have already quoted, (pp. 187, 188,) "has, for no other reason except the consequences involved in an admission of their truth, been treated with a flagrant disregard of equity and common sense, to which no parallel can be adduced." And he adds, with equal truth: "This violation of common equity in relation to the Scriptures has been favored by the mere circumstance of their having to be continually defended. It matters not how impudently false an imputation may be; the reply, though in the most absolute sense conclusive, begets almost as much suspicion as it dissipates. Herein consists all the strength of infidel writings; they call for a defence of that which is attacked, and this defence seems to imply that the question may fairly be argued, and that it is in some degree doubtful."

Here, then, we are willing to leave our case. The evidence which we have brought forward is drawn from no private or doubtful sources, but from writings whose genuineness no scholar of any weight, even in this age of scepticism, has, so far as we know, called in question. Any intelligent and careful reader is competent to judge of its force in relation to the subject before us. A great deal is sometimes said about the prodigious learning of certain writers who have framed theories in opposition to the authenticity and genuineness of the Gospels. But we are not aware that they lay claim to any original sources of information on these subjects, which are not equally open to the researches of other inquirers. The truth is, that all the books written within two centuries of the death of Christ, which have any bearing on this subject, are perfectly well known to scholars, and would fill only a small part of a small library; and from these few books, fragments of which are indeed to be found in later writers, we must draw all the historical testimony that is of any considerable value, or that ought to have any considerable weight, with an enlightened and conscientious inquirer. The method too often pursued by those who deny the genuineness of the Gospels has been to cloud and bewilder their readers by a mass of irrelevant and unimportant matter, drawn from the speculations, the crude and uncertain statements, and even from the spurious writings of a later age.

Indeed, there is, beyond what we have already alluded to, an impression lingering in the minds even of the most intelligent and enlightened believers, that a much greater amount of evidence is needed here than is required to prove the genuineness of other writings. For, it is said, spurious and fabulous stories naturally gather round such cases as this. But we doubt altogether the fact here alleged. The greatest teachers of the world have thrown around them an atmosphere of light which is fatal to every fabulous creation or growth. Their truths are clothed in a simplicity and grandeur which painfully contrast with the affected air of greatness which inferior minds, from a false and entirely different point of view, undertake to throw around themselves. Their teachings are too much the living products of their own thought, to allow the parasitic imitations and deformities of other minds to grow out of them and to partake of the same organic life. When the freshness of their youthful vigor is gone, trees begin to be covered with lichens and mosses, and, thus arrayed in ornaments not their own. These statements, made in accordance with the philosophy of the subject, are, we believe, sustained by historical facts. If, as those who deny the authenticity of the Gospels suppose, Jesus was simply the greatest moral and religious teacher that the world has known, with no power of working miracles, then the person who in his mind and fortunes, his life, teachings, and death, bore a closer resemblance to him than any other teacher that ever lived, was Socrates. But there never was a man around whom it would have been more impossible for spurious memoirs and miraculous fictions to grow up. Before the keenness of his intellect and the very nature of his instructions, though he believed himself guided by a personal divinity, all such fabulous creations must have slunk away, if it had ever entered the mind of any one of his distant and enthusiastic admirers to attempt to connect them with him. So with Confucius, the only other teacher who can be named in the same connection, no fabulous legends could stand the blaze of his strong intellect, as it shone out from his writings, long enough to attach themselves to him as a part of his life in the estimation of after ages. So, separated from the miracu

lous element, there is in the mind of Jesus, showing itself through his life and writings, a far-seeing keenness and wide-reaching cast of thought, a natural, commonsense comprehensiveness of wisdom, a breadth and elevation of moral sentiment, a calm and reasonable faith free from every element of excitement or fanaticism, which must have been the despair of any enthusiastic admirer who should dare attempt to add new incidents to his history, or wrap in a tissue of marvellous adventures the majestic simplicity of his character and his instructions. To make such an attempt while his thoughts and the memory of his life were still fresh in the minds and hearts of men, as they must have been for at least a century after his death, far from being what is usual in such cases, would have been a thing wholly unparalleled in connection with one of the great moral and religious teachers of mankind. And that men should not only have attempted so extraordinary an experiment with the life of Jesus, but that they should have succeeded in their attempt, and so incorporated their foreign marvels into his life as in no wise to affect its simplicity, blending them everywhere naturally with his common thought and speech, would be a greater miracle than any act which they have ascribed to him. Let any one read the Gospels with a view to this, and see how some of the simplest and sublimest of Christ's words flow calmly and naturally out of his miraculous deeds, a living organic part of a living organic whole, and let him seek to separate the one from the other without destroying the life of both, and he may have some idea of the impossibility of such myths and fabulous accretions as have been ascribed to the history of Jesus. Instead of such fabrications being common in such cases, we do not believe that another instance of the kind can be brought up from all the records of our race. No memoirs of this kind, professing to have been written by the original followers of Mahomet or their associates, have ever enrolled themselves among the sacred Mohammedan writings; and as to the Koran, which claims to have come through him, no one denies its claim. It is not till the simple and sublime doctrines of a great religious teacher have begun to lose their vital influence over the souls of men, and superstition begins to supplant a pure and simple

