an exercise of culture, where all they knew of art and letters was united and expressed. And it made a man's heart sorry for the good fathers of yore who had taught them to dig and to reap, to read and to sing, who had given them European Mass-books which they still preserve and study in their cottages, and who had now passed away from all authority and influence in that land-to be succeeded by greedy land thieves and sacrilegious pistol-shots. So ugly a thing our Anglo-Saxon Protestantism may appear beside the doings of the Society of Jesus." Such, in brief, are the two sides of the picture of Catholic life and people and influences given us by Robert Louis Steven

the one the dark and unfair side-the crude and hasty judgment of a mind youthful, raw and callow, and (in spite of his better self and even unknown to himself) tainted with the unreasoning prejudices of his Presbyterian training; the other the bright and fairer side the ripe judgment and just verdict of his maturer years. When all is said-when his praise and his blame, his tributes and his censures, are weighed in the balance-I think we are safe in maintaining that the good outweighs the evil he has done us. If Stevenson erredas he frequently did—in his earlier estimates of us, his errors must be attributed to thoughtlessness or unconscious prejudice, never to malice. His latest accounts of us certainly go a great way towards atoning for the faults and injustices of his earlier days, and after a deliberate survey of the field, we freely pardon the wrong he did us unwittingly and strain him to our embrace as our friend and the friend of truth everywhere as God gave him the light to see it.

JOHN E. GRAHAM.

THE PRINCIPLES OF GOSPEL-HARMONY.

It is sometimes urged that it is impossible, with the materials at our disposal, to construct any really satisfactory harmony of the Gospels. Whether this conclusion is a justifiable one or not is a moot question; certain it is, however, that from the very earliest days of the Church down to the present time men have endeavored-and presumably always will endeavor-to construct one harmonious and consecutive whole out of the four narratives handed down to us. We need only mention Tatian, Victor of Capua and St. Augustine in the earlier ages; Stroud, Father Coleridge, Rushebrooke and Wright in more recent days.1

And of all these harmonists no one absolutely endorses the views of his predecessors-a fact which lends countenance to the declaration that such an attempt is pre-ordained to failure. But of late years so much work has been done, both in England and on the Continent, for the settlement of what is known as the 'Synoptic Problem' that, in the minds of many, a solution of this vexed question is-if not imminent—at least not impossible. Whether we agree with this or not, it is at least certain that no satisfactory harmony can be constructed until a clear idea of the relations of the Synoptic Gospels to one another has been obtained. We are not here concerned, however, save indirectly, with the Synoptic Problem. Our object is rather the examination of the principles which should guide us in our endeavors to construct such a harmony of the three Synoptic narratives-for we may leave the Fourth Gospel out of consideration for the present-as shall satisfy the demands of modern scholarship while abating no jot or tittle of sound doctrine regarding inspiration.

Harmonists may be conveniently divided into two classes: those who take inspiration into account, and those who do not.

1A long list of such attempts will be found in Tischendorf's Synopsis Evangelica, pp. xii-xvi.

The latter class regard the question simply from the literary point of view and maintain that the fact that the narrative is inspired is no real factor in the case. There is a great deal to be said for this view. Whether inspired or not, the Gospels are a literary product and the problems they present to the student of literature are not affected by the fact that they are inspired. But on the other hand no final solution of a problem can be arrived at which fails to take into account all the factors of the case. Hence, while approaching the problem from the literary point of view, the Catholic exegete can never formulate a conclusion which conflicts with the doctrine of inspiration. For inspiration is the determining factor, any view which runs counter to it is of necessity false, though not every view which does full justice to the doctrine of inspiration is therefore true.

We have been careful to say that inspiration must be taken into account in arriving at any solution whether of the Synoptic Problem or of harmonistic difficulties. It is to be taken into account, it is not a prime factor in the case. In other words while the claims of an inspired document are a conditio sine qua non of an acceptable solution, they are not a determining principle by the aid of which we arrive at a solution. It is possible that neglect of this principle will explain the failure of many systems of harmonisation put forth in the past.

