are thus
confirmed, and the age and date of the Synoptic Gospels, I think
we may say, within approximate limits, established.

But we must not forget that there is a double challenge to be met.
The first part of it--that which relates to the evidence for the
existence of the Gospels--has been answered. It remains to
consider how far the external evidence for the Gospels goes to
prove their authenticity. It may indeed well be asked how the
external evidence can be expected to prove the authenticity of
these records. It does so, to a considerable extent, indirectly by
throwing them back into closer contact with the facts. It also
tends to establish the authority in which they were held,
certainly in the last quarter of the second century, and very
probably before. By this time the Gospels were acknowledged to be
all that is now understood by the word 'canonical.' They were
placed upon the same footing as the Old Testament Scriptures. They
were looked up to with the same reverence and regarded as
possessing the same Divine inspiration. We may trace indeed some
of the steps by which this position was attained. The [Greek:
gegraptai] of the Epistle of Barnabas, the public reading of the
Gospels in the churches mentioned by Justin, the [Greek: to
eiraemenon] of Tatian, the [Greek: guriakai graphai] of Dionysius
of Corinth, all prepare the way for the final culmination in the
Muratorian Canon and Irenaeus. So complete had the process been
that Irenaeus does not seem to know of a time when the authority
of the Gospels had been less than it was to him. Yet the process
had been, of course, gradual. The canonical Gospels had to compete
with several others before they became canonical. They had to make
good their own claims and to displace rival documents; and they
succeeded. It is a striking instance of the 'survival of the
fittest.' That they were really the fittest is confirmed by nearly
every fragment of the lost Gospels that remains, but it would be
almost sufficiently proved by the very fact that they survived.

In this indirect manner I think that the external evidence bears
out the position assigned to the canonical Gospels. It has
preserved to us the judgment of the men of that time, and there is
a certain relative sense in which the maxim, 'Securus judicat
orbis terrarum,' is true. The decisions of an age, especially
decisions such as this where quite as much depended upon pious
feeling as upon logical reasoning, are