, for example, did not draw his
materials from Luke; for there is his genealogy of our Lord, and his
full account of the sermon on the mount, not to mention other
particulars. Nor did Luke take his materials from Matthew; for there is
his genealogy also, with large sections of matter peculiar to himself.
Mark has but little matter that is absolutely new; but where he and the
other two evangelists record the same events, if one compares his
narratives with theirs, he finds numerous little incidents peculiar to
this gospel woven into them in a very vivid and graphic manner. They
come in also in the most natural and artless way, as might be expected
from one who, if not himself an eye-witness, received his information
immediately from eye-witnesses. The three writers, moreover, do not
always agree as to the order in which they record events; yet,
notwithstanding the diversities which they exhibit, they were all
received from the first as of equal authority.

The natural explanation of this is that all three wrote in the apostolic
age, and consequently had access, each of them independently of the
other two, to the most authentic sources of information. These sources
(so far as the evangelists were not themselves eye-witnesses) lay
partly, perhaps, in written documents like those referred to by Luke,
1:1, partly in the unwritten traditions current in the apostolic
churches, and partly in personal inquiry from eye-witnesses, especially,
in the case of Mark and Luke, from apostles themselves. From these
materials each selected as suited his purposes, and the churches
everywhere unhesitatingly received each of the three gospels,
notwithstanding the above-named variations between them, because they
had undoubted evidence of their apostolic authority. We cannot suppose
that after the apostolic age three gospels, bearing to each other the
relation which these do, could have been imposed upon the churches as
all of them equally authentic. We know from the history of Marcion's
gospel how fully alive they were to the character of their sacred
records. On apostolic authority they could receive--to mention a single
example--both Matthew's and Luke's account of our Lord's genealogy; but
it is certain that they would not have received the two on the authority
of men who lived after the apostolic age.

16. In the gospel narratives are numerous incidental allusions to
passing events without the proper sphere of our Lord's labors, to soci