as the great central fact of Revelation.

The Church of Christ has ever felt, and will ever
feel, that, in some true sense, there was but one
going up to Jerusalem ; and such was the feeling of
the Saviour himself. This feeling comes out in a
conversation with his brothers.* Taunting and
tempting the Saviour, his brethren counseled him
to go with the caravan of his enthusiastic followers
that was about to move on from Galilee going up
to the Feast of Tabernacles, and to " show himself
openly " as the Messiah. They would then have
had Him do what he afterward did when he entered
Jerusalem in triumph — if triumph that funereal pro-
cession can be called which he knew was leading on
to his death on the cross. His brethren did not
believe in Him ; their spirit was a mocking one ;
yet they were curious to see what would come, and
were ready to turn the event, if possible, to their
own ends. Our Lord severely rebuked them. He
said the world knew its own, and they could safely
go up to Jerusalem at any time. He knew their
thoughts ; he knew the future, unknown to them,
and told them his " time " to go up had not come.
He answered their thought, and said, " I go not
up." They understood that he would not then go

* See John, chap, vii, 1-14. From the words " I go not up yet to
this feast," (ver. 9,) "yet" should be omitted, according to the best
authority.

286 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

up in the way they wished ; and he did not contra-
dict himself, as they understood him, when, a few
days after, in a different way from that in which
they tempted him to go, he went " as it were in
secret." He said, " I go not up," for to him there
was but one going up to Jerusalem. To that thought,
that feeling, that purpose of the Saviour, the will of
God conformed the structure of the three earlier
Gospels ; and the same Will ordained that those
Gospels should forever be read before the last.
Thus in those three Gospels, His Church — before
hearing of those other goings up to Jerusalem that
were of less consequence, and on which she looks
with different feelings — thrice goes with her Saviour
to Calvary in that one going up to Jerusalem to
which Christ Jesus ever looked forward as the con-
summation of that for which he came into the world ;
for it is written that "God so loved the world that
he gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever be-
lieveth in him should not perish but have everlast-
ing life ; for God sent not his Son into the world
to condemn the world ; but that the world through
him might be saved."

THE FIRST AND THE SECOND GOSPEL. 287

J

CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST AND THE SECOND GOSPEL.

"HY the four Gospels ? It has been strongly
argued that the first was adapted to the
Jews, the second to the Romans, the third
to the Greeks, and the last to Christians. Only the
last statement is correct ; for the characteristics of
the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans did not so fill
out the orb of human nature that, by speaking to
each in turn, the truth could address the whole hu-
man race. Each of the three earlier Gospels is su-
perior to national peculiarities, and is adapted to
sinners of every race and nation ; and each of the
four Gospels so offers salvation to all the children
of men that Greek, Roman, or Jew, barbarian,
Scythian, bond or free, may be one in Christ.

The Evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke, were
somewhat restricted to the cycle of facts in the oral
teaching of the Apostles ; and the forms in which
they cast their recitals were often molded by the
living tradition which they tried to use and did use.
Yet they used their own eyes as well as the eyes
of others. They told from their own lips what they
heard ; and, while the great purpose of each of the
four Gospels is one and the same, each has a char-
acter of its own.

288 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

None seriously question that the Gospel of St.
John and the " treatises " of St. Luke are the prod-
ucts of individual minds. The evidence of the same
fact as to St. Mark's Gospel is convincing, and so
also as to the Gospel of St. Matthew. The unique
structure of the earliest Gospel is more complicate
than that of the others, yet the unity of its organic
life is perfect as that of a cedar of Mount Lebanon.
And in the end all infidel efforts to tear that Gos-
pel to pieces will only result in making that Gospel
appreciated intellectually as much as it has been
spiritually appreciated.

In each of the holy Gospels the mind of the
writer can be traced, and the unity of each Gospel
is strong ground from which to repel the attacks
that are made upon their authorship. The unity
of the whole Gospel is one of the many impregna-
ble grounds from which to repel the assaults that
are made upon the whole Gospel. Upon this
ground we have already entered ; and we are now
further to consider some of those correspondencies
and affinities of the Gospels which give to the Evan-
geliad the unity, not of a human work, but of a di-
vine creation.

It might be thought that St. Matthew and St.
John would have so divided their joint work that
one would have portrayed their Master as the Son
of man and the other as the Son of God ; but no
such vain attempt to treat of the two natures in
Christ, apart from each other, could have been
thought of by any Evangelist ; and yet St. Matthew
sets forth Christ Jesus more in his relations with

THE PURPOSE OF ST. MATTHEW. 289

time, St. John more in his relations with eternity.
The genius of St. Matthew was the more historic,
that of St. John the more philosophic ; and though
nothing is more philosophic than St. Matthew's
plan, nothing is more historic than the filling out
of the plan of St. John. Free scope was given to
the genius of St. Matthew by his earlier coming
into the field, and to St. John because the other
Evangelists wrote before him.

It was given to St. Matthew intelligently to pre-
pare the way for the Gospel of St. John. It was
also given to St. Mark and St. Luke to prepare its
way ; and they did so as well, though they were less
conscious of doing so. We learn something of
these things from what we learn of the construction
and character, the similarities and differences, of
their Gospels ; and what it was given St. Matthew
to do we are now to discover in the only way pos-
sible— by finding out what he did.

Some knowledge of the time in which Christ Je-
sus lived is prerequisite to a knowledge of his life
on earth ; and the earliest Evangelist gives more of
this than those who came after him. From St.
Mark's Gospel this historic element is, compara-
tively, absent, evidently because St. Matthew wrote
before him, for it was more needed in Rome than
in Jerusalem. And as St. Matthew wrote primarily
for his own countrymen, to whom such knowledge
was common with himself, his giving it as he does
shows his large comprehension of what was required
of the earliest written Gospel.

The reason why St. Matthew's historic gifts have
19

29O THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

not been more appreciated is simply this : he gives
" the form and pressure of the time " so quickly
and easily that he hardly seems to give it at all.
Yet a truer and deeper insight into what was then
going on, can be gained from his Gospel than from
all the many elaborate treatises on the Jewish civ-
ilization at that epoch. From them much may be
learned of the two political and religious factions,
parties, or sects of the Jews ; but in sincerity and
depth this knowledge does not compare with that
which St. Matthew makes an indestructible part of
our own, when the Baptist, seeing the Pharisees and
Sadducees, with fierce anger suddenly cries out,
" O generation of vipers ! " St. Matthew brings our
souls into magnetic contact with the vital points
of the time when they touch the soul of St. John,
for the life of his time throbs in the heart of a great
man. Well St. Matthew knew the light he was
letting in upon the inevitable course of events
through the stern surprise, the withering contempt,
of the " Who hath warned you to flee from the
wrath to come?" From the walled city those
hypocrites came out to snare the Preacher in the
open country ; and through their reception by the
Preacher all know — those who spell out the words
as well as those who read the Greek — and St. Mat-
thew meant all should know, the wickedness of the
Pharisees and Sadducees. Through the Prophet's
heart all feel, and St. Matthew meant that all
should feel, that there is no good in them. Here
the future is in the present, the end is in the begin-
ning ! For when the Herald thus flings the gage

ST. MATTHEW'S HISTORIC GIFT. 2QI

of battle down, we know that a deadly fight with
the evil powers in the land cannot be put off nor
put aside ; that the battle is already begun ; that
there can be neither conciliation, compromise,
peace, nor truce ; that the war must be an open
and bitter war to the end.

St. Matthew so makes us feel what was then going
on, that our sense of it is somewhat like our sense
of what is now going on in our own world around
us, the kind of knowledge we are all the time using
in our daily life so readily and so unconsciously,
that it seems almost as much a matter of feeling as
of thought. Evidences of St. Matthew's historic
power are in all he wrote, but I must be content
with one more example of it. The threescore years
and ten are not long enough to read all the books
about the Jews, yet what could be learned by plod-
ding through them all, that is of as much value as
what cannot but be learned from one reading of the
second chapter of St. Matthew ? There the wide-
spread belief in the coming of the King of the Jews,
apd the prophecy of his birth in Bethlehem, are so
fastened in the memory that they never can be for-
gotten. There the predicted sign of the Messiah's
glory is seen in the heavens ; there the world-wide
preparation for his coming is made known ; and the
evil heart of the Jews is laid bare when Gentiles,
from a land beyond that whence Abraham crossed
over the Euphrates, tell that the Messiah is born,
and " King Herod is troubled and all Jerusalem
with him." Here again St. Matthew binds the end
of his Gospel to its beginning ; for no wonder that

292 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

outside of the gate of that same Jerusalem the King
of the Jews was nailed to the cross !

The pioneer Evangelist had to bridge over the
years between the older revelation and the new rev-
elation, by proving that Moses and the Prophets
had spoken of Christ. Besides this he had to carry
on the line of his mission " to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel," so that what, in the end, was
openly to become a mission to the human race,
might be seen to have had that breadth of intent
from its beginning. As he had to record the rela-
tions of Christ to the past, he also had to reveal the
relations of Christ to the future ; the one by repeat-
ing words of ancient prophecy, the other by recall-
ing Christ's own prophetic words, which time would
prove to be utterances of Him " by whom the time-
worlds were made." All these things St. Matthew
had to do, for all these things he did.

Wonderful his carrying out of so varied and large
a plan in so small a space ! Still more wonderful
the power that made all there is in his Gospel sub-
ordinate and tributary to its revelation of the Sav-
iour ! The difference between his Gospel and any
and all the fifty lives of Christ written in the last
fifty years is incommensurable ; it is not a matter
of degree but of quality ; the power of the Evan-
gelist is of another kind. Some cry out that a mir-
acle cannot be proved by witnesses no longer sub-
ject to the questionings of curiosity, gone centuries
ago to be forever with the Lord ; but St. Matthew's
Gospel is a miracle whose evidence abides in itself.

His Gospel prepared the way for the next. That

ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL AND ST. LUKE'S. 293

Gospel only sketched the historic back-ground that
St. Matthew had so fully drawn, and it gave but
little of the prophetic evidence that St. Matthew
had so fully given. There Christ is seen in the sin-
gleness of his majesty; and when its likeness of Him
was combined with his likeness in the earlier Gos-
pel, then the image of the Lord in the hearts of his
people grew more life-like than before.

To the second Gospel we will return, but, leaving
it for the present, let us pass to the affinities of the
third Gospel with the earliest one. And if we say
that the mission of Christ is wider in St. Luke's
Gospel, this is at once rebuked by St. Matthew's
opening his with the coming of the Magi and clos-
ing it with the words, " Go teach all nations." St.
Matthew's idea of Christ's mission is as broad as
St. Paul's, (even as his idea of Christ is as spiritual
as St. John's,) but the earliest Gospel had fully and
clearly to give His mission to the Hebrews. St.
Matthew gave this once for all — not so that the
Evangelists who came after him could wholly pass
it over, but so that in St. Luke's later Gospel the
reception of the fullness of the idea of the coming
of Christ to all nations being less hindered by the
idea of his coming to the Jews, St. Luke could pre-
sent the world-wide view of Christ's mission better
than himself. This difference between their Gos-
pels is strikingly marked by St. Matthew's stop-
ping when he had thus far quoted the prophecy of
Isaiah concerning John the Baptist, " The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of
the Lord, make his paths straight," while St. Luke

294 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

goes on to quote this, " Every valley shall be filled
and every mountain and hill shall be brought low,
the crooked shall be made straight, the rough ways
made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of
God." The primitive congregations sharply felt the
difference between the two Gospels ; it was an ele-
ment in the discord as to Judaism which called out
St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians ; but in the
course of time the congregation so came to read the
earlier Gospel in the light of the later Gospel that
it hardly knew how much had been taken away from
the force of " I am not sent but unto the lost sheep
of the house of Israel," by the blending in the mind
of St. Matthew's Gospel with that of St. Luke.

Along another line a difference may be traced,
though more faintly, which further tends to make
the third Gospel the complement of the first. There
is a tone of solemnity and sadness in the earliest
Gospel that borders upon sternness and severity.
This was the true historic tone when St. Matthew
was dealing with the evil of that evil time ; for,
having left the malice and murder in the heart of
Jerusalem to his colleague St. John, it was only
thus that he could make the death of the Lord his-
torically intelligible ; and even then the earlier Gos-
pel at this point waits for the last. St. Matthew
reveals the diabolism of the time in such a way
that the end does not take us by surprise ; yet still
a searching historical scrutiny finds that, because of
the absence of some of the facts related by St. John,
the catastrophe comes about in the first Gospel
without any very obvious, immediate cause. This

ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL AND ST. LUKE'S. 295

is common to the three earlier Gospels ; and in this,
their structure is divinely conformed to the mystery
of the Atonement; for, even when all the visible
links in the chain are supplied by St. John, the
death of Christ is not historically intelligible. His-
tory knows but inferentially of the Divine or the
Satanic. It is not given to history to understand the
Agony in the garden and the Death on the cross.

What St. Matthew wrote is pervaded with a sense
of the presence and power of the Prince of this
world that is beyond human insight. St. Matthew
shows nothing of the disposition of Tacitus to
darken the shades because it suited his own nature ;
yet he made it so plain that the desperate wicked-
ness of the nation was ripening for judgment, that
this needed not to appear with like fullness in the
later Gospels ; and hence there is a difference be-
tween his tone and St. Luke's. Yet there is no
variance between them ; for, with even more full-
ness, St. Luke recites that awful parable of the
wicked husbandmen's cool, calculating, money-
making treason and murder, where the hard daring
of human guilt is represented as passing beyond the
foreknowledge of the all-seeing Mind ! And the
more thorough the comparison of the two Gospels
the more the correspondence comes to light. Take,
for example, the visit of the angels at the Nativity.
The gentle shepherds beheld no merry throng of
bright visitants coming down to the earth with
songs of cheer. They beheld the host of the angels,*

*St. Luke ii, 13 : "And suddenly there was with the angel a mul-
titude of the heavenly host." The English term here gives the sense

296 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the army of heaven drawn up in battle array above
the manger of the holy Child ! Yet throughout,
these Gospels preserve each its own characteristics.
They stand in their right places in the great year of
God's mercy in Christ. In the earlier Gospel there
is more of the severity of winter ; in the later, there
is more of the gladness of spring.

When the three earlier Gospels are taken to-
gether, then, the first Gospel is perfect through its
relation to the kindred Gospels. They are perfect,
not apart from each other, but through a unity that
came from the same Spirit, leading each Evangelist
to give to his Gospel a character of its own. The
same is true of the Gospel of St. John; but what
is further to be said of the dependence of the
Gospel of the last Evangelist on that of his col-
league and of the other two Evangelists must be
put off until after we have considered the occasion

of the Greek term. For host is used by the masters of our tongue
either for an army in battle array or for an army in combat. Byron
may be said to define the former use of the word in his line descrip-
tive of the day at Marathon :

The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career.

Scott uses the word in the other sense, when one of the two squires
left to guard the lady on the hill overlooking Flodden Field, seeing
Lord Marmion's banner waver in the fight, cries out :

Fitz-Eustace, you with Lady Clare,
May say your beads and patter prayer,
I gallop to the host.

In the verse from St. Luke what is in the Greek word is exactly
given in the English word ; and I cannot but say that I have some-
times heard the attempt made to mend our admirable version of the
Scriptures from the Greek, simply because there was not a compe-
tent understanding of the force and meaning of the English of the
translation.

THE PURPOSE OF ST, MARK. 297

and motive for St. Mark's Gospel and the origin of
St. Luke's.

When I turned from communing with the forma-
tive Gospel of St. Matthew to think of how St.
Mark must have felt when he read it, it seemed to
me as natural as could be, that St. Mark wrote
just what he did write. When he read the apos-
tolic Gospel his admiration, his surprise, his won-
der, must have been lost in amazement. Yet, as
he thought over that marvelous creation, he must
have felt strongly impelled to tell over again the
things St. Matthew told, just as he had so often
heard St. Peter tell them. I think this would be
very clear if we could keep what we read in St.
Matthew's descriptions apart from what we see in
St. Peter's pictures ; but the two are so interblended
in our memories that we have hardly an idea of
how the narratives of the one gain from the touches
of the other. But if that becomes fully apparent,
then what St. Mark did seems to be the most nat-
ural thing in the world. St. Peter's " son " knew
his Gospel by heart, and the reading of St. Mat-
thew's brought up to him many things that St.
Peter had told him, in such a life-like way, that he
almost felt as an eye-witness would. Now, though
a story be well told, yet an eye-witness will tell that
story all over again ; or if told too well for that to
be thought of, how sure he is to touch up the pict-
ure ! The reason of the impulse is not far to seek.
Many things are left out by a good story-teller. He
seizes upon the strong points, and is dramatic rather
than pictorial ; for the very highest descriptive tal-

298 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

ent knows what to leave out as well as what to
put in.

St. Matthew had the rare gift of seeing into, and
of bringing to light, the soul of things ; but in por-
traying their bodily form he was not so good. The
highest descriptive talent is seldom found in com-
pany with that lower excellence. In the latter St.
Matthew was not deficient, and in the former he
has no superior. My meaning will be clearer if we
compare St. Matthew's portrait of the centurion
with the almost dramatic scene in St. Luke's Gos-
pel. In the later Gospel there files in the proces-
sion of the elders. They proclaim that the centu-
rion had built a synagogue ; and to commemorate
that good work of a Roman suits as well the spirit
of the third Gospel as to tell of the charity of the
good Samaritan. Then files in the procession of
the friends of the centurion, escorted by himself*
with his men at arms. For all that double array of

*Matt viii, 5-13; Luke vii, 1-10. Of the seeming difference in
the two narratives as to the presence of the centurion, the explana-
tion in most comments — facit per alium facit per se, what a man
does by another he does himself — mistakes the facts. In both Gos-
pels the words are those of the centurion in person. St. Luke says
our Lord marveled at him. The difficulty is that the centurion
sends the elders, sends his friends, but nothing is said of his coming
himself. Prof. Sewell changes the translation thus: "The English
version uses the word ' sent ' in connection with both parties. St.
Luke used two different words — a-xEOTeikev in reference to the first
party, but e-rre/LLipev in reference to the second. The former implies
that the sender remained behind ; the latter has two meanings,
(1,) to send a person under escort, (2,) to escort him. And we find
that St. Luke tells us that when Jesus approached the house the
centurion called out his soldiers and conducted his friends under an
escort."

