draw up in as complete and consecutive a form as possible an account of the main facts regarding Christ's person and work, by reference to the most authentic and reliable sources of information. His missionary travels with Paul would afford excellent opportunities for collecting such information. In particular, the two years which he seems to have spent in Cæsarea during Paul's detention by Felix, where he was within two days' journey of the shores of Lake Gennesaret, the scene of many incidents in our Lord's ministry, would enable him to obtain at first hand, from brethren who had been eye-witnesses, many of those narratives which are only to be found in this Gospel.1 His high Christian character gave him a moral fitness for the work, while his culture and the love of accuracy manifest in his historical and topographical allusions,2 marked him out as a suitable instrument in the hands of Providence for writing the Gospel story in a form as well adapted for the philosophical Greeks as Matthew's Gospel was to be for the theocratic Jews and Mark's for the practical Romans.3

2. Date of Composition.

The date of its composition is uncertain. It may have been as early as 60 A.D., at the close of the two years which Luke spent with Paul at Cæsarea; or it may possibly have been during Paul's imprisonment at Rome,

1 No doubt sometimes delivered orally and sometimes in the form of a written narrative, as indicated in i. 1. Hence the contrast between the Aramaic style of the Gospel generally (and of the earlier part of the Book of Acts) and the classical Greek of Luke's own opening dedication. His informant with regard to the Saviour's infancy and childhood may have been no other than Mary herself.

2 e.g. in giving dates (ii. 2, iii. 1-3) and in the mention of our Saviour's age when He began His public ministry (iii. 23). But see p. 80 (on the Book of Acts): The man who in the anxiety and weariness of a tempestuous voyage,

61-63 A.D., or even some years later; but in any case anterior to the Book of Acts, as the preface to the latter implies.1

3. Character and Contents.

If St. Matthew's Gospel may be styled the Messianic Gospel and St. Mark's the realistic Gospel, St. Luke's may be fitly described as the catholic Gospel foreshadowing the expansion of God's kingdom in the future as the first Gospel reflects its history in the past, and the second describes its energy in the present. It is not only more comprehensive in its range, beginning with the birth of the Forerunner and ending with an account of the Ascension, but it also brings out more fully the breadth of Christ's sympathy and the fulness and freeness of His love. In illustration of this we may note the following points: (1) The Gospel of Luke traces Christ's genealogy, not, as Matthew's does, by the legal line to Abraham, the head of the Jews, but by the natural line to Adam, the head of humanity,-forming thus a fit introduction to the life of Him who was to be the KinsmanRedeemer of the whole human family.3 (2) It exhibits more clearly the reality of Christ's humanity in the various

1 The broad distinction which St Luke makes (alone of the evangelists) between the approaching destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world (e.g. "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," xxi. 24) has led many to assign to this Gospel a date subsequent to 70 A.D. But in the midst of the allusions to national disaster there occur words of far larger import (e.g. xxi. 27: "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory"). Luke's express object was to write "in order"; and in his greater clearness and precision on this subject as compared with St Matthew we may reasonably hold that we have only another illustration of the fact already referred to, that while Matthew combines words uttered on several different occasions, Luke reports them in their individual form

and setting. Besides, if Luke's Gospel had been written considerably later than the two other Synoptics, it could scarcely have failed to afford evidence of the writer's acquaintance with them.

2 No information is given with regard to either of these events in any of the other Gospels, except the bare allusion to the Ascension in the disputed passage of Mark (xvi. 19): "So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God."

the

3 iii. 38: ". the son of Adam, the son of God"; Matt. i. 1: 66 son of David, the son of Abraham.' Cf. ii. 30, 31: "Thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples." iii. 6: "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God"-a part of Isaiah's prophecy (chap. xl.) not quoted by Matthew (iii. 3) or Mark (i. 3).

