authorship, date, and the authority assigned to them. This constitutes our difficulty; for the testimony grows more dim in proportion as we ascend upwards, affording a very strong probability that the earlier writers read and quoted from some of our Gospels; but still, except in a few cases, and those the latest in point of date, not amounting to so complete a proof as to place the fact beyond all reasonable question.

Further. The period, which cannot be placed at less than thirty years, intervening between the publication of the Synoptic Gospels and the first Christian writing not included in the canon, viz. the first epistle of Clement, affords no attestation whatever, unless it be one or two very doubtful quotations in St. Paul's Epistles, which are inadequate to prove that he either read or cited from any one of our present Gospels.

Such is the interval of time which it is necessary to cover with literary evidence in proof that the Gospels are the works of the persons whose names they bear. Let me briefly set before you what our evidence is valid to prove.

I. Mr. Sanday has established on clear and incontrovertible evidence that the Gospel used by Marcion was a mutilated version of our present Luke; and that the latter has not been framed out of the former, as a number of persistent efforts have been made to prove. I refer with great pleasure to his masterly argument on this subject, which must be considered to have settled the question. Assuming therefore that the date of Marcion's Gospel cannot be placed later than A.D. 140, it becomes certain that St. Luke's Gospel must have been in existence early in the second century.

II. Another inference applicable to the three Synoptics, proves that their publication cannot have taken place at a later date. The citations from them in the three Fathers above referred to, prove that their text was in a condition so extremely faulty, as to render it incredible that such corruptions can have been introduced in a less period

than sixty or seventy years from the date of their first publication, which must consequently have taken place not later than the early part of the second century. This is a very strong point of the evidence. The only difficulty respecting it is, that it requires a special course of study for its due appreciation.

III. Two Gospels, bearing the same name as two of the Synoptics, are directly referred to by Papias.* If this reference could be shown to have been made to our present Gospels of Matthew and Mark, it would prove that in the judgment of this Father they were the works of the persons whose names they bear; and supposing his judgment to be trustworthy, it would prove that they were published at the date which has been usually assigned to them. But here our evidence is anything but conclusive. Not to enter on the vast controversy which has taken place over this passage, one thing respecting it is absolutely certain: The Matthew with which Papias was acquainted was, according to his express statement, written in Hebrew. Our Matthew is no less certainly written in Greek. Papias, it is true, has been affirmed to have been a man of small intellect; but however this may have been, it cannot have been so small that, supposing he had ever seen St. Matthew's Gospel, he was unable to distinguish between the Hebrew and the Greek character. His subsequent affirmation also, that each interpreted it as he was able, seems decisive that he could never have seen a Greek copy. To meet this difficulty, the assumption has

*The following is Papias's statement:- "Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew tongue, and every one interpreted them as he was able. Mark, as the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that he remembered that was said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord, nor attended upon Him; but later, as I have said, upon Peter, who taught according to the occasion, and not as composing a connected narrative of the Lord's discourses, so that Mark made no mistake in writing down some things as he remembered them. For he took care of one thing, not to omit any of the particulars that he had heard, or to falsify any part of them."

been made that our present Greek Matthew is a translation from the Hebrew. Such an inference however rests on a very uncertain foundation, because our Matthew has all the appearance of being an original composition. The difficulty is also greatly increased by a careful analysis of the narrative portions. These bear few indications of being the work of an eye-witness, even less than some portions of Luke, which is confessedly a compilation, and form a striking contrast to the Gospels of Mark and John.* Candour there

*The Gospel of St. Mark supplies us with the best means of instituting this comparison, because so large a portion of its narratives runs parallel to those in Matthew, which is not the case with the Fourth Gospel. The phenomenon which strikes the reader of Matthew is that, except in a few cases, such as the accounts of the Transfiguration, the history of the woman of Canaan, the Crucifixion, and the murder of the Baptist, there is a total absence of minute detail. This is carried to such an extent in some of his narratives, such as the account of the cure of the woman with the issue of blood, as to leave us ignorant of the precise character of the facts. This is exactly reversed in Mark. His narrative is extremely rich in minute details, and in such touches as would naturally form portions of an account by an eye-witness of the scenes which he describes. It is also very remarkable that these touches are so closely interwoven with the structure of the narrative as to be inseparable from it. It is inconceivable that the author of our present Mark, be he who he may, had before him a narrative resembling that of Matthew, and that in composing his own Gospel, he deliberately inserted those graphic touches which distinguish nearly all its narratives. Not only would the diffi culty of doing this be extreme, but the idea that he has done so is totally inconsistent with the honesty of the author; for the only source from which he could have derived them must have been deliberate invention. The tradition however, mentioned by Papias, that Mark derived his facts from the teaching of Peter, and consequently that his share in the composition of this Gospel consisted chiefly in imparting to his materials their present arrangement, forms an adequate explanation of the phenomena before us; for it is a simple matter of fact that in nearly every case where we can ascertain either from this or the other Gospels, that Peter was present at an occurrence, the narrative in Mark gives us a graphic description of it, such as an eyewitness of Peter's temperament would be likely to supply. On the

