thorship 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 l'auteur 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 consciously misrepresented
it.

We may next turn to the essential part of Dr. Wace's citation
("Nineteenth Century," p. 365) touching the first Gospel:--

St. Matthew evidently deserves peculiar confidence for the
discourses. Here are the "oracles"--the very notes taken
while the memory of the instruction of Jesus was living and
definite.

M. Renan here expresses the very general opinion as to the existence
of a collection of "logia," having a different origin from the text in
which they are embedded, in Matthew. "Notes" are somewhat suggestive
of a shorthand writer, but the suggestion is unintentional, for M.
Renan assumes that these "notes" were taken, not at the time of the
delivery of the "logia" but subsequently, while (as he assumes) the
memory of them was living and definite; so that, in this very
citation, M. Renan leaves open the question of the general historical
value of the first Gospel; while it is obvious that the accuracy of
"Notes" taken, not at the time of delivery, but from memory, is a
matter about which more than one opinion may be fairly held. Moreover,
R