judgements, he never
offers a criticism of any act that implies moral approbation or
disapprobation; that he says nothing to show that he had feelings or
that he cared about questions of right and wrong. Page after page of
Thucydides will make the reader tingle with pity or indignation;
there is hardly in literature so tragic a story as the Syracusan
expedition--and the writer did not feel! Is it not the sternest and
deepest feeling, after all, when a man will not "unpack his heart
with words"? Something of this kind we find in the Gospels. There is
not a word of condemnation for Herod or Pilate, for priest or
Pharisee; not a touch of sympathy as the nails are driven through
those hands; a blunt phrase about the soldiers, "And sitting down
they watched him there" (Matt. 26:36)--that is all. (From a literary
point of view, what a triumph of awful, quiet objectivity! and they
had no such aim.) Luke indeed has one slight touch that might be
called irony[4]--"And he released unto them him that for sedition
and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he
delivered Jesus to their will" (Luke 23:25)--and yet the irony is in
the story itself. "Why callest thou me good?" So it is recorded that
Jesus once answered a compliment (Matt. 19:17); and it looks as if
the mood had passed over to his intimates, and from them to their
friends who wrote the Gospels. He meant too much for them to seek
the facile relief of praise. The words of praise die away, yes, and
the words of affection too; and their silence and self-restraint are
in themselves evidence of their truth; and more winning than words
could have been.

Here and there the Gospels keep a phrase actually used by Jesus, and
in his native Aramaic speech. The Greek was not apt to use or quote
foreign phrases--unlike the Englishman who "has been at a great
feast of languages and stolen the scraps." Why, then, do the
Evangelists, writing for Greek readers, keep the Aramaic sentences?
It looks like a human instinct that made Peter--if, as we are told,
he had some part in the origination of Mark's Gospel--and the rest
wish to keep the very words and tones of their Master, as most of us
would wish to keep the accents and phrases of those we love. Was
there no satisfaction to the people who had lived with Jesus, when
they read in Mark the very syllables they had heard him use, and
caught his great accents again? Is there not for Christians in every
age a joy and an insp