maintaining that four Gospels are necessary, and are necessarily
all--there are four points of the compass, seasons and so forth;
therefore it is appropriate that there are four Gospels. The
argument is not very convincing; but that such an argument was
possible is evidence to the position of the Gospels as we have them.
We must remember the solidarity of that early Church. The
constituency, for which the Gospels were written, was steeped in the
tradition of Jesus' life, and the Christians accepted the Gospels,
as embodying what they knew; and there were still survivors from the
first days of the Gospel. When Boswell's Life of Johnson was
published, the great painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds, a lifelong friend
of Johnson, said it might be depended upon as if delivered upon
oath; Burke too had a high opinion of the book. In the same way the
Gospels come recommended to us by those who knew Jesus, though, it
is true, we do not know their names.

The Gospels do not tell us all that Christians thought of Jesus, but
they imply more than they say. The writers limited themselves. That
Luke, for years a friend of Paul's, so generally kept his great
friend's theology, above all his Christology, out of his Gospel, is
significant. It does not mean divergence of view. More reasonably we
may conclude something else: he held to his literary and other
authorities, and he was content; for he knew to what the historical
Jesus brings men--to new life and larger views, to a series of new
estimates of Jesus himself. He left it there. In what follows, we
must not forget in our study that behind the Gospels, simple and
objective as they are, is the larger experience of the ever-working
Christ.

There are three canons which may be laid down for the study of any