THE ROMAN CENTURION. 299

petitioners there was a reason. The officer was one
of those few who, when they want a thing done,
take all the means to have it done. And St. Luke's
historically instructive description shows that the
Roman was not sure the wonder-working Israelite
would work a miracle for one of the heathen. To
study the religious passions of hostile races was of
the Roman military art. The officer knew there
were difficulties in the way of Christ's doing what
he wished to have done, and he smoothed the way
with good sense and tact and Roman energy. He
made his personal desire a matter of public concern ;
and such was the pulse of Israel that we are not
sure, if he had not done what he did, that Christ
would have wrought the miracle. Certain it is that
his forethought in putting forward the elders made
the granting of his prayer consist much better with
a prudent and wise regard to Christ's immediate
purpose in his mission to Israel. St. Matthew knew
and appreciated all that as well as St. Luke ; but
that which touches him is the man. His eye is
fastened on the centurion. His soul is fixed on the
soul of the centurion, and he so fixes our souls on
him that the mind (though we remember and ap-
preciate St. Luke) will no more combine the two
descriptions than it will combine two representa-
tions of the same event, one in sculpture and one in
painting. It chooses to keep St. Matthew's descrip-
tion apart by itself. St. Matthew could not dwarf
the centurion by bringing in what no one else could
have left out, and what after him St. Luke brought
in so well. His thoughts are so with the man that

300 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

he has no thought for the elders or for what the
elders said. He cannot divide the interest of the
centurion's words with those of others. To him
the centurion's words need no emphasis from the
presence of his men-at-arms, for they breathe the
soul of Rome. With true historic instinct he
speaks of what he most deeply felt ; and the cen-
turion speaks to us, he lives for us as he lived for
him, because St. Matthew makes us feel just what
he felt. And St. Matthew sees it all through his
Master's eyes, feels it all as he felt it, for his Master
" marveled at the centurion."

" Lo " and " behold " are St. Matthew's charac-
teristic words. They come in some thirty times,
and (with the constant recurrence of the simple
connective then) have rightly been thought to
show the hand of an unpracticed writer, whose
artless, child-like ways are not like those of rhetor-
icians. Yet there is another side to this. Those
words are the signs of the one, who in the converse
of the Disciples with the Lord never said a word,
yet was so wrapt a listener, that when it came to
the writing out of what the Lord had said, the Dis-
ciples turned to him. For St. Matthew caught up
his use of those words from his Master's lips : " O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, behold," and, " Lo, I am
with you alway." And as the quickness of St.
Peter's will is felt in his characteristic word
straightway, so the peculiarity of St. Matthew's
nature is felt in his characteristic words. For wis-
dom is the child of awe and wonder. The soul
that is alive to a sense of the unseen and eternal is

THE STYLE OF ST. PETER. JOI

ever crying, Lo, and Behold, as it every-where
marks in the visible things in time the passing
signs of the power and wisdom of God. And, fur-
ther, on looking into St. Matthew's use of his char-
acteristic words we see that usually they either
mark a train of events : " Behold, there came wise
men from the East ;" or else they call upon the
soul rather than the senses : " Behold, certain of
the Pharisees said within themselves, This man
blasphemeth."

Some argue that the descriptions in the earliest
Gospel could not have come from an eye-witness.
Such dullness is almost incredible. St. Matthew
paints for the mind where others paint for the eye.
Where others would have told of what they had
seen, he tells of what he felt. Thus the element
of personal feeling is as really in his narrative as in
theirs, and such description as his is not only per-
sonal testimony, but personal testimony of the very
highest kind. Yet St. Matthew's genius was more
like that of a sculptor than of a painter. And in
that pictorial power, but for some lack of which he
would not have been the grand witness and great
historian that he was, St. Peter excelled him. That
gift of St. Peter's comes out in things small and great.
With St. Peter things move fast. His characteristic
word is straightway ;* it comes in some forty times
or more. St. Peter is fond of diminutives ; he

* In our version, sometimes translated " forthwith," which is well,
sometimes " immediately," which is not so well ; and often as this
word comes in, it were better always to have rendered it " straight-
way." See Mark i, 29, 31.

302 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

talks of the little fishes, the little dogs that ate the
crumbs, the little maid, and even of a little ear.*

St. Peter's words are strong. At the Baptism
heaven was " rent /" the others say it was opened.
His word is the one they all use '-when the veil of
the Temple was rent asunder from the top to the
bottom." Some fine descriptive touches are his
alone, such as, Jesus sat upon the Mount of Olives,
over against the Temple. And he alone marks that
Caiaphas, before he questioned Christ, "stood up in
the midst — came down from his high seat into the
circle of the members of the Sanhedrim, thus mak-
ing his act that of the whole court. But, then, St.
Matthew also marks that Caiaphas stood up, and
of the three Evangelists who record that great mo-
ment he alone gives the oath : " I adjure thee by
the living God that thou tell us whether thou be
the Christ, the Son of God."

St. Peter has many fine descriptive touches, as
that Jesus, " rising up a great while before day, went
out into a solitary place, and there prayed." Some-
times his words very naturally tell more than they say:
"All the city was gathered together at the door ;"
and again, "It was noised abroad that He was in
the house, and straightway many were gathered to-
gether, insomuch that there was no room to receive

* The ear of Malchus, which he smote off with his sword. (Mark
xiv, 47.) He may have taken it up at a sign from his Master ; yet
Peter's eye must have been quick to have marked at such a time
that it was a little ear. But the word is used by the other Evan-
gelists, and it may be that while scholars have taken it in a dim-
inutive sense, it is merely a form of the word peculiar to Palestin-
ian Greek.

THE STYLE OF ST. PETER. 303

them, no, not so much as about the door." What
door ? what house ? It was Peter's own door, it
was Peter's own house, that house in which the
Master " took his wife's mother by the hand and
lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she minis-
tered unto them." /

But each Gospel has descriptive touches of its
own, and some of th<5se in the second Gospel are in
the others. If Peter tells that the little maid awak-
ened from the sleep of death was to " have some-
thing to eat," so does Luke; and for once Luke
becomes the more graphic and minute. In the
second Gospel the wretched father beseeches Jesus
(just after he came down from the holy mount) to
help "my son;" in the third Gospel it is, "my son,
my only child." Yet St. Peter alone tells that when
the multitude then beheld Jesus "they were greatly
amazed." This suggests what was beyond descrip-
tion ; and what can it have been but that some-
thing of the unearthly light of the Transfiguration
lingered on His face, like the light on the face of
Moses when he came from the mount where he had
seen God ?

Our Lord's manner of " looking around " so im-
pressed St. Peter that he often speaks of it. " He
looked round on the scribes with anger, being
grieved for the hardness of their hearts ;" " He
looked round about in the Temple." And it is
only St. Peter who tells how Jesus, going to his
death in Jerusalem, " went before them in the way."
St. Matthew and St. Luke tell what Jesus said " in
the way," but only St. Peter marks his manner as

304 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

he went. It was not with " bowed head," as one
writer has it ; it was not with the martial bearing of
a general, as another writer has it ; both are wrong
in describing what the Evangelists would not try-
to describe. Something there was in the look of
the Lord which mortal eyes had never seen ; and as
St. Peter set us thinking how Christ looked when
he came down from Mount Hermon, so here he
does the like by saying that as Jesus " went before
them in the way, his disciples were amazed, and as
they followed him they were sore afraid!'

My readers would do well to compare throughout
the earlier with the second Gospel, and then they
will feel the breadth of the difference between St.
Matthew's descriptions and those of St. Peter; here
a single paragraph must suffice to illustrate this.
Any one would answer, and we might turn to the
night when Jesus walked on the water, but that St.
Peter is chary of speaking about himself;* and so

* Save when he told of his denial of his Master (Mark xiv, 66-72)
and of the fearful rebuke of himself, (viii, 32, 33.) There is a touch-
ing exception to his reserve in what is found only in xvi, 7. The
reticence of the second Gospel as to things pertaining to St. Peter
accounts for its saying nothing of the miracle at his call, given in
Luke v, I— II. The fact of this reticence shows the Apostle's close
personal relation to the second Gospel. It is readily and fully
proved by comparing its record of what was said at Csesarea Phil-
ippi with the record in the Gospel of St. Matthew : " And Peter an-
swereth and said unto him, Thou art the Christ." Mark viii, 29.
"And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed
art thou, Simon Bar-jona ; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it
unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto
thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
Church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I

ST. MATTHEW AND ST. MARK COMPARED. 305

let us turn to the stilling of the storm. The time
of this miracle in the course of events is given in
the second Gospel. In St. Matthew it comes into
the two chapters following the Sermon on the
Mount, which are made up of facts selected without
regard to their time or place, for the purpose of
portraying our Lord's general manner of life. The
storm was in the night after the day of the terrible
encounter with "the scribes from Jerusalem," who
in Peter's house charged Jesus with casting out
devils through " the Prince of the Devils." It was
so busy a day that the Disciples " could not so
much as eat bread." On that day Jesus began to
teach the people in parables, a significant sign of
the great change that had come over their hearts.
At the end of that day our comparison begins.*
" When Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he
gave commandment to depart unto the other side."
St. Peter marks the very hour : " That same day
when even was come, he saith, Let us pass over
to the other side, and when they had sent the mul-
titude away they took him, as he was, in the ship."
As he was is colloquial, and points to his being
tired out ; it is a phrase which eye and voice inter-
preted, and we are to remember how real, how liv-

will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and what-
soever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and what-
soever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Matt.
xvi, 16-20.

* See Matt, viii, 23-27 ; Mark iv, 36-41 ; Luke viii, 22-25 ; also
Mark iii, 22, with Matt, xii, 38 ; xiii, 1-3 with Mark i, 3, and note
in the fourth verse the words, "And the same day when even was
come."
20

306 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

ing to St. Mark, tone and look and gesture made
all that St. Peter told.

Then comes a fisherman's touch — " there were
with him other little ships." The la7idsman, taking
no note of the fleet, thus goes on, " Behold, there
arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that
the ship was covered with waves " — the sailor thus,
" There arose a great storm of wind, and the waves
beat into the ship so that it began to fill ;" the lat-
ter is the more seaman-like, but there is not much
to choose. " He was asleep," says the publican ;
the fisherman says, " He was in the hinder part of
the ship asleep on a pillow " — his head lying on
the steersman's leathern-covered bench. St. Mat-
thew says, " They awoke him, saying, Lord, save us ;
we perish;" the words St. Peter gives, (his own,
perhaps, though more than one must have cried
out,) mean that and more, " Master, carest thou not
that we perish?" Then St. Matthew — " He arose,
and rebuked the winds and the sea ; and there was
a great calm ; " St. Peter — " He arose, and rebuked
the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still,
and the wind ceased, and there was a great calm."
Then, verbally, they coincide ; the disciples saying,
" What manner of man is this, that even the winds
and the sea obey him?" St. Matthew brings in
their words thus: "The men marveled and said" —
but when St. Peter, recalling that moment, tells
how " they feared greatly, and said one to another,"
we hear those frightened men whispering, and we
see them shrinking from the Lord, while their eyes
are fastened upon Him.

OTHER MOTIVES OF ST. MARK. 307

Yet, neither here nor anywhere in St. Mark's
Gospel, is there a trace of any running counter to
St. Matthew, or any wish to outvie him in descrip-
tion. The storm is told by St. Luke also ; and a
comparison of the three descriptions goes to show
that, like St. Matthew, he came short of St. Peter's
power of putting another in his own place.

So natural was St. Mark's impulse to write out
what St. Peter had so often told, that it almost
seems as if he might have done so for his own
pleasure ; but writing was not then the simple and
easy thing it is now ; and as a few Latin words in-
dicate that he wrote in Rome, so a few words of
explanation — such as, " the Jews, except they wash
their hands, eat not" — show that he had others
besides his own countrymen in mind.

Other motives, then, came to be associated with
the originating, formative, leading motive, without
which St. Mark would not have written. The order
of time had been disregarded in the earlier part of
St. Matthew's Gospel, and St. Mark gave the se-
quence of events in the life of our Lord, by placing
the parts or sections of St. Peter's Gospel in their
time-order.* He also recorded the few things in

* Papias says, that he was told by Presbyter John that St. Peter
was wont to suit his teachings to the occasion, and did not set forth
events in their order, and that St. Mark wrote them out in the same
way. If ever the Presbyter did say just that, he may have thought
the one fact must have been consequent upon the other ; but so far
as the order of events in the second Gospel is concerned, this tradi-
tion is worthless. Dr. Edward Robinson, whose sound judgment
enabled him wisely to handle a learning in which no one surpassed
him, prepared with his usual thoroughness and carefulness a Har-
mony of the Gospels, the best, perhaps, that has ever been made ;

308 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

St. Peter's oral teaching that were not in the earlier
Gospel — such as the exquisite parable of the se-
cretly growing seed ; the cure of a deaf and dumb
man ; of a blind man at Bethsaida ; and he alone
gives this word of the Lord, " The Sabbath was
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."

St. Mark opens his Evangel with a few words
from Isaiah, the chief, and Malachi, the last, of the
Prophets ; with this he is content,* because St. Mat-
thew had compared the life of Christ with Hebrew
prophecy. His not giving the discourses of our
Lord is only explicable in a similar way. This ab-
sence of prophecies from his Gospel is evidence that
its construction was determined by that of the earlier
Gospel, and the absence of the discourses is further
evidence of this ; while the absence of both more
than doubles the power of this argument.

St. Mark does give the Discourse on Mount
Olivet, but this is an exception to his general rule.
The awe-struck Disciples, who listened with wonder
to that word of prophecy, could not have seen into
all its depths ; for it is still giving out more and
more of its meaning, and will continue to do so un-
til all be fulfilled. St. Matthew was not one of the
four who were with the Lord on Mount Olivet ; he
wrote down its words from the lips of St. Andrew,
St. James, or St. John, as they remembered them ;
and St. Mark could not but think it best to give St.

he tells us that, after having fixed upon that order of events in the
Gospels that seemed to him certain or most probable, he found that
this was the order of St. Mark's Gospel.

* The later citation of prophecy, Mark xv, 28, found in our ver-
sion, is not in the best manuscripts.

WITNESS TO THE INCARNATION. 309

Peter's version of it, in which, towards the close,
there is something of the tone and cadence of the
words as they came from the lips of the Lord.

Though St. Mark's Gospel was to be read by the
heathen, he says nothing of the coming of the Magi.
Their witness to the Lord was of peculiar and thrill-
ing interest to the whole Gentile world, yet, like St.
Luke and St. John, he was content with what St.
Matthew told. There is stronger confirmation of
what has been said of the construction of St. Mark's
Gospel, in its not directly revealing the Supernat-
ural Birth of Christ — though its first line recalls this
by the words, " The Son of God." * And all those
who assert that St. Mark knows nothing of His
supernatural origin are rebuked when, in the syna-
gogue at Capernaum, one of the host of that Evil
spirit, from whom this assertion now comes, cried
out, " Jesus of Nazareth, I know thee who thou art,
the Holy One of God ; " and again, when " in the
country of the Gadarenes," a demon cried with a
loud voice, " What have I to do with thee, Jesus,
thou Son of the Most High God?" But in St.
Mark's Gospel there is more than the witness of the
lost to the nature of Christ. His own argument
with the Pharisee is there : "Since David called
me Lord, how am I his son?" And again: "The
chief priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus,
saying, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ?

* Some careless scribe left those words out of some early manu-
script, but no scribe would have put them in had not St. Mark writ-
ten them. Their loss would be great ; but if a misjudging criticism
succeeds in blotting them out of the sacred text, still they are not.
essential to the proof of the Incarnation from the second Gospel.

310 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Jesus said, I am ; and ye shall see the Son of man
sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in
the clouds of heaven."

Both the intelligence and the faith of the Chris-
tian congregation in giving equal honor to the sec-
ond with the earlier Gospel are like that of the
Apostles in their treatment of the evidence of the
resurrection. Precious then as now, the mystery of
the birth of the Lord ; yet they fearlessly welcomed
the second Gospel, though in it nothing was directly
said of that great fact; and the reason why they
did, is not less instructive than plain. The second,
like the other Gospels, proves that Jesus was the
Son of God, though its argument is simpler than
that of the other Gospels. Like St. Peter himself,
it is rapid and direct ; and it has a peculiarly con-
vincing power. For, like the Disciple whom Jesus
loved, the disciple to whom the Father revealed the
Divine nature of his Son proved the Incarnation by
what he had heard and seen and known of the man
Christ Jesus ; that is, by what Jesus was in Himself.

Does, then, the Supernatural Birth of the Lord
Jesus lose any of its evidence by the absence from
the second or from the last Gospel of any direct
revelation of that great fact? Not in the least; for
it disparages not the revelations of it in the first and
in the third Gospels to say that the evidence of the
fact gains in strength when the chief Apostle and
the beloved Disciple prove the divine nature of the
Lord solely by what they had heard and seen of the
man Christ Jesus. Their confidence in the suffi-
ciency of that evidence breathes like confidence into

WITNESS TO THE INCARNATION. 3II

hearts willing to receive the truth ; and this spirit of
St. Peter in his testimony to Christ Jesus is an ele-
ment of power — as is St. Matthew's, when he offers
only brief evidence of the Resurrection.

St. John's argument is the same in kind with St.
Peter's ; but when he wrote, the revelations of the
blessed Mother in the third Gospel, as well as those
of the angel to St. Joseph in the earliest Gospel,
were known to the Church. The straightforward
boldness and originality of St. Peter's argument
was in accordance with his character, and became
his rank. His soul is in his Gospel, and if any one
would know something of the reasons why the dis-
ciple whose steps faltered on the water, and who
denied his Master, was chief of the apostles, let him
read his Gospel with open heart and he may
know.

