and undertakes to
reconcile them. When I turned to the records and read them in this new
light, his attempted reconciliation, to my mind, was an utter failure.
Like every attempted reconciliation I have ever read since, it was done
by "reading into the record," not only what was not there, but what was
wholly inconsistent with the record that is there. If any candid
reader will first read carefully the first two chapters of Matthew,
noting all the details, and then likewise the first two chapters of
Luke, he will see that they are wholly irreconcilable in their details.
They agree in but two points: That Jesus was miraculously begotten, and
born at Bethlehem. But in every detail of what went before and after,
they are wholly at variance.

My belief in divine and infallible inspiration was here materially
weakened. How could the Holy Spirit "inspire" in two different men,
writing upon the same subject, such varying and irreconcilable accounts
of the same event? Besides, our author had practically abandoned the
idea of inspiration by attributing Mark's knowledge of the life of
Jesus to Peter and Luke's to Paul. But, on the other hand, as I
learned a little later, in all the writings attributed to Paul, there
is not a single reference, even most remotely, to the miraculous birth
of Jesus; but on the other hand there is much evidence in his writings
to lead to the conclusion that he knew nothing about it. Then where
did Luke get this information?

Concerning the Gospel according to John, our author devotes forty-eight
pages to an effort to support its authorship in the Apostle John, and
to try to reconcile it with the other Gospels. Like the differences
between Matthew and Luke concerning the birth of Jesus, this was the
first knowledge I had that there were any discrepancies between them,
or that there was any doubt about its authorship. He quotes
elaborately from the Church Fathers in its favor, as well as from the
modern critics both for and against. He admits that chapter xxi is a
later addition to the book, but insists that John wrote it himself,
except the last two verses, which were "added by the church at
Ephesus." He also admits that v, 2, 3, and viii, 1-11, are both
spurious and added by a later and unknown hand.

When I had read it all I knew less about the authorship of the book
than when I began. But the discrepancies between it and the synoptics
loomed large and menacing. I will not go into det