of the story which, this one alteration being made, the Gospels themselves present.

It is not even open to any one to object that without this alteration the general drift of the Gospel narrative is still perfectly plain. It is admittedly not so. Not only is it impossible without very many alterations to produce any connected history at all, but when with such alterations such a history is produced, it depends upon such a multitude of conjectures and arguments and leaves so small a portion of any one Gospel intact that it must at best seem of very questionable authority. At the same time the absence of any distinctly recognizable plan in narratives thus constructed makes it singularly difficult to understand them, and still more difficult to remember all the various alterations of the several Gospels which they involve.

Supposing the one alteration now contended for to be declared inadmissible, scarcely any two parts of the outline of the narrative above given will hold together. Throughout the whole of the last year and a half of the Ministry all the minutely accurate agreements between the several Gospels must be not only purely imaginary but altogether contrary to the facts of the case. Disallow the one correction of S. Luke's text, and at every turn incidents distinctly affirmed by one Evangelist to have happened on the same day or about the same date are as distinctly affirmed by another Evangelist to have happened at an altogether different time. Whilst neither the same days, seasons, nor even years can be assigned to events which are certainly recognized by different Evangelists as the

same.

The very fact that, with the one exception which

S. Luke's text presents, absolute order can be shewn to reign supreme in the Gospels makes the existence of contradictions of this sort absolutely incredible.

On what ground then can any one refuse to recognize the fact that S. Luke himself never could have been the Author of the confusion which the received version of his Text involves? The facts of the case have hitherto been dealt with in

two ways.

(1) One class of persons claim to make many arbitrary and conjectural alterations which they do not attempt to reconcile with the accuracy of the documents dealt with.

Can they with any shew of consistency refuse to accept a single alteration, for which a vast body of evidence is forthcoming, and which produces at once perfect agreement between the several narratives?

(2) Others, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, argue that historical order was not an essential part of the design of the Gospels.

But when it is proved that a single alteration of a possible error shews a uniform historical order to dominate the arrangement of every fact in at least three of the Gospels, and throughout a great part of the fourth, can a contention, previously open to so many objections, be for one moment sustained?

What is there then in either of these alternatives to set against the fact that, even as the Gospels now stand, the recognition of a single error in one of them is sufficient to prove that there is absolutely no other deduction to be made from the inviolable accuracy which we feel instinctively must belong to documents so accredited as the Gospels to the hearts and consciences of men?

CHAPTER VIII.

S. LUKE'S TESTIMONY ΤΟ

CHRIST'S

DIVINITY OBSCURED BY THE DIS-
PLACEMENT OF HIS TEXT.

Proposition in enumeration of proofs.

That the revised order of S. Luke's text brings out into bold relief the most emphatic evidence which his Gospel contains of the Divinity of our Lord, and reveals a remarkable coincidence of testimony on this subject between his Gospel and that of S. John.

WHY did our Lord at one time excuse His Disciples for not praying, and at another not only teach them to pray but even enforce prayer upon them as a duty?

It is true that on the first occasion He was replying to a merely captious question of His avowed enemies, but even to such it was His custom to give a true answer, and one, which so long as the circumstances remained the same, would be as true at one time as at another.

The reason why they did not pray or fast like John's disciples He declared to be that such exercises were incompatible with the relations existing between them and Himself. He was the Bridegroom, they were the Bridegroom's friends. When He was taken away from them it would be necessary for them to fast and pray, but until then it was not so.

As S. Luke's text now stands, the request 'Lord teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples' appears as having been made whilst the relations between Christ and the Disciples continued to be just what they were when the subject was first discussed. Hence the difficulty of explaining the apparent inconsistency between what our Lord said upon one occasion and what He said and did upon another.

But the moment we know that the whole of that part of S. Luke's Gospel in which this second incident is dealt with really belongs to quite the end of the Ministry, and that it has only been thrown back to an earlier period by earlier events having been wrongly inserted after it, the difficulty disappears. The time we see is already at hand to which on the first occasion he had alluded. Already, "the days were well-nigh come that He should be received up"; and this fact alone constitutes a sufficient reason for our Lord's doing then what He had not thought it necessary to do before.

But even with this explanation there is much that we cannot at once wholly understand.

Supposing that the time had really arrived for such teaching to be given, why did our Lord need to be asked to give it? why should it be regarded as a mere concession to 'importunity'? and why should the whole incident be recorded in such a way as to suggest to the sceptic so many objections, and oblige the Commentator to offer such elaborate explanations to prove that, in the Parable which follows the granting of the request, God is not, as He appears to be, represented as acting upon merely human and even unworthy motives?

The answer to all these difficulties which I venture to suggest is that the present state of S. Luke's text has so obscured the circumstances of the case, and with them the whole drift of the argument, that we have been driven to content ourselves with the mere surface meaning of the Parable, and entirely to disregard the underlying meaning which it was designed to veil.

The whole force of the Parable I imagine to turn upon the double meaning of the word which we render importunity, but which primarily means dulness of comprehension and want of due sensitiveness, being in fact the same word used in the well-known passage in the Odyssey describing the insensibility of the stone to the labours of Sisyphus in keeping it in constant motion.

It is this dulness of comprehension and spiritual insensibility on the part, not of all, but of one of the Disciples against which Christ makes remonstrance, even whilst, in consideration of His own departure being now near at hand, He grants the request made to Him.

Even so far as the surface meaning is concerned the idea is rather of shamelessness than importunity. The request was an altogether unreasonable one. It so happened indeed that it probably did but cause our Lord to anticipate what He would shortly have done without being asked, but none the less did it imply that in not having done it before, He had undervalued and been unmindful of a duty clearly recognized by John.

The Parable is thus at once an explanation of the motives which induced our Lord to grant the request, and a remonstrance against the anaideia (a word the double meaning of which no translation can render) which prompted it.