LUKE.

LUKE THE LITERARY ARTIST.

When we come to Luke, we come to a later storyteller, and one
with a stronger natural gift for his art. Before you have read
twenty lines of Luke's gospel you are aware that you have passed
from the chronicler writing for the sake of recording important
facts, to the artist, telling the story for the sake of telling
it. At the very outset he achieves the most charming idyll in the
Bible: the story of Mary crowded out of the inn into the stable
and laying her newly-born son in the manger, and of the shepherds
abiding in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night,
and how the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of
the Lord shone around them, and suddenly there was with the angel
a multitude of the heavenly host. These shepherds go to the
stable and take the place of the kings in Matthew's chronicle.
So completely has this story conquered and fascinated our
imagination that most of us suppose all the gospels to contain
it; but it is Luke's story and his alone: none of the others have
the smallest hint of it.


THE CHARM OF LUKE'S NARRATIVE.

Luke gives the charm of sentimental romance to every incident.
The Annunciation, as described by Matthew, is made to Joseph, and