hat the
Apostles endured for what they must have known to have been a falsehood,
and the still more astounding difficulty that One Whom the author of
"Supernatural Religion" allows to have been a Teacher Who "carried
morality to the sublimest point attained or even attainable by
humanity," and Whose "life, as far as we can estimate it, was uniformly
noble and consistent with his lofty principles," should have impressed a
character of such deep-rooted fraud and falsehood on His most intimate
friends.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" has, however, added another to the
many proofs of the truth of the Gospel. In his elaborate book of 1,000
pages of attack on the authenticity of the Evangelists he has shown,
with a clearness which, I think, has never been before realized, the
great fact that from the first there has been but one account of Jesus
Christ. In the writings of heathens, of Jews, of heretics, [199:1] in
lost gospels, in contemporary accounts, in the earliest traditions of
the Church, there appears but one account, the account called by its
first proclaimers the Gospel; and the only explanation of the existence
of this Gospel is its truth.

THE END.

[FOOTNOTES]

[3:1] Papias, for instance, actually mentions St. Mark by name as
writing a gospel under the influence of St. Peter. The author of
"Supernatural Religion" devotes ten pages to an attempt to prove that
this St. Mark's Gospel could not be ours. (Vol. i. pp. 448-459.)

[6:1] I need hardly say that I myself hold the genuineness of the Greek
recension. The reader who desires to see the false reasonings and
groundless assumptions of the author of "Supernatural Religion"
respecting the Ignatian epistles thoroughly exposed should read
Professor Lightfoot's article in the "Contemporary Review" of February,
1875. In pages 341-345 of this article there is an examination of the
nature and trustworthiness of the learning displayed in the footnotes of
this pretentious book, which is particularly valuable. I am glad to see
that the professor has modified, in this article, the expression of his
former opinion that the excerpta called the Curetonian recension is to
be regarded as the only genuine one. "Elsewhere," the professor writes
(referring to an essay in his commentary on the Philippians), "I had
acquiesced in the earlier opinion of Lipsius, who ascribed them (_i.e._,
the Greek or Vossian recension) to an interpolator writing about A.D.
140. No