history of this, the greatest drama in the world's history, comes to us from St. Mark, which thus becomes not only as it has been called a new Gospel type, but also the transition between Q and the two later Synoptists.

With this transitional view of St. Mark before him, Mr. Streeter asks, who does not feel that St. Mark, the oldest of the Gospels we have, is the one we could best spare? And yet as we ask such a question, do not some of us feel that we could not afford to lose a single word or incident in that fourfold account of our Lord's closing hours which the Church has preserved for us? should we not miss that picture of "the Strong Son of God, Immortal Love," which in the old symbolism of the Gospels the Lion of St. Mark presents to us? should we not miss the Gospel which someone has even described as a "history of the Passion expanded backwards," so long a portion of the Gospel Ideals with that one last week? And as we open the closing pages of each of our Gospels we find ourselves face to face with no mere mosaic of texts, but with a matchless picture transcending the most consummate literary skill, and a true Christian science would lead us to exclaim as we stand before that picture, "This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."

No wonder Professor Romanes could write, "True, or not true, the entire story of the Cross from its commencement in prophetic aspiration to its culmination in the Gospels is by far the most magnificent presentation in literature" (Thoughts on Religion, p. 160).

Before we pass to another class of literature closely connected with the Gospels, let us look for a moment at that Johannine passage in Q from another standpoint. It may be fairly alleged that more than one recent discovery has enabled us to trace the existence of Johannine phraseology at an early date in the Church.

In support of this, we might refer to passages in the Didache and possibly in the Odes of Solomon. With regard to the former, if we may place it with Dr. Sanday in A.D. 80-100, and with Mr. C. H. Turner at the same date, or even earlier still, its evidence becomes of the highest value. We have seen that Harnack places Matthew xi, 27, as early as A.D. 50, and it is not too much to add that he would also carry with him the verdict of many scholars when he maintains the likelihood that such words were known to St. Paul.*

But if it is rash to reject the early existence of Johannine phraseology, we may go further and maintain that it is

* P. Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus, pp. 264, 265.

equally rash to affirm, as is so often done, that the whole historical character of the fourth Gospel is to go by the board. In England, it is true, leading utterances may still be constantly quoted on the conservative side. Thus, e.g., Mr. C. H. Turner, in his Studies in Early Church History, p. 191, maintains that it still appears to him reasonably certain that one of the original disciples named John, whether the apostle or another, settled in Asia Minor, wrote the fourth Gospel there, and died about A.D. 100. And more positive statements still as to the authorship of the fourth Gospel by the beloved disciple might easily be quoted both in England and Germany.

But still it is often boldly affirmed that in Germany the Gospel of St. John is no longer to be regarded as a source in estimating the documents at our disposal say, e.g., for a Life of Jesus, or for an examination of their teaching and claims. It is, therefore, well to remember in passing that one of the fullest and most thoughtful works upon St. John's Gospel in recent years comes to us from Germany. The title of the book is in itself sufficient to secure it a high place, The Gospel of St. John as a Source for the History of Jesus.

There is much in the volume with which we should probably not agree, but its great value lies in the fact that the writer, F. Spitta, so well known in other connections, regards the fourth Gospel as containing an original document which was the work of an eyewitness, and that this eye-witness was one of the most trusted' friends of the Master, no less a person than the Apostle John.

It is worth noting that Spitta regards this portion of the fourth Gospel as still more reliable than the Synoptists as an authority and a history.

II. But no attempt to deal with the sources of our Gospels could lay claim to any fullness, unless we make some reference to those remarkable pseudepigraphical or apocalyptic books of the Jews which form in some respects a kind of background to the New Testament books.

Let us endeavour to give to some few of them a brief consideration.

The Assumption of Moses, probably dating soon after A.D. 6the date assigned to it not only by Dr. Charles, but by Professor Burkitt-is written by a Pharisaic Quietist. He has to protest

it is in fact the very object of his writing against the secularization of the Messianic ideal, and the growing political corruption of the Pharisaic party, against the notion so common, at all events in the middle of the century, that works were the means of salvation.

The Apocalypse of Baruch, the work of several authors, Pharisaic Jews, dating from A.D. 50-100, and containing portions to be assigned to a date before the fall of Jerusalem, again shows us in some of its sections the prevalence of a carnal and sensuous view of the Messianic kingdom, and in its dependence for salvation upon works, the need of the preaching of a Paul. If we take the passages bearing upon works and justification, it is not too much to say of them that "with every position here maintained Christianity is at variance, and Rabbinic teaching in full accord."

The Book of Jubilees, dating, according to Dr. Charles, 13596 B.C., is an attempt of a pious Jew, to which reference has already been made, and evidently a popular and widely read attempt, to describe the creation and the successive events in the history of Israel from the standpoint of the writer's own times.

