principle accessible and easily intelligible, by which the details can
be summarily disposed of.

We shall not be much mistaken, perhaps, if we say that the view of most
educated English laymen at present is something of this kind. They are
aware that many questions may be asked, difficult or impossible to
answer satisfactorily, about the creation of the world, the flood, and
generally on the historical portion of the Old Testament; but they
suppose that if the authority of the Gospel history can be well
ascertained, the rest may and must be taken for granted. If it be true
that of the miraculous birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord,
we have the evidence of two evangelists who were eye-witnesses of the
facts which they relate, and of two others who wrote under the direction
of, or upon the authority of, eye-witnesses, we can afford to dispense
with merely curious enquiries. The subordinate parts of a divine economy
which culminated in so stupendous a mystery may well be as marvellous as
itself; and it may be assumed, we think, with no great want of charity,
that those who doubt the truth of the Old Testament extend their
incredulity to the New; that the point of their disbelief, towards which
they are trenching their way through the weak places in the Pentateuch,
is the Gospel narrative itself.[F] Whatever difficulty there may be in
proving the ancient Hebrew books to be the work of the writers whose
names they bear, no one would have cared to challenge their genuineness
who was thoroughly convinced of the resurrection of our Lord. And the
real object of these speculations lies open before us in the now
notorious work of M. Renan, which is shooting through Europe with a
rapidity which recalls the era of Luther.

To the question of the authenticity of the Gospels, therefore, the
common sense of Englishmen has instinctively turned. If, as English
commentators confidently tell us, the Gospel of St. Matthew, such as we
now possess it, is undoubtedly the work of the publican who followed our
Lord from the receipt of custom, and remained with Him to be a witness
of His ascension; if St. John's Gospel was written by the beloved
disciple who lay on Jesus' breast at supper; if the other two were
indeed the composition of the companions of St. Peter and St. Paul; if
in these four Gospels we have independent accounts of our Lord's life
and passion, mutually confirming each other, and if it can be proved
that they ex