strong to bear such a construction. And when we come to examine the documents which constitute the “New Testament” we notice at once that the traditional view of their character has undergone the same modifications as we have seen in other beliefs. From the words of the writers of the early Church it is clear that verbal inspiration was the common opinion, nor do we find much modification until we come to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From that period the extraordinary activity of critical analysis has worked a complete revolution in the educated world with regard to the Bible, and the New Testament has not been spared. Outside the Church of Rome inspiration has been virtually abandoned, and even in that heroically conservative institution the term has been emptied of all meaning. There is no dogmatic definition of inspiration, and the words in which the Councils incidentally describe it are of that elastic and diplomatic character which the Church always uses when, with an eye to future developments, it wishes to impress the uneducated majority without restricting too narrowly the liberty of the educated minority. One eminent professor of Scripture used to tell me that he prayed for a dogmatic definition of inspiration from Rome; another hoped that the Pope would not be so foolish as to lay down anything dogmatically at the present day. Ordinary Catholics are consoled by the Pope’s encyclicals; but Leo XIII. will die like Honorius or John XXII.; his utterances can conveniently be laid aside as not ex-cathedra pronouncements whenever it becomes clearly necessary to do so; even now they only bind the expressions, not the thoughts, of Catholics.
However, the hopeless controversy about inspiration is of little consequence; the question is, Do the documents form an authentic and reliable narrative of the words and life of Christ? The answer must be obtained by the impartial use of ordinary critical methods, by the examination of the evidence produced in favour of the truthfulness of the New Testament. Evidence may be either internal, taken from certain features of the narrative itself, or external—that is, the testimony of other reliable documents to its authenticity. It matters little whether we can trace the gospels to Matthew, Mark, etc.; if they are proved to be records of events by contemporary and credible witnesses, they are worthy of credence. But that is precisely what we cannot prove them to be; the evidence adduced is hopelessly insufficient. There is internal evidence of some force found in the topography, the political allusions, and the numismatics of the Gospels; but that is useless, since it does not extend to the only passages we are concerned about—the words of Christ and his supposed miracles. These may have been inserted into a simple and truthful contemporary biography of Christ, or an earlier document may have been used to give colouring and plausibility to a much later composition. We should have some basis