Those, like silly Matthew Arnold, who talk of
the revelations of the Lord's Birth in the Holy
Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, as legends,
are condemned by the course of St. Peter and St.
John, when they prove from what they had known
of their Master, that in him there was the Divine
Nature revealed by the Angel and by the Holy
Virgin. The same kind of evidence of the Great
Fact is given throughout the first and third Gos-
pels ; while in the second Gospel, as in them, it is
attested by the voice of God at the Baptism and at
the Transfiguration ; and his voice from heaven is
heard for a third time in the Gospel of St. John.
Each of the Gospels, then, brings direct supernat-
ural witness to the Supernatural Fact. One reason

312 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

why the second and why the fourth Gospel did not
bring in the witness of the Angel was that St. Mat-
thew's Gospel had made it known throughout the
Church ; and one of the reasons why that even the
beloved Disciple, of whom the Lord Jesus, when
He was dying on the Cross, said to His Mother,
Behold thy son, and who from that hour took Her
to his own home, did not bring in Her witness was,
that it had every-where been proclaimed by the Gos-
pel of St. Luke. Thus St. Peter and St. John were
free to prove the Incarnation by what they person-
ally had known of the man Christ Jesus; and they
did so prove it that to deny the Incarnation is in
fact to deny all that St. Peter and St. John tell of
His life ; and to deny that is what those who wick-
edly talk of the legend of his Birth have it in their
hearts to do.

In the second Gospel the Incarnation is every-
where revealed — as when the wind went down, the
sea was still, and the Disciples and the seamen whis-
pered, What manner of man is this ? or when " Je-
sus said, Son, thy sins are forgiven thee ; and there
were certain of the Scribes reasoning in their hearts,
Who can forgive sins but God only? and Jesus per-
ceived in spirit that they so reasoned within them-
selves, and said unto them, That ye may know that
the Son of Man hath power to forgive sins, (then
he saith to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, and he im-
mediately arose." To strike out the Incarnation
would be to strike out the second Gospel ! What
then is to be said of the criticism which avers that
the Incarnation is unknown to that Gospel ? Yet

ST. PETER AND THE SECOND GOSPEL. 313

like unto this in folly and sin is all the adverse criti-
cism of the Holy Gospels.*

All the Fathers who speak of the Construction
of the Gospels, tell us that St. Mark wrote out St.
Peter's Gospel. St. Jerome says that Paul took
Titus with him as the blessed Peter did Mark, cujus
Evangelium Petro narrante et Mo scribente composi-
tum est, whose Gospel was composed, Peter dictat-
ing and Mark writing. Even if this be taken as
meaning no more than that St. Mark wrote what
he heard from St. Peter, still the way of saying it
shows how completely the idea that the second
Gospel was St. Peter's Gospel had taken hold of
St. Jerome. His opinion is of uncommon weight,
for he was a translator of the Scriptures ; but here
his words are given as a clear and forcible utterance
of the common opinion of the Fathers. At an ear-
lier time, Irenaeus says, that " Mark writing out
the things that Peter said, delivered them to us;"
and similar testimony from Presbyter John carries
such witness back to the apostolic generation.

Alford thinks that the Fathers testify to "a pri-
vate unavowed influence," of which, personally, they
could have known nothing ; that their witness is
vague and inconsistent as to the nature and extent
of that influence, and he rejects the " authorizing "
of the second Gospel by St. Peter, because the fact

* As when Ewald prints St. Matthew's Gospel in Jive different
kinds of type to show the patchwork ! Each age looks back and
sees barbarism, of which the ages before were unconscious. The
ages to come will look back on this and say, Behold, the blood of
the Vandals and the Goths still raging in the veins of the Ewalds
and those of like propensity to destroy !

3 14 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

is not " apparent as it would have been had it ever
existed." This painstaking scholar mistakes the
nature and the value of the witness of the Fathers,
as do all those who decry it as hearsay. The judg-
ment of the Fathers as to the origin of the second
Gospel was founded upon evidence that has not
reached us, but which was satisfactory to them, and
is to be respected as intelligent. There is nothing
that contradicts their testimony, and it is upheld
by all the facts in the case. That what they say is
often casually said makes it none the less convinc-
ing. It is a thing, of course, that their witness
should vary as to some unimportant details of time,
place, and circumstance ; and this is of no conse-
quence. They leave no doubt of the great fact,
that in their times the second Gospel was univers-
ally held to be, substantially, the Gospel of St.
Peter. Their witness to that fact is from personal
knowledge, and not from hearsay. And St. Peter's
sanction of the Gospel is sufficiently " apparent "
from that belief. Without his sanction it is hard
to see how it could have been received as it was ;
and it is " apparent " that it never could have been
so received without the sanction of some of the
Apostles, so given as to lay a sure foundation for
the common Christian belief in its origin and au-
thority. In the days of the Fathers that belief found
expression in all possible ways. Thus Tertullian
said, that St. Mark's Gospel may be called that of
St. Peter. Justin Martyr, quoting a fact found
only in the second Gospel, says, This is written in
the Memoirs (the Memorabilia) of St. Peter ; and

ST. PETER AND THE SECOND GOSPEL. 31 5

in repeatedly speaking of the second Gospel as St.
Peter's, I have conformed to early Christian usage.

One tradition says that St. Peter " neither en-
couraged nor discouraged " his enthusiastic friend ;
and such is the course that St. Peter would have
been most likely to take at first, as he was among
those who had named St. Matthew as one of the
two apostolic Evangelists. St. Peter could not
have wished to alter a word or line in the Gospel
that St. Matthew wrote. No doubt he felt it was
not in him to have done that work so well, and
thankfully accepted that Gospel as the gift of God ;
yet he may have felt that " his son " was right in
thinking that he himself could have told some things
in a more lifelike way than St. Matthew had told
them, for he could.

It is natural to think that St. Mark was not at
once fully aware of how great a thing he was about
to do, and that what he wished to undertake seemed
too humble to be withstood by his teacher and
guide. Certainly there was no thought of dispar-
aging the excellence of the earlier apostolic Gospel,
no idea that what Mark wrote would take its place,
and it never did.

It may also be supposed that at length they were
led by the Spirit of God to see how great was the
thing they were doing; for in his last Epistle St.
Peter said that not only while he lived would he
remind the Church of the things concerning the
Lord Jesus, but that he "would endeavor that it
might be able after his decease to have those things
in remembrance." These words may have been

316 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

meant to prepare the way for the second Gospel.
His last Epistle was written not long before his
death ; for the Lord Jesus Christ had showed him
that "he must shortly put off his tabernacle ;" but
there is some obscurity hanging over his martyr-
dom, (sure as the fact is,) and I cannot but think
that for a time that Epistle was somewhat hidden in
that same obscurity; and also some of the facts that
concerned the second Gospel. St. Peter knew that
his death was nigh, but the sudden outbreak of the
persecution in which he died may have been un-
looked for. In that persecution both the pupil and
the Master may have died. To me the breaking
off of the second Gospel so near its end seems
clearly to point to the death of St. Mark ; but tra-
dition does not easily part with its heroes, and not
knowing of the death of the " son " as certainly as
that of his spiritual father, it wrought out for St.
Mark a history in Alexandria, and at length carried
his bones as triumphantly to the Cathedral of Ven-
ice, as it did those of the Magi to the Cathedral of
the Rhine. But if St. Mark was suddenly martyred
in the persecution when St. Peter died, we have
the reason for the imperfect form of his nearly
completed Gospel ; and the obscurity of their fate
may have also so gathered around St. Peter's last
Epistle as to have been a reason why it was not at
once received throughout the Christian world.

Yet on thinking over what has here been written
concerning the second Gospel, my reader may say,
How does this making of the second Gospel such
a mere telling over again of what St. Matthew told,

THE SECOND GOSPEL. 317

consist with its having, in virtue of its own worth,
an equal place in our minds and hearts with the
other Gospels ? The second Gospel is very much a
telling over again of what is told in the first ; it is
also plain that St. Matthew anticipated in his Gos-
pel some things that otherwise would have been
written by the Evangelists who came after him. He
joined the New Covenant so firmly to the Old Cov-
enant that there was little need for the later Evan-
gelists to prove the harmony of the two. Yet, that
Christ Jesus was the Messiah promised and prophe-
sied was so vital a fact, (not to the Hebrews only,
but to all nations,) that St. Mark's passing it over
as he did can be accounted for only on the theory
that has here been set forth as to the origin and
construction of his Gospel. Often and long as I
have thought of this theory in the years since the
idea of it first came to me, I have never had a doubt
of its correctness. The theory takes note of each
peculiarity and characteristic of the second Gospel,
and no other that I have met with attempts to ac-
count for some of these. As said before, the sec-
ond Gospel presents an image of Christ in the sin-
gleness of His majesty, as he was enshrined in the
heart of the great Apostle. This Gospel comes not
short of those of the other Evangelists, (if it be law-
ful to compare words of inspiration,) yet the earlier
Gospel is the larger Gospel of the two, and St. Mat-
thew was a greater writer than St. Peter. I dis-
parage not the chief Apostle in saying so, for St.
Peter thought so, or else he would have taken the
office he helped to confer on St. Matthew. But

318 THOUGHTS ON- THE HOLY GOSPELS.

though St. Peter was not so great a writer he was a
greater man. The greatest men are not the men
who write, but the men who are written about, and
to that greater class the Chief Apostle belonged.

Thus far our inquiries have gone on much as if
in planning and writing their Gospels the Evangelists
had been as free in thought as if they were writing
essays ; yet could there have been any scope for
the play of their minds, since they state facts only?
This should have been thought of before, and what
is here said of it must be said in few words. The
play of the historian's mind among his facts is one
of the elements of his history. The Evangelists,
more than historians, restrict themselves closely to
facts ; but facts are many-sided things ; it takes
more than one mind to see all the bearings of any
given one of them, and, in the selection and recital
of their facts, the play of the minds of the Evangel-
ists comes in.

Their style varies with the character of each, yet
the truth, common to them all, gives harmony to
this diversity. But the harmony of the Evangelists
comes not only from the common truth, but from
the common inspiration of them all ; and in the
fore-ordering of all things, the facts that were to go
into the Gospels were shaped to that end by the
Divine Spirit, who wrought with the Evangelists in
selecting and describing them. St. Matthew gave a
world-wide breadth to the opening of his Gospel
by choosing from all the facts at his command the
Coming of the Magi — a wonder and sign in which

THE GOSPEL FACTS ORDAINED. 319

heathen were pointed and guided to the King of
the Jews, by prophecy that was not Hebrew proph-
ecy— by the Star and the miracle. Through those
facts the Evangelist revealed that, in the Great
Cycle of Time then closing, the mercy of God had
reached all nations ; through those facts he prophe-
sied that his mercy would reach all nations in the
Great Cycle of Time then beginning; and through
them he revealed in the world outside of Judea a
preparation for the Gospel of the Divine Redeemer,
to which history was afterward to bear witness.
And thus he could at once give to his Gospel,
(which he had to make the most Hebraic of all the
Gospels,) world-wide breadth, because the Spirit of
God, as far back as the Time-Cycle when Balaam
prophesied, and as far back as when the stars were
set in the heavens, looked to the use of those facts
by his Evangelist. Into this one element in the
mystery of the Divine constructive wisdom of the
Evangeliad, from generation to generation human
thought will see farther and wider and. deeper, but
all the thought of man to the world's end will not
make the whole of this knowledge its own.

320 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE.

IN the third Gospel (now to be considered) many
of the facts in the first two Gospels are repeated
for the third time. Speaking in a general way, it
may be said that they are the cycle of facts that
belonged to the oral apostolic Gospel. One reason
why the facts of the earliest Gospel re-appear in the
second has been fully given ; but for their third
re-appearance there is a reason that reaches also
to their repetition in the second Gospel. It was an
axiom of Hebrew law* that it took more than one
witness to prove a thing legally. By two or three
witnesses facts are presented in various lights, and
through a comparison of divers presentations their
truth may become a matter of demonstration. This
threefold repetition, then, of so much in the earlier
Gospels, which is such a contrast to their chasms
of silence, is to be ascribed to the Divine Spirit who
watched over the forming of the Gospels ; for in this
way their portraiture of the life of the Son of man
and Son of God has a completeness to which hu-

*The Lord names that Law. Matt, xviii, 16 ; John viii, 17, 18.
The other Gospels note only one Demoniac at Gadara, one blind
man at Jericho ; St. Matthew, in each case, marks two cures, (as
also in ix, 27.) He heard His Master speak of the Law , possibly
had it in mind when thrice showing the full legal proof of His Di-
vinity ; and he alone marks the " two false witnesses."

THE THREEFOLD REPETITION. 32 1

man witness could have attained in no other way.
And through this threefold repetition an evidence
of their truth inheres in these records which is open
to all — a kind of evidence that would have been en-
tirely wanting had there been only one Evangelist,
or had not the same facts been told over and over
again. We should, then, put away from our minds
the rationalistic notion that the Gospels are but the
fruits of individual researches and inquiries, because
they go over the same facts. So far from the repe-
tition in the Gospels compelling us to believe that
the Gospels belong merely to literature, it is one of
the multitude of evidences of the more than human
wisdom that is manifest throughout the sacred
Scriptures.

Such repetition almost disappears in the last Gos-
pel ; for no evidence of the truth would avail for the
salvation of those whose hearts reject the Saviour
as he is revealed by the first, second, and third
Evangelists. The last Gospel is for the family of
the Saviour ; there, with love and reverence, they
know their Redeemer's voice, and, with concen-
trated emotion, hear his last words of peace and
hope and heaven, because in the final Gospel the
wisdom of the Holy Ghost changed the structure of
Revelation so as to perfect their communion with
their Saviour, Mediator, and Lord.

The Gospel of St. Luke is limited to the Galilean
cycle of events in much the same way as the first
and second Gospels; and for this limitation, reasons
have been given in what was said of the construc-
tion of St. Matthew's Gospel and of that of the
21

322 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Gospels generally. But the origin of the third Gos-
pel is not as clear as that of the first Gospel ; its
motive is not as apparent as that of the second, and
its affinities are not so close with the first. There
is much in it that is not in the two earlier Gospels :
the memoir of the holy Virgin, another version of
the Sermon on the Mount, or of a sermon much the
same but delivered at another time, a journey rich
in parables and in works of mercy, (but few of which
are in the earlier Gospels,) and still another version
of the word on Mount Olivet. On looking into the
bearing of this, I could not but suppose that the
setting forth of this new material might have had
much to do with the writing of this Gospel ; but if
that were its leading motive, and if it were of the
private character that its being addressed to The-
ophilus might indicate, it is hard to see how it could
have become of like authority with the apostolic
Gospels, or with the one so closely related to St.
Peter.

The honor given to Gospels of the brethren has
been noted as proving that they were written in the
apostolic generation, and this proof remains in full
force though the Fathers tell us that Mark wrote
under St. Peter's eye, and Luke under the eye of
St. Paul. It is true that the Fathers have not left
so general a witness to the one fact as to the other,
but the tone of those who name it is that of men
speaking of things known to every one — as we
speak of Jefferson's having written the Declaration
of Independence.

Irenaeus says that " the same things that St. Paul

THE THIRD GOSPEL AND ST. PAUL. 323

preached were written out by St. Luke/' * The
oldest catalogue of the books of the New Testament
(A. D. 180) states that the third Gospel bears the
name of St. Luke, but is really that of St. Paul; and
this is of peculiar weight, because it embodies the
judgment of one who took such an interest in the
history and origin of those books as to draw up that
catalogue.f As before said, some have denied the
witness of the Fathers to the origin of the second
and third Gospels because they could have had no
personal knowledge of the facts ; but, so far from
this being an evidence of their sagacity, it shows
how little thought they have given to the materi-
als from which history is derived. None of the his-
torians of Alexander the Great had any personal
knowledge of him, they all lived later than his
time ; and the rule of those critics would unsettle
ancient history and discredit most of the modern
historians.

It might be divined from the second Gospel that
it was in some way related to St. Peter, but it could
not, in like manner, be divined that the third Gos-
pel was related to St. Paul ; and as the idea could
not have come from the Gospel itself, the Fathers

* This, and similar language of other Fathers, is direct proof of
much of that which has been said in this volume of the oral Gospels
of the Apostles.

f Known as the Muratorian, from the name of the scholar who,
near the middle of the last century, found it in the Ambrosian Li-
brary at Milan. It is reprinted in Westcott's valuable " History of
the Canon." Its data is given approximately. And it should be
stated that this is the case with the dates throughout this volume.
They are for the convenience of the general reader, and usually
point, not to the time when a person was born, but when he wrote.

324 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

must have known of the fact from historical evi-
dence. Their testimony to the origin of the second
Gospel is of great consequence ; to the origin of the
third it is indispensable. Without the fact which
they hand down to us, we should not be able to
find out how this Gospel did originate ; learning
from them its origin, we can find much that con-
firms their testimony. The torch of history in their
hands so lights up its origin, that with what we
know of the oral Gospel, the relations of St. Luke's
Gospel to St. Paul's can be made clear.

Only a miracle could have prevented the writing
out of some of the oral Gospels of the Twelve Apos-
tles. That only two of those Gospels were written
out by Apostles came from their selecting two of
their number for their Evangelists. How it came
to pass (humanly speaking) that St. Mark wrote out
St. Peter's Gospel has been explained ; and pres-
ently it will be seen that St. Luke's writing out St.
Paul's Gospel came, in part, from no less natural
motives than those of St. Mark.

Holding the fact that St. Luke's Gospel is in
substance the Gospel of St. Paul, to be established
by the witness of the Fathers, let us consider St.
Luke's preface ; and, as this short preface is almost
enigmatical, it may be best to state the conclusions,
that, in connection with other facts, I think, may
be drawn from it, before trying to prove them.
St. Luke says that many had taken in hand to set
forth in order a declaration of things believed as
they were delivered by the Eye-witnesses ; that is,
they had undertaken to write out in their time-

ST. LUKE'S PREFACE. 325

order the sections of the oral Gospel of the Twelve
Apostles. Paul, the thirteenth Apostle, " born out
of due time," was not an eye-witness of the Word,
yet he also had an oral Gospel of his own, and St.
Luke wrote out the sections of that Gospel in their
proper order.

