The men who wrote them were too much _awed_ by our Lord, to make
more words about him than they absolutely needed.

Our Lord was too utterly _beyond_ them. They felt that they could
not understand him; could not give a worthy picture of him. He was
too noble, too awful, in spite of all his tenderness, for any words
of theirs, however fine. We all know that the holiest things, the
deepest feelings, the most beautiful sights, are those about which
we talk least, and least like to hear others talk. Putting them
into words seems impertinent, profane. No one needs to gild gold,
or paint the lily. When we see a glorious sunset; when we hear the
rolling of the thunder-storm; we do not _talk_ about them; we do not
begin to cry, How awful, how magnificent; we admire them in silence,
and let them tell their own story. Who that ever truly loved his
wife talked about his love to her? Who that ever came to Holy
Communion in spirit and in truth, tried to put into words what he
felt as he knelt before Christ's altar? When God speaks, man had
best keep silence.

So it was, I suppose, with the writers of the gospels. They had
been in too grand company for them to speak freely of what they felt
there. They had seen such sights, and heard such words, that they
were inclined to be silent, and think over it all, and only wrote
because they must write. They felt that our Lord, as I say, was
utterly beyond them, too unlike any one whom they had ever met
before; too perfect, too noble, for them to talk about him. So they
simply set down his words as he spoke them, and his works as he did
them, as far as they could recollect, and left them to tell their
own story. Even St. John, who was our Lord's beloved friend, who
seems to have caught and copied exactly his way of speaking, seems