5. That the postponement of what now stands as Luke xi. 14—xiii. 21, would have been further recommended by its having the effect of preventing an appearance (a) of another supposed contradiction between S. Luke and the other Evangelists, and (b) of a meaningless repetition in S. Luke's own Gospel.

6. That, the displacement once made, the advantages of the fresh arrangement of the text would be so much more obvious than the contradictions it entailed, that MSS. containing the original arrangement would be very quickly discredited.

7.

That, from the nature of the case, there being three other pictures with which to compare the one supposed to have been tampered with, absolutely conclusive evidence—especially with regard to the present as compared with the original order of events at the several points where the narrative must have been disconnected and reunited— would be forthcoming, and that this evidence would necessarily be as conspicuously absent in the case of the wrong as it would be conspicuously present in the case of the right order.

8. That, though the main principle of construction, which suggests and requires the correction contended for, is, as S. Luke's text now stands, only a matter of deduction and inference, yet, as soon as his Text is placed in what is claimed to have been its original order, this principle is at once seen to be identical with the guiding principle indicated. in his Preface.

9. That the correctness of the principles of construction which suggest and require the alteration contended for is testified by the fact that, when the alteration is made, it

becomes apparent that, with two or three very minor exceptions, the order of events given by S. Luke is identical with that given by S. Mark, and that we are thus enabled on the testimony of two witnesses, both being Evangelists, to perceive exactly in what instances S. Matthew has departed from a strictly chronological order, and so to ascertain the exact plan upon which his Gospel is written.

10.

That the correctness of the principles of construction which suggest and require the particular transposition contended for is testified by the fact that when applied to the general arrangement of the Four Gospels they at once shew them to be in perfect accord and thus produce the result which Harmonists have so long striven. after but have confessedly failed to arrive at.

II. That, whereas the revision of S. Luke's text required to rectify the alleged displacement is of so unusual and drastic a character, that, if no such displacement had taken place, it would necessarily serve greatly to increase any previous difficulty in reconciling the several narratives, it does as a matter of fact entirely remove that difficulty and results in our being able to form a continuous narrative, which at once commends itself to our judgement as certainly true, and at the same time altogether removes those special difficulties which have given rise to the greatest amount of controversy.

12. 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.

In spite of the formality of such an enumeration of evidences as the above, I have thought it best to try to shew, as it were at a glance, how singularly strong is the cumulative force of the proofs thus indicated.

I do not think-but it is an opinion not difficult to test-that any judge in a court of law would hesitate to direct a jury that the above points, supposing all, or the majority of them, to be established to their satisfaction, amounted to absolute and incontrovertible evidence of fact; evidence even stronger than under all the circumstances could perhaps be reasonably expected.

Let us then proceed to our proofs.

Required to prove

I.

That the text affected by the proposed transposition is, as it now stands, a falsification of S. Luke's promise to write 'in order,' and that it constitutes the only exception to the fulfilment of this promise.

Here we are met at once by what I conceive to be one of the very many curious and deeply important effects of the error which has to be proved.

Assuming for a moment the existence of this error, it will be seen that, by throwing S. Luke's Gospel altogether out of its original order, it entirely altered its designed relation to the other Gospels; and further, that this relation being of the very essence of the whole plan of his Gospel, S. Luke's Preface, or definition of his plan, did not, from the moment the error was made, admit of being either understood or translated literally.

S. Luke's Gospel standing as it does now, a literal acceptance of the obvious meaning of the Preface at once ranges the promise and the performance of S. Luke in direct antagonism; whilst the definition of the object of his writing in order' becomes at once so obscured as to be absolutely unintelligible; so much so that the best a translator can do is to take refuge in a vague generality,

the certainty of the things,'

and make S. Luke speak of instead of the truthfulness of the treatises or Gospels' (Aóywv), which, when he wrote, formed the subject of all formal catechetical instruction in the early Church—the fact that the word Aóyos is used in both S. Luke's' Prefaces' (see Acts i. 1), presumably with the same meaning, being unavoidably ignored.

But the moment the effect of rectifying the alleged displacement in his Gospel is perceived, the promise of the Preface stands, as it should do, interpreted, not contradicted, by that which it introduces. At the same time the full significance of the nicer shades of meaning attaching to the various words used in the Preface being no longer obscured by misconception as to the impression, which they were intended to convey, we are able at once to adopt so absolutely literal a translation as the following:

"Forasmuch as many have attempted to arrange afresh a narrative of those things which were accomplished in our midst, even as they handed it over to us which were eyewitnesses and Ministers of The Word, it seemed good to me also, having followed the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the truthfulness of the Gospels wherein thou wast instructed.”

As it stands, S. Luke's Gospel is demonstrably not written in historical or chronological order: nay, so unhistorical does its arrangement appear, that so acute a critic as Mr McClellan, after putting forth "a conspectus shewing the organic structure and dogmatic connexion of S. Luke's Gospel," such conspectus proceeding on the same lines as similar ones suggested respectively by Professors Ebrard, Oosterzee and Westcott, concludes his argument with the words, "If our conspectus be only fundamentally correct the historical hypothesis is for ever destroyed."

Nor are the opinions of modern writers of world-wide repute less emphatic as to the meaning of the actual word in S. Luke's Preface translated 'in order.' That it does not mean historical order they are convinced.

But arguments based upon an unusual, though admissible meaning of a word, are always specially open to suspicion, and in the present case the fact may well have been, that to credit a writer with saying one thing, and then immediately proceeding to do another, has seemed such a manifest reductio ad absurdum, that there has existed a sort of logical necessity to interpret what S. Luke said by what he appeared to have done.

Hence the natural wish to harmonize promise and performance was really father to the thought, which, but for the apparent contradiction between them, would probably never have been suggested.

That this modern interpretation of the expression in order,' logical and uncontrovertible as it seemed, should always have been regarded by many as unsatisfactory was natural enough. Apart from its involving a very rare use of the original word, the context constitutes it a peculiarly