St. Luke is not speaking (as commonly thought)
of persons who had written a Gospel, but of those
who had done a humbler work. Apparently he
was not going to do over again what others had
done, for if so, he would have said that he was not
satisfied with their work ; but he does not say this
either directly or indirectly. He could not find
fault with them for trying to do what they did, (on
any view of his meaning,) for he was about to do
much the same. St. Luke does not say expressly
that his knowledge came from the Eye-witnesses ;
if that may be inferred, it may also be inferred that
it came from some other source ; and on looking
into his Gospel, what he says of his perfect knowl-
edge " of all things from the very first " naturally
connects itself with the latter inference, through
the revelations made by the Holy Virgin. St. Luke
wrote to Theophilus, " that he might know the cer-
tainty " of what he had been taught, but what the
Twelve Apostles delivered needed no confirmation ;
and St. Luke's reciting this in its time-order
would not have given it any confirmation. There
are, then, insuperable objections to the common
idea that St. Luke wrote out the Gospel of the
Twelve ; and that idea must be given up, whether
any thing better can be put in its place or not.

26 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

St. Paul's converts had learned St. Paul's oral
Gospel in sections, which, unlike those of the Gos-
pel of the Eye-witnesses, had not been set in their
time-order; and, if we consider how Theophilus
must have understood St. Luke's preface, its mean-
ing becomes consistent with all the facts, and clear.
St. Luke hints (and the word is used advisedly to
express what he conveys to us, though his meaning
was plain to Theophilus) at more than he says.
He had " a full knowledge of all things " — so our
version reads — but he means more than that ; the
word he uses means that he had diligently inquired
into (followed up) all things from the very first.
At the time when he wrote some knowledge of the
life of the Lord could have been gained from those
who had " companied with the Disciples during the
time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among
them." The earlier chapters of his Gospel did not
come from the Apostles ; his preface may consist
with a purpose to combine what twelve Eye-wit-
nesses had " delivered " with knowledge derived
from others, or it may consist with a purpose to set
forth either by itself; but Theophilus, who was fa-
miliar with all the circumstances, would have un-
derstood the allusion to the Gospel of the Twelve,
and have been sure from St. Luke's having written
out St. Paul's Gospel, that St. Luke meant that, in
his judgment, the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles
and of the Thirteenth Apostle were the same in
spirit and in truth. And, further, from what we
can learn or may reasonably conjecture of the his-
tory of those times, I think we shall conclude that

PAULINE ELEMENT IN LUKE'S GOSPEL. 327

this was what St. Luke meant to convey, and what
Theophilus gathered from his preface. And were
we to accede to the notion of Ambrose and Origen
that by Theophilus (a name that means lover of
God) St. Luke, in a somewhat mystical oriental
fashion, meant a Christian, still, the meaning of
his preface would have been clear to St. Paul's con-
verts, and through them to all the Christians at
that time.

Though the Fathers held St. Luke's Gospel to be
the Gospel of St. Paul, critics, orthodox, quasi or-
thodox, and infidel, have found no Pauline element
in the third Gospel ; but, on the other hand, a
school of critics have labored to prove that Luke
was the partisan of Paul, and for his sake colored
facts and invented facts as deftly as a political
pamphleteer. This (Tubingen) school* is evidence
of its kind (and with those courteous orthodox
scholars who admire its industry, commend its
learning, and, may Heaven preserve their own!
who praise its good intentions, it should be strong
evidence) of a close relation between what Paul
preached and Luke wrote.

On thinking of this question some may feel that
the portrait St. Paul has unconsciously drawn of
himself in his Epistles is not in harmony with the
sweet and gentle spirit of St. Luke's Gospel — such
should look at that portrait again. In the soul of
St. Paul there was a feminine element, as there is
in the souls of all heroic and noble men. He was
earnest even to sternness, yet self-forgetting, and in

* So called from the University of that name.

328 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the depths of his nature there was the tenderness
of a woman.

Many, however, will deny (what thus far has been
assumed, and which is essential to the proof that
the third Gospel is substantially St. Paul's) that St.
Paul taught a Gospel of his own. This denial was
a reasonable one so long as the oral teaching of
the twelve Apostles was not understood ; but as
each of them had an oral Gospel of his own, and
as the thirteenth Apostle was " not a whit behind
the other Apostles," it follows that he had his own
oral Gospel. Why not ? But to this question
(which often may be put in lieu of a discussion) it
will be answered, Because St. Paul was not one of
the twelve Eye-witnesses. This fact, in part, has
led to the common idea that by the term Gospel
St. Paul always meant the Truth; but St. Paul
used the word Gospel in two senses, in much the
same way the word is used now. Sometimes he
used it in its broad general sense; though with him
and with the early Christians it never meant a sys-
tem of theology, but was a name for the leading
facts revealed concerning the Lord — was, in brief,
Christ Jesus and him crucified ; and again, by his
Gospel, St. Paul meant that oral Gospel of his own,
which, like the twelve Apostles, he had prepared
and taught.

The Judaizing party had tampered with St. Paul's
Galatian converts, and St. Paul writes to some of
those converts, charging them with having " gone
over " from his Gospel to " another Gospel." It is
difficult now to see all the meaning of the concise

REPROOF OF THE GALATIANS. 329

words of his heated writing, but their full meaning
was felt by those to whom he wrote. Those Gala-
tians had not apostatized, they had neither gone
back to heathenism nor back to Judaism; therefore
the only idea that fits well to all that St. Paul
wrote to them, is, that they had put another Gospel
(doubtless the written apostolic Gospel of St. Mat-
thew) in the place of his own oral Gospel. But it is
hard, with our sense of the harmony of the Gospels,
to see why this should have called forth such ve-
hement indignation ; and it is hard so to transfer
ourselves into that earnest and angry time as to
make its war about questions, then most vital but
long since dead, as real as it was. The words of St.
Paul charge some of the Galatian congregation with
perverting " another Gospel," which he says is "not
another" and, from his epistle and from what is
known of the great conflict among Christians at that
epoch, these things are certain — They had wrested
the earliest written apostolic Gospel against the
cardinal truth that salvation is only through the
Cross ; if they had not done this doctrinally they
had done it practically, and it was rightly an open
and an awful sin in the eyes of Paul. They had
wrested St. Matthew's written Gospel against St.
Paul's oral Gospel, which was wickedly to misuse
the former, for the two Gospels were truly the
same in spirit and in truth ; and so to abuse St.
Matthew's Gospel was to bring against St. Paul the
whole weight of the authority of the Apostles in
Jerusalem. Having done those things, his enemies
were sure to say, " Peter we know and Matthew we

330 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

know, but as for this Paul, we know not who he is,"
and just that they did say. They attacked his Gos-
pel, and then attacked the Apostle himself; they
first denied his teachings, and then denied his com-
mission. These are sure inferences from what St.
Paul wrote ; for he gave a chapter from his own
autobiography, telling that after his conversion at
Damascus he conferred not with flesh and blood;
went not up to Jerusalem but into Arabia ; and that
he received his Gospel from the Lord himself. He
then tells of a journey to Jerusalem, describing it
by a term not elsewhere found in the Scriptures :
he went there, he says, loropTjoai lisrpov ; and if we
may transfer his word bodily from the Greek — thus
coining a term but little more strange, perchance,
than St. Paul's to the Galatians, and suggesting
much the same meaning that his did to them — he
went there to historize St. Peter. The Greek term
means to narrate a history or to seek material for a
history, and here it points either to one or to both
of these purposes. Either, then, St. Paul went up
to Jerusalem to draw upon St. Peter's store of
knowledge of what the Lord said and did, or else
to compare his own knowledge with the recollec-
tions of St. Peter.* St. Paul closes his narrative
with a solemn oath, " Now the things which I write

* Even had St. Paul merely said (as our version has it) that he
went up to Jerusalem to see St. Peter, still the whole passage would
have the sense that has been given to it. Its peculiar word finds
the excuse for its obscurity in the plainness of the whole statement ;
and I have not determined the sense of the passage from the mean-
ing of that one word, but rather the meaning of the word from that
of the passage.

THE MEANING OF ST. PAUL. 33 1

unto you, before God I lie not ; " and, on looking
at all the facts, at his reasons for bringing out the
facts, and at the whole tenor of what he says, the
conclusion is almost irresistible, that he had his
oral Gospel chiefly in mind.

St. Paul's charge against his converts is, " You
have gone over from my Gospel to another ; " and
it nowhere appears that he had his apostleship in
mind. He may have had some thought of that, but
he does not say so, directly or indirectly. His
word is Gospel. " You have gone over from my
Gospel /" and it is questionable whether he could
have said " my Gospel," using the word in the
broad sense of the truth, for in that sense the Gospel
is not the Gospel of any man. The Gospel in the
sense of the truth is known, in its fullness, only to
Him who is the Truth ; and a Gospel is only so
much of the truth as he was pleased to make
known by his servant, the Evangelist. This is
marked in the title of each of the Gospels, where
(the article not being found in the best manuscripts)
we should read, "A Gospel according to St. Mat-
thew," and so of the others. And when St. Paul
charges his converts with having " gone over to an-
other Gospel," he says in the same breath it is not
"another" — words intelligible enough if the view
that has been taken of their meaning be correct,
while it is difficult to give them any other sense
that accords with the fact that the Galatians had
not apostatized.

St. Paul's conflict with the Judaizing party (marks
of which are deeply graven in the sacred records)

332 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

was a life and death struggle for the Cross; for they
held that if a man were not circumcised he could
not be saved. For and against this dogma, which
now seems so foolish, ridiculous, and unchristian,
the war raged with fierceness and bitterness ; but
the party of the faith so thoroughly triumphed that
the struggle was almost forgotten until interest in
it was awakened by that spirit of inquiry into the
past which is characteristic of our times. In the
long-forgotten struggle in the earliest Christian gen-
eration not only was truth more dear to St. Paul
than his own life, in peril, but he. himself had every
thing at stake ; for the ritualists denied his apostle-
ship, and they overthrew the faith of many not only
in his teaching but in his commission. In the
midst of the continuing and universal battle, which
raged not only among the volatile Frenchmen of
Galatia but every-where, St. Luke put forth the
Gospel of the decried and defamed Apostle ; (not,
indeed, without higher motives,) yet for the Apos-
tle's vindication. Seeing this — St. Luke's addressing
his Gospel to Theophilus, (a man of good repute,
no doubt, yet of so little mark that but for St. Luke
his name would have perished,) which ever before
had seemed very strange to me, became clear. For
had St. Luke declared that he was instructed and
commissioned by the hated Apostle to do what he
did, it would have gone far to defeat his purpose.
Addressed to Theophilus, his Gospel was for the
converts of St. Paul and for the whole congregation.
Its brief preface simply indicated what St. Luke
had too much tact to make offensively plain, that

MOTIVES OF THE EVANGELISTS. 333

St. Luke had diligently inquired into whatever had
been delivered by the Twelve Apostles, that he
had searched into all things from the first, and,
therefore, all might be certain of the truth of what
the Apostle to the Gentiles taught ; and this preface
was followed by what was at once recognized (for
the most part at least) as the oral teaching of the
calumniated Apostle.

The calling forth of the natural powers of the
holy Evangelists for purposes and through motives
in part resembling those of other men, has, in these
times, been more thought of than ever before ; and
the inquiries made concerning this have, thus far,
been more or less of a hinderance to faith in the holy
Scriptures ; but, in the end, larger knowledge of the
natural in the Scriptures will confirm their inspira-
tion. The more clearly natural purposes, motives,
and powers are seen working to produce the Gos-
pels, the more clearly is seen in them a Supernatu-
ral purpose and power ; and thus it will, at last, be
more manifest than ever that each of the Gospels is
an achievement high above all human effort. Let us,
then, hopefully pursue our fearless inquiries, for it
is true alike of the Written and of the Living Word,
that to know the human in either is to be certain
that there is in each the indwelling of the Divine.

In consequence of the malice of the enemies of
St. Paul in Jerusalem, he was constrained from
openly doing his work. His two years of duress
at Caesarea by the Sea were years of seeming in-
action— but is it possible that St. Paul was ever
inactive? During those two years St. Luke was

334 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

his companion ; and the place, (within the bounds
of the Holy Land,) the freedom of St. Paul from
any close restraint, the length of the time, and all
the circumstances, accord with the supposition that
in the imprisoning of Paul at Caesarea, " the wrath
of man" was so overruled to the praise of God, that
it led to the writing out of the Gospel of Paul by
the hand of Luke.

St. Paul had that executive capacity and good
fellowship which promptl}' calls in the help of oth-
ers ; and in the writing out of his Epistles he at
times did this. St. Paul was too great a man to envy
the gifts of other men ; and he could not but have
known that the genius and culture of his friend and
companion, St. Luke, were better fitted than his
own for some kinds of writing. For an orderly ar-
rangement of ideas St. Paul was not remarkable,
and the calm flow of narrative was not suited to his
rapid mind. The torrent rush of his thoughts
brooked not the restraints that would have been a
help to their utterance. He is often plain, he is
always powerful, yet sometimes his sentences are
twisted into almost inextricable convolutions; and
the contrast between his rugged, broken, impas-
sioned, vital eloquence, and the facile and well-
turned periods of his companion, has been one of
the strongest reasons why literary critics have doubt-
ed the Pauline element of the third Gospel. It is,
however, more reasonable to suppose that St. Luke's
writing out of the Gospel of Paul grew, in part, out
of this difference in their style and manner of writ-
ing, and that, on perceiving St. Luke's superior

EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 335

historic gifts, St. Paul willingly and gladly permit-
ted a larger liberty in composing and writing than
he would have given to another.

At this point, let us glance at an Epistle whose
history may here have some light thrown upon it,
and in its turn may throw some light upon that of
the third Gospel. The Fathers say, that the Epistle
to the Hebrews was St. Paul's ; and in proof of this,
it is here sufficient to say, that it was pronounced
to be such by the Council of Laodicea, (A. D. 363.)
But though (as with the Second Epistle of St. Peter)
its origin was known to some of the Churches, and
to so many more than at once received St. Peter's
Second Epistle, that it was widely accredited from
the beginning, yet it was not for a time universally
acknowledged ; and for this some of the reasons
are evident. The Epistle to the Hebrews was ad-
dressed only to a part of the Church, and there-
fore it was not likely to find its way to the whole
Church as quickly as the other Epistles. It did
not bear the superscription of St. Paul ; and its
style was so unlike that of any of the Epistles
known to be his, as to raise a doubt as to its Pauline
authorship. The evidence, then, (as in the some-
what similar case of the third Gospel,) which, in
some way, connected St. Paul with the Epistle to
the Hebrews, must have been strong ; and what we
have seen of the state of things at the time agrees
wTith the idea that there was such a connection. In
the great conflict in which the honor of Christ, the
purity of the faith, and Paul's own standing among
his brethren, were in peril, there was urgent need

33$ THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

of an appeal to the Hebrew Christians, that should
meet, on Hebraic ground, those who were swerving
from the faith ; and there was urgent need of an
argument from the Old Covenant that should win
the victory for the New Covenant. If it were to
accomplish its immediate purpose such an argument
could not go forth in the name of St. Paul. The
style of Apollos may have been better suited to
such an argument ; and that he was in heart and
soul in unison with the Apostle is a sure inference
from St. Luke's commendation of Apollos, as " an
eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures." Those
words exactly describe the writer of the Epistle to
the Hebrews ; but whether Apollos wrote the Epis-
tle to the Hebrews, or some one else, the fact that
the early Christians held it to be one of St. Paul's
Epistles at least proves that it was written under
the Apostle's eye.

Nearly all that was sent forth by the other side
in that great struggle has utterly perished, with
the curious and almost worthless exception of the
Clementine Homilies, a sort of religious romance,
in which, though written after Paul's lifetime, there
is an echo of the unscrupulous and bitter hate of the
Judaizing party toward the Apostle. But the docu-
ments that were written by St. Paul, and those that
were written by men acting in concert with him,
are a complete justification of my denial of the as-
sertion, that there was no literary instinct at work
among the Christians in the apostolic generation.
In a purely literary point of view, nothing was ever
better concerted, nothing was ever better timed,

THE SPIRIT OF ST. LUKE. 337

nothing more exactly fitted to its end, and nothing
more successful in accomplishing its end, than the
sending forth of St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians,
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Gospel of St. Luke,
and " his treatise," known as the Acts of the Apos-
tles. Christian antiquity ascribed the Epistle and
the Gospel to Paul, because they came from the
camp of the great Apostle ; and St. Paul's prisons
were camps from which his orderlies went forth, and
the war was carried on. Both of the contending par-
ties knew that the mind, the will, and the teaching
of the great Champion were in the Epistle and in
the Gospel ; and, paying more heed to facts than to
forms, they said they were St. Paul's ; and they were
— for the orders given by a General on a battle-field
are his orders, though written out by subalterns.

The spirit of St. Luke was pacific and concilia-
tory. He was unwilling to say any thing that
would inflame the quarrel, that had arisen to such
an alarming height, that at Antioch St. Paul " with-
stood St. Peter to his face"* because, as he boldly
told the Galatians, "he was to be blamed." When
St. Luke struck into this great and universal con-

* See Gal. ii, 11-16. This afterward gave to St. Peter an occa-
sion to show how grandly he could forget his anger, when just be-
fore his own decease, in his last Epistle, (as was most needful,) he
gave his powerful support to St. Paul, by assigning to his Epistles a
place of equal honor with the writings of the holy Prophets. 2 Pet.
iii, 15, 16. And (though with this there blends language that almost
seems to detract from it) yet may it not have been, that in ways hard
to prove yet easy to conjecture, the still powerful Judaizing faction
may have partially succeeded for a time in depriving St. Peter's
Epistle of some of the honor that was its due, because of the honor
it gave to the Apostle to the Gentiles ?
22

338 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

flict he trod boldly on dangerous ground. His ad-
mirable spirit was that of a man strong and wise as
well as good ; and I think that his Gospel, (together
with the Epistle to the Hebrews,) may have done
hardly less than the Epistles and the labors of St.
Paul himself, to bring about harmony in the Church.
St. Luke set the oral teaching of the calumniated
Apostle in order, so that it might conveniently be
compared with that of St. Matthew. By transcrib-
ing the memoir of the holy Virgin he brought her
fame to the vindication of the Apostle. His earlier
chapters were felicitously adapted to conciliate the
Jewish party, for they revealed the fulfillment of
the ancient promises to Israel, and they clothed the
religion of the holy Temple with a sacred beauty
that, losing nothing of its charm, is felt by all who
read those chapters now. Thus, his Gospel, like
the preaching of St. Paul, was addressed, " first to
the Jew and then to the Gentile." Not until he
had given to his earlier pages this warm and rich
Jewish coloring did he bring in the Genealogy of
Jesus, which seems out of place until his reason
for placing it where he does appears. This gene-
alogy he carries back not only to Abraham, the
father of the Jews, but to Adam, the common
father of the human race, thus opening the full
breadth of the mission of Christ ; and to do this
more convincingly he does not bring in this geneal-
ogy until after the signs at the Baptism. And here,
in this Gospel, is laid a basis for St. Paul's teaching
to the Corinthians — "The first man Adam was
made a living soul ; the last Adam was made a

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 339

quickening spirit; the first man is of the earth
earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven;"
— and something of the contrast there drawn out
seems here to be indicated, when it is said of Jesus,
" who was the son of Adam," and also said, " who
was the Son of God."

