to grope our way among confused and meagre records, gleaning from them how a peasant of Galilee who had lived in an obscure village for full thirty years, appeared as a preacher of the "kingdom of God," was attended by crowds of eager listeners, of whom but a few remained faithful, and, changing his views regarding himself, attacked priestcraft in its stronghold at Jerusalem, and was there put to death as a mover of sedition.

Coming to us in the way I have outlined, it is no matter for wonder that the records sadly lack arrangement, and that we cannot set down, except in very rough and uncertain fashion, the order of events in the life of Jesus. According to the "synoptics," his ministry lasted about a year, beginning in Galilee, where it was carried on till he went to Jerusalem and there met his death. According to the fourth gospel, it began at Jerusalem, and was varied by journeys into Galilee, and even through Samaria, lasting in all about three years. A like difficulty meets us in striving to arrange the order of the sayings of

Jesus, because in the gospels discourses given at various times are lumped together, as, for example, in the unsurpassed "Sermon on the Mount," which, by the way, Luke says was preached upon a plain; and the only method of picking out the earlier sayings from the later is by first acquainting ourselves with the earlier and later views of Jesus concerning his mission, and thus fixing the probable occasions which called forth his utterances.

No less a difficulty faces us when we ask what warrant we have that the gospels record his exact words, for they were addressed to unlearned men mostly drawn by Jesus from his own rank in society, and sharing the gross notions of their class, who could not understand his meaning, and so the words as they passed into their minds conveyed quite another sense than that in which he who was so much 66 over the heads" of his hearers used them. And then the records, the work of men who wrote from hearsay, differ from one another in reporting the same matters, so that we cannot say

which is the correct version, and must lament that both he and his hearers, and the writers of the gospels as well, could not foresee what opposing views about him would arise in after years, what value would be attached to his words, causing these to be quarrelled and fought over and died for by unnumbered men and women. The marvel is, even making full allowance for the greater power of the human memory in bygone times to faithfully report traditions word for word, and for the striking and best-remembered form, as parable and pithy saying, in which so much of his teaching was cast, that what has survived of all he said impresses us as truly embodying its spirit;1 vivid indeed must have been the image of the teacher; vivid the manner and matter of his teaching, which, filtered through many minds and many tongues, touches

1 "The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought; but who among his disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the gospels?"-J. S. Mill, Essay on Theism, p. 253.

us through the simple and stately language of our English Bible.

Added to the drawbacks which have been named, there are the legends and miracles with which the four lives of Jesus are suffused, and which, in showing us that the prevailing belief in these things was shared by the writers of the gospels, make us careful what we accept from them. Of this, however, more anon; here my sole object is to show that there are no ancient writings to which greater importance has been given, and of which so little can be known, although from them men are from time to time constructing lives of Jesus as minute and wordy as if every detail about him, with undisputed vouchers of its truth, were in their hands. Now, the foregoing outline of the nature and value of the sources of knowledge on this subject will not be without service if it saves you from reading the countless books in which scholars have discussed the age and authorship of the gospels-an irksome task, which few will perform and from which none can profit. It will also suffice to

show that a life of Jesus, in the usual sense of that word, is impossible; that all we can hope for, as we read the obscure phrases and varying statements of these ancient gospels, is to gather some idea of the secret of the enduring power of a man whose influence for good in this world cannot well be overrated. And in this life of ours, which finds so much serious work ready to hand, it is some gain to learn that among the self-appointed and resultless tasks over which men have spent years, are all attempts to construct lives of Jesus from the gospels, and systems of doctrine from his sayings, whereby the beauty and fitness of these may elude us, and the life that is in them escape.

III.

The Public Ministry of Jesus.

JESUS, perhaps attracted by the loveliness of the district and its numerous population, among whom were many welcoming faces, made, as