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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 eyewitnesses, many of those narratives which are only to be found in this Gospel. 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, 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.

Its Date. 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, 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.

Its 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 like Matthew's by the legal line to Abraham the head of the Jews, but by the natural line to Adam, the head of humanity (iii. 38), forming thus a fit introduction

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to the life of Him who was to be the KinsmanRedeemer of the whole human family. (2) It exhibits more clearly the reality of Christ's humanity in all the stages of human life (ii. 4-7, 21, 22, 40, 42, 51, 52; iii. 23), bringing into prominence more especially His dependence upon God in the great crises of His life, when He had recourse to Him in prayer (iii. 21; vi. 12, 13; ix. 28, 29; xxiii. 34, 46), and inculcating earnestness in prayer by two parables peculiar to itself (xi. 513; xviii. 1-8). (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" (xiv. 16), "a certain man had two sons (xv. 11), etc. (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 (xvi. 19), The Pharisee and Publican (xviii. 9), and The Prodigal Son (xv. 11), as also the story of the Good Samaritan (x. 30). It is here we find a record of Christ's visit to the house of Zacchæus the publican (xix. 1), of His gracious reception of the woman that was a sinner (vii. 37), and of His promise of Paradise to the penitent malefactor (xxiii. 43). It is here we find the touching story of the raising to life of the young man at the gate of Nain (vii. 11), 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" (viii. 42); it is here we learn that the demonaic boy whom He healed at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration was an "only child" (ix. 38). (5) It is the Gospel of toleration and brotherly love, embracing within the range of its sympathy the Samaritan (ix. 51-56; xvii. 11-19), the Gentile (iv. 25-27; xiii. 28, 29), the poor (ii. 7, 8, 24; vi. 20; ix. 58; xiv. 21), the very young, this being the only

Gospel that tells us that the children brought to Jesus were "babes" (xviii. 15, R.V.), and the weaker and, up to that time, less-honoured sex (i. concerning Mary and Elisabeth; ii. 36-38; viii. 1-3; x. 38-42; xxiii. 27, 28).

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 (ii. 8-14), 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" (iv. 18); 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" (ii. 10), and proclaims a Saviour who is to be "a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of (Thy people) Israel" (ii. 32),—in whose name "repentance and remission of sins should be preached unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem" (xxiv. 47). 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 (i. 46-55), the Benedictus (i. 68-79), the Gloria in Excelsis (ii. 14), and the Nunc Dimittis (ii. 29-32).

It adds to the importance of this Gospel, styled by Renan "the most beautiful book in the world," that about one-third of its contents is peculiar to itself, consisting mainly of chapters ix. 51-xviii. 14, relating to the Saviour's last journey to Jerusalem.

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TS Author.-It is a weighty and significant fact that until the close of the last century the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel was never seriously challenged. Epiphanius, indeed (380 A.D.), tells us of a very small party who had ascribed it to Cerinthus, a heretical contemporary of the Apostle John at Ephesus; but they seem to have had no other reason for rejecting it than their aversion to its teaching. During the present century no question has been the subject of more controversy; and scarcely any can be of more importance, considering its close bearing on the doctrinal aspects of Christianity, and especially on the divinity of Jesus Christ.

To a large extent the question is covered by the line of evidence already indicated in connection with the Gospels as a whole (see pp. 5-7). But in some respects the external evidence for this Gospel is stronger than for any of the others. It is specially quoted by such early Gnostic writers as Basilides (125 A. D.), Valentinus (145 A.D., whose favourite phrases were borrowed from its opening verses), and Heracleon (a disciple of Valentinus), who wrote a commentary on it—being the first known commentary on any part of the New Testament. Moreover, as John himself survived till near the close of the first century, a comparatively short interval was left between his death and the time when the four Gospels are known to have been universally accepted by the

Church (185 A.D.); and for this interval it so happens that we have a direct chain of testimony consisting of a very few strong and well-connected links.

At the lower end of the chain we have Irenæus, one of the most important witnesses to the general reception of the four Gospels towards the close of the second century. Born in Asia Minor, where John spent the last twenty or thirty years of his life, he became Bishop of Lyons in Gaul, which had a close ecclesiastical connection with his native land. Early in life he was brought into familiar contact with Polycarp (born 70 A.D), a disciple of the Apostle John, who was for more than forty years Bishop of Smyrna and was martyred 155 A.D. Among other allusions which he makes to Polycarp, he says, in a letter to his friend Florinus (177 A.D.), "I can describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp used to sit when he discoursed, and his goings out and his comings in, and his manner of life and his personal appearance, and the discourses which he held before the people, and how he would describe his intercourse with John and with the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he would relate their words. And whatsoever things he I had heard from them about the Lord and about His miracles, Polycarp, as having received them from eyewitnesses of the life of the Word, would relate altogether in accordance with the Scriptures."

It is beyond dispute that this Irenæus accepted the fourth Gospel as a genuine work of the Apostle John. Is it credible that he would have done so, if it had not been acknowledged by his teacher Polycarp, who had been a disciple of John? And if it was accepted by Polycarp as a genuine writing, notwithstanding its marked dissimilarity to the other Gospels, what better evidence could we have that John was really its author, and that it was accepted as his, from the very first, by the leaders of the Church in Asia Minor?

It may be well to state here very briefly the principal facts in John's life, and the circumstances under which he is said to have written his Gospel.

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