of Jesus; then another divine being sent instead of him (xiv. 16). He comes not then in his own proper person; still the coming being is closely connected with him;—is to come "in his name" (xiv. 26), to "testify of him" (xv. 26). In short the coming is miraculous, corporeal or spiritual, as circumstances require; as the coming of the Father (xiv. 23), so that of the Son, both equally implying the accomplishment of the spiritual purpose before theoretically announced in the discourses.1

With the giving of the Spirit the narrative properly terminates; but an incident is added offering a final illustration of the nature of the great agent of religion in the heart, namely faith. It is added, to refute the last illusion of incredulity, that seeing is essential to believing. Doubtless external "signs" are often needful in order to originate faith; but they are needful only as means for producing something higher and better; they are as the body of which faith is the soul; and when the pure spirit has been disengaged remain but as the refuse of mortality or the cerements of the dead. The most blessed faith is that which believes without seeing; the majority believe only after they have seen; others again, even although seeing, believe not, like the Jews and the half-darkling Nicodemus, who though alive to the inconsistencies of his fellow rulers, remains apparently unconscious to the last, appropriately sharing with Joseph of Arimathea the last duties to the corpse. The faith which depends on sight is

1 Dr. Hilgenfeld supposes that the Spirit which at first descended upon Jesus according to the Baptist's intimation (i. 32. etc.), was itself the Logos; that this Spirit became severed from him at his crucifixion, according to the gnostic theory of the impassive divinity, and was reunited at the ascension. (Die Evangelien, p. 238, and "Urchristenthum," p. 129.) But one of the most noticeable characteristics of the gospel is the tact with which it steers clear of gnosticism; and perhaps the best illustration of the writer's meaning is the passage in the first Epistle-1 John v. 6,-where Christ's humanity is emphatically asserted against the Docetists; declaring-possibly not without an allusion to the baptismal water and the accompanying descent of the Spirit -that he "came not by water alone, but by water and blood."

2 The first section of the gospel terminates at xii. 37, with a formal inference as to the same important subject.

Such,

ever precarious, and apt to relapse into unbelief. we are told, was once the condition of Peter; and the evangelist seems to have in view this unsatisfactory state of mind when in a preceding paragraph, as well as in the appended twenty-first chapter (ver. 7) he contrasts the conduct of Peter with that of John (xx. 4, 8). It will assist our comprehension of this passage to refer to that in Luke (xxiv. 12) mentioning the bewildered perplexity of Peter at the sight of the grave clothes, a passage which the fourth evangelist seems here to have had especially in view,3 and which may have suggested the contrast between the disciple who could not understand what he saw, and the other who on seeing believed and understood at once. Peter saw only grave clothes; John, indifferent at first to these externalities, saw a confirmation of his previous faith, founded on the divine necessities of Scripture.

The other Gospels.

The admission of the ideal character of the fourth gospel supplies a clue to follow the more complicated structure of the others. To suppose the fourth historical were not only to dismiss the entire phenomena of Christianity to the sphere of the miraculous, but to destroy, or at least indefinitely weaken, our reliance on accounts which are inconsistent with it. On the other hand, after allowing the conceptional character of the fourth, the question again opens as to the relative reliability of the others; while at the same time the insight already gained as to the nature of the fourth forbids an incautious indiscriminate reliance on the pragmatical accuracy of all. It has been seen that most of the New Testament writings, like the genuine ones

1 According to the saying-Matt. xiii. 12, and Luke viii. 18-that he who hath not shall lose even what he seems to have.

2 Luke xxii. 31.

See Baur, "Evangelien," 323.

of St. Paul, contain a special doctrinal character or view of Christianity, in other words a peculiar "gospel,"1 expressed with a particular anxiety to secure that harmony and unity among believers which were still desiderata in the second century, and which since the Antioch dispute were assuredly non-existent in the first. Controversial or conciliatory efforts of this kind were expressed partly in didactic, partly in narrative form; and of the two it would seem less obviously impressive to clothe the lesson in didactic admonitory language under the name of an apostle, than to shape it as a story,-making it arise spontaneously and dramatically in the course of familiar intercourse with Jesus himself.