And another fertile source of failure has been the tacit identification of inspiration with revelation.

Thus, to take a few well-known examples of difficulties which have to be faced in all attempts at harmonisation:

Matth. xx. 30-34, tells us of two blind men whom Our Lord healed as He went out from Jericho. Mark, however, x. 4652, and Luke XVIII. 35-43, mention only one-Mark actually names him, Bartimaeus, and they both tell us that the event took place as Our Lord was entering into Jericho.2

'Note Cajetan: 'Apud Matthaeum duo scribuntur caeci hoc in loco: quorum alterius tantum meminit Marcus, forte quia notior, et magis clamabat.'

Matth. vIII. 28, tells us of two demoniacs at Gerasa; Mark v. 2, and Luke VIII. 27, mention only one and their whole recital is colored by the fact that he was but one individual.3

These cases are familiar. How is a harmonist to treat them? The accounts are not revealed, if they were so we should have perforce to treat them as referring to distinct incidents; and this, as far as we are aware, no harmonist has attempted to do. But though not revealed the accounts are inspired, and divergences such as they present must be taken into account in arriving at an estimate of the real meaning of inspiration. We have a very similar case in the appeal made, according to Matth. xx. 20-23, by the mother of the sons of Zebedee, according to Mark x. 35-40, by the sons themselves. Now in the case of St. Peter's denials the apparent conflict between the questions and answers given us by the three Evangelists may be explained by supposing a chorus of voices, one said one thing, another another; but it is surely impossible to take refuge in such an explanation in the case of this appeal to sit at Our Lord's right hand. Can we suppose that mother and sons simultaneously put forward the petition? The whole character of the narrative is against such a supposition.

The above are patent instances of want of agreement; there are others which are not so evident but which on examination present perhaps greater difficulties. It will, however, be evident from the three instances given that we have to face an exceedingly delicate question: the Evangelists are inspired, how far did the gift of inspiration carry with it that of inerrancy? Were they always exact? Did their memories never play them false? In other words-and in the terms of the question immediately before us can the Gospel narratives be completely harmonised? It is a common axiom among non-Catholic writers that we have not to take the inspiration of the Bible for granted, but have to prove it for ourselves by

Cajetan: 'Marcus tamen tacens unum, non contradicit, saevioris enim creditur mentionem facere.'

study of each Book (see Bishop Welldon's paper in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1908). How this feat is to be accomplished we are never told-for obvious reasons! But the proposition might with truth be stated as follows: we must take the inspiration of the Gospels for granted since the Church tells us to do so; but nothing save examination of the Gospels themselves will tell us what was the effect of inspiration upon the Gospel-writers.

We are not here treating of inspiration in itself but it may be as well to state briefly what we hold with regard to it. In the first place, then, its existence has been defined repeatedly by the Church; its nature never. Following, however, on the lines laid down by the declarations of the Vatican Council, Sess. iii, cap. II. de Revel., repeated by Leo XIII in the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus,' and taught expressly by St. Thomas (Quodl. vII. qu: vi, i, ad 5m; 2da, 2dae, 173.4, etc.), we hold that the inspired writer is the instrument of God; that his relations to Him are the same as those which hold good between all instrumental and principal causes; that just as nothing flows from an instrument save as moved by the principal agent, so in the case of the inspired writer. And further; just as in every effect which flows from a series of subordinated causes there is something which is due to each of the causes which have combined to the production of that effect-they would not else have been applied-so in the case of inspiration. And lastly; just as in the above series of causes and effects there is always something produced by the immediate cause as well as something due to the cause which set that latter in motion, so in the case of an inspired writing, there is something which is due to the intermediate causes, but beyond that there is always something which is due solely to the first cause working for the production of the ultimate effect. This is not the place in which to develop these points, we have stated them succinctly in order to show that we allow no such thing as partial inspiration; there is no room in the Thomistic view for ' obiter dicta' or portions of the Gospel-narrative which are outside the influence of inspiration.