faith, that a fabulous growth of miracles and wonders springs up and shapes itself into myths and legends, which become, like the apocryphal Gospels and miraculous stories of the Dark Ages, a part of the popular belief. Fabulous creations like these soon succeed in encircling the history of pretenders and fanatics, and grow into it with a parasitical pertinacity; but they have never attached themselves to any great teacher as genuine and faithful memoirs, written by his immediate followers, with minute and circumstantial details connected with particular times and places, abounding in numerous, unconscious, and almost unnoticed allusions, which are to be verified only by a minute knowledge of the customs of the age and the natural features of the country. Far from being, as is sometimes said, what is common in such cases, this is precisely such a thing, we believe, as was never attempted, certainly never with success, in any such case. The myths of classical antiquity and of the Middle Ages belong to entirely different classes of compositions.

In this connection, no arguments have, perhaps, been urged with more plausibility and popular effect against the genuineness of the four Gospels than those which have been drawn from the apocryphal Gospels. But we ask no stronger argument on our side than that to be derived from a careful comparison of the two classes of writings, in their style, their tone of sentiment, and the general character of their contents.

As to their external history, the difference is as great. The attempt has often been made to show that the apocryphal Gospels were received by the early Christians with the same show of respect, and on the same kind of evidence, as the four Gospels which we now receive. But there is no sort of fairness, precision, or truth in this way of viewing the subject. It is carrying back the loose theories, the credulous statements, the fantastic and childish dreams of the fourth and fifth centuries, (some much later,) and, without keeping the difference of time in view, placing them as of equal authority beside the conduct and testimony of the first and second centuries, when men were competent to say what Gospels had and what had not been received as genuine from the days of the Apostles. The only way of meet

ing this course of reasoning (if reasoning it can be called), which would envelop the clear light of early Christian testimony and facts in the mists and myths of a later and inferior age, is to insist on a rigorous chronological method, to set down dates with the most scrupulous care, to trace authorities to their source, and to adinit no vague testimony without first determining precisely what it amounts to and the exact time to which it belongs. A want of thoroughness and precision here has been the cause of a vast deal of confusion and bewilderment.

But what are the facts relating to the apocryphal Gospels? What is the historical evidence on which they rest, as compared with that which we have given for the canonical Gospels? For a full and circumstantial answer to this question, we would refer to the eleventh chapter in the third volume of Mr. Norton's work on the Genuineness of the Gospels. We would particularly recommend a comparison between this chapter and an article relating to Dr. Hoffman's work on "The Christ of the Apocryphal Gospels," in the Christian Examiner for July, 1852.

The results of Mr. Norton's inquiries may be briefly stated here. There is no evidence in the writings either of heretics or of Catholic Christians belonging to the first two centuries, that any one of the apocryphal Gospels which have come down to us was in existence at that time, while there is the most direct and overwhelming testimony that our four Gospels were then received and held in respect by all Christian churches. There was a mutilated copy of the Gospel of Luke, which Tertullian mentions in his controversy with the Marcionites as being received by them. But except a Gospel according to the Hebrews, which Mr. Norton supposes to have been the Hebrew original of the Gospel of Matthew," the Gospel according to the Egyptians," he says, "is the only apocryphal book, bearing the title of a Gospel, that is mentioned by any writer during the three centuries succeeding our Lord's death, from which a single quotation is professedly given, or of which it is probable that a single fragment remains "; and in respect to this Gospel there is no reason to suppose that it was received as an authoritative or sacred book by any sect of Christians, or that it purported to be in any sense a history of Christ's ministry. The whole matter relating