AGNOSTICISM: A BE JOINDER. 171 



" Luke's " version is the earlier. The correspondences between the 

 two forbid the notion that they are independent. They both begin 

 with a series of blessings, some of which are almost verbally iden- 

 tical. In the middle of each (Luke vi, 27-38, Matthew v, 43-48) 

 there is a striking exposition of the ethical spirit of the command 

 given in Leviticus xix, 18. And each ends with a passage contain- 

 ing the declaration that a tree is to be known by its fruit, and the 

 parable of the house built on the sand. But while there are only 

 twenty -nine verses in the " Sermon on the Plain," there are one 

 hundred and seven in the " Sermon on the Mount " ; the excess in 

 length of the latter being chiefly due to the long interpolations, 

 one of thirty verses before, and one of thirty-four verses after, the 

 middlemost parallelism with Luke. Under these circumstances, 

 it is quite impossible to admit that there is more probability that 

 " Matthew's " version of the sermon is historically accurate than 

 there is that Luke's version is so ; and they can not both be 

 accurate. 



" Luke " either knew the collection of loosely connected and 

 aphoristic utterances which appear under the name of the " Ser- 

 mon on the Mount " in " Matthew," or he did not. If he did not, 

 he must have been ignorant of the existence of such a document 

 as our canonical " Matthew," a fact which does not make for the 

 genuineness or the authority of that book. If he did, he has 

 shown that he does not care for its authority on a matter of fact 

 of no small importance ; and that does not permit us to conceive 

 that he believed the first Gospel to be the work of an authority to 

 whom he ought to defer, let alone that of an apostolic eye-witness. 



The tradition of the Church about the second Gospel, which I 

 believe to be quite worthless, but which is all the evidence there is 

 for " Mark's " authorship, would have us believe that " Mark " was 

 little more than the mouth-piece of the apostle Peter. Consequent- 

 ly, we are to suppose that Peter either did not know, or did not 

 care very much for, that account of the " essential belief and car- 

 dinal teaching " of Jesus which is contained in the Sermon on the 

 Mount ; and, certainly, he could not have shared Dr. Wace's view 

 of its importance.* 



I thought that all fairly attentive and intelligent students of 

 the Gospels, to say nothing of theologians of reputation, knew 

 these things. But how can any one who does know them have 

 the conscience to ask whether there is " any reasonable doubt " 



* Holtzmann (" Die synoptischen Evangelien," 1863, p. 75), following Ewald, argues that 

 the " Source A " ( = the threefold tradition, more or less) contained something that an- 

 swered to the " Sermon on the Plain " immediately after the words of our present Mark, 

 " And he cometh into a house " (iii, 19). But what conceivable motive could " Mark " have 

 for omitting it? Holtzmann has no doubt, however, that the " Sermon on the Mount" is 

 a compilation, or, as he calls it in his recently published " Lehrbuch " (p. 372), "an artificial 

 mosaic work." 



