firmed or reenacted after Charles's true accession to the throne, or Restoration,' as it is improperly designated. And to this day no memorial of the great Protector is to be seen among those of the sovereigns and statesmen whose effigies ornament our Houses of Parliament. In fact, from the royalist point of view there never was such a person as Oliver Cromwell in connexion with the government of. England, just as from the orthodox' Jewish point of view there never was such a person as Jesus the Messiah or Christ.

We now come to the consideration of those documents which are usually regarded as the sources of the history of our Lord's life and teaching, and on which the doctrines of Christianity profess to be based. These are the four Gospels, bearing respectively the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the several Epistles of St. Paul and other Apostles, with the Books of the Acts of the Apostles and the Revelation of St. John, forming together the Canon of the New Testament. As all these latter writings, looked on merely in the character of historical documents, relate principally, if not entirely, to the Resurrection of our Lord and its consequences, they need not be further alluded to at the present stage of the inquiry.

As regards the Gospels, the authorship of the first and fourth is commonly attributed to the two Apostles whose names they respectively bear; the second and third are in like manner supposed to be the composition of companions of the apostles Peter and Paul, Luke, the writer of the latter, being also said to be the author of the Acts of the Apostles.

The alleged authorship of these several works has been disputed, and seemingly successfully; though this, in itself, might not essentially affect their authority. The Psalms of David and the Proverbs of Solomon contain internal evidence of not having been wholly written by the monarchs whose names they bear; but this does not materially detract from their value.

A more serious objection is, that the several narratives are not always consistent with one another, and that even in some cases they are contradictory. Still this, if considered reasonably and

without any preconceived notions, ought not to invalidate the testimony of the writers as veracious and trustworthy recorders of the main facts with respect to which they agree. Indeed, so far from leading to the illogical conclusion that because they do not all coincide in every, even the minutest particular, they are therefore untrustworthy altogether, their differing in such trifling circumstances, whilst agreeing as regards the main facts, is the most convincing proof of the substantial truth of those facts. For their absolute agreement on all points and in all the details would have been a sure sign of their being copied the one from the other, whereby the testimony of their writers would lose its value as the evidence of independent witnesses, if indeed it did not give rise to the suspicion that that testimony had been fabricated for the purpose of giving currency to falsehoods.

It is not requisite to enter here into any elaborate criticism of the four Gospels. The first three, which profess to give an historical summary of the life and teaching of our Lord, and are therefore styled synoptical, agree substantially on most, if not all, material points. The fourth Gospel is chiefly didactic and doctrinal; but it is also in part historical, containing several incidents that are not touched on or even alluded to in the other gospels; in addition to which it represents some most important matters very differently.

Speaking of the synoptical Gospels, the present Archbishop of York (Dr. Thomson) says: 'The results of criticism as to the relation of the three Gospels are somewhat humiliating. Up to this day (1863) three views are maintained with equal ardour: (a) that Mark's Gospel is the original Gospel, out of which the other two have been developed ; (b) that it is a compilation from the other two, and therefore written last; (c) that it was copied from that of Matthew, and forms a link of transition between the other two**. In other words, it has not been possible to arrive at any satisfactory and conclusive result respecting the data or composition, and consequently the intrinsic value, of those three Gospel histories.

* Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible.'

Nevertheless it may be affirmed respecting the three synoptical Gospels that the first is the most valuable, as containing the fullest record of the sayings of our Lord Jesus in a form bearing the impress of truth; though it manifestly contains at the same time considerable interpolations and additions, probably made at the time when this Gospel was translated into Greek from the Jewish language, in which it appears to have been originally written.

The second Gospel might seem to be a compilation from the first, rather than that the first was developed from it. But there is no good reason why it should not be an independent original document, which was subsequently modified.