My readers can further pursue this line of thought
for themselves, yet one correction of our version
may make St. Luke's carrying out of his immediate
purpose more clear. The angel did not say to the
shepherds, " I bring you good tidings of great joy
that shall be to all people," but to the people, that
is, to the children of Israel ; yet it consists with the
breadth that he meant to give to his Gospel when
of those good tidings the anthem of heaven in-
stantly opens the world-wide promise. And there
is a like utterance of both ideas when good old
Simeon is moved by the Holy Ghost to say, " Thy
salvation thou hast prepared before the face of all
people, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory
of thy people Israel."

St. Luke followed his Gospel with the Acts of
the Apostles ; and here, again, his earlier chapters
are felicitously adapted to his immediate purpose.
There is no shaping or coloring of the facts ; his
narrative of the Pentecost has the completeness and
simplicity of truth ; nothing can be more natural
than the conduct of the witnesses of those super-
natural events ; and yet if the supernatural had there
been foreordained solely for that very end it could
not have accorded better with St. Luke's purpose
to vindicate the course of the Apostle to the Gentiles.

340 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

The Spirit of God there foreshadowed that evan-
gelizing of all nations which was the work which the
Lord Jesus intrusted especially to Paul. And when
the disciples begin to speak in the tongues of the
nations as the Spirit gave them utterance, it is the
chief Apostle, it is St. Peter himself, who interprets
to the multitude the wonder and sign by the words
of the prophet, " It shall come to pass in the last
days, saith God, that I will pour out my Spirit upon
all fleshy After the miracle at the gate called
Beautiful, St. Peter reminds the people of the divine
covenant with Abraham, " In thy seed shall all the
kindreds of the earth be blessed." In alien Sama-
ria Philip preaches the things concerning the king-
dom, and then St. Peter, " sent " by the Apostles,
preaches " in many villages of the Samaritans." To
St. Peter comes a vision so enlarging his ideas of
Christ's kingdom, that at Caesarea by the Sea, he
opens the way in which the Apostle to the Gentiles
was to walk, by the baptism of the Roman, Corne-
lius. And while these great and significant events
are going on in the glorious company of the Apos-
tles, Saul is in the company of those Jews who
plan the trial and the death of St. Stephen ; and
the martyr's defense of himself before " the coun-
cil " is a defense of the course of St. Paul, who, in
the end, takes up the work of St. Stephen just where
he left it when Saul was consenting to his death.

The contrast, then, of the spirit and course of
Saul with that of St. Peter makes the course of Paul
more striking and glorious when, called to this
work by the Lord in person at Damascus, and car-

ST. LUKE AS AN EVANGELIST. 34 1

rying out what St. Peter began, he goes forth to
evangelize the nations. St. Luke, then, records
such labors, triumphs, and sufferings of the Apos-
tle that the Apostle's death is not needed for his
vindication. St. Luke could not record that, for he
did not wait until his friend was dead to fight his
battle ; he came to his friend's help while he lived,
and what he told of him was so much to St. Paul's
honor that could he have placed the crown of mar-
tyrdom on the brow of the dead Apostle it would
have added nothing.

When thinking of the greatness of St. Luke as
the earliest historian of the Church, I cease to won-
der that generations passed before any mortal dared
to follow in his footsteps ! But if we rest even for
an instant in the idea that St. Luke wrote only as
the champion of a man, though that man were St.
Paul, or if we rest even for an instant in the idea
that he was merely the historian of the Church, we
undervalue the gift of God in what he wrote. We
have traced his lower purpose to mediate between
the hostile parties in the Congregation, that we
might gain that better understanding of the origin
and construction of his writings which is needful in
the doubts and controversies of these times ; but
the greater is sacrificed to the less if we do not ever
remember that in what St. Luke wrote concerning
what was done after the Resurrection as well as be-
fore, he was the Evangelist of the Lord Jesus. His
soul was ever bent to tell what the Lord Jesus
" began both to do and to teach ; " and what an idea
that word gives of St. Luke's intelligence of the far-

342 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

reaching purposes of the Lord, for never did sub-
limer truth visit the soul than that which is uttered
in that word began ! The full sense of St. Luke's
glory as Christ's Evangelist has rightly veiled his
lower and more human purposes — as the sunlight
veils the stars — for, through the help of God's grace,
all that was merely human in his motive and pur-
pose was made so entirely subordinate to his mani-
festation of the Lord, whether in his life on earth
or as he rules at God's right hand, that St. Luke's
Scriptures are an everlasting blessing, while all that
was temporary in the ends they once served is well-
nigh forgotten.

St. Paul said he had " neither received his Gos-
pel of man nor was taught it, but by revelation of
Jesus Christ." We have seen reason to think that
he was then speaking of his oral Gospel, and there
are some other reasons that may go to uphold this
conclusion. The Judaizing party wrested St. Mat-
thew's Gospel against the truth in its integrity, and
this, with the fact that the chief Apostle found it
so difficult to hold on to the true idea of the large
freeness of the New Dispensation, though revealed
to him in vision, make it quite certain that such a
Gospel as that of St. Luke could not have been writ-
ten by any one of the Twelve Apostles. And in
such a state of feeling as then existed among those
Apostles, may there not have been, in the case of
the third Gospel, the nodus dignus vindice, the oc-
casion calling for an intervention of the Lord Jesus,
that would correspond to the meaning that has
been given to St. Paul's words ?

ST. PAUL'S MEANING. 343

In St. Paul's fulfilling the work it was given him
to do his great instrument of power was his oral
Gospel ; his preaching, like that of the Twelve Wit-
nesses, was the telling of what the Lord Jesus said
and did ; and as St. Paul had not been an eye-wit-
ness of the Lord, as he was to stand so much alone
in his work and to be hated by many in the Church
for what he did, may there not have been sufficient
reason why, in framing his oral Gospel, he should
have had help from the Lord in person ? May it
not have been that nothing else would have met the
case ? And what is the meaning that should be
given to these words of our Lord to Paul at Damas-
cus : " I have appeared unto thee for this purpose,
to make thee a minister and a witness of these
things which thou hast seen, and of those things in
the which I will appear unto thee? "

Whether St. Paul means that he had communi-
cations from the Lord that put him in as good con-
dition as the other Apostles to frame his oral Gos-
pel; or whether, in learning of the life of his Lord,
he availed himself of means open to all, interrogat-
ing disciples more favored than himself, comparing
and weighing their words, supplying from the mem-
ory of one what was lacking in another, and that his
oral Gospel thus framed was sanctioned by the Lord
in person — these are open questions ; but while the
latter idea may answer to his words, and seems to
be required by some of the facts in the case, noth-
ing less than this can answer to his words.

While thinking of these questions I looked to see
whether any thing could be found in the third Gos-

344 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

pel to confirm the meaning that has here been
given to St. Paul's words. The prayer of the thief
whispered from dying lips and the Saviour's low re-
sponse may have been inaudible to others ; though
the loud reviling of the impenitent felon when nailed
to the cross may have been heard, and so have come
to St. Matthew's knowledge. The other Evangel-
ists seem not to know that on the Mount, Moses
and Elias talked with Jesus of His decease which He
should accomplish at Jerusalem ; Peter and they that
were with him seem then (Luke ix, 31-33) to have
been " heavy with sleep." I thought also of the
change in the order of the Temptations in the wilder-
ness. But though in these things there may possi-
bly be the evidence I was seeking, this is far from
certain. The lack of such evidence may be in part
the reason why St. Paul's words are so generally
held to refer to the Gospel in its broad sense. But
natural as may be the impulse to see if in that way
the origin of the Gospel can be determined, it is a
mistaken one ; for as the Gospels are all inspired by
the Spirit of the Lord, it would probably be utterly
in vain to seek in the third Gospel for any distin-
guishing signs of his special intervention. And it
should be remembered by those believers who in-
cline rather to lessen than to heighten the miracu-
lous in the Gospels, that the miraculous is not a
thing of degrees. The intervention of the Lord Jesus
in the framing the third Gospel would have been no
more miraculous than his recalling by his Spirit his
Sermon on the Mount to St. Matthew, or his last dis-
courses to St. John.

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS. 345

CHAPTER VII.

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS.

fN the presence of nature artists feel that they
cannot picture its full glory ; that they can only
suggest the might of the ocean, the grandeur of
the mountains, the mystery of the skies. Like this
feeling of artists in the presence of nature was the
feeling of the Evangelists in the presence of the
Lord. Had they tried to do what unbelief blames
them for not doing, they could not have been the
holy Evangelists, nor could Jesus have been the
Son of God !

The first Evangelist opens the way for the sec-
ond, the two for the third, and the three, hand
joined in hand, make ready for the last Gospel.
Here the plow might be driven in deep, abundant
harvests gathered. " The world could not contain
the books that might be written " concerning the
harmonies through which the four Gospels become
the one Gospel. Those harmonies disclose them-
selves to every deeper look, but all that can here
be done is barely to indicate lines of thought that
run to every chapter, paragraph, and verse.

Each Evangelist wrought according to the laws
of his own nature while portraying so much of the
glory of Jesus as the Spirit revealed ; yet each one

346 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

of them brings out something that might rather be
looked for in the Gospel of some one of the others.
In St. Matthew's, Jesus is Christ rejected ; yet he is
Rex tremendce majestatis, the King terrible in maj-
esty, who sends " not peace ©n earth, but a sword."
There he is the " smitten and afflicted " One whom
the prophets foreknew ; there it is written, " The
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have
nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his
head ;" and there it is also written, " When the Son
of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy
angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of
his glory, and before him shall be gathered all
nations."

Recalling the difficulty of even St. Peter's having
written such a Gospel as St. Luke's, let us give a
parting glance at the motives through which the
Divine Wisdom ordained that a Gospel such as
that of St. Mark should emanate from one of the
Twelve, when as yet their souls were not wholly
freed from the trammels of Judaism. The second
Gospel sets forth the authority of Jesus in teaching,
his power in action ; it reproduces the impression
which the Lord's Divinity made on St. Peter's own
soul and on the souls of others ; it tells not of the
quaking earth, the rending graves, but of how the
Roman, whose soldiers nailed Jesus to the cross,
cried out when Jesus died, " Truly this man was
the Son of God." Through its affinity with the
first Gospel, and through its originating ' motive,
humble and human as it was, it becomes a pre-
sentment of Christ as prefigured in Melchizedek,

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS. 347

who " was without father, without mother, without
descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end
of life, but made like unto the Son of God." * Thus
this Gospel prolongs, and, if it were possible, makes
the majesty of the Saviour more sublime ; and yet
in this Gospel alone is it said that the kindred of
Jesus thought " he was beside himself."

We should further mark how the truth unfolds
in the Gospels in that order in which they are to
stand forever. At their beginning, through the
title Emmanuel, St. Matthew reveals who Jesus
was, which is the more significant, since nowhere
else in the New Testament is that title given to
the Saviour. To prove that there was in Jesus
the nature thus revealed St. Matthew bends all the
might of his mind, and then St. Peter is sent to his
aid. All the Gospels reveal the Son of God ; but
after those of St. Matthew and St. Peter comes
that of St. Paul, which, still opening His glory and
His grace, is more fully the Gospel of the man Christ
Jesus. In the first Gospel nothing is told of the
human circumstances of the Birth of Jesus ; in the
second nothing is said of his birth at all, it begins
with Christ Jesus, the Son of God. Then, the
course of the revelation would be instructive to
those who would fain believe there is a legendary
element in the Gospels, were their hearts open to
reason ; for though the third Gospel confirms those
before it as to the nature of Jesus, it goes on to tell
of the new-born Babe tended by his mother in the
manger of an inn. The Babe carried to the Sanc-

* See Gen. xiv, 18, 19, 20 ; Heb. vii, 1-3.

348 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

tuary is redeemed like other babes ; his Mother is
purified like other women ; the Child grows in wis-
dom and stature ; at twelve years of age the Boy
comes, as other boys do, to the Temple with his
father and mother ; and the Man preaches his first
sermon in Nazareth, " where he had been brought
up."

Thus the unfolding of the Gospel conforms to the
fact, which is not that Jesus was a man raised to
the skies, but that he came down from heaven.*
After revealing the Son of God it gives to his birth
all its human environments, even to the placing of
the crib of the new-born Babe among the cribs of
the patient cattle, " who wait for the manifestation
of the sons of God." It descends into all the hu-
miliation of the helplessness of infancy without the
least jarring upon our intellectual, moral, or aesthetic
sense — a literary miracle that should convince men
of letters of the truth of what is so divinely told.
Yet literary genius, shrinking from the consequences
of owning Jesus who convicts of sin and condemns
sin, has too often withheld its witness to this mira-
cle wrought within its own sphere ; yet what the
wise would hide from their hearts is the silent
thought, not the less real, though voiceless, of the
most unlettered Christian that ever heard the Gos-
pel of St. Luke.

The Divine majesty of Jesus is every-where in
the third Gospel ; yet, in comparison with the first
and second Gospels, and in one view of it, (not ex-
clusive or exhaustive, yet a true one,) St. Luke's is

* Here see his own words to the ruler of the Jews. John iii, 13.

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS. 349

the Gospel of the Son of man. As such it harmo-
nizes the earlier Gospels with the last, leading on to
the Gospel of St. John, in which the glory of the Son
of God shines through the glory of the Son of man.
Knowing that he would " tarry " long, St. John
gave to his share of the work that was assigned by
the Apostles to St. Matthew and himself* the pa-
tient thought of a long life-time. Meanwhile, St.
Matthew had finished his share of the work as early
as the seventh year after the crucifixion, and his
Gospel, with those of St. Mark and St. Luke, had
become known to the whole congregation. In the
changes of those years the strange speculations of
the Gnostics so began to appear, that the prelude
to St. John's Gospel may, in part, have been meant
to guard against errors that were more fully to be
developed ; and some have thought that St. John
kept those errors in mind throughout his Gospel.
But, on considering the earlier Gospels, the method
of St. John, and that his was the final Gospel, it
would seem that had there been no such theosophic,
Oriental heresies, its first fourteen verses might have
been as they are.

* On page 114 a tradition given by Eusebius was reconciled with
what had been said of the origin of St. John's Gospel. The Mura-
torian tradition is that in a vision it was revealed to Andrew, the
Apostle, that John was to write a Gospel. This might confirm what
had been said of the apostolic selection of John as an Evangelist,
but I thought it best to ground that fact solely on the reasons given,
and refer to the tradition solely for the sake of completeness. Yet,
with some other facts, it makes it probable that when St. John wrote
he had not outlived all his brethren, which, inadvertently, is almost
implied in the words supposed, on page 112, to have been uttered by
the last of the Apostles save St. John.

350 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

The error that the tone of the last Gospel, as to
the glory of Christ, is at variance with that of the
others, finds its evidence, if any where, in those four-
teen verses, and it is disproved by one of the pur-
poses for which they were written. For through
those verses St. John brought his Gospel into har-
mony with what St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St.
Luke had before made known of the glory of Jesus
at his birth, at his baptism, and on the three mount-
ains. Of all men St. John was the one best fitted
to clothe in words the truth contained in those four-
teen verses ; but, evidently, it is truth that is con-
firmed as well as affirmed — it is truth which was
familiar to all Christians.* And that it was thus
familiar would be seen by all (save those who mis-
take or willfully disparage the intelligence of the
early Christian congregations) had the books of the
New Testament been placed in their time-order ;
for then St. Paul's Epistles to the Philippians and
Ephesians, with the Epistle to the Hebrews, would
have come in before the last Gospel.

No general statement can sum up the work of the
aged apostle, no one formula can express all he had

* The statement of Eusebius, that when St. John wrote, the other
Gospels were every-where known, is discredited in recent comments,
because it is imagined- that St. John could not have known of the
other written Gospels. Yet, on looking at the dates given in those
orthodox volumes to the four Gospels, and on reflecting upon the
civilization of the Roman world in St. John's time, one cannot but
think that if St. John, with his commanding position and intellect,
had not heard of and read the other Gospels, the great Apostle,
while not a very old man, must have become stone-deaf and stone-
blind. Truly the Christian religion is divine ; it triumphs over the
assaults of enemies, and it outlives the folly of its friends !

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS. 35 I

in his mind and heart to do; yet his thesis, with as
much completeness and precision as it well can be
set forth in a single line, is this : The Eternal Word
manifest in the flesh. But it should be further said
that, by his first fourteen verses, St. John was made
free to lay more stress than he otherwise might
have done on that part of his thesis indicated by the
words manifest in the flesh ; also, that he does not
try to heighten the idea of the divine nature of Je-
sus through higher revelations than those in the
earlier Gospels, (which it was not possible to do,)
and that his method of disclosing the divine nature
of Jesus is rather by broadening and heightening
the impression made by his human nature. Thus
the course of the Gospels is that of the natural de-
velopment of faith in Jesus; for first the soul is
struck with the miracle of his divinity, and then with
the miracle of his humanity, and at last it finds in
the latter an ever-increasing evidence of the former.
The courage of the earlier Evangelists, when they
have no fear that the cruel mockings and scourgings
of Jesus will take away from the sense of his Divin-
ity, is morally sublime. St. John shares in that
feeling, and in him it passes into an ever-present
conviction that to know the Son of man is to be-
lieve in the Son of God. In a way almost his own
— though there are instances of it in the other Gos-
pels— St. John brings out the Saviour's divinity
through sudden and vivid contrastings of his divine
and his human nature. "When Jesus saw Mary
weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came
with her, he groaned in spirit and was troubled.

