him to the haven of safety from the ignis fatuus which leads on to ruin.

Lambert.-"The more important the contents of a book are to mankind the more surely will its genuineness be admitted or denied from the beginning."

Such is the case in periods of advanced civilization; but uneducated and barbarous peoples are so prone to superstition and to an unquestioning faith that they are ever ready to seize upon anything as true which ministers to their love of the marvellous.

The age in which the Gospels were written was not a critical age. The art of printing was then unknown; copying was laborious, and a belief in necromancy, demonology and witchcraft was held by Jews and Gentiles alike. In popular belief miraculous powers were supposed to be possessed by good and bad alike, though derived from different

Sources.

Is the present age willing to receive the legends of those times with the same implicit credence that they do the leading facts of history and science about the truth of which the educated minds of the world are in substantial accord? Why ignore facts? Why forget that this is not only the iron and golden but par excellence the typographical age? That laborious research has unsealed the repertories of the past and brought to light treasures of knowledge which have been hidden from the wisdom of ages? We know more of ancient Egypt than the average Egyptian knew of his own times and country; more of Galilee, of its faiths and hopes, and fears, than those who fished in its waters and struck their tents by its shores; more of the mysticism of the past than those who waved the magic wand, held converse with familiar spirits and traced by the trackless stars the course of human destiny. And yet let us not indulge in vainglory. We have

only begun to learn-only taken our first lesson in the hornbook of knowledge. But in the light of our present advancement and of our knowledge of the past, how futile to say: "It is a remarkable fact that the authenticity or genuineness of the four Gospels was never brought in question until modern times, and then only by a few infidels; and even these confine themselves to bold, naked, groundless statements."

In the first place, little attention was paid to the small sect of "despised Galileans." It was only after Christianity had become a power that special notice was taken of it. At Christ's death the number of the disciples, as far as Scripture informs us, was about one hundred and twenty (Acts i. 15). It does not follow because the "crime of unbelief," or heresy, was punished, that those who inflicted the penalty cared to look critically into the history or tenets of the offender. The mouth of the dissenter was gagged, his books burned, and himself tortured and slain. What use had orthodoxy for other argument than fagot, wedge and thumb-screw? What had theology to do with the doctrines of "infidels," or history, save by a passing notice, with a record of their lives and sufferings? They were criminals. They dared to think; "away with them to the dungeon and the rack!" The Jews were intolerant of Christianity, and Christian professors in turn persecuted Jew and infidel.

Lambert.-"The genuineness of the four Gospels was never brought in question until modern times." "Modern times" is exceedingly indefinite; but, if so, why were they not questioned? There is no evidence that, when the Gospels were written, they bore on their face any evidence that they were composed or claimed to have been written by the authors to whom they are now ascribed. Justin speaks of them as the "memoirs of the apostles," although neither Mark nor Luke were apostles. "But all additions are later and presuppose

a collection of the Gospels" ("Encyclopædia of Religious Knowledge," vol. i., p. 268).*

So we may infer, on the highest authority, that the titles, "The Gospel according to Matthew," etc., were not placed there when the Gospels were written, but at some future time, no one knows' by whom.

Lambert." These Gospels were received in the earliest times as genuine, and were quoted by the earliest Christian writers as the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."

Yet it is a fact that the earliest Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, though he quotes from words contained in Matthew, Mark and Luke (never once from John and only once from Mark), yet does not mention the name of either, but quotes. almost exclusively from Christ's words (“ Encyclopædia of Religious Knowledge," vol. ii., p. 1220). Justin also says, these writings were also called Gospels and were written by the apostles or their companions. Thus we see that in the earliest approach to the times of the apostles there seemed to be no definite idea in the mind of a Christian author and saint as to who were the writers of the first four books of the New Testament. Had the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John been prefixed to those works, or had they been popularly known as the writers thereof, would not Saint Justin Martyr have referred to them as such? We are told that Celsus who lived in the second century, Porphyry who lived in the third, and Julian who lived in the fourth, referred to these books as having been written by their reputed authors. If so it proves nothing to the purpose; for between the times those books were written and the writers referred to lived and wrote, there

* As I shall have frequent occasion to refer to this scholarly and exhaustive work, I will say that its authors are not infidels but Christians; one of whom is the learned Philip Schaff, D. D., Professor in Union Theological Seminary, N. Y.

was ample time for some one to write over these books what was not originally there, i. e., "Gospel according to," etc. But who were those men who earliest attested the authorship of the first four books of the New Testament? Honest men, no doubt, but were they careful in their methods and clear and rational in their conceptions of religious truth? Were they free from the fanciful notions common to their age? I quote from "Mosheim's Church History," Part II., chapter iii., a work of the most rigid orthodox stamp: "But the 'Expositions of the Revelations' by Justin Martyr, and of the four Gospels by Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, together with several illustrations of the Mosaic history of the creation by other ancient writers, are lost. The loss of these ancient productions is the less to be regretted, as we know, with certainty, their vast inferiority to the expositions of the Holy Scriptures that appeared in succeeding times. Among the persons already mentioned none deserved the name of an able and judicious interpreter of the sacred text. They all attributed a double sense to the words of Scripture; the one obvious and literal, the other hidden and mysterious, which lay concealed, as it were, under the veil of the outward letter. The former they treated with the utmost neglect and turned the whole force of their genius and application to unfold the latter. Or, in other words, they were more studious to darken the Scriptures with their idle fictions than to investigate their true and natural sense. Some of them also forced the expressions of sacred writ out of their obvious meaning in order to apply them to the support of their philosophical systems; of which dangerous and pernicious attempts Clemens of Alexandria is said to have given the first example."

Irenæus also, a learned and devout Christian Father, bears ample testimony to the "four and no more" of the Gospel writers. His reasons seem to the unlettered mind of the present

as queer. Yet he was a pillar of the ancient church, and he shall speak for himself: "It is impossible," he says, "that the Gospels can be more or less than they are. For as there are four zones in the world we inhabit, and four principal winds, while the church is spread abroad throughout the earth, and the pillars and basis of the church are the gospel and the spirit of life, it is right that she should have four pillars, exhaling immortality on every side, and restoring renewed vitality on men. From which fact it follows that the word has given us four versions of the Gospels written by one Spirit."

But what has all this to do with the question of authorship? "Much every way," for these are the witnesses called, and we wish to see whether they have level heads; whether they are matter-of-fact men, who testify to facts only, or whether, even though honest, they are so imbued with a spirit of a romantic theology that they are liable to mistake their own fanciful notions for the truths of history.

But supposing that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the Gospels, are we certain they wrote them in their entirety as we have them now? We are certain they did not. We hear the Bible called "God's Book," as if it had been written as a unit, as one entire work, all of the parts to be bound together according to the present order of arrangement, and translated as we have it in the "authorized version.” And yet the books of both the Old and New Testaments were written at various times, by different authors, very generally for a specific and temporary purpose, with no direction as to future use or disposition; and, as to the four Gospels, without any pretence of divine direction. Not only so, but not until the sixteenth century did the Catholic Church settle for itself the Canon of Scripture, and it is well known that the Council of Trent then incorporated into the canon several books which the Protestant world regards as apocryphal.