yond doubt" to the fact that the
author of the two books is a man of the second apostolic generation.
Well, it seems to me that I could agree with all that M. Renan considers
"beyond doubt" here, without surrendering anything, either "practically"
or theoretically.

Dr. Wace (_Nineteenth Century_, March, p. 363) states that he derives
the above citation from the preface to the 15th edition of the "Vie de
Jesus." My copy of "Les Evangiles," dated 1877, contains a list of
Renan's "Oeuvres Completes," at the head of which I find "Vie de
Jesus," 15 deg. edition. It is, therefore, a later work than the edition of
the "Vie de Jesus" which Dr. Wace quotes. Now "Les Evangiles," as its
name implies, treats fully of the questions respecting the date and
authorship of the Gospels; and any one who desired, not merely to use M.
Renan's expressions for controversial purposes, but to give a fair
account of his views in their full significance, would, I think, refer
to the later source.

If this course had been taken, Dr. Wace might have found some as decided
expressions of opinion, in favour of Luke's authorship of the third
Gospel, as he has discovered in "The Apostles." I mention this
circumstance, because I desire to point out that, taking even the
strongest of Renan's statements, I am still at a loss to see how it
justifies that large sounding phrase, "practical surrender of the
adverse case." For, on p. 438 of "Les Evangiles," Renan speaks of the
way in which Luke's "excellent intentions" have led him to torture
history in the Acts; he declares Luke to be the founder of that "eternal
fiction which is called ecclesiastical history"; and, on the preceding
page, he talks of the "myth" of the Ascension--with its "_mise en scene
voulue_." At p. 435, I find "Luc, ou Fauteur quel qu'il soit du
troisieme Evangile"; at p. 280, the accounts of the Passion, the death
and the resurrection of Jesus, are said to be "peu historiques"; at p.
283, "La valeur historique du troisieme Evangile est surement moindre
que celles des deux premiers." A Pyrrhic sort of victory for orthodoxy,
this "surrender"!

And, all the while, the scientific student of theology knows that, the
more reason there may be to believe that Luke was the companion of Paul,
the more doubtful becomes his credibility, if he really wrote the Acts.
For, in that case, he could not fail to have been acquainted with Paul's
account of the Jerusalem conference, and he must have consci