he contemporary evidence that we have with regard to Christ. He
impairs with one hand the value of what he has so lavishly yielded with
the other. He finds inconsistencies and discrepancies in the narrative
that for him destroy their value as testimony. A lawyer would probably
say that this is that very human element in the writings which
demonstrates their authenticity and adds to their value as evidence,
because it shows clearly the lack of any attempt to do anything more
than tell a direct story as it had come to the narrator. No special
effort was made to avoid critical objections founded on details. It was
the general impression that was looked for.

Sir William Ramsay, in his "Luke the Physician and Other Studies in the
History of Religion" (New York: Armstrong and Sons, 1908), has answered
Harnack from the side of the professional critic with much force. He
appreciates thoroughly the value of Professor Harnack's book, and above
all the reactionary tendency away from nihilistic so-called higher
criticism which characterized so much of German writing on biblical
themes in the nineteenth century. He says (p. 7): "This [book of
Harnack's] alone carries Lukan criticism a long step forwards, and sets
it on a new and higher plane. Never has the unity and character of the
book been demonstrated so convincingly and conclusively. The step is
made and the plane is reached by the method which is practised in other
departments of literary criticism, viz., by dispassionate investigation
of the work and by discarding fashionable _a priori_ theories."

The distinguished English traveller and writer on biblical subjects
points out, however, that in detail many of Harnack's objections to the
Lukan narratives are due to insufficient consideration of the
circumstances in which they were written and the comparative
significance of the details criticised. He says, "Harnack lays much
stress on the fact that inconsistencies and inexactnesses occur all
through Acts. Some of these are undeniable; and I have argued that they
are to be regarded in the same light as similar phenomena in the poem of
Lucretius and in other ancient classical writers, viz., as proofs that
the work never received the final form which Luke intended to give it,
but was still incomplete when he died. The evident need for a third book
to complete the work, together with those blemishes in expression, form
the proof."

Ramsay's placing of Harnack's writing in genera