keeps its sharp edges. Date and perhaps even place may be forgotten,
but the look and the tone of the speaker are indelible memories. In
the experience of every man there are such moments, and the
reminiscences can be trusted. The Gospels are almost avowedly not
first-hand. Peter is said to be behind Mark; Mark and at least one
other are behind Matthew and Luke. Luke in his preface explains his
methods. They are collectors and transmitters; and the
indications--are that they did their work very faithfully. There is
a simplicity and a plainness about the stories in the Gospels, which
further guarantees them. It is remarkable how little of the
adjective there is--no compliment, no eulogy, no heroic touches, no
sympathetic turn of phrase, no great passages of encomium or
commendation. It is often said about the Greek historian,
Thucydides, that, among his many intellectual judgements, he never
offers a criticism of any act that implies moral approbation or
disapprobation; that he says nothing to show that he had feelings or
that he cared about questions of right and wrong. Page after page of
Thucydides will make the reader tingle with pity or indignation;
there is hardly in literature so tragic a story as the Syracusan
expedition--and the writer did not feel! Is it not the sternest and
deepest feeling, after all, when a man will not "unpack his heart
with words"? Something of this kind we find in the Gospels. There is
not a word of condemnation for Herod or Pilate, for priest or
Pharisee; not a touch of sympathy as the nails are driven through
those hands; a blunt phrase about the soldiers, "And sitting down
they watched him there" (Matt. 26:36)--that is all. (From a literary
point of view, what a triumph of awful, quiet objectivity! and they
had no such aim.) Luke indeed has one slight touch that might be
called irony[4]--"And he released unto them him that for sedition
and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he