ide. The doctrines of Paul are not so much theological baggage,
of which the Church would do well straightway to disencumber itself.
After all that the young science of Biblical Theology has done to reveal
the manifold variety of New Testament doctrine, the book still remains a
unity; and the attempt to play off one part of it against another--the
Gospels against the Epistles, or the Epistles against the Gospels--is to
be sternly resented and resisted. To St. Paul himself any such rivalry
would have been impossible, and, indeed, unthinkable. There was no claim
which he made with more passionate vehemence than that the message which
he delivered was not his, but Christ's. "As touching the gospel which
was preached by me," he says, "neither did I receive it from man, nor
was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ."
The Spirit who spoke through him and his brother apostles was not an
alien spirit, but the Spirit of Christ, given according to the promise
of Christ, to make known the things of Christ; so that there is a very
true sense in which their words may be called "the final testimony of
Jesus to Himself." "We have the mind of Christ," Paul said, and both in
the Epistles and the Gospels we may seek and find the teaching of
Jesus.[2]

It is, however, with the teaching of Jesus as it is recorded in the
Gospels that, in these chapters, we are mainly concerned. We come,
therefore to our second question: Can we trust the Four Gospels? And
this question must be answered in even fewer words than were given to
the last. As to the external evidence, let us hear the judgment of the
great German scholar, Harnack. Harnack is a critic who is ready to give
to the winds with both hands many things which are dear to us as life
itself; yet this is how he writes in one of his most recent works:
"Sixty years ago David Friedrich Strauss thought that he had almost
entirely destroyed the historical credibility, not only of the fourth,
but also of the first three Gospels as well. The historical criticism of
two generations has succeeded in restoring that credibility in its main
outlines."[3] When, from the external, we turn to the internal evidence,
we are on incontestable ground. The words of Jesus need no credentials,
they carry their own credentials; they authenticate themselves.
Christian men and women reading, _e.g._, the fourteenth of St. John's
Gospel say within themselves that if these are not the words of J