352 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

Jesus wept; and again groaning in himself, cometh
to the grave." Out of his own heart St. John
writes ; like St. Matthew, he tells of what he feels.
Writing such as theirs comes in no other way. St.
John knows that souls open to the truth will feel
as he feels; and though the mystery of the humanity
of Jesus when he weeps and groans at the grave of
Lazarus becomes almost oppressive, yet even then
(though we hardly know why) we as truly feel his
divinity as when, almost in the same breath, " He
cries with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth."

Knowing the difference between his method and
that of the other Evangelists, in his First Epistle
St. John marks, by his use of the plural, that his
witness to the Lord is that of all the Apostles ; and
there he thus states the purpose and method of his
Gospel : " That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands
have handled of the word of life", (for the life was
manifest, and we have seen it and bear witness and
show unto you that Eternal Life which was with the
Father and was manifest unto us,) that which we
have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye
also may have fellowship with us."

In Jerusalem, almost from the very first, Jesus
was on his trial and was condemned by the Jews.
On the first coming of the Saviour to the city (John
ii, 24) he would not commit himself to the Jews be-
cause he knew them. Chapter vii, 1, gives as the
reason why he " would not walk in Jewry," that the
Jews "sought to kill him." Before that (v, 16, 18)

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS. 353

it is said, the Jews sought to slay him;* and the
end, which came at last, was put off only by his
prudence and the intervention of God. As a con-
sequence of this state of things, what he said in
Jerusalem was of a more personal character than the
comparatively impersonal Sermon on the Mount.
In Jerusalem, in his last hours with his disciples,
his words have the openness of heart of the words
of one who knows that he is about to die. Some
of those words are as clear revelations of his divinity
as any he ever made — " Hast thou not known me,
Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father;"
yet some of them most strikingly prove him truly
man, as when he said, " I have kept my Father's
commandments." And his Church has ever felt
that Christ is never more visibly divine, and never
more human, than in his last hours with his family.
Much, then, of all that was given to St. John was
especially suited to his method. But, in meditating
upon his Gospel, and also upon the others, it is to
be remembered that each Evangelist was guided
and watched over by the Divine Spirit, who inspired
his purpose and wrought toward his Gospel, even to
the fitting beforehand of events and words to that
end.f

* See also John viii, I, 37, 40 ; x, 31 ; xi, 8, 16. Chap, viii says,
" They took up stones to cast at him : but Jesus hid himself, and went
out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed
by." The Greek word rendered "hid himself" means "was hid-
den ; " it points to a miraculous shielding of Jesus. The greater
number of manuscripts omit the last clause of the verse.

\ Of this truth I have before spoken, and would offer these two
scriptures as indirect yet pertinent evidence of it : John ix, 2, 3, " His
disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his par-
23

354 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

To St. John it was given to complete the Gospel ;
and therefore his presentment of the Lord must
needs be in many ways, a broadening and heighten-
ing of what was before made known of Him. The
earliest Gospel recalls what Isaiah foreknew of the
kindling of the Great Light ; and in the third Gos-
pel there is Simeon's prophecy that the holy Child
would be a light unto the nations ; but St. John,
long meditating upon the whole of ancient Scripture,
even from the day when in the natural world the
element Light prefigured Christ in the spiritual world,
concentrates into a focus all its rays, and declares
Jesus to be the true Light, who enlighteneth every
man. He never loses sight of this, and he proves
it by the Scriptures* and by the miracles and by
the words of Jesus, with a fullness and power that
becomes the final Gospel. In like manner St. John
sets forth the truth that Jesus is the Life of the
soul. Thus, also, in his Gospel and in his Epistles,
he reveals that in Jesus the love of God is offered
unto us. And in meditating upon these things, we

ents, that he was born blind ? Jesus answered, Neither hath this
man sinned, nor his parents : but that the works of God should be
manifest in him." John xi, 4, " When Jesus heard that [Lazarus was
sick,] he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of
God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." There is more
direct evidence of it in the many verses where certain things are said
to have been done " that the Scriptures might be fulfilled."

* There are more direct references to the Hebrew Scriptures in
St. Matthew's Gospel than in all the others put together ; yet the
judicious Archbishop Trench says of St. John, " His Gospel, appar-
ently less, is indeed far more thoroughly steeped in the Old Testa-
ment, connected with it by finer and subtler links, than any of the
other three."

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS. 355

should remember that this is the Gospel of the Dis-
ciple who was nearer than any of his brethren to
the blessed Mother, as well as to her crucified Son.
Thus, in every way, the last of the Holy Evangel-
ists was fitted so to present Jesus in his human
nature, as through his human nature to bring the
children of men into communion with him as the
divine Redeemer, the only begotten Son of God.

St. John tells us that his Gospel was written that
we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of God, that believing we might have life through
his name. In the earlier part of this volume, the
fact that all the Gospels are arguments to prove
this, was dwelt upon ; for without its light, their
structure is dark ; and when the Gospels are mis-
taken for biographies or histories there are seeming
faults in their construction which can readily be
perverted into evidence of a fragmentary and le-
gendary origin. But though the fact that the Gos-
pels are such arguments be indispensable to the
clearing up of their structure, yet devout souls, in-
stinct with a wisdom of the heart better than that
of the intellect, may feel that with the enlighten-
ment it brings there comes a sense of pain and loss ;
and the effect of that truth is a questionable one
unless we discern by whom the argument is really
made. The argument in the Gospels is not made
by the Evangelists, but by the Lord himself. There
Jesus proves himself the Son of God, the Saviour
from sin and every human ill, even from death and
the grave. Between this idea of the Gospels and
every other the difference is immense. Every other

356 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

idea of his Gospels is meaningless and worthless in
comparison. From its root it is unlike all partial
and human ideas of the Gospels. It reaches to their
source and discloses the true power of those won-
ders of the Eternal Spirit with which time has
nothing to do. For Christ Jesus comes to us all in
his Gospels as truly as he came to those Jews who
received or rejected him. His Gospels bring us all
into the presence of our Judge. They compel us
to look on the face of the Saviour, whom if we do
not accept, we deny. They make to us as real and
personal an appeal as that which Pilate made to the
Jews, when he said, Ecce Homo, Behold the man !
And with this coming unto us of Jesus in his Gos-
pels, his rejection by the Jews is so inwrought for
our warning, that the same wickedness there was in
them we see in ourselves, if we, through our unbe-
lief, crucify the Son of God afresh.

Such in St. Matthew's Gospel is the rejection of
the Saviour by the Jews, that while it is a pervad-
ing element in the second and third Gospels — the
contrast with that darkness making the light more
vivid — it is less marked in them, because they were
never to be separate from St. Matthew's. In St.
Mark's Gospel the Saviour comes to all as the man
Christ Jesus, by word and deed revealing himself
the Son of God. In St. Luke's Gospel he comes as
the universal Friend and Lord, the King of the
promised age of peace and good-will to man. In
St. John's Gospel, as said before, he comes to Chris-
tians ; and I would now complete this truth by say-
ing, that in the last Gospel He comes to all with a

ST. JOHN AND THE OTHER EVANGELISTS. 357

directness of appeal that puts the spirit that is with-
in us to the most severe of all tests. There He who
is the Light of the world shines most searchingly
into the darkness of our hearts ; there his witness
to himself is the most open and full ; there the pur-
pose of the Jews to slay him is instant, repeated,
relentless ; and great as was their sin, so great is
the sin of all those who reject the Lord Jesus when
he pleads with them in the last Gospel. And trust-
ing to my readers to give all needed qualification to
general words, it may, further, be said, that those
who reject Jesus as he comes to them in the earlier
Gospels, reject the Son of God ; and those who re-
ject him as he comes to them in the Gospel of St.
John, reject the Son of man.

St. John completes the Evangeliad ; and then, as
we contemplate its structure, we see in it the hand
of Him who planned the worlds in time, for in it the
course of the Spirit of God is seen to be the same
with his course in histoiy. He first established the
truth of the Divinity of Jesus so that it can never
more be questioned in his Church, and he then began
the full revealing of his Humanity. The Church is
now divinely moved as never before to contemplate
the relations of the Humanity of her Lord with all
that is below the sun ; and those are yet to be dis-
closed with a fullness beyond all imagining. Their
sources are in his Divine Nature, for Jesus can be
in sympathy with all that rightly springs out of the
Human Nature, whether in the family, the nation,
or the race ; he can be in full sympathy with every
rightful human hope and calling and art, redeem-

358 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

ing, informing, purifying and glorifying all, because
he is the Eternal Word, who is the Life in nature,
the Light in the soul.

There has ever been some perception of the affin-
ity of the Divine with the Human Nature. In the
heathen mythologies gods come down to the earth
in the likeness of men, and mortals are raised to
the skies as gods. Such facts go to prove that the
Incarnation of the Eternal Word is a truth which the
soul is not unfitted to receive, while at the same time
they prove that the idea of a perfect union of the
two natures in one Being is not one the human
mind, unaided, can seize hold upon. Apart from
the man Christ Jesus — Son of God and Son of man,
the fullness of the Divinity given in the one term
being equal to the fullness of the Humanity given
in the other — the idea of such a Being was not a
possible one. It was not possible for man to have
conceived of the union of the Two Natures in
Christ, and it was equally impossible for the Apos-
tles to have conceived of a Life answering to such a
conception, had not the Eternal Life who is with
the Father been manifest in the flesh. They had
seen him and known him, and herein is the sufficient
answer to all doubt and unbelief concerning the
Holy Gospels — by the grace of God they so bear
witness to Christ Jesus that the Written Word is
the brightness of the glory of the Living Word and
the express image of his person.

UNITY OF THE EVANGELIAD. 359

CHAPTER VIII.

UNITY OF THE EVANGELIAD.
N the course of these inquiries nothing has been

1

said of St. Matthew's bold departure from the
order of time. This could only be explained
in a volume given to that Gospel. With that ex-
ception, the question, How St. Matthew's Gospel
came to be in manner and form as it is ? has been
answered in what has been said of the purpose of a
Gospel and of its consequent limitations ; of the
relations of his Gospel to the oral Gospel ; of the
concert of action between St. Matthew and St.
John ; and in the chapters that give the reasons
for his silence or reserve as to some facts of great
moment, and that also fixed the time when St.
Matthew wrote. Some things that were said of the
construction of the earliest Gospel bore upon that
of the other Gospels, and the simpler motive and
less complicate structure of the second Gospel per-
mitted a somewhat complete answer to be given to
the question, How did that Gospel come to be in
manner and form as it is ? We have also inquired
into the origin of the third Gospel, and into the
relations of the final Gospel with St. Matthew's and
wTith those of the other two Evangelists.

The relations traced out have, in the main, been
those of a general kind ; but besides these, there

360 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

are special affinities and correspondencies between
the Gospels, and between parts of the same Gospel,
whose thorough searching out gives a sense of the
oneness of the Evangeliad that can be given in no
other way. Thus St. John gives no description of
the Ascension, (twice described by St. Luke,) yet
in his Gospel (vii, 63) it is foretold by the Lord
himself; and again, (xx, 17,) in what He said to
Mary Magdalene. The Eucharist is not described
by St. John, yet the truths that were uttered when
it was instituted were revealed before in the Dis-
course in the Synagogue at Capernaum, (vi, 32-58,)
given only by St. John. As casual illustrations of
such harmonies compare what St. Matthew says of
the Baptist's reception of the Pharisees with our
Lord's words in the third Gospel, (vii, 29, 30; xi,
44.) Also compare Acts iv, 13 with John vii, 15 ;
also John vii, 53 and viii, 1 with Matt, viii, 20 and
Luke xxi, 37 ; also John vii, 47 with Matt, xxvii,
63 ; also Mark viii, 12 with John xi, 33, 38. An
exhaustive study of such harmonies of Scripture
seems to be impossible. To trace them with the
help of a reference Bible and Concordance (and
especially the prophetic intimations of the New in
the Old Dispensation) is a constant pleasure and
surprise. Every one may find new ones, for these
cross lights are as numberless as those of the stars,
and the marvel of these lights in the firmament of
Scripture is as great as the marvel of the lights in
the firmament of heaven — and the heavens will pass
away, (2 Pet. iii, n,) but the truths which the Lord
reveals in his holy Scriptures abide forever !

UNITY OF THE EVANGELIAD. 36 1

It has been our intent to give only a general
view of the unity of the Evangeliad, and we con-
clude with a word more concerning the most re-
markable of the differences between the three ear-
lier Evangelists and St. John, who completed the
writing out of the Gospel. Much thought has been
given to minor differences, and comparatively little
to the fact that Matthew, Mark, and Luke record
the institution of the Eucharist, and pass over our
Saviour's last words to his disciples on the same
night, and St. John, who is silent as to the former,
records the latter. These facts, together with St*
John's silence concerning the prophecy on Mount
Olivet, point to an understanding between him and
St. Matthew as to the structure of their Gospels.
His passing over the prophecy is little or no evi-
dence of this, for he may have thought that the
three previous records of it, like the three of the
Transfiguration, were complete.

That prophecy largely pertained to the end of a
cycle of time which the last Evangelist looked upon
as closed so far as the Jews were concerned. Its
proper place, then, was in the earlier Gospels, for,
more than the others, the Gospel of St. John looks
forward to the future. This is seen in the coming
of the Greeks seeking the Saviour ; and more fully
in our Lord's promise of the Holy Ghost, who, in
his stead and with greater power than his own, is
to convince the world of sin and of righteousness
and of judgment to come.

It was every way different with the discourses on
the night before the crucifixion. St. Matthew and

362 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

St. Peter heard them ; yet they are not given in the
first nor in the second Gospel, neither are they given
in the third. From all of these facts the inference
is sure, not only that St. Matthew and St. John
wrote in concert, but that both St. Peter and St.
Paul knew that the writing out of these words of
the dying Saviour was intrusted solely to the Disci-
ple whom Jesus loved.

It was more than human wisdom that separated
the word given on Mount Olivet and the institution
of the holy Sacrament from the last words of Jesus
to his family. He always speaks like himself, and
there is no dissonance between the prophecy and
the farewell ; but there is a wide difference in their
effect on the mind and the heart, and they were di-
vinely kept apart because the soul, in the same mood
of mind and heart, cannot assimilate them. The
reason why the institution of the sacrament is, in
like manner, kept apart from the farewell of Jesus,
is of greater moment. The wisdom of God in plac-
ing even those solemn and tender words of his Son
apart from the holy sacrament, so constructed the
Gospels that the sacrament should stand out by it-
self in a way that tends to give to that ordinance
its right place in the mind and heart of his Church.

Seeming differences of a minor sort, such as there
must needs be in narratives of the same events
when the attendant circumstances that once would
have made them clear have long been forgotten,
rightly appear to be of little account when so re-
markable a difference is explained and justified, and
become a help to making the organic unity of the

UNITY OF THE EVANGELIAD. 363

Evangeliad as clear to the Christian intellect as it
has ever been to the Christian heart. The sense of
that unity is heightened by the study of the distinc-
tive characteristics of each Gospel. That unity is
not matter of private opinion nor of any late find-
ing out. Differences in the Gospels were as clearly
seen, as keenly felt, and more exaggerated, in the
apostolic generations than they have ever been
since ; yet in all past time, even as now, Christians
have felt that the fourfold Evangel was one Evan-
gel ; and of this, feeling is the highest critical test,
and the only decisive one.

To that unity let us give one parting glance ;
and, my friendly and tireless reader, you will make
what further I have to offer your own better than
through any labor of argument, if you will imagine
yourself to be one of the Christians dwelling in
Alexandria in the last half of the first century, and
will put yourself in the place and enter into the
thoughts and feelings of a Christian convert in that
age, when, at four different times and from four dif-
ferent places, the four Gospels came to that great
center of the intelligence of the Roman world. In
Alexandria, in the first Christian century, you are
reading the manuscript of St. Matthew's Gospel.
Knowing the great outlines of the Saviour's life
from the oral teaching in the churches, and having
often heard traditions of his ministry in Judea, you
are surprised to find that up to the time of his last
visit to Jerusalem St. Matthew so confines his rec-
ord to what took place in Galilee. Still you are
not surprised that he does not mark this omission,

364 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

because the great fact, that he passes over in silence,
is familiar to all. You wonder more to find that
after his description of the Sacrament he omits those
solemn and tender words of love, of hope, of proph-
ecy, with which the Lord took leave of his Disciples,
some faint rumor of which has gone every-where
abroad. His silence seems so strange in a Gospel
largely framed of discourses of the Lord, that for
the moment you question the correctness of what
you had heard ; but, as you reflect upon the scene
in that large upper chamber, on that hour looked
forward to by the Lord, on the peaceful private in-
terview at night, on the institution of the new sac-
rament, on the fearful separation that was nigh, you
feel convinced that the Church has not been mis-
taken in its belief that in that hour the Lord uttered
words such as even by him were never said at any
other time. You think of his discourse when the
Disciples were sent forth on their mission, and your
conviction deepens that he parted not from them
in this silence. You think over the Sermon on the
Mount ; you think over all his recorded discourses ;
and, with his life, his death, his glorious resurrec-
tion before your mind, you try to frame for your-
self the farewell of the Lord to his children on the
eve of his betrayal, his trial, condemnation, and
death. Vain the effort of the unsatisfied mind !
You even doubt whether those great discourses that
before filled your soul with such content might not
have been better spared than this which you so
much desire to hear. Nor can your earnest heart
be satisfied even with the manuscript of an Apostle,

UNITY OF THE EVANGELIAD. 365

until the thought comes to your mind that St.
Matthew could only have passed over what was so
precious because he knew that some one would co-
operate with him in the great work of making a
written memorial of the life of the Lord.

Years pass away, and then the Gospel penned by
Mark, and accredited by the last Epistle of St. Pe-
ter, becomes known to the Christian world. The
first disciple who comes thereafter journeying from
Babylon bears with him the precious scroll, a wel-
come offering to the Church in Alexandria. You
read the manuscript and find that, like St. Mat-
thew's, it passes over the ministry of the Lord in
Judea, and that it contains not those words which
your heart longs more and more to hear as life is
passing away.

