and
which has vindicated its place in the devotional life in every
Christian generation. But, for the present, the first Three Gospels
will be our chief sources.

The Gospels have, of course, been attacked again and again. Sober
criticism has raised the question as to whether here and there
traces may be found of the touch of a later hand--for example, were
there two asses or one, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem? has the
baptismal formula at the end of Matthew been adjusted to the creed
of Nicaea? In the following pages the attempt will be made to base
what is said not on isolated texts, which may--and of course may
not--have been touched, but on the general tenor of the books. A
single episode or phrase may suffer change from a copyist's hand,
from inadvertence or from theological predilection. The character of
the Personality set forth in the Gospels is less susceptible of
alteration.

This point is at once of importance, for the suggestion has been
made that we cannot be sure of any particular statement, episode,
incident or saying in the Gospels--taken by itself. Let us for the
moment imagine a more sweeping theory still--that no single episode
incident or saying of Jesus in the Gospels is authentic at all. What
follows? The great historian, E. A. Freeman of Oxford, once said
that a false anecdote may be good history; it may be sound evidence
for character, for, to obtain currency, a false anecdote has also to
true; it must be, in our proverbial phrase, "if not true, well
invented." Even if exaggeration and humour contribute to give it a
twist, the essence of parody is that it parodies--it must conform to
the original even where it leaves it. A good story-teller will
hardly tell the same story of Mr. Roosevelt and the Archbishop of
Canterbury--unless it happens to be true, and then he will be
cautious. "Truth," to quote another proverb, "is stranger than
fiction"; because fiction has to go warily to be probable, and must
be, more or less, conventional. The story a man invents about
another has to be true in some recognizable way to character--as a
little experiment in this direction will show. The inventor of a
story must have the gift of the caricaturist and of the bestower of
nicknames; he must have a shrewd eye for the real features of his
victim. Jesus, then, was a historical person; and about him we have
a mass of stories in the Gospels, which our theory for the moment
asks us to say are all false; but they