passages would be left out
which did not suit the peculiar views of this or that sect; others would
be added as this or that apostle recollected something which our Lord
had said that bore on questions raised in the development of the creed.
Two great divisions would form themselves between the Jewish and the
Gentile Churches; there would be a Hebrew Gospel and a Greek Gospel, and
the Hebrew would be translated into Greek, as Papias says St. Matthew's
Gospel was. Eventually the confusion would become intolerable; and among
the conflicting stories the Church would have been called on to make its
formal choice.

This fact at least is certain from St. Luke's words, that at the time
when he was writing many different narratives did actually exist. The
hypothesis of a common origin for them has as yet found little favour
with English theologians; yet rather perhaps because it would be
inconvenient for certain peculiar forms of English thought than because
it has not probability on its side. That the Synoptical Gospels should
have been a natural growth rather than the special and independent work
of three separate writers, would be unfavourable to a divinity which has
built itself up upon particular texts, and has been more concerned with
doctrinal polemics than with the broader basements of historic truth.
Yet the text theory suffers equally from the mode in which the first
Fathers treated the Gospels, if it were these Gospels indeed which they
used. They at least could have attributed no importance to words and
phrases; while again, as we said before, a narrative dating from the
cradle of Christianity, with the testimony in its favour of such broad
and deep reception, would, however wanting in some details, be an
evidence of the truth of the main facts of the Gospel history very much
stronger than that of three books composed we know not when, and the
origin of which it is impossible to trace, which it is impossible to
regard as independent, and the writers of which in any other view of
them must be assumed to have borrowed from each other.

But the object of this article is not to press either this or any other
theory; it is but to ask from those who are able to give it an answer to
the most serious of questions. The truth of the Gospel history is now
more widely doubted in Europe than at any time since the conversion of
Constantine. Every thinking person who has been brought up a Christian
and desires to remain a Christi