At length the Christians of Alexandria are glad-
dened with the Gospel of St. Luke ; you unroll the
manuscript, and read with kindling eyes the opening
words, which promise to confirm that which is be-
lieved in all the Churches, and which seem to prom-
ise to you that the writer can and will supply what
the others have omitted. The opening of the Gos-
pel is glorious beyond your hopes. There is the
Evangel of the infancy, there are the memories
which the mother's heart had treasured up of the
birth of the Holy Child, the gift of the Blessed
Virgin to the Church. There are many things new
and precious. But even this Gospel is no less won-
drous in its silence than glorious in its fullness ;
for some reason leads St. Luke, as it had led St.
Mark and St. Matthew, to pass over in silence what

366 THOUGHTS ON THE HOLY GOSPELS.

the Lord did in Judea, and like them to pass over
in silence those words so long waited for in earnest
hope ; and again it seems to you that the only so-
lution of this mystery is that to some Apostle has
been intrusted the high duty of recording the sacred
life in Judea, and that to him also has been granted
the honor and blessing of prolonging in the Church
forever, the celestial music of those parting words
of the Saviour.

The years roll on until your hope begins to die.
You hardly think you will ever hear those words on
earth, and believe they exist for you only in the
record of things below the sun, that is treasured in
heaven. But at length the manuscript of the last
Apostle flies through the world. Christian Alex-
andria, crowding on the mole, greets afar on the sea
the welcome bark that brings one who, in his bo-
som, bears a scroll more precious than all the costly
freight which the galley is hurrying to the mart
with the speed of the wind and the strength of the
oar. The manuscript of the aged Apostle is un-
rolled in the Church of Alexandria. You listen to
that choral song, which flows as if from out the
infinite far realms, where Christ hath gone. Page
after page falls on the listening ear of the vast
throng; all and more than all you know of the
Lord in Judea is told as only by St. John it could
be told. The sacred record grows into full beauty
and perfection. At length the intense feeling of the
weeping throng deepens to an ecstasy of fear and
hope, and, amid all the uproar of the crowded mart,
whose living surges beat against the walls, the

UNITY OF THE EVANGELIAD. 367

hushed temple is still as a sepulcher as the reader
comes to the night of the solemn Sacrament, of
some of whose words but faintest echoes had
reached the Christian Church, and lo, at that mo-
ment when Matthew, Mark, and Luke hushed their
voices in reverential silence, the reader goes on re-
citing, " Let not your hearts be troubled : ye be-
lieve in God, believe also in me." With adoring
thankfulness, with wrapt wonder, you hear this un-
imagined word. The wisdom and mercy of God
hath at last given to man a record of his Son com-
plete beyond all fear, glorious beyond all hope.
You foreknow that every dying Christian will hear
the words, " Let not your heart be troubled : ye
believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's
house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place
for you." The work of the chosen Witnesses is at
last complete, and, like him who beheld the glory
of the Life of the Lord in its beginning, seeing the
full glory of its close, you say, " Lord, now lettest
thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation."

INDEX:

WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.

Those who consult the Index in this (as well as in my other
books) will find in short-hand, facts set forth there, rather than to
overburden the Text with notes ; or that, with the printed page
before me, yet seemed to be needed. Thus, for the Taxing under
Cyrenius, see the Title, Dates in the Gospels ; for the Time of the
Last Supper, Times and Seasons. See, also, Mary, the sister of
Lazarus ; St. Matthew, his Gospel ; Nain, and other Titles.

Aramean or Syro-Chaldaic Language. Called the Hebrew
tongue, Acts xxi, 40, xxii, 2 ; in use after the Captivity ; one of
the two languages spoken by Jews of Palestine at the Christian
era ; the mother tongue (Mark v, 41, xv, 34, Acts xxvi, 14) of
our Lord and his Disciples, 96, 97. The transference of the Gos-
pel from that tongue into Greek, 98 ; could have been so well
done only by Jews of Palestine, 99 ; this not disproved by the
style of St. Luke, 99. In that language St. Matthew first wrote ;
a trace of this, (xvi, 17,) see note, 278. Some years after he
translated his Gospel into Greek, 99, 193-195.

Baptism op Christ Jesus. Touches of difference in its descrip-
tions, 243 ; alluded to, though not described, by St. John, 241,
242 ; its privacy, 245 : John its sole witness, 245-247 ; was it the
full Beginning of the Ministry? 241, 245, 255, 261.

Bethany. Why St. Luke, x, 38, referred to it as "a certain vil-
lage," 182, 183. St. John's allusion to that verse, 188. That in
the search of Jerusalem (169) Bethany was included, is not only
probable in itself, but quite certain from the fact that, for some
religious purposes, the Rabbins held that suburb to be a part of
the Holy City.

Birth of our Lord. The silence of the inspired Evangelists con-
cerning the Day, 150-152.

Cana of Galilee. Silence of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as to

the miracles (John xi, I— II, iv, 46-54) there wrought, 219-222.

Two sites are claimed for this hamlet, one at Kefr Kenna, four

miles or so from Nazareth, the other at Kana el Ielil, eight miles.

24

370 INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.

Lieut. Conder ("Tent-work in Palestine") thinks "it far more
probable that Kenna, on the road to Tiberias, would be the place
twice visited by Christ, than the remote Kana, which is on no
man's road of travel." The sites were so near that this is of no
weight ; and that Kana was on no man's road of travel rather
strengthens the tradition (much the most ancient of the two) that
it was the place. Its name is strong evidence of it, and since the
time of Robinson it has been generally held to be so. It matters
little or nothing to my argument which of the sites is the true one
— the village, unnamed by Josephus or in the Talmud, was hum-
ble and obscure.

Capernaum. Silence of Matthew, Mark, and Luke concerning the
healing (John iv, 46-54) of a son of a nobleman of that city, 178,
219-222.

Dates in the Gospels. 150-158. The Birth of Christ, 150-152 ;
beginning of his Ministry, 154-156, 266, 267; Acts x, 34-37.
"Then Peter said, the word which God sent unto the children
of Israel, began from Galilee after the baptism which John
preached" Line fifth, 157, and line fourth, 151, require a word
concerning a parenthesis that has given rise to a learned, volumi-
nous, instructive, interesting, and, for the most part, irrelevant
debate. " In the days of Herod the king (Luke i, 5) it came to
pass that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all
the world should be taxed, (ii, 1, 2 ;) and this taxing was first made
when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria" Even in the rudest
taxation there are, I. The census or enrollment ; 2. The valuation
or assessment ; 3. The collection. In all languages the word
Taxation points to one or another of these stages of the process,
or to the whole process, as the case may be. If it were now writ-
ten that a Decree for Taxation went forth from the Emperor Na-
poleon III., and was carried out by President M'Mahon, change
of government and delay would be implied. St. Luke marks that
when the Decree went forth the grandest of monarchs, next to
Csesar, reigned in Jerusalem. His intense personality and dra-
matic history, his largesses to cities of Europe and Asia, the
feeling that he was the last of the great subject-kings of Rome,
and the length of his reign, made him, after Augustus, the most
striking figure and best-known man in the Roman world. The
crash of the great Herodian house — sonitum ruince auditum
Medis — resounded through the Roman world as through our world
the late crash of the Corsican Dynasty. Jerusalem was " far
the most illustrious city of Asia," (Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. v, 15 ;)

INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES. 371

then as now the Jews were every-where ; and then as now it
was felt by nu^riy that somehow the world's fate was bound up
with theirs. St. Luke, with the brief allusion, proper in a paren-
thesis, to things well known, points onward to the epoch eleven
years after Herod's death, when Augustus made Jerusalem a sub-
urb of Antioch, Judea a province of Syria, and sent into exile
the son of his ally and friend. If, with the three stages of Tax-
ation in mind, the parenthesis be read in the light of the
time, the long-drawn debate about it is seen to be out of all
proportion to the case, for its meaning becomes too plain for con-
troversy.

Family of Bethany. Mary and Martha, unnamed by Matthew
or Mark, and briefly noticed by Luke (x, 38) as living in " a cer-
tain village " — strangeness of this reserve as to the Family now of
all others in Judea the most thought of save that of our Lord ; the
use made of it to discredit the Gospels ; and its reason, 181, 182.
St. John's reference (xi, 10, n) to that verse of St. Luke, 188.
This is evidence of his thorough knowledge of this Gospel. Of
the intention of the chief priests to kill Lazarus at the time of
the Crucifixion, 171. Of the suppression of the name of Mary by
Matthew and Mark when describing what she did in the house
of Simon of Bethany, 183-188.

Fathers. "Worth of their evidence to the origin and authorship of
the Gospels, 70, 313, 314. Their universal testimony to St.
Peter's relation to the second Gospel, 313-315. Alford's mis-
take as to its nature and value, 313. Their testimony to St. Paul's
relation to the third Gospel less general, but decisive, 322-324.

Galilee. The people of, 122.

Greek Language. Spoken in Jerusalem and in all Palestine, 97.

Inspiration of the Gospels. Part I, chap, viii, pp. 134-146.

John the Baptist. Portraits of, 242 ; see also 254. Consistency
of his history, 243-245. Brought up in the desert, 244 ; see
also 159. His greatness, 247. His sole witness to the signs at
the Baptism, 245, 246. Never preached in Jerusalem, 254. The
introduction of his witness into the prelude to St. John's Gospel,
247-253. His last testimony, 267, 268. Of the continuance of
his proclamation after he knew that Jesus was the Messiah,
254-261. The causes of his imprisonment and murder. Did
the Pharisees have any thing to do with it ? 268-270.

John, St. Why chosen one of the apostolic Evangelists, no, 112,
124, 126. The long time that he took to meditate upon his Gos-
pel, 1 15, 116, 349, note. The thoroughness of the oral teaching

372 INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.

in all the Churches should be noted in this connection, as well as
that the other Gospels were every-where known. Tradition in
Eusebius as to the origin of his Gospel, 114, 115 ; in the Murato-
rian Catalogue, 349, note. His Gospel. Reasons why the min-
istry in Judea was assigned to John, 112, 123-126. Comment on
its earlier chapters, Part III, chaps, ii, iii, iv, pp. 240-287. His
relations with his old master, the Baptist, 242, 248, 249. Intro-
duction of his witness into the prelude to the Gospel, 247-253.
Its theme — the eternal Word manifest in the flesh, 350, 351. The
opening of his Gospel presupposes the revelations of the divinity
of the Lord in the other Gospels, 350. See also 249, 250, 251.
They prepare for the last Gospel, 345, 349, 350. St. John's method,
351, 352. His Gospel the completion of the Evangeliad, 354.
Looks more to the future than the other Gospels, 361.

Josephus. Character of his writings, 47-51.

Judea. Its isolation, 118. Feeling of the Jews in the days of the
Disciples, that of all Palestine only this district was then the
Holy Land, 118-121. See also 214, 216.

Justin Martyr. The exposure by Lightfoot, Westcott, Ezra
Abbot, and others of the uncritical handling in " Supernatural
Religion" of the references of Justin to our four Gospels has estab-
lished, beyond further controversy, conclusions to which judicious
scholars long since came : so far as required, these are stated,
104, 105. Justin speaks of St. Mark's Gospel as St. Peter's, 314.

Lazarus. Not named by Matthew, Mark, or Luke, 182. Strange-
ness of this and its reason, 181-183. Intent of the Jews to kill
Lazarus, 171. These verses of John xii, 9, 10, 11, should there
have been given : To Bethany much people " came not for Jesus'
sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had
raised from the dead. But the chief priests consulted that they
might put Lazarus also to death; because that by reason of him
many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus."

Luke, St. Careful as to dates, 151, 157. For his reference to
Cyrenius, see Dates. His relations with St. Paul, 333-335, 338,
341. His Gospel. Bearing upon its date of the fact that, like
St. Mark's, it was of equal authority with the two apostolic
Gospels, 61, 62. Its relations to the oral Gospel, 102, 92, 93 ;
also Part III, chap. i. Its place in the unfolding revelation, 296,
347-349. Difference between its tone and that of the first Gospel,
293-296, 347. Its description of the centurion compared with
St. Matthew's, 298-300. Witness of the Fathers that St. Luke
wrote out the Gospel taught by St. Paul, 322-324. Intent and

INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES. 373

meaning of its preface, 324-333. Why this Gospel was addressed
to Theophilus, 332. St. Paul's oral Gospel ascribed by that Apos-
tle to the Lord himself, 342-344. See I Cor. xi, 23 : there St.
Paul, relating the institution of the sacrament, says, " I received
of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you."

Mark, St. The time of his death uncertain, 316 — compare last
paragraph, 54, 55. His Gospel. That it did not bear the name
and was not written by one of the Apostles proof of its date, 61, 62.
Irenseus had this Gospel with its present ending ; and the recep-
tion of the whole by the congregation in his time is conclusive
evidence that as completed it had received apostolic sanction.
The Fathers universally bear witness to the fact that the second
Gospel is St. Peter's Gospel written out by St. Mark, 313. St.
Peter's allusion to this Gospel, 315. Its originating and other
motives, 297-307. Its witness to the Incarnation, 309-311. For
this Gospel, see 293, 297, 229, 346, 347.

Mary, the Sister of Lazarus. Her anointing of the Saviour,
(Matt, xxvi, 6-16; Mark xiv, 3-1 1 ; John, xii, 2-8,) 183-188.
This was in Bethany, which, in Luke x, 38, is "a village," ku/xtjv
TLva. He tells of an anointing, (vii, 36-50,) ev ttj tvoXel, "in the
city ;" that is, Capernaum. Every one has marked the recurrence,
in his own life or in the lives of others, of similar events. In the
history of the last hundred years similar events are frequent.
Twice a great war begins in April, on its 19th day, and with an
attack upon Massachusetts militia men ; twice a Bonaparte is the
first officer of a French republic ; twice such a one, by fraud and
force, becomes emperor ; twice there is sudden ruin ; twice, impris-
onment and death in exile ; and twice there is an only son. Yet,
when two thousand years are done, if then there be as now celeb-
rity-seeking men, they will prove such history is legendary. Of
the similar events in the life of Christ, not one in fifty is recorded.
There was little to distinguish the hundred healings of the sick,
the lame, and the blind. That Christ cleansed the Temple on his
first coming to Jerusalem, and again at his last coming, was as
natural as that the traders undid what he had done before.
Anointing was an Eastern usage. Each of the two anointings was
in the house of a man of as common a name as that of Smith ; and
to this striking similarity in the two cases another as remarkable
might be added — each was in the house of a man, and not of a
woman ! All else — the place, the persons, all that was said, all that
was done, was different. And when such spasmodic believers as
Schleiermacher confound these two anointings there is no escaping

374 INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.

the conviction that in this case they love darkness rather than
light.

Mary, the Mother of our Lord, 106, 365, 171, 172, 190; de-
cisive evidence of St. Matthew's caution for her safety, 191, 192.

Matthew, St. Chosen to write out the Gospel, 107 ; his large
comprehension of what was required of the earliest Evangelist,
289; reticence and other characteristics, in, 124; his portrait of
the centurion, 298-300 ; the wounding of Malchus, 229, 230 ; the
paying of the Temple tax, 232-234 ; his style as affected by
his reticence, in, 112, 233, 234, end of note; his characteristic
words, reason for them, 300, 301. His Gospel. Transferred
from Hebrew into Greek by the Apostle himself, 193-195 : the his-
toric element larger, and in it the Messianic prophecies more fully
verified, than in the second or the other Gospels, 289, yet see note,
354; compared with St. Luke's, 293-296; with St. John's, 288,
289, 271, 284, 294, 295 ; unity of his Gospel, 288, 235. The style
of St. Matthew's Gospel that of an eye-witness and its testimony
personal testimony of the highest kind, 298-301. Yet, echoing
many others, Godet says "the intuitive descriptive character is
altogether wanting" to his Gospel. He cites as evidence that
portrait of the centurion, so life-like that St. Petei passed the
centurion without a word ! Godet talks of the second editor of
St. Matthew's Gospel. He caught up this notion from skeptics
who bring that Gospel down as late as A. D. 130. His own dates
refute him : these are A. D. 60-63 for our Gospel, and 64 or 65
for the " Book of Discourses " imagined for St. Matthew. Where,
then, the time to have set the discourses in a frame of events ?
Who could have done a work so wonderful and have been utterly
unknown ? Would St. Matthew have put up with such interfer-
ence? Would the Church have let another masquerade in the
Apostle's clothes ? This after-feat of interweaving the words with
facts so as to make our Gospel is a sheer impossibility. This car-
rying back and misapplying a later method, this fancying that any"
Disciple ever thought of editing his Master's words apart from his
acts, is ridiculous. That a Gospel of such oneness in conception
and execution can be a patched up thing, made over and mended,
whether by "a second editor" or by many, (see note, 313,) is as
silly a critical notion as I ever met with! Godet's facile mind also
sets aside the decision of the Church as to St. Peter's Second
Epistle; and faith must dispense with the help of such unquiet
people, who, in trying to defend it, throw away that for which
there can be no compensation.

INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES. 375

MURATORIAN CATALOGUE, 323.

Nain, the Raising of the Widow's Son, 86; why passed over
by Matthew and Mark, 228. A paragraph for 335, line 29, car-
rying out the argument in chap, i, Part III, by some oversight of
mine, was not sent to the printers, and is here given in brief.
Though the Apostles in their oral Gospel, and the other Evangel-
ists, showed their confidence in the evidence set forth of their
Lord's divinity by giving but one manifestation of his power over
the grave, St. Luke may have thought that if only the one mani-
festation of that power in the two previously written Gospels were
given by him, its visible exercise might be left too dependent upon
a single illustration of it — and yet, from the point of view whence
we looked at the fifteen miracles, (chap, i, Part III,) the recital of
the miracle at Nain is seen to be related to the message the Baptist
sent from his prison at Machasrus, on the other side of the Jordan.
That message, with the reply and with what was said to the peo-
ple in consequence of the message, are a long consecutive recital.
I do not think the miracle was recorded solely or chiefly because
of this, yet these verses show the natural and close relation between
the two. " He that was dead sat up and began to speak — and
this rumor went throughout all Judea and throughout all the re-
gion roundabout, and the disciples of John showed him all of these
things, and John calling two of his disciples sent them to Jesus."
Luke vii, 15-18.