fore requires us to admit that Papias was not aware of the existence of a Greek Matthew; and that the proof that our present Matthew is a translation from the Hebrew of Papias is inconclusive. It is highly probable that it has grown out of it but if the argument is to sustain the weight which has been imposed on it, we want something stronger than probabilities of this description, which after all are little better than mere conjectures.

The identity of the Mark of Papias with our Mark is far more probable, although it cannot be asserted positively; still I think that the probability is considerably higher than that which is assigned to it by Mr. Sanday.*

It will be unnecessary for me to pause over the other remnants of the Patristic writings, or the testimony afforded by the early heretics, which, as far as it goes, is very valuable, further than to observe that while they render it highly probable that the authors used one or more of our

other hand, it is no less inconceivable that the narrative as it stands in Matthew can have been constructed by a person who had an outline before him at all resembling our present Mark; for in that case he must have deliberately struck out nearly all the graphic touches. Not only could no purpose have been effected by doing this, but the person who did it must have been absolutely devoid of taste. The idea which has been so often propounded, that one of these Gospels can have formed the basis on which the other has been constructed, is in direct contradiction to the phenomena which they present. One thing however must be admitted, the narrative portions of St. Matthew present few of the distinguishing traits of autoptic testimony.

*The two chief difficulties attending the identification of our present Mark with the Mark of Papias are-First: that Papias affirms that the Mark with which he was acquainted was not written in order, whereas ours follows an orderly arrangement. Secondly: it is argued from the number of cases in which Matthew and Luke are in agreement, and Mark at variance, in their use of particular forms of expression, that our present Mark cannot be one of the original documents on which our Synoptics are based, and consequently that it is not the Mark of Papias. This second reason seems to me to be inconclusive; for our Mark may be the Mark of Papias, and yet not be one of the documents supposed to have formed the basis of the

present Gospels, they do not establish the fact beyond all reasonable question. The evidence seems very nearly conclusive with respect to the author of the Clementine Homilies; still it must be allowed that the probability, though high, is in no case so strong as to amount to a moral demonstration. The whole of the evidence, however, if taken together, may be considered as establishing beyond reasonable doubt that the Synoptics were in existence during the first twenty years of the second century.

IV. I will now offer a few remarks on the evidence furnished by the writings of Justin Martyr and the Apostolical Fathers.

The writings of Justin not only exceed in bulk all the remains of Christian literature previous to his time, but their references to the actions and teaching of Our Lord are exceedingly numerous. Assuming that he wrote not later than A.D. 145 to A.D. 150, and that his recollection was good for thirty years earlier, his testimony becomes

Synoptic narrative. Such documents may be sought for in memoranda used by the original missionaries of the Christian Church, and which by frequent use had become thoroughly impressed upon their memories. The first objection, however, is a more serious one. Mr. Sanday justly assumes that the most natural meaning of the words "in order" is "in chronological order." Still they are applicable to any kind of orderly arrangement, as is shown by the use in the preface of St. Luke's Gospel; for it is hardly possible that its author can have meant by this expression to affirm that he has in all cases followed the strict chronological order. But there is a looseness about the expression in Papias which renders it possible to apply the words to the arrangement of the discourses which Mark has incorporated into his Gospel, rather than to the events. It is true that in the sentence where these words occur, Papias states that Mark" wrote down accurately, but not in order, all that he remembered that was said or done by Christ." But in the second sentence he describes Peter, from whom he says that Mark derived his materials, as teaching according to the occasion, and "not as composing a connected narrative of the Lord's discourses." A loose writer like Papias might have had these latter in view when he said that Mark had not followed an orderly arrangement in the composition of his Gospel.