deal with subjects of great importance, some of which may not come directly under consideration in The Fourfold Gospel. Hence they have been given in outline here, as otherwise there might be no opportunity of publishing them at all. The present state of the evidence makes it impossible to regard the above suggestions as established conclusions; but some may regard them as at all events more probable than the literal view; and, in any case, the considerations advanced may indicate how these apparently definite narratives of actual events may have arisen-without any dishonesty in those who have recorded the narratives in their present shape-out of visions, metaphors, parables, and songs. I add "songs," because we perhaps lay too little stress on the influence of the earliest Christian hymnology. The Pauline Epistles (Eph. v. 14) have preserved no more than three lines of those "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs which they commended to the Ephesians and Colossians, and which St Paul himself sang by night in the prison at Philippi. That the songs vanished may be explained on the supposition that they seemed to the second generation of Christians, and especially to plain Gentiles, too "oriental," or "florid," or prone to treat history as poetry1." Such matter-of-fact western readers would be in danger of innocently converting the metaphorical into the literal and poetry into history. As the poems of Israel influenced the chronicles of Israel, so-it can hardly be doubted-the poetry of the first generation of Galilæan and Jewish believers must have left its impress on subsequent prose narratives of the life of Christ throughout the Roman empire. 66 1 A friend suggests that the use of "linen garment" and of other above-mentioned metaphors is "too transcendental" for the simple folk of the earliest Christians. But perhaps my friend ought to have said "too oriental and poetic for our occidental and prosaic minds to accept with ease-even with the Revelation of John open before us." I INDEX (NEW TESTAMENT PASSAGES) [Black Arabics refer to paragraphs [2]800–[2]997 (the 2 not being printed). 1 Black Arabics refer to paragraphs [2]800-[2]997, 291 21 foll. 848 24f 874c, 24f 18-21 873 20 875, 17** 21 851 22 foll. 45 [4 914 ordinary Arabics to the 19-2 |