l "Matthew," a fact
which does not make for the genuineness, or the authority, of that book.
If he did, he has shown that he does not care for its authority on a
matter of fact of no small importance; and that does not permit us to
conceive that he believes the first gospel to be the work of an
authority to whom he ought to defer, let alone that of an apostolic
eye-witness.

The tradition of the Church about the second gospel, which I believe to
be quite worthless, but which is all the evidence there is for "Mark's"
authorship, would have us believe that "Mark" was little more than the
mouthpiece of the apostle Peter. Consequently, we are to suppose that
Peter either did not know, or did not care very much for, that account
of the "essential belief and cardinal teaching" of Jesus which is
contained in the Sermon on the Mount: and, certainly, he could not have
shared Dr. Wace's view of its importance[42]

I thought that all fairly attentive and intelligent students of the
gospels, to say nothing of theologians of reputation, knew these things.
But how can any one who does know them have the conscience to ask
whether there is "any reasonable doubt" that the Sermon on the Mount
was preached by Jesus of Nazareth? If conjecture is permissible, where
nothing else is possible, the most probable conjecture seems to be that
"Matthew," having a _cento_ of sayings attributed--rightly or wrongly it
is impossible to say--to Jesus among his materials, thought they were,
or might be, records of a continuous discourse, and put them in at the
place he thought likeliest. Ancient historians of the highest character
saw no harm in composing long speeches which never were spoken, and
putting them into the mouths of statesmen and warriors; and I presume
that whoever is represented by "Matthew" would have been grievously
astonished to find that any one objected to his following the example of
the best models accessible to him.

So with the "Lord's Prayer." Absent in our representative of the oldest
tradition appears in both "Matthew" and "Luke." There is reason to
believe that every pious Jew, at the commencement of our era, prayed
three times a day, according to a formula which is embodied in the
present "Schmone-Esre" [43] of the Jewish prayer-book. Jesus, who was
assuredly, in all respects, a pious Jew, whatever else he may have been,
doubtless did the same. Whether he modified the current formula, or
whether the so-called "Lord's Praye