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The third Gospel, bearing the name of Luke, the beloved physician' of Paul, cannot be the composition of its alleged author; for it professes to have been written for the information of one Theophilus, to whom it is addressed, respecting 'those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they, who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word, delivered them unto us;' the fact being, as the writer commences by saying, that many had taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of these things;' and as he could not truly have said this unless there were already in existence several more Gospel histories than merely the two bearing the names of Matthew and Mark, it follows that a later date must be attributed to this document than the lifetime of a companion of St. Paul. And the statement that 'many' such histories were then in existence, and that this additional one was written in order that Theophilus (and, indeed, all lovers of God) might know the certainty of those things,' seems to imply that the other narratives then extant were not to be depended on, and therefore were intended to be superseded by this authoritative version. In fact, the third Gospel may probably be regarded as the first attempt of the heads of the early Christian Church' to assert their authority in putting forth a narrative of its founder's life which should be accepted as truthful and orthodox; all others, if not actually stigmatized as heterodox, being impliedly held up

as untrustworthy in comparison with this the only authoritative history.

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Unless the plenary inspiration of the third Gospel be insisted on,and this it will hardly be at the present day,-it stands to reason that its writer could not have possessed the means, even with the aid of the tradition' which he avows, of recording, ' ipsissimis verbis,' the conversation between the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, the beautiful 'Magnificat' of the latter, the 'Benedictus' of the aged priest Zachariah, the Nunc dimittis' of the devout Simeon; not to speak of the Proclamation of the angel to the shepherds, and the 'Gloria in excelsis' of the heavenly host. How attractive this legendary history must have been to the early converts is manifest from the hold these lovely poems have taken on the very soul of the Church, and the constant employment of them in its offices. But that these poems are authentic literal records of what was actually done and said, cannot be accepted as true, except on the assumption of their plenary inspiration. This third Gospel was, however, written at a time when the Jewish element still preponderated in the infant Christian Congregation; and accordingly it narrates the early history of the Messiah in a form which, whilst calculated to attract and at the same time instruct the Gentile converts who had some acquaintance with Judaism, was nevertheless in its main features in accordance with Jewish notions.

The fourth Gospel professes to be the composition of the Apostle St. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved; and as that Apostle must have been an eye-witness of the events professed to be recorded in it, and as he stood in the most intimate relation to his Master, and consequently was likely to be the best exponent of his expressions and sentiments, the authority of this Gospel was universally recognized as superior to that of the other three. This claim has, however, been disputed of late years; and the more closely the subject is investigated, the more reason there is for the opinion that this Gospel is not only not the composition of its reputed author, but that it is of much later date than even the third Gospel. Indeed there are the strongest grounds for

regarding the fourth Gospel as the production of a period when the Gentile had gained the ascendancy over the Jewish element in the Christian Church, and opinions were entertained which were no longer those of the Apostles. And thus it is that the personal human history of Jesus the Messiah,' so prominently put forward in the third Gospel, is discarded in the fourth, and Jesus Christ' is represented in his spiritual character of the Son of God.

In the present work it is not intended to discuss a question that has been so ably handled by numerous scholars both on the Continent and in England. All that needs to be said here is, that it was only after much doubt and hesitation, and with the greatest pain, as being at the sacrifice of the cherished convictions of many years, that the conclusion was arrived at that, in the consideration of the personal history of the Messiah, we are bound to disregard the testimony of the document bearing the title of The Gospel according to St. John.' And it must be added that, as will be shown in the progress of the present work, there is reason to treat the testimony of this Gospel as of little worth in other respects likewise.

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Whilst the first and second Gospels are entitled to be regarded as what they profess to be, the third and fourth Gospels may not unaptly be comprised within the two classes of legends which Dr. Arnold has defined as being equally remote from historical truth, but in all other respects most opposite to each other: the one imaginative but honest, playing with facts, and converting them into a wholly different form, but addressing itself also to a different part of the mind; not professing to impart exact knowledge, but to quicken and raise the perception of what is beautiful and noble; the other, tame and fraudulent, deliberately corrupting truth, in order to minister to national or individual vanity, but substituting in the place of reality the representations of interested or servile falsehood'*.

Making certain allowances, the Gospel bearing the name of St. Luke, which gives a poetical form to the life of the Messiah, *History of Rome,' i. 393.