has a similar effect in throwing a distinct section of the Gospels into confusion.

The exact way in which the misconception leading to the alteration arose was presumably as follows. Supposing that S. Mark distinctly states, as at first sight he seems to do, that the Parable of the Sower was spoken on the same day on which Christ embarked for a voyage across the Sea of Galilee, the revisers were met by the apparent difficulty that S. Luke interposed between these two events a number of incidents, mostly peculiar to his own narrative, and which extended over a period of time, including at least one Sabbath Day. To avoid what seemed like absolute contradiction—and not recognizing that St Luke was really elucidating the true meaning of what was only a grouping of parables in S. Mark, and at the same time shewing S. Mark's practical agreement with S. Matthew-they omitted the section which created their difficulty, and thus brought 'the embarkation' into the same apparent connexion in S. Luke in which it stood in S. Mark.

To do this they were obliged to postpone the offending section, and to insert it at the first available place where they thought it could not involve contradiction, viz. after, and as a sort of Appendix to, what they considered to be the conclusion of the Galilæan ministry. To persons unacquainted with the principles of construction which regulate S. Luke's method of narration a number of subsidiary reasons would at the same time give irresistible cogency to this primary argument in favor of altering his 'order,' whilst they would equally tend, not only to give to the alteration once made an appearance of correctness, but to make it singularly difficult of detection, so much so indeed that the very point at which the cause of con

fusion would ultimately have to be sought would always be the very one at which, more than anywhere else, everything would seem to indicate absolute agreement and correctness. Thus the mistake not only effectually removed, so to speak, S. Luke's original landmarks, but it actually set up false and marvellously plausible ones in their place.

Looking in fact at all the circumstances of the case, I do not think it would be any exaggeration to say that human ingenuity, however bent on mischief, could not possibly have devised any one apparently simple and harmless alteration, which could have had more disastrous and wide-reaching effects in throwing into confusion and utterly obscuring, directly a very large portion of each of the Gospels, and indirectly the whole of them. But for this -and the kindred mistake in Luke iv. 44-not only would the general accuracy of all the Evangelists have been perfectly apparent, but there would have been no sufficient prima facie ground for the too common assumption that intensely minute accuracy was not one of the main characteristics of the Gospels, an assumption absolutely incompatible with a right appreciation of their distinctive cha

racters.

In dealing with the results of the examination of the Text of the Gospels, which led me to the above conclusions, I originally prepared a work which would have formed two somewhat bulky volumes. But on attempting to revise these for publication it seemed to me better, in spite of many obvious objections to such a course, to recast the whole into three smaller volumes which might each be fairly complete in itself, the first and present one dealing with the order of events in our Lord's life, the second with the

significance of the variations, additions and omissions in the several Gospels, and the third shewing the general bearing of the conclusions thus arrived at on the interpretation of particular portions of the Gospels and upon the general view of our Lord's ministry and teaching which they involve. The present volume must therefore be regarded as merely a first instalment of a more complete work and as only intended to prepare the way for a fuller treatment of the subject from the above points of view.

Having thus indicated the origin of the present work, and to some extent the lines upon which it proceeds, I will only add that in confining myself in the first instance to the attempt to demonstrate the real order of events in the Gospels, to the exclusion of other cognate and equally important questions, I am influenced by the desire not in any way to complicate that which is necessarily the first question to be settled, or even to run the risk of raising side issues which might only tend to obscure it.

That I am exaggerating in my own mind the interest which must attach to every honest attempt to deal even with this one problem of Gospel criticism I cannot think. Nor do I fear but that, such honesty being assumed, due allowance will be made for the many imperfections, and it may be errors, by which the present attempt may be more or less marred. As one of the Parochial Clergy I feel strongly that in trying to deal with this subject I am at least well within the domain of what must ever be to them a subject of study as appropriate as it is fascinating. They alone know, as no others can, the insidious effects of the attempts which are being so continually made to discredit and invalidate the very Title-deeds of Christianity,

and how, both amongst those who are more or less directly influenced by the arguments advanced, and amongst the great masses of those who only catch the distant and perverted echoes of the controversy, faith is sometimes utterly shipwrecked, and still more often reduced to a mere profession utterly inoperative whether as a restraining or a motive power. To encourage 'broader and more liberal' views of the truth is the modern panacea for all the evils thus arising. But for the less educated classes it is a panacea simply inapplicable, whilst for those who are most apt to trust to it, it may well prove a reed which, when really leant upon, will only break and pierce the hand

Unhappily it is from within, as much from without, that dangers of this kind threaten. What are really terms of capitulation are openly discussed within the camp, and by the very leaders whose hearts should be the staunchest. To quote a single instance :

A modern writer of considerable repute puts forward an opinion, which, though seldom advanced in such uncompromising terms, does, so far at least as its premisses are concerned, really embody the opinion of a continually increasing number of those who would be amongst the very last to suggest the surrender of that in which they had any adequate belief. Assuming that there are certain grave discrepancies in the Gospels, and that such discrepancies are as they certainly would be if they existed-entirely inconsistent with the commonly understood meaning of Inspiration, the writer argues that the first thing we ought to do is to abandon a claim on behalf of the Evangelists, which is manifestly not consistent with the facts of the Then, he argues, and then only, will the general historical truthfulness of the Gospels and the force and

case.

beauty of their teaching be so universally recognized and appreciated that the time must soon come when, to use his own words', "works like that of Strauss would hardly be produced, or if produced would fall at once to their proper level, being classed with such writings as those of one of his countrymen (Professor S. S. Witte), who in the last quarter of the 18th century maintained that the Pyramids and the ruins of Persepolis, Palmyra, and Baalbec were natural productions, the result of volcanic agency."

That a consummation so devoutly to be wished will ever be brought about by any such impossible concessions, few persons probably will for a moment imagine. That it might be by an exactly opposite process some may perhaps hope.

Let us only suppose it possible-and I am profoundly convinced that it is so-to prove that all these imagined instances of "human error and imperfection ", of which the writer speaks, have really no existence whatever; let them be explained, not by arguments designed to prove that words may mean what no one would ever suppose they were intended to mean, but by arguments and proofs requiring for their acceptance nothing more than the not uncommon qualities of candour and common sense, and it may not

1 Norton, Internal Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, p. 119. Supporting the above view Mr Norton writes

"It is from this doctrine [i.e. of the inspiration of the Gospels] that the objections with which their genuineness and authenticity have been assailed derive their chief strength.

"It having been assumed that they are infallible books free from the imperfections and mistakes that belong to works of merely human narrators, and especially to those of writers so uneducated as the Evangelists, when such imperfections and mistakes have been discovered in them, the unbeliever has thought himself to have found an argument against the reality of God's revelation by Christ, while in fact he had only found an argument against a false doctrine.'

H. G.