[Footnote 16: Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the bloody sweat, the
meeting of the holy women, the penitent thief, &c. The speech to the
women of Jerusalem (xxiii. 28, 29) could scarcely have been conceived
except after the siege of the year 70.]

A great reserve was naturally enforced in presence of a document of
this nature. It would have been as uncritical to neglect it as to
employ it without discernment. Luke has had under his eyes originals
which we no longer possess. He is less an evangelist than a biographer
of Jesus, a "harmonizer," a corrector after the manner of Marcion and
Tatian. But he is a biographer of the first century, a divine artist,
who, independently of the information which he has drawn from more
ancient sources, shows us the character of the Founder with a
happiness of treatment, with a uniform inspiration, and a distinctness
which the other two synoptics do not possess. In the perusal of his
Gospel there is the greatest charm; for to the incomparable beauty of
the foundation, common to them all, he adds a degree of skill in
composition which singularly augments the effect of the portrait,
without seriously injuring its truthfulness.

On the whole, we may say that the synoptical compilation has passed
through three stages: First, the original documentary state ([Greek:
logia] of Matthew, [Greek: lechthenta ê prachthenta] of Mark), primary
compilations which no longer exist; second, the state of simple
mixture, in which the original documents are amalgamated without any
effort at composition, without there appearing any personal bias of
the authors (the existing Gospels of Matthew and Mark); third, the
state of combination or of intentional and deliberate compiling, in
which we are sensible of an attempt to reconcile the different