St. Paul, and other books, some of which the Church judged afterwards to be Apocryphal.

Irenæus, writing to his friend Florinus (about A.D. 177), and fondly recalling his intercourse in earlier days with Polycarp, alludes to the four Gospels under the well-understood title of Scriptures1. The passage is too interesting to be abridged :

:

'I well recollect seeing thee in Asia Minor, at the house of Polycarp, when I was a boy, and thou wast in attendance on Hadrian's court, and seeking to commend thyself to Polycarp. Indeed, the events of my boyhood I remember better than what is more recent. For what is then put into our memory seems to grow with our growth, and become part of our very being. I could describe the exact spot where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and converse; his goings-forth and his comings-in; the whole manner of his life, and his personal appearance; I remember his discourses to the people, and how he would narrate his intercourse with John and with the others who had beheld the Lord; and how he repeated their words, and what he had heard from their lips about the Lord and about His miracles and teaching; all this, received directly from those who were eye-witnesses of the Word of Life, used Polycarp to relate, agreeing throughout with the Scriptures".

This same Irenæus, in his book 'Against Heresies' (iii. 1), speaks of the Gospel which the Apostles first preached orally, and afterwards by the will of God. handed down to us in a written form, 'the foundation and pillar of our faith.' He then proceeds to narrate

1 Compare Matt. xxvi. 54, Luke xxiv. 27, Acts xviii. 28, I Cor. xv. 3, 4, and 2 Peter iii. 16, where the term seems to be applied to St. Paul's Epistles.

2 Fragmenta Irenæi (Stieren's edition, vol. i. p. 822).

the circumstances under which St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John severally wrote their Gospels, mentioning them by name and in the order of our present Canon.

In the second book he speaks enthusiastically about the inspiration of Scripture, clearly including the Gospels in this term. After expressly defining 'Scripture' to mean the writings both of prophets and evangelists1 in the 27th chapter, he says in the 28th that where we find difficulties we must assume the fault to be in ourselves, 'because the Scriptures, being spoken by the Word and Spirit of God, are perfect.'

Thus it appears that within a hundred years of the fall of Jerusalem, and almost within the lifetime of disciples of one of the Apostles, the Christian Church had accepted and stamped with the seal of inspiration these four Gospels, as the only authoritative records of our Lord's sojourn upon earth.

From this time forward these four written Gospels came to be considered the most precious treasures of the Christian Church. Copies of them were multiplied, and they were bound up with the other sacred books. By the good providence of God two of these manuscript copies, both written before the close of the fourth century, have been preserved down to our own time. One is in the Vatican library at Rome, the other (discovered in the monastery of Mount Sinai, ten years ago) is in the Imperial library at St. Petersburg. A third, of equal authority, written apparently early in the fifth century, is in the British Museum. Few, if any, books of ancient times have come down to us so authenticated by external testimony as these four Gospel narratives of our blessed Lord's sojourn upon earth.

1 'Universæ Scripturæ et prophetiæ et evangelia.'

CHAPTER II

Their Enternal Character

WE open these Gospels and read them, and what

do we find?

Four brief narratives, none of them longer than a modern pamphlet, none of them a complete biography, but each one rather a collection of salient anecdotes and discourses, precisely such as an earnest preacher would select in order to convey to his hearers in the shortest compass a vivid portraiture of Him whom he wished to make known to them. They have much, necessarily, in common: all proceed upon one main outline of facts—the Baptism, the Ministry, the details of the Condemnation and Crucifixion, the Resurrection of our Lord.

And yet how distinct are these four portraitures ! And above all, what a marked difference between the three earlier Gospels and the fourth! Of this latter and most obvious difference let us first speak,—the difference between St. John's Gospel and the rest.

The first three Evangelists, until they come to the final journey to Jerusalem, narrate only what occurred in Galilee. Whereas St. John's narrative to the extent of six-sevenths of its space has Jerusalem for its scene.

Again, the three Galilean Gospels (as we may call them) have many miracles, many parables in common; told sometimes in almost identical words, as

though they had derived their narrative from the often repeated oral teaching of the self-same eye-witnesses (and this may well be the explanation). St. John, on

the contrary, relates no parables, and has but one miracle in common with the rest.

Again, the Three relate chiefly our Lord's popular discourses concerning His Kingdom; St. John for the most part His conversations with the Apostles or controversies with the Jews about His own Person and Mission.

But the difference in style is still more striking. The Three write a plain narrative, making no comment, never speaking in their own person (except in St. Luke's brief preface); St. John writes authoritatively, theologically, enforcing his own explanation of the facts which he relates.

These contrasts, which so widely separate the fourth Gospel from the rest, are at once explained by the fact which the early Church traditions unanimously affirm, that St. John wrote thirty years later than the rest, for a generation of men who had grown up in the Christian faith, and been familiar from childhood with that more popular cycle of Apostolic teaching which the three earlier Evangelists had embodied in their Gospels. We may accept or reject the anecdote preserved by Eusebius (Ecc. Hist. iii. 24), that the elders of Ephesus brought the three earlier Gospels under the special attention of the aged Apostle, and that he approved them, only noticing that some things were yet wanting, and wrote his own Gospel by way of supplement to them1; but one thing is certain, that,

1 Dr. Routh, in a note on Muratori's Fragment, speaks without any doubt of the authenticity of this anecdote of the primitive Church.-Rel. Sac. i. 407.

if not these actual Gospels, yet at any rate their substance, as repeated over and over again by the Apostles and their ministers in preparing catechumens for baptism, was already familiar to the readers for whom St. John wrote. Hence (what otherwise would be inexplicable) his silence respecting such events as the Ascension and Transfiguration, and the institution of the Eucharist, of each of which, however (as has been well observed), he seems to assume a knowledge in his readers' minds1.

Setting apart, therefore, this fourth Gospel as possessing a character of its own altogether distinct from that of the rest, we proceed to consider the other three. And here too, in the midst of much general agreement, we find differences,-traces of three distinct cycles of oral teaching, as though addressed to three distinct groups of Christian Churches.

We read St. Matthew's Gospel from end to end continuously, so as to gather one general impression ; we mark the pedigree from Abraham, the father of God's chosen people; the call from Egypt, as with Israel of old, so with the Hope of Israel; the ever recurring appeal to the Old Testament; the careful notice of every minute accomplishment of Messianic prophecy; the stress laid on Christ's fulfilment of the Law; the repeated announcement that a restoration of the theocratic kingdom was at hand; the number of parables specially explaining the nature of this kingdom ;—we cannot mark all these characteristics

1 For St. John's allusions to the Ascension, see vi. 62; to the Transfiguration, i. 14 (comparing 2 Pet. i. 17, and noticing the phrase 'the only begotten of the Father,' in which there seems to be a reference to the Voice then heard); to the Eucharist, xiii. 2.

2 Matt. ii. 15; v. 17.