stages of human life,1 and brings into special prominence His dependence upon God in the great crises of His life, when He had recourse to Him in prayer, while it inculcates earnestness in prayer by two parables peculiar to itself.3 (3) In keeping with this view of it as the gospel of humanity, we find that it represents Christ's teaching not so much in its theocratic as in its human aspects its usual formula in the introduction of a parable being not "the kingdom of heaven is like," as in Matthew's, but "a certain man made a great supper," "a certain man had two sons," &c. (4) It represents Christ as far-reaching in His sympathies, full of compassion for the poor, the weak, the suffering, and ready to forgive the chief of sinners. It is in this Gospel we find the parables of The Rich Man and Lazarus, The Pharisee and Publican, the Prodigal Son, and the two Debtors. It is here we find a record of Christ's visit to the house of Zacchæus the publican, of His gracious reception of the woman that was a sinner, of His prayer for His murderers, and of His promise of Paradise to the penitent malefactor. It is here we find the touching story of the raising to life of the young man at the gate of Nain, who was "the only son of his mother, and she was a widow"; it is here we are told that Jairus' daughter, whom Christ restored to life, was an only daughter"; it is here we learn that the demoniac boy whom He healed at the foot

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1 ii. 4-7 (His birth); 21 (circumcision); 22 (presentation in the temple); 40 (childhood, "and the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom"); 42 (first Passover as a son of the Law); 51 (submission to parents, he was subject unto them "); 52 ("Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men "); iii. 23 (full maturity, "and Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years of age"). But for Luke the first thirty years of our Lord's life would be an entire blank-with the exception of the incidents of His infancy recorded by Matthew.

2 iii. 21 (at His baptism); vi. 12, 13 (before choosing His apostles); ix. 28, 29 (at His transfiguration); xxiii. 34, 46 (prayer for His murderers, and commending of His spirit into His Father's hands).

3 xi. 5-13 (the appeal to friend at midnight); xviii. 1-8 (the importunate widow).

4 xiv. 16; xv. 11, &c.

5 xvi. 19; xviii. 9; xv. 11; vii. 41-43 6 xix. 1; vii. 37; xxiii. 43.

7 vii. II.

8 viii. 42.

of the Mount of Transfiguration was an "only child." 1 (5) It is the Gospel of toleration and large-heartedness, embracing within the range of its sympathy the Samaritan, the Gentile, the poor, the very young, this being the only Gospel that tells us that the children brought to Jesus were "babes "5-and the weaker, and up to that time less-honoured, sex.

It is no accident, therefore, that the words "Saviour," "salvation," "grace," occur more frequently in this than in any other Gospel; it is no accident that it represents the Saviour's birth as heralded by angels to shepherds watching their flocks by night,2 and His ministry as opening in a despised village of Galilee with the gracious words of the evangelic prophet, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor "; it is no accident that as its first chapters resound with the voice of praise and thanksgiving for the birth of the Saviour, its closing verses tell of the disciples' joy as they returned to Jerusalem with the blessing of the Ascended Saviour resting on their heads, to be "continually in the temple, blessing God": - it is because this Gospel from first to last tells the "good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people," 4 and proclaims a Saviour who is to be "a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of (Thy people) Israel" 5-in whose name "repentance and remission of sins should be preached unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem." Luke is indeed the most evangelical of all the evangelists, and as such he has fitly preserved for us the first precious germs of Christian hymnology, which, after eighteen centuries, are. still prized as an aid to worship by almost all sections of the Christian Church, viz., the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Nunc Dimittis.7

1 None of these words (σωτήρ, σωτηρία, χάρις) is found in either of the other Synoptics. The first occurs twice in Luke, once in John; the second four times in Luke, once in John; the third eight times in Luke, and three times in John.

2 ii. 8-14. The ministry of angels both to Christ and to His people is more prominent in this than in any other Gospel; the same feature is noticeable in the Book of Acts, in which angels are mentioned twenty-two times.

3 iv. 18 (at Nazareth).

4 ii. 1o (the angel's message to the shepherds).

ii. 32 (Simeon's prophecy).

6 xxiv. 47 (words spoken by Christ before His ascension).

7 i. 46-55 ("And Mary said-My soul doth magnify the Lord." &c.); i. 67-79 ("Zacharias. prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel," &c.; ii. 13; "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest," &c.; ii. 28-32, "he (Simeon) received him into his arms, and blessed God, and said, Now lettest thou thy servant depart, O Lord," &c.