remarkable _agreement_ not only in their general plan, but in
many of their details also. With the exception of our Lord's last
journey to Jerusalem and the history of his passion there, they are
mainly occupied with his ministry in Galilee. The selection of incidents
is also to a great extent the same. "The most remarkable differences lie
in the presence of a long series of events connected with the Galilean
ministry, which are peculiar to St. Matthew and St. Mark (Matt.
14:22-16:12; Mark 6:45-8:26), and a second series of events connected
with the journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51-18:14), which is peculiar to
St. Luke." Westcott, Introduct. to the Study of the Gospels, chap. 3.
The coincidences of language, as well as incident, are also remarkable;
and here the general law prevails that these coincidences are more
common, as has been shown by Norton and others, in the recital of the
words of others than in the narrative parts of the gospels, and most
common when our Lord's own words are recited.

6. But with these remarkable agreements coexist equally remarkable
_differences_. Each writer has his own peculiarities of style, which
appear more distinctly in the original than they can in any version. It
has been noticed also by Biblical scholars that these peculiarities are
more marked in the narrative than in the recitative parts of the gospels
in question. Each writer, moreover, brings in incidents peculiar to
himself, not in the form of patchwork, but as parts of a self consistent
whole. So far is he from exact outward conformity to either of the other
gospels, in respect to arrangement and circumstantial details, that the
diversity between him and them in these particulars, sometimes creates
serious difficulties when we attempt to arrange the three different
narratives in the form of a harmony.

7. No theory of the origin of these three gospels can be true which does
not explain both their coincidences and their differences. Hence we may
set aside at once the hypothesis of their _mutual dependence_ on each
other--that the later evangelists used the writings of the earlier. By
the different advocates of this theory, each of the three synoptic
gospels has been made in turn the primary record from which the others
drew; but no one of them has been able, upon this hypothesis, to account
for the omissions or insertions of the supposed later evangelists, much
less for the remarkable fact already noticed, that the peculiarit