In speaking of the origin of the gospels, two factors must always be taken into account; the spontaneity of tradition, and the free choice of the individual writers. Even in the fourth gospel, where traditional data are most arbitrarily treated, the writer's licence is still held within certain limiting conditions. The synoptical gospels follow more submissively the growth and bias of tradition; they are no uniform original creations of a single mind, but results of the long continued efforts of successive compilers to adapt the legendary material to existing exigencies; so that in assigning dates to them much diversity of opinion may be expected to arise from the length of time really occupied in the process, and from the partial choice of a special chronological epoch in the protracted line of their formation. Yet all three documents will be found to have a specific tendency, to evince a more or less determinate purpose, a disposition to neutralize existing varieties of opinion, and to pave the way for Catholic establishment. In every case the writer's theory or policy of course exercises a modifying influence over his narrative. Matthew represents especially the Judaical tradition, but with intermingling Catholic concession; Luke is a conciliatory

1 Gal. ii. 2. Rom. ii. 16.

aggregate of Judaical notions and narratives superadded to a Pauline basis, which, next to the genuine Pauline Epistles, may be considered as the purest and most important document of Paulinism; in Mark the original intent of gospel writing, namely, that of "good tidings" or salutary doctrine, sinks almost entirely into mere narrative—a narrative singularly Catholic and practical, which instead of attempting to combine and harmonize disputable points of doctrine, adopts the safer plan of omitting them. And if, according to what seems to be the better opinion, this narrative be a mere secondary compilation, it will simplify the subject to state in the first place some of the reasons on which the inference of its derivative character is founded, before entering on the problem of the two parent gospels.

Mark.

The problem as to Mark's originality, first mooted by Storr on one side and by Griesbach and Saunier on the other, has recently been much debated; Ritschl, Weisse, Wilke, Ewald, Thiersch, and others contending for Mark's priority; but the truer view seems to be that of Baur, Schwegler, De Wette, and Köstlin, placing him last in order.1 In considering the matter it is necessary to distinguish the Mark mentioned by Papias in Eusebius as entirely different in character from the canonical Mark; the latter appearing to have been unknown down to the time of Irenæus. The fact that the whole of the actual Mark, except about twenty-four or twenty-seven verses, was to be found in Matthew or Luke, at first suggested the hypothesis that Mark was the common source of the others; but this did not account for the discrepancies and additions; and the forced efforts of Wilke to make the writer's own glosses

1 See Köstlin's Ursprung u. Composition der Synoptischen Evangelien, 1853; Hilgenfeld, Die Evangelien, 1851; Bleek's Synoptische Erklärung, i. p. 4.

into later interpolations proved fatal to his theory. The name of Mark, the evidently Petrinic and neutral character of the gospel, added to the tradition of its Roman origin, internally confirmed by Latinisms and other indications, seem unfavourable to priority; for the oldest gospel writing was probably Aramaic; and Mark's suppression of controversial matter seems to indicate that advanced period of church development when unity having been to a great extent secured, it seemed more prudent to drop debateable topics than to discuss them. In regard to this it is remarkable that at the very point where in Matthew the evangelist encountered the Sermon on the Mount (i. 21), he suddenly passes to Luke; and that his language betrays a leaning towards Docetic views of Christ,' and an aversion to the human origin expressed in the genealogies. A late date is also suggested by the alteration of Christ's prediction of his personal return during the lifetime of individuals then present into a mere "establishment of the kingdom," without referring to a personal coming; there are also several apparent allusions to later circumstances and legends; and the relation of dependency becomes more and more evident when we detect the later compiler missing the original meaning in parallel passages. Thus in Mark ix. 6, the fear of Peter is inadequately accounted for; the antecedent cloud and voice, the natural causes of fear in Matthew (xvii. 6), being placed after the effect. In chapter ix. 36 the omission of the verses (Matt. xviii.

1 This is seen in the opening verse (i. 1) in the change of "8 TEKTOVOS ÚLOS" (Matt. xiii. 55) into “¿ TEKTWV 8 vios Mapias" (Mark vi. 3); also in the omission of the story of the infancy, a usual symptom of gnosticism occurring in the Clementines, the Diatessaron of Tatian, etc.

2 Matt. x. 23; xvi. 28.

3 Comp. xvi. 17 with Acts ii. 4, and xxviii. 3. Mark seems to hold the balance even between asceticism and luxury; he omits the passages Matt. xi. 19, Luke vii. 34; but also omits Matt. xix. 10-comp. Mark x 13; he sanctions the possession of sandals, and even of two coats, if not worn together (ch. vi. 9 compared with Matt. x. 10, Luke ix. 3). His corrected citation of the words (Isai. lvi. 7), "house of prayer for all nations" (ch. xi. 17) seems already to betray the pretensions of Roman Catholicism.