teaching of their Master, and rejected the other as a fabulous addition.

From these two conclusions it follows:

First that no legendary matter worthy of the notice of the historian, which was invented as late as the last ten years of the first century, has been incorporated into the narratives of the Synoptics.

:

Secondly That the traditions of the same period attributed to Jesus a number of miraculous actions, nearly all of them identical with, and all of them of the same character as those in our Gospels, and wholly differing in type and conception from those which are narrated in the Apocryphal ones.

Thirdly that the religious and moral teaching, which these traditions attribute to Him, whatever slight variations it may have contained, is for all practical purposes the same as that which we read in the Synoptics.

Fourthly that if the narrative of the Synoptics consists of a mass of legendary matter, these legends must have grown up between A.D. 30 and A.D. 90, or during the sixty years which followed the conclusion of our Lord's ministry. This interval I shall fully cover by the aid of the Pauline Epistles in my next Lecture.

The importance of one element in the historical inquiry has been greatly overlooked both by the opponents and the defenders of Christianity; I mean the existence of the Church as a visible society; and the guarantee which this affords of the accurate transmission of the facts on which it was founded, and the degree in which it renders it impossible that the traditions of the primitive followers of Jesus should at this early period of its history have been superseded by a set of legendary inventions, which obscured the true facts of its Founder's life. The whole question has been discussed as though it were a purely literary one, in which a complicated mass of testimony consisting of a number of minute probabilities has to be carefully estimated.

The facts of Christianity are not like the ordinary facts of history. They differ from them in this, that not only do they form the foundation on which the Church of Jesus Christ has been erected, but that a constant preservation of the knowledge of them is a necessary condition of its continued existence-they form in fact the sole principle of its cohesion as a society, and the mainspring of the religious life of its individual members. In this respect the Church differs from every human institution in that it has not only been founded by Jesus Christ, but has been built on Him, He being at the same time both its foundation and chief corner-stone. The facts of its founder's life first brought the Society into being; an acquaintance with them was essential to that continuous growth, which it has exhibited from the first dawn of its existence to the present hour, and if they could be proved to be fabulous inventions, its destruction would be inevitable.

Another equally powerful reason for the accurate transmission of the traditions constantly in operation, was the

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*The relation in which Jesus Christ stands to the Church, as distinct from that in which the founders of human institutions stand to the Societies which they have originated is best expressed in the words of the great Apostle, "That we may grow up to Him who is the head of all things, even Christ. From whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual measure of every part, maketh increase of the body, to the edifying of itself in love." (Eph. iv. 15, 16.) "He is the Head of the body, the Church." (Col. i. 18.) As ye therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith." (Col. ii. 6, 7.) “And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, increaseth with the increase of God." (Col. ii. 19.) These and a vast number of other passages which might be easily quoted from the Apostle point out in clear and unmistakable language the difference of the relation in which the Christian Church stands to its Founder from that in which the founders of human Societies stand to theirs; and the constant necessity which it was under of keeping the great facts of His life and teaching in vivid remembrance.

necessity for making converts. Consisting originally of a few hundred members, the Church has grown to its present dimensions by inducing others to join its ranks. Unless it had been thus enlarged, the century which gave it birth must have witnessed its extinction. What was the only mode in which converts could be made? Only one answer is possible, by persuading them that Jesus was the Christ. To effect this two things were necessary: First, to explain to the proposed convert the true meaning of the idea of the Christ; and secondly, to set before him such facts in the history of Jesus as were sufficient to prove that He was the Christ. This involved the necessity of keeping the record of such facts in constant remembrance. It follows therefore that as the Church grew with great rapidity during the first three centuries of our era, its members must have been most active missionaries, and consequently that their motive for keeping in vivid recollection the chief events of their Master's life must have been of the strongest character; and that this must have been in active operation during the entire period which elapsed between the conclusion of the ministry of Jesus Christ, and the period when I have proved from the testimony of the Fathers that the Church was in possession of an account of His actions and teaching, similar in its great outlines to that which is contained in the Synoptic Gospels.

These considerations therefore make it certain, that the knowledge of the chief events of Our Lord's ministry must have been handed down in the living recollections of the individual members of the Church in a stream of unbroken tradition; and it is immaterial for the present argument whether this was effected by the aid of written documents, by oral transmission, or by a union of both.* The importance of this fact, of which so little account is made

* I use the word "tradition as denoting that the events were not transmitted merely by the aid of written documents; but that they must have formed a portion of the living consciousness of the entire Christian community.

in our ordinary evidential treatises, can hardly be overestimated.

Assuming these positions to have been established, the following conclusions necessarily result from them. It would have been in the highest degree difficult, not to say impossible, during the brief interval between Our Lord's ministry and the end of the first century, to have imposed on any community of Christians a mass of legendary matter of a character wholly different from those facts on the belief in which the Church was originally founded, and which formed the moving spring of the daily life of its individual members, and which many of them had accepted as the ground of their conversion. It is absolutely im

possible that communities like the Churches of the first century, living in a state of constant antagonism to their Jewish and pagan neighbours, and having to justify to themselves the grounds on which they had abandoned their former beliefs, could have become oblivious of those facts which had induced them to accept Jesus as the Messiah, and which had ever since formed the foundation of their religious life. From these considerations it follows that the Church must have been possessed of a machinery for transmitting an account of the chief events of its Founder's life, which was incomparably superior to that of every other form of traditionary history.

This difficulty, in itself insuperable, is greatly increased by the number of the Christian communities, and the wide extent of territory over which they were scattered. Even if we suppose such an imposition to have been possible in the members of a particular Church, it would have been impossible to extend it to any considerable number of them. But as the Patristic testimony is fully adequate to prove that a body of facts similar to those recorded in the Synoptic Gospels formed the foundation of the life of the entire Church at the conclusion of the first century, it follows that they must have been substantially the same as those which the original followers of Our Lord narrated as

the chief events of His ministry, and the groundwork of the Christianity of the Churches which they planted.

But in addition to these considerations, which are in themselves sufficiently weighty, the whole interval of time lies within the period of the most genuine and lively historical recollection. It is one in fact which is completely covered by the lives of the actual witnesses of the facts, and of persons who heard the reports of them from those witnesses. These various reasonings in the latter portion of this Lecture fully prove that the Synoptic Gospels do not consist of a mass of myths and legends invented between the years A.D. 80 and 170. The still more important evidence furnished by the writings of St. Paul, I shall consider in the following Lecture. In the meantime I will only press on your attention the importance of the Church as a witness to the facts of Christianity, as distinct from the mere literary evidence on which their truth has been almost exclusively rested, in the words of St. Paul, "The Church of the Living God is the pillar and ground of the truth."