ient historians of
composing speeches for insertion in their narratives, and weigh the
suggestion that the sermons in the Acts may conceivably owe much to
the free rehandling of Luke or may even be his own compositions,
there is a fresh significance in his marked abstention from any such
treatment of the words of Jesus. It means that we may be secure in
using them as genuine and untouched reproductions of what he said
and thought.

This leads us to another point. The central figure of the Gospels
must impress every attentive reader as at least a man of marked
personality. He has his own attitude to life, his own views of God
and man and all else, and his own language, as we shall see in the
pages that follow. So much his own are all these things that it is
hard to imagine the possibility of his being a mere literary
creation, even if we could concede a joint literary creation by
several authors writing independent works. Indeed, when we reflect
on the character of the Gospels, their origin and composition, and
then consider the sharp, strong outlines of the personality
depicted, we shall be apt to feel his claim to historicity to be
stronger than we supposed.

Finally, two points may be mentioned. The Church from the very start
accepted the Gospels. Two of them were written by men in Paul's own
personal circle (Philemon 24; Col. 4:10, 14). All found early
acceptance and wide use,[6] and after a century we find Irenaeus
maintaining that four Gospels are necessary, and are necessarily
all--there are four points of the compass, seasons and so forth;
therefore it is appropriate that there are four Gospels. The
argument is not very convincing; but that such an argument was
possible is evidence to the position of the Gospels as we have them.
We must remember the solidarity of that early Church. The
constituency, for which the Gospels were written, was steeped in the
tradition of Jesus' life, and the Christians accepted the Gospels,
as embodying what they knew; and there were still survivors from the
first days of the Gospel. When Boswell's Life of Johnson was
published, the great painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds, a lifelong friend
of Johnson, said it might be depended upon as if delivered upon
oath; Burke too had a high opinion of the book. In the same way the
Gospels come recommended to us by those who knew Jesus, though, it
is true, we do not know their names.

The Gospels do not tell us all that Christians thought of Jesu