PREFACE.


This book is entitled "The Lost Gospel" because the book to which it is
an answer is an attempt to discredit the Supernatural element of
Christianity by undermining the authority of our present Gospels in
favour of an earlier form of the narrative which has perished.

It seemed to me that, if the author of "Supernatural Religion" proved
his point, and demonstrated that the Fathers of the Second Century
quoted Gospels earlier than those which we now possess, then the
evidence for the Supernatural itself, considered as apart from the
particular books in which the records of it are contained, would be
strengthened; if, that is, it could be shown that this earlier form of
the narrative contained the same Supernatural Story.

The author of "Supernatural Religion," whilst he has utterly failed to
show that the Fathers in question have used earlier Gospels, has, to my
mind, proved to demonstration that, if they have quoted earlier
narratives, those accounts contain, not only substantially, but in
detail, the same Gospel which we now possess, and in a form rather more
suggestive of the Supernatural. So that, if he has been successful, the
author has only succeeded in proving that the Gospel narrative itself,
in a written form, is at least fifty or sixty years older than the books
which he attempts to discredit.