isted and were received as authentic in the first century of
the Christian Church, a stronger man than M. Renan will fail to shake
the hold of Christianity in England.

We put the question hypothetically, not as meaning to suggest the fact
as uncertain, but being--as the matter is of infinite moment--being, as
it were, the hinge on which our faith depends, we are forced beyond our
office to trespass on ground which we leave usually to professional
theologians, and to tell them plainly that there are difficulties which
it is their business to clear up, but to which, with worse than
imprudence, they close their own eyes, and deliberately endeavour to
keep them from ours. Some of these it is the object of this paper to
point out, with an earnest hope that Dean Alford, or Dr. Ellicott, or
some other competent clergyman, may earn our gratitude by telling us
what to think about them. Setting aside their duty to us, they will find
frank dealing in the long run their wisest policy. The conservative
theologians of England have carried silence to the point of
indiscretion.

Looking, then, to the three first Gospels, usually called the
Synoptical, we are encountered immediately with a remarkable common
element which runs through them all--a resemblance too peculiar to be
the result of accident, and impossible to reconcile with the theory that
the writers were independent of each other. It is not that general
similarity which we should expect in different accounts of the same
scenes and events, but amidst many differences, a broad vein of
circumstantial identity extending both to substance and expression.

And the identity is of several kinds.

I. Although the three evangelists relate each of them some things
peculiar to themselves, and although between them there are some
striking divergencies--as, for instance, between the account of our
Lord's miraculous birth in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in the absence
in St. Mark of any mention of the miraculous birth at all--nevertheless,
the body of the story is essentially the same. Out of those words and
actions--so many, that if all were related the world itself could not
contain the books that should be written--the three evangelists select
for the most part the same; the same parables, the same miracles, and,
more or less complete, the same addresses. When the material from which
to select was so abundant--how abundant we have but to turn to the
fourth evangelist to see--it is a