356 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix 



to be the founder of that " eternal fiction which is 

 called ecclesiastical history " ; and, on the pre- 

 ceding page, he talks of the "myth" of the 

 Ascension with its " mise en scene voulue" At 

 p. 435, I find " Luc, ou Tauteur quel qu'il soit du 

 troisieme ]vangile " ; at p. 280, the accounts of 

 the Passion, the death and the resurrection of 

 Jesus, are said to be " peu historiques " ; at p. 283, 

 " La valeur historique du troisieme Evangile est 

 surement moindre que celles des deux premiers." 

 A Pyrrhic sort of victory for orthodoxy, this 

 " surrender " ! And, all the while, the scientific 

 student of theology knows that, the more reason 

 there may be to believe that Luke was- the com- 

 panion of Paul, the more doubtful becomes his 

 credibility W he really wrote the Acts. For, in 

 that case, he could not fail to have been acquainted 

 with Paul's account of the Jerusalem conference, 

 and he must have consciously misrepresented it. 



We may next turn to the essential part of Dr. 

 Wace's citation (" Nineteenth Century," p. 365) 

 touching the first Gospel : 



St. Matthew evidently deserves peculiar confidence for 

 the discourses. Here are the "oracles" the very notes taken 

 while the memory of the instruction of Jesus was living and 

 definite. 



M. Renan here expresses the very general 

 opinion as to the existence of a collection of 

 " logia," having a different origin from the text 



