catechists to assist them in the work. In preaching to the heathen, it would only be the leading facts of Christ's life that would require to be proclaimed, but in the instruction of those who had already accepted the message of salvation it would be necessary to go more into detail, and set Christ before them as a guide and pattern in their daily life. This instruction was doubtless given in an oral form, the scholars repeating the lesson again and again after their teachers—which is the meaning of the word "instructed "1 in Luke i. 4. We have another trace of such systematic instruction in the expression used in Acts ii. 42: "They" (the converts) "continued stedfastly in the apostles' teaching."

The history of Christ's life and teaching was thus originally set forth not in the form of a chronological narrative but rather as a series of lessons imparted by the apostles and their fellow - labourers as occasion required, or "to meet the needs of their hearers," as one of the early Church Fathers (Papias) says, referring to Peter's style of preaching. During the twelve years or more that elapsed before the dispersion of the apostles from Jerusalem, a recognised course of instruction had doubtless gained currency in the Church, corresponding to St. Peter's definition of the period in the life of Christ which was the proper subject for apostolic testimony-" Beginning from the baptism of John unto the day that he (Jesus) was received up from us (Acts i. 22). With this agree the specimens of apostolic preaching contained in the Book of Acts (iv. 19, 20; x. 36-43; xiii. 23-31), as well as the allusions which the apostles make in their epistles to the Gospel preached by them and the knowledge of Christ's life acquired by their converts. A close examination of such passages makes it evident that, while Christ Jesus was the constant theme of the apostles' preaching, they dwelt chiefly on the great facts that formed the consummation of His ministry-His sufferings, death, and resurrection; and we may regard it

1 Taught by word of mouth by dint of repetition.

as an evidence of the faithfulness with which our Gospels reflect the earliest preaching and teaching of the apostles, that they give such prominence to the closing scenes of our Lord's history. We have another token of their authenticity in the fact that they narrate events not in the light shed upon them by the subsequent teaching of the Spirit, but as they were actually regarded by the disciples at the time of their occurrence, long before the publication of the Gospels.

It would seem that before our Gospels were composed, attempts had been made by private persons to draw up a connected history of the Saviour's life, or at least of His ministry. Such attempts are referred to by St. Luke in the preface to his Gospel (i. 1-4). It is evident that he is alluding to other documents than the Gospels we possess, both because he speaks of them as many, ," in a tone scarcely consistent with the respect due to apostolic records, and because a comparison of the four Gospels leads to the conclusion that he could not have had any of the three others before him when he drew up his narrative. Whatever part the previously-existing documents referred to by Luke may have had in determining the shape in which the oral Gospel was finally to be recorded, all of them were ultimately superseded by our present Gospels, in whose preservation and triumph we may see an illustration, in the highest sense, of "the survival of the fittest."

Their Diversity.—On a comparison of the several Gospels, a marked difference is at once apparent between the fourth and the three preceding ones. The latter are called Synoptical, because they give in one common view the same general outline of the ministry of Christ -an outline that is almost entirely confined to His ministry in Galilee and includes only one visit to Jerusalem; whereas the fourth Gospel gives an account of no less than five visits to the capital, and lays the scene of the ministry chiefly in Judæa. A still more important distinction between them, with regard to the nature of their contents, has been briefly expressed by

designating the synoptical Gospels as the bodily Gospels, and St. John's as the spiritual Gospel-by which it is meant that the former relate chiefly to outward events connected with the Saviour's visible presence, reported for the most part without note or comment, while the latter is designed to represent the ideal and heavenly side of His personality and work. Akin to this distinction is the fact that the first three Gospels report Christ's addresses to the multitude, consisting largely of parables, while the fourth Gospel contains discourses of a more sublime character, frequently expressed in the language of allegory and addressed to the inner circle of His followers.

When we enter into a closer examination of the three synoptic Gospels and compare them with one another, we find an amount of similarity in detail, extending even to minute expressions and the connection of individual incidents, combined with a diversity of diction, arrangement, and contents, which it has hitherto baffled the ingenuity of critics to explain fully. A general idea of their mutual relations may be gathered from the following comparison. If the contents of each Gospel be reckoned 100, the relative proportion of those things in which a Gospel agrees with one or other of its fellows to those things in which it stands alone would be as follows:

It is found that the coincidences in language are much fewer than they are in substance-which is only what might have been expected, if the several accounts are derived from independent witnesses. Reckoning the material coincidences in St. Matthew to be 58 as above, the verbal coincidences would only amount to 16 or 17; in St. Mark the former would be 93 as compared with 17 of the latter; in St. Luke 41 as compared with It further appears that by far the greater number of

IO.

these verbal coincidences are met with in the report of
our Lord's discourses and other sayings, a circumstance
which confirms us in the belief that the Gospel was
handed down for a number of years in an oral form,
as the preachers and teachers would feel bound to
adhere strictly to the very words in cases of reported
speech, whereas they would be under no such obligation
in the narration of events. As regards the latter, a
considerable modification of the oral Gospel would natur-
ally take place during the long period that elapsed before
it was committed to writing. The modification would
vary in different parts of the Church; and it is in this
way, as well as by taking into account the possibilities of
fresh lessons being added from time to time by those who
had been “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word"
(Luke i. 2), that we can best account for differences, both
in expression and in substance, which would otherwise
seem unaccountable. If the apostles' teaching was
originally given in Aramaic—the form of Hebrew then
spoken in Palestine-and had to be translated into Greek
by the catechists, this would help still further to account
for the diversity we meet with in the Gospels.

Their Harmony.-It is possible that further study and investigation may shed more light on the historical and literary relations of the four Gospels, but meantime it is clear that the true way to discern their harmony is not to attempt to piece them together in the vain hope of forming a complete chronological history, but to study each from its own point of view and learn from it what it has to teach concerning the many-sided life and character of Jesus Christ. No one Gospel could possibly do justice to the infinite significance of the great theme; and instead of causing perplexity, the existence of four different Gospels should rather be matter of thankfulness, as setting Christ before us in so many different aspects of His divinely human personality, much in the same way as various portions of the Old Testament set Him forth prophetically under the several aspects of prophet, priest, lawgiver, and king.

From the nature of the case, the Gospels are necessarily fragmentary, as indicated by St. John when he says "there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written" (xxi. 25). The same writer gives us a key to the interpretation of his Gospel when he says, "These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye may have life in his name " (xx. 31). In like manner each of the other Gospels, while historical in its character, is animated by a special purpose of its own with its appropriate grouping and selection of events. Owing to the frequent change of scene and audience in Christ's ministry, the historical sequence could not be strictly adhered to by any one desirous to trace, from any point of view, the progress of His teaching. At the same time, there was a gradual development in Christ's ministry, culminating in His death, resurrection, and ascension; and this gradual advance we find reflected in each of the four Gospels.

Unity amid diversity,—this is what we have to look for in the Gospels, as in the Scriptures generally; and of this we have a token in the time-honoured fancy of the Church, by which the four Gospels are likened to the four-visaged cherubim, having the faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. This comparison has been variously applied, but the interpretation followed in modern works of art, after St. Jerome, identifies the four faces with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John respectively, as setting forth the human, the conquering, the sacrificial, and the heaven-regarding aspects of Christ's being. We shall probably be nearer the truth, however, if we say that while the first Gospel sets forth Christ's life and teaching with reference to the past, as the fulfilment of the Old Testament, the Gospel of Mark exhibits that life in the present as a manifestation of the activity and power so congenial to the Roman mind; St. Luke, as a Greek, depicts it in its catholic and comprehensive character, as destined in the future