Names in the Evangeliad, 176-178, 230, 231. In the course of
the argument, chap, ii, Part III, it should have been said that the
brethren of our Lord " did not believe in him," (John vii, 5,) and
that this may have had something to do with St. Matthew's nam-
ing " James, Joses, Simon, and Judas." xiii, 55.

Nazareth. A reason suggested for its evil name, 217.

Papias, A. D. 140, wrote a comment on our Gospels, and interwove
traditions with it. Of this lost book Eusebius gives a few debated
sentences. Papias speaks of the Xoyia, (sacred oracles, of Mat-
thew;) skeptics and others have mistaken this for loyoi, discourses.
In Rom. iii, 2, and Heb. v, 12, the term is used for the Hebrew
Scriptures, and it merely shows that Papias held the Scripture of
Matthew to be inspired. Our Gospels are like no other writings,
and such the peculiarity of their structure and origin, and so dif-
ferent the classes to whom they had to be described, that they
could hardly have had at once a common and exclusive name for
them. Hence their several names in Justin. The conjecture that
Matthew compiled a " Book of Discourses " grew out of that

376 INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.

blunder as to Papias' tejrm, (loyia.) His comment was in five
parts ; the discourses on the earliest Gospel can be arranged in
five classes, and in this, confirmation of the conjecture was found ;
but had Papias* comment been in six or seven parts, (as the
" Discourses " can be put in as many classes,) the argument from
this striking coincidence would be as good as now — that is, good
for nothing. • Papias also says that Matthew wrote in Hebrew;
and the same persons understand him to say further that every one
translates him as he best can ; and their inference is, that in his
time there was no Gospel of Matthew in, Greek. What Papias
did say was, that there had been a time when each one had to
translate what Matthew wrote in Aramean as he could — a needless
and shallow remark touching what was written in the provincial
tongue of a district not larger than Wales, that suits well with
Eusebius' poor opinion of the worthy antiquarian's capacity. No
one cared to preserve Papias' stories merely for their own sake,
much as he thought of them ; but Eusebius alludes to one about
" a woman accused of many sins," and, with a positiveness equal
to the vagueness of this statement, she is now taken to be the
woman accused of one. John viii, i-ii. St. Augustine gives the
reason why some ancient versions and manuscripts of the last
Gospel left that paragraph out. It is becoming the fashion to
treat that paragraph as not belonging to John's Gospel ; but here-
tofore critical opinion has been very evenly balanced on that
point. And now Wordsworth, while rejecting it, says, " The ex-
ternal evidence for it is strong, the internal evidence rather in its
favor, and it is coherent with what precedes."
Peter, St. His descriptive powers contrasted with those of St.
Matthew, 301-306. His reticence as to things personal, 304, and
see note. His Gospel. The second Gospel cited as his by
Justin, 314. Known as such by Tertullian, Irengeus, Jerome,
and other Fathers, 313, 314. Originating motive of that Gospel,
297-307. Other motives, 307. Its witness to the Incarnation,

309-313.

Petronius. — Story of, 119, 120. Josephus, Bell. Jud. xi, 10.

Plato, Philo, and St. John, 251-253.

Praying of our Lord, 243.

Scriptures Explained. The seeming contradiction of Matt, viii, 7
and Luke vii, 6 as to the presence of the centurion. Sewall's rec-
onciliation of the two, 298 ; the difference between Matt, viii, 28,
as to the place of the cure of the demoniacs, ' ' the country of the
Gergesenes," and Mark v, 1, Luke viii, 26, "of the Gadarenes,"

INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES. 377

note, 122 ; see also note, 320 ; John vii, 8, " I go not up to the
feast," and 10, "then went He up unto the feast," 285, 286.

Second Chapter of St. Matthew. Its historic and geographic
terms, 152-154. I would here preserve the judgments of three
scholars (as published in daily journals over their own names)
concerning the Discussion of those terms in "The Wise Men" —
that of Charles H. Brigham, Professor of Ecclesiastical History ;
Tayler Lewis, Professor of Greek in Union College ; and Howard
Crosby, author of a Greek Grammar, Chancellor of the University
of New York. Professor Brigham said, " The Discussion of the
meaning of the word avaroXuv, is exceedingly close and ingenious.
If patient pleading and the collation of historic and archaeological
facts can establish so nice a proposition, an excellent prima facie
case has certainly been made out." Dr. Lewis said, " The disser-
tation on the East and the Far East is important, clear, and I
think accurate." Dr. Crosby said, "In a very masterly and con-
vincing manner the author shows that the plural and singular
avarakdv and avaroJir} conform to the Hebrew Mizrach and Ke-
dem and are the Far-East and the East, and that these were to
the Jews of Matthew's day geographical designations, represent-
ing the Medo-Persian country, and Babylonia."

Son of God, 309, note. The omission of those words (Mark i)
from Davidson's " New Testament " led to that note, whose tone
is not warranted by the facts, as the manuscripts almost universal-
ly have those words, and as he follows the Sinaitic manuscript,
which (it seems to be agreed) is carelessly written.

Stephen, St. His argument, 166. This martyr the forerunner of
Paul, 166. The persecution that began with his trial ; its charac-
ter and motive, 164-172.

Style of the Evangelists, 147-149.

Times and Seasons. As to the day of the Last Supper there is
much discussion ; yet, so far from leaving it uncertain, all the
Evangelists fix the day by the term napaoicevT/, the Preparation
Day. Matt, xxvii, 62, Mark xv, 42, Luke xxiii, 54, John xix, 14, 31.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke also fix it as the day of unleavened
bread (xxvi, 17, xiv, 12, xxii, 7); Mark and Luke also, as the day
when, according to the law, the Paschal Lamb must be slain, that
is, the 14th day of the month Nisan. Each and all so fix the day
as to confirm what is said 150, 157, 158, of their carefulness as to
Times and Seasons. When the sun of the 13th day had set, then
the 14th day began, and then our Lord gave the order to make
ready the Passover. It was kept by Him on the evening thus

378 INDEX: WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.

belonging to the 14th day. It was kept by the Jews on the evening
of the 15th day. The last fact is certain from each of the earlier
Gospels, when read with the knowledge of the Jewish calendar,
which their writers reasonably looked for, or give in their own
words ; yet to modern readers that fact comes out unmistakably,
only in the Gospel of St. John. It there so incidentally comes out.
that evidently St. John is not aware of any variance between the
earlier Gospels and his own ; and as he does not feel that there
is a variance, there can be none. The debate has arisen out of
the idea that the time-law of the festival was more rigorously ob-
served than it can have been. With no record of the fact, it is as
certain as if it were of record, that at one point the letter of the
law was set aside. It was not possible to keep the law that the
Paschal Lamb must be slain between the hours of three and five
on the 14th day; and the killing in the Temple of the 260,000
lambs needed for the great feast of all Israel in Jerusalem must
have been going on for days before the 14th. There must have
been other departures from the legal times, that were exceptional.
If some family were called home before the eve of the 15th, (the
slain lamb could be had,) and no doubt they ate their Passover be-
fore they went. If some aged man who had dragged himself to
the Holy City lay at the point of death and desired to eat his last
Passover, there must have been the good sense and the good feel-
ing to grant his pious wish by anticipating the time ; and the more
readily, since the time-law, set aside by common consent as to one
point, was loosened as to all others. The family of Jesus kept
their Passover before the others. Nothing is said of a Paschal
Lamb at their table ; but our Lord called that supper a Passover.
He changed it into the Sacrament ; and the events of that day are
parts of one whole. The Lord Jesus is the sacrifice — the Paschal
Lamb foretold, (1 Cor. v, 7.) At the beginning of that 14th day
our Lord revealed himself to his own family as the Lamb of God,
whose flesh and blood is the life of the soul, and before that day
was done, He revealed himself to all the world as the Lamb slain
for the sin of the world. On that 14th day of the month Nisan,
the day for the slaying of the Paschal Lamb, He transformed the
Passover into the Sacrament ; on that same day he was slain, and
the typical prophetic Jewish Passover ended forever.

Unbelief. Disqualifies for sacred criticism, 77. Worthlessness of
the skeptical writings concerning the Scriptures, 78.

Verbal Coincidences in the Gospels, 42.

Writing out of the Gospels, 44.

WHO THEY WERE, AND HOW THEY CAME TO
JERUSALEM.

By FRANCIS W. UPHAM, LL.D.
i2mo, pp. 258. Price, $1.

In his admirable "Life of Jesus," Dr. Deems makes this
frankly honorable and noteworthy statement : " This book is
the first successful attempt that I have seen to clear up this
pilgrimage. After reading it I canceled what I had before
written on the subject."

British Quarterly Review, No. CXIX, July, 1874.

The subject is surrounded with grave difficulties, and de-
mands candid, careful, and thorough examination. Without
these the character of the Magi, the country from which they
came, the inducements under which they acted, the reception
they experienced at the hands of Herod, cannot be appreciated
or understood. On all these questions Dr. Upham has be-
stowed an examination at once thorough and scholarly, has re-
moved all difficulty, and has invested the whole subject with
singular interest. In no instance that we recollect has the visit
of the magi been so luminously investigated, or so completely
substantiated as a part of the divine history. The volume has
our earnest commendation.

The Presbyterian Review.

We trust Dr. Upham will work on in the same rich vein of
scriptural investigation, and thus lay the Christian public under
yet greater obligations.

Hartford Evening Post.

If a pot of old coin is dug up in the ruins of some forsaken city,
the telegraphic wires quiver round the world announcing the
great discovery ; but here is a discovery of quite another kind —
the solution of a historical and religious mystery ! We recall
our childish impressions of this pilgrimage — our mature ideas
were not much better. We recall our very picture of the magi ;
of the bowed forms of three giant-like old men ; men of little
account ; a sort of fakirs or fortune-tellers, wandering from a
great but indefinite distance ; lonely, humble, tattered, and for-
lorn ; in their long, dusty, graceless, and travel-stained gowns,
turbaned and sandaled ; wandering, they knew not whither, to
find the King of the Jews. Who were they? Whence came
they ? How could they learn of the King of the Jews by a star?
and what was the King of the Jews to them ? This strange
bewildering tale, of a pilgrimage so improbable, so without any
intelligible cause, of strangers from a far-off land who could
know nothing of Christ — how could all this be? With such
thoughts we took up the answer to the question, Who were the
Wise Men ?

It is seldom that learned people take the trouble to bring
things within the comprehension of the people, but this is a
book for the people, and they feel this magnetically. It does
not lower the subject down, it lifts the reader up to it. Its sen-
tences are like new coins just struck from the mint. The style
flows like a swift river, deep and full, yet clear as crystal. Any
one can see the thought, yet it is often so deep that the longer
it is looked into the deeper it seems. A third or fourth reading
brings out something new. What the writer seeks to prove
comes out point by point till nothing is left to ask for. No
shadow of doubt remains. In the light of this unique book we
read the thrilling story of the Wise Men as we never read it
before ; and in the still night we look with new wonder and
awe into the blue depths above, and wish we knew which of all
these glittering orbs was the one created " to herald through
all worlds and date through all time " the advent of Him who
was the Maker of all the worlds.

gT$f{ 0$ OUf( I<Of(f):

•OR, CHRIST JESUS, KING OF ALL WORLDS, BOTH OF TIME OR SPACE,
WITH THOUGHTS ON INSPIRATION, AND THE ASTRO-
NOMIC DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.

By FRANCIS W. UPHAM, LL.D.
i2mo, pp. 357. Price, $1 50.

The author of this volume is a brother of Professor Thomas
C. Upham, of Bowdoin College, so dear, for a quarter of a
century, to the successive classes in that institution. He has
many of the characteristics of his eminent brother: a shrinking
modesty , a beautiful and fervent faith ; a scholarship as exact
as it is full ; a marvelous patience in investigation ; a quaint,
refined, and exquisite style; and a most noble spirituality of
tone and thought. A few years ago Dr. Upham published a
book about the Wise Men that surprised even those who were
wonted to such researches. It was the porch to this inner sanct-
uary. And the comparison of a sanctuary is fit and accurate
in describing this volume. In all its argument, in all its de-
scription, in its array of facts, in the current of musing, it is
profoundly religious. It is a book all full of belief. The relig-
iousness is real, in the soul of the book more than in its phrases,
in the swell of the sea on which this bark of discovery rides.
A book like this, in our critical, doubting time, when Ortho-
doxy is so wavering, and so many hardly know what they be-
lieve or where they stand — a book so sweet, fervent, rapf in its
vision of heavenly things, which is so high and deep in its
thought — is delight and refreshment. It is original enough in
its proposition and its conclusion, even by its title-page, to
be classed with books of sensation. But it belongs, in reality,

to a very different class, to the class of which only elect souls
see all the meaning and truth, and which teach continually,
as their musical sentences linger in the memory. — The late
Charles H. Brigham, (Unitarian,) Proj 'essor of Ecclesias-
tical History.

No Greek or Hindu legend could have been so historically,
cleared, so explained, so exhibited in harmony with the highest
human thought. In this there is no compromise, not the least
ground for any suspicion of Dr. Upham's own orthodoxy. A
great salvation from a great and fearful perdition, secured alone
by the expiatory death of a great and divine Saviour, who is
the Head of the Church, the Life of the Church, being at the
same time the Lord of the Universe, and the indwelling
Word or Life of Nature itself— this is the great idea that
runs through these books. The writer presents it with un-
flinching boldness. It is this fearless and at the same time
most candid treatment of suppressed difficulties that entitles
these works to our admiration. The term is used advisedly.
There are such statements in the Bible, explicit narrations, the
consideration of which may thus be said to be in a measure
suppressed on account of their supposed difficulty. Such meet
us in the beginning of Genesis and of Matthew. Unreliability
in these places is unreliability every-where. Yet both of these
parts of the Bible have been strangely neglected so far as any
searching examination of them is concerned.

The difficulty in the story of the Wise Men and of the Guid-
ing Star has been encountered by Dr. Upham with a fidelity, a
clearness, and a vigor we have seen manifested no where else.
He aims to prove, and most readers will be convinced that he does
prove, the authentic verity of the narration. Among the things
made clear, settled, we think, beyond controversion, is the con-
nection of the Star with the prophecy of Balaam. The effect
of it upon the mind of the reader is as convincing as it is start-
ling and impressive. The old wonder makes credible th( later
prodigy. The eloquent exposition so lifts us into the supernat-
ural sphere that it becomes natural, if we may use such a seem-
ing paradox. In close connection with these prophetic wonders
is the learned and satisfactory disquisition given in "The Wise

Men," on the religion of the ancient Persians, and its connec-
tion with primitive revelation. The Bible, a world book, even
in its most ancient parts — such is the impression we get from
the whole compass of this admirably managed argument — the
Bible, a wonderous book, with awonderous harmony, revealing,
even in its most unpretending parts, a wonderous power of
which the careless reader has little or no conception. The
best argument for the divinity of the Scripture comes from
such expositions as these, showing it to be indeed a field of
buried treasure. This is strongly felt in reading Dr. Upham's
masterly exposition of the Eighth Psalm. The objection to the
Scriptures drawn from what is called the astronomical argu-
ment is the one from which we most shrink. All other natu-
ralistic difficulties combined fall short of the appeal it makes
to the imagination. We have nowhere seen this so well met as
in the bold yet most fair and truthful argument devoted to it in
this book.

Along with it there is a dwelling upon the doctrine of the
Logos in nature, as well as in grace ; a doctrine so unmistakably
announced in the Scriptures old and new, yet so little heeded.
We are thus led to the climax of the book : Christ the Lord of
the worlds, his kingdom extending beyond the earth, having mys-
teries which pertain to thrones, dominions, principalities, and
powers, as well as to the human sphere. Thoughts like these
certainly show themselves in the Scriptures, but the consideration
of them is suppressed. We shrink from the difficulties they sug-
gest. Dr. Upham meets them — meets them fairly, candidly — ■
meets them, we think, triumphantly. Sometimes we hesitate
in following him. We fear it may be only the fascination of his
style and of his enthusiasm that carries us away. But there
they are, plainly visible in the Scripture, the views for which
he contends ; and if we cannot resist the conviction that he is
rightly employing its evidence, we are compelled to admit the
power of his argument. — Tayler Lewis, author of the " Six
Days of Creation."

Dr. Upham's new work abounds in sublimities and beauties,
that mark him a poet as well as a careful student of the pages
of history and revelation. His view of the confusion of tongues.

(i3,) his description of Balaam and Abraham, (21-26,) his story
of Jacob's funeral, (29,) his defense of the Guiding Star,
(115, 116,) and his notice of Sennacherib, (135-140,) may be
mentioned as some of the passages that exhibit his mingled
powers of poetry and research. He considers the star which
guided the Magi to have been a real star, perhaps the centn.l
star around which the material universe revolves, whose light
first touched the earth at the time of our Saviour's birth, and
whose guiding power from Jerusalem to Bethlehem was exer-
cised through refraction, or some other natural law miracu-
lously appointed for the purpose. The idea is certainly a most
sublime one. that God should cause his grandest orb of glory
to shine upon our sin-stricken earth, just as he caused his Son
to appear upon it for man's salvation. We cannot here repeat
or review Dr. Upham's arguments for his position, but can
urge them as most interesting and weighty upon the attention
of all. But whatever be the opinion of readers regarding the
theory proposed, the book has excellences wholly apart from
this. The part entitled " The Astronomic Doubt as to Chris-
tianity," is itself a treatise of great value; and the exposition of
the Eighth Psalm, occurring in it, is a specimen of the highest
and truest style of exegesis. His thoughts on the death of the
children at Bethlehem, and his argument thence to the salva-
tion of all infants, are novel and conclusive. But we cannot
emphasize one part of the book above another. It is full of
profound and original thought. It is a rich and precious
contribution to the literature of a true Christianity. — Howard
Crosby, D.D., LL.D., Chancellor of the University of New
York.