rigin be doubted--see Col. 4:11, 16--by one who
had received a Jewish training under the influence of the Greek version
of the Old Testament,) and therefore pervaded and colored by Hebrew
idioms. This peculiar form of the Greek language belongs to the
apostolic age, when the teachers and writers of the church were Jews.
After the overthrow of Jerusalem, the dispersion of the Jewish nation,
and the death of the apostles and their associates, it rapidly
disappeared. Thenceforward the writers of the church were of Gentile
origin and training, in accordance with the Saviour's memorable words:
"The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation
bringing forth the fruits thereof."

These internal proofs, coinciding as they do with a mass of external
evidences so great and varied, place the genuineness of the four
canonical gospels on a foundation that cannot be shaken.

CHAPTER III.

UNCORRUPT PRESERVATION OF THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES.

1. It is necessary, first of all, to define what is meant in the present
connection by the uncorrupt preservation of the gospel narratives. When
a man, whose business it is to examine and compare manuscripts or
editions of a work, speaks of a given text as corrupt, he means one
thing; in a question concerning the truth of the Christian system as
given in the writings of the New Testament, a corrupt text means
something very different. The collator of manuscripts understands by a
corrupt text one that has been marred by the carelessness or bad
judgment of transcribers, whence have arisen so many "various readings,"
though these do not change, or essentially obscure the facts and
doctrines of Christianity, as has been most conclusively shown by the
results of modern textual criticism; but in an inquiry whether we have
in our canonical gospels the account of our Lord's life and teachings as
it was originally written by the evangelists in all essential
particulars, we have to do with the question, not of various readings,
such as are incident to all manuscripts, but of essential additions,
alterations, or mutilations--like those, for example, which Marcion
attempted--by which the facts and doctrines themselves are changed or
obscured. It is against the charge of such essential corruptions that we
maintain the integrity of the text in the gospels, as in the other books
of the New Testament.

2. The most important materials for writing in ancient times were the
paper made of