t least singular that three writers
should have made so nearly the same choice.

II. But this is not all. Not only are the things related the same, but
the language in which they are expressed is the same. Sometimes the
resemblance is such as would have arisen had the evangelists been
translating from a common document in another language. Sometimes, and
most frequently, there is an absolute verbal identity; sentences,
paragraphs, long passages, are word for word the very same; a few
expressions have been slightly varied, a particle transposed, a tense or
a case altered, but the differences being no greater than would arise if
a number of persons were to write from memory some common passages which
they knew almost by heart. That there should have been this identity in
the account of the _words_ used by our Lord seems at first sight no more
than we should expect. But it extends to the narrative as well; and with
respect to the parables and discourses, there is this extraordinary
feature, that whereas our Lord is supposed to have spoken in the
ordinary language of Palestine, the resemblance between the evangelists
is in the Greek translation of them; and how unlikely it is that a
number of persons in translating from one language into another should
hit by accident on the same expressions, the simplest experiment will
show.

Now, waiving for a moment the inspiration of the Gospels; interpreting
the Bible, to use Mr. Jowett's canon, as any other book, what are we to
conclude from phenomena of this kind? What in fact do we conclude when
we encounter them elsewhere? In the lives of the saints, in the monkish
histories, there are many parallel cases. A mediaeval chronicler, when he
found a story well told by his predecessor, seldom cared to recompose
it; he transcribed the words as they stood into his own narrative,
contented perhaps with making a few trifling changes to add a finish or
a polish. Sometimes two chroniclers borrow from a third. There is the
same identity in particular expressions, the same general resemblance,
the same divergence, as each improves his original from his independent
knowledge by addition or omission; but the process is so transparent,
that when the original is lost, the existence of it can be inferred with
certainty.

Or to take a more modern parallel--we must entreat our readers to pardon
any seeming irreverence which may appear in the comparison--if in the
letters of the correspondents of t