In doing this the writer severely condemns the laxity of his countrymen with regard to the keeping of the Sabbath, but at the same time he shows us how rigid were the requirements of an orthodox Jew, and, quite apart from the Gospels and St. Paul, what a fatal danger the spirit of Rabbinism might become. Whoever drew water or lifted a burden on the Sabbath was to die; whoever did any business, made a journey, attended to his cattle, kindled a fire, rode any beast, travelled by ship, whoever fasted, or whoever made war on the Sabbath, was to die. As we read such regulations, can we wonder that people turned from a religion which might become so mechanical and so devoid of spirituality to the teaching of Jesus? or that St. Paul saw in such a spirit a burden too grievous to be borne, and in the law and liberty of Christ "a more excellent way?"

In some respects the most remarkable of all these books is The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, coming to us in its Hebrew original from about the closing years of the second century B.C. This book in its later Greek form contains so many points of likeness both in thought and word with the New Testament that Dr. Charles has gone so far as to maintain that the New Testament writers were influenced by The Testaments, although he admits that the latter does actually contain many Christian interpolations.

But Dr. Plummer, who has written in support of the opposite view with great force and detailed examination, considers that The Testaments was influenced by the New Testament. It is noteworthy that by far the most of the alleged parallels to the Gospels are to be found in the Gospel of St. Matthew, and

in the sayings recorded in that particular Gospel (see to the same effect Jacquier, Le Nouveau Testament dans l'Eglise Chrétienne, p. 141, 1911).

*

But if St. Matthew's Gospel, as there is reason to believe, was from the first the most popular, owing perhaps to its sayings and discourses, which would most readily strike the ear and remain in the memory, then we can account for the phenomenon mentioned. Moreover, it is very strange that these numerous similarities in thought and word should scarcely be found outside the New Testament books, in spite of their previous influence, and that, apparently, we have no certain evidence of The Testaments until the time of Origen.

One of the most remarkable features in these Jewish books is the omission, according to good evidence, of a suffering Messiah. And this becomes a matter of great importance at present, in face of the assertions of A. Drews, in Germany, that the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was by no means unknown to the Jews.

But even in the memorable passage IV Esdras vii, 29, where we read that after 400 years, the Son of God, the Messiah, should die, such a statement has nothing to do with the great prophecy of Isaiah liii. In the passage before us there is no kind of suffering, the death of the Messiah is a purely natural one there is no violence associated with it-not only is the Messiah to die, but all in whom there is human breath. It may even be that the writer meant to emphasize the thought of the new creation, which was to supersede the Jewish national Messianic hope (see further for this prophecy International Journal of Apocrypha, January, 1912).

Anyhow, the whole conception of a suffering Messiah was at variance with Jewish beliefs at the time of the Advent. All the Gospels bear witness to this, and it may be fairly said that it is not until after the fall of Jerusalem that we meet with this conception of a suffering Messiah in Rabbinical literature at all.

III. In dealing with the subject of comparative religion the relation of Christianity to the mystery religions is the question most freely discussed, according to Dr. Kirsopp Lake and Dr. Percy Gardner, in England, and they are strongly supported by Reitzenstein in Germany. But on the opposite side we have Sir W. Ramsay and Dr. Warde Fowler.†

*See Mr. C. H. Turner, Journal of Theological Studies, October, 1910. + See his Religious Experiences of the Roman People, p. 467, and The Modern Churchman, April, 1912.

What was the thought which lay at the root of these great Eastern religions? It seems to have been that of the triumph of light over darkness, of death issuing in life, incorporated in myth and legend.

The eclectic Gentile, as Dr. Lake describes him, who would come under the teaching of St. Paul as to the meaning of the death of Jesus, would see every reason for equating the Lord with the Redeemer-God of the mystery religions. At Antioch, or Ephesus, or Corinth, or Rome, there would be men disposed to listen to the teaching which told of owrnpía, which told that the soul could be raised above the perishable and the transient (as the best philosophy would hold) to an actual union with the Divine, and that this union would be effected in those "mysteries" of Christianity which promised the Gospel of eternal life.

But Dr. Lake makes a great and crucial avowal when he adds that for this salvation of the soul St. Paul's teaching would come to such a man with the advantage that this Redeemer possessed an historic character which could scarcely be claimed for Attis or Mithra.

We must omit the famous passage from Sir S. Dill, in which he contrasts the narrative of a divine life, instinct with human sympathy, with the cold symbolism of a cosmic legend. But it may be worth while to turn for a moment to Herr Gennrich, of Berlin, who has so well reminded us that the mediator whom Mithraism announced as a Saviour was but the personification of a power of nature, and the redemption instituted by such means was but a myth, devoid of any moral significance, and destined to hopeless failure when placed in the scale against the incomparable attractive power of the historical Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus of Nazareth. In Christianity that above all which separated man from God was not the unavoidable defect of a finite, earthly nature, but the personal decisive act of the human will against God (Die Lehre der Wiedergeburt, p. 87, 1907; see, too, on the same contrast between Mithraism with its legends and myths and the historical fact of the Incarnation, Christus: Manuel d'Histoire des Religions, by Professor J. Huby and other French Romanist writers, p. 396, 1912).

Once more we turn to the writer who has done more than anyone else to give us the salient points in the history and teaching of the religion of Mithra-"It was a strong source of inferiority, so he tells us, " for Mazdaism that it believed in only a mythical redeemer. That unfailing well-spring of religious emotion supplied by the teachings and the passion of the God sacrificed