XV111 PREFACE 



hardly carry no impartial judge beyond the 

 admission of a possibility this way or that. 



Thus, nothing but a balancing of very dubious 

 probabilities is to be attained by approaching 

 the question from this side. It is otherwise if 

 we make the documents tell their own story : if 

 we study them, as we study fossils, to discover in- 

 ternal evidence of when they arose, and how they 

 have come to be. That really fruitful line of in- 

 quiry has led to the statement and the discussion 

 of what is known as the Synoptic Problem. 



In the Essays (VII. XI.) which deal with the 

 consequences of the application of the agnostic 

 principle to Christian Evidences, contained in this 

 volume, there are several references to the results 

 of the attempts which have been made, during 

 the last hundred years, to solve this problem. 

 And, though it has been clearly stated and 

 discussed, in works accessible to, and intelligible 

 by, every English reader, 1 it may be well that I 

 should here set forth a very brief exposition of 

 the matters of fact out of which the problem has 

 arisen ; and of some consequences, which, as I con- 

 ceive, must be admitted if the facts are accepted. 



These undisputed and, apparently, indisputable 

 data may be thus stated : 



I. The three books of which an ancient, but 



1 Nowhere more concisely and clearly than in Dr. Sutherland 

 Black's article "Gospels " in Chambers's Encyclopaedia. Refer- 

 ences are given to the more elaborate